“Here’s what I think,” Grover continued. “That speech is good. But it’s dangerous as hell.”
“Dangerous?” I said.
“Yeah. Let me ask you something. What am I doing?”
“You mean, what are you trying to tell me?”
He shook his head like a frustrated school teacher. “No, no. I mean, what am I doing? What am I doing right now?” He held his cigarette toward me, a clue for the slow-witted.
“You’re smoking a cigarette.”
“Right. Now, what’s this cigarette made out of?”
“Tobacco.”
“Okay. You know how we talk about tobacco being sacred, right? You just gave me tobacco, right? So, is this cigarette sacred?”
Dan was grinning. He sensed where Grover was going. I was completely confused.
“I don’t know,” I said.
Grover took the short white butt from his mouth and crushed it theatrically on the stoop. “Nope. It’s just a casual smoke.” He reached into his breast pocket and took out the packet of Prince Albert I had given him. “Now, this is sacred, because you gave it to me sacred. Do you follow me?”
I smiled weakly. He continued. “Sometimes things are sacred and sometimes they’re not. It’s not sacred when the guy at the store hands me a pack of cigarettes because he’s just handing me a pack of cigarettes. Do you see? But when you hand me that tobacco, you’re making it sacred because you’re offering it to me.”
“Okay,” I said. The purpose of the discussion still eluded me.
“But it’s still tobacco, am I right?”
“Yes,” I said, thankful for a question to which I knew the answer.
“It’s the same with Indians,” Grover stated, as if the connection were obvious. “Sometimes we’re sacred, sometimes we’re not. But we’re always Indians. If you write only the sacred stuff, it’s like that New York woman. Just write it all. The old man will try to trick you, but you’ve got to be smart.”
Dan was enjoying himself immensely. He puffed on his cigarette and emitted a series of little “heh, heh’s” as Grover talked.
“So what are you saying?” I asked, truly confused.
“Look over here,” Grover directed. “Look at old Fatback there. Watch her close.”
Fatback was snuffling in the brown fieldgrass. She sneezed several times, yawned, scratched herself, urinated on a bush, dug violently on a patch of dirt, then turned around several times and laid down.
“What did you see?” Grover asked.
I told him.
“Did it all make sense?”
“It was all dog stuff.”
“But if you were writing a story about dogs, you’d put all that in.”
“Sure. As much as was necessary.”
“Well, you’re writing a story about Indians. But you’re writing like a white guy. You want everything all neat. Put it all in. Just write it the way it is.”
I turned to Dan. He was digging at the ground with a stick. Grover spoke again. He wanted to emphasize his point. “This old man’s seen a lot. You ought to write everything, not just like speeches.”
I had a sense of what he was driving at. But I was beginning to get angry and frustrated. I had done what the old man had asked, and I had done it well. I had done it with no promise of reward and not even a thank-you. Dan had seemed satisfied. But now he was sitting silent, letting Grover tell me it was all wrong. I was beginning to feel like I had felt so many times before working with Indians. Nothing you ever did was enough. Nothing was ever acknowledged. You just worked and worked until someone perceived some slight or some wrong in what you did, then you were shown the door. A burr of indignation rose up inside me. This time I was not going to be shown the door. If the time came, I was going to walk through it myself.
Dan raised his hand slowly. It was a deliberate gesture, calling attention to his desire to speak. He chose his words carefully. “I’ve been listening here,” he said. “You’re right, Grover. It’s the white man’s way to try and make everything neat. I guess I wanted a white man’s book.”
Grover was gratified. His point had been taken. “You do it all like that thing Nerburn read,” he said, “and it’s going to be like that New York woman’s clothes — all ironed and neat.” Then, to me, he counseled, “You can’t be afraid to get things dirty.”
Dan sat hunched over in thought. He bit on the edge of his cigarette and spit out several strands of auburn tobacco. “Yeah,” he said slowly. His thoughts were still forming. “I guess we should do it the Indian way.”
I didn’t know what “the Indian way” was. It sounded ominously unformed, and I had invested a great many hours in the shoe box and its contents. I started to protest. Dan silenced me. He turned and began walking slowly up the steps. “Listen to Grover,” he said.
Grover picked up the cue.
“Forget the speeches,” he said. “You’ll get speeches. The old man is always giving speeches. Has been ever since I’ve known him. Get the rest of it.” He stopped on the top step and spit once into the dust. “Think about Fatback.” He nodded his head toward the dog and grinned.
Fatback kicked twice in the throes of some dog dream, let out a blubbery wheeze, and settled contentedly into her hollow of dirt.
“That’s how you should write it,” he said. “Just tell the story.”
It took me a while to get over my anger at Grover’s airy dismissal of my literary method. I had worked too hard, too long, to take it in stride. Still, Dan, who had spent years collecting those shoe boxes full of thought fragments, seemed decidedly indifferent to our change in direction. I tried to tell myself that if Dan could absorb the idea of a whole new direction, I should be able to as well. I decided to ask him about it.
The opportunity came in an unexpected fashion. The next morning as I drove up the path to his house I noticed a thin haze of smoke lingering in the air. When I turned the corner into his yard I saw him standing in front of his stoop tending a small fire with a stick. He was chanting under his breath and throwing something onto the small patch of flames. I drove in cautiously, afraid that I might be interrupting some private ritual. But he grinned and beckoned me over with a hurried gesture.
“Come on. Come on,” he said as I climbed out of the truck. A sweet fragrant odor came from the flames. “Here.” He reached into a small leather pouch he was holding and pulled out a pinch of something. “Put this on the fire.”
“What is it?” I asked.
“You’re too late for the pipe. I did that alone.”
He sprinkled some more of the substance on the fire. The rich odor rose and filled the air.
“It’s sweetgrass, Nerburn. You’ve heard of sweetgrass?”
“Yes,” I answered, though I was not acquainted with the intimacies of its usage.
“The Creator loves the smell of sweetgrass. If you smoke the pipe and pray and then put sweetgrass on the fire, he will listen to you.”
I wanted to be involved, but I felt uncomfortable entering into his spiritual reality.
“I’m doing this for you,” he said.
“For me?”
“Yeah. That you will write a good book.”
Things