“Just asking, Kurt. It shouldn’t be controversial. I’m only trying to establish a time frame.”
“ ‘Fucking the Indian’ is not a time frame. It’s ignorant. Remember John Wayne in Hondo where he plays a half-breed army scout? My point is he has a hard time being accepted by Indians and whites, per se.”
“Are you saying we might be half-breeds?”
“Not per se. We just don’t want any questions like that hanging over us.”
“Can we stop for water? What happens if we have mechanical problems on the Rez? You can’t even buy tires for this thing.” I was trying to change the subject, and I guess I was successful because Kurt started the motor and pulled back onto the highway, the tiny four-hanger sneezing under the hood. I knew perfectly well that I didn’t pass inspection around our house except with Dad. Kurt was trying to see himself in the mirror, his hair windmilling around in the heat. Then he’d look at me like a dermatologist. It didn’t take me long to figure out that he was wondering if we were half-breeds.
Roland White Clay was some kind of emeritus tribal chairman. His office was at the end of a corridor past the drinking fountain, and sparsely furnished, a military portrait behind the desk. He wore a sport coat over his jeans and a sky-blue western shirt, his Stetson resting upside down on his desk. He met us with cordial suspicion and occasionally glanced out of his window as we met, seemingly anxious to be outdoors again. Kurt and I sat in front of his desk, as though interviewing for a job.
“Chief — do you mind if I call you Chief?”
“Suit yourself,” said White Clay with a wintry smile.
“Chief, I read all the Montana and Wyoming papers pretty much every day, and I see an issue that affects Indian people very negatively.” Here White Clay perked up. “And that is: rolling cars. My research indicates that with each six inches of wheelbase, the likelihood of rollovers is reduced by eighteen percent.” I spotted this as bullshit from the get-go. “My thought is to appeal to the automobile industry as an altruistic salute to Native American culture to manufacture special editions of their standard vehicles with wider wheelbases to help prevent rollovers.” The acid look in White Clay’s face was a wonder to behold. White Clay spoke after long silence.
“If you think I should,” said White Clay, “I can have tribal council sit in.”
“No,” said Kurt. “We’re just trying to learn more about our mother. She has dementia and she’s slipping away.”
He gazed at us. “Well, we were close.”
“How close?” said Kurt. You could hear the demand in his voice. White Clay mused comfortably as he looked back at him. Finally, he smiled. Just then three little boys ran in: White Clay’s grandchildren. He introduced them. All had short, crisp names, Chip, Skip, and Mick. He reproached them affectionately for their muddy jeans and T-shirts. They tagged White Clay and shot out as quickly as they’d come.
“I never married,” he said.
“That’s all you’re going to say?”
“That’s all I’m going to say.”
The photograph behind the desk, grainy from being blown up, showed a smiling GI on a riverbank, propped against his M1. I couldn’t tell if it was White Clay or just another Indian kid. We had deferments, which Kurt said was the only way to go if there was nothing more to fight than gooks. My asthma exempted me, but Kurt could easily have been drafted if Mother hadn’t gone to the board. She had something on the woman who was running it.
“Is Caroline suffering?”
Caroline. When had someone last called Mother that? “No,” I said. “Except during her so-called good spells when she is confused.” I didn’t say a word about what she might have been going through while Kurt was impersonating him, not when we were sitting across the desk from the genuine Wowser.
“Whose idea was it to come and see me?”
Kurt barked an artificial laugh. “We just thought you might want to see her. Might do her a lot of good.”
A truculent cloud crossed Kurt’s face. “Our mother enjoys an unparalleled and dignified standing in our community that will never change.” All I could think was that if he took a stand at this moment he could plan on being Wowser for the rest of Mother’s life. White Clay picked the Stetson up off his desk and thrust it onto his head. He stood, still tall if bowlegged, but broad shouldered and erect. “Caroline and I were … there wasn’t room for it. I’ll come to see her, if you think it would help. Might help me!”
One look at Kurt’s MG and he said he’d take his pickup. Going back in that hot headwind was awful. It nearly stopped that silly little car, and our faces roasted as we headed into the afternoon sun. “How about the three papooses that showed up in the chief’s office? What’d he call ’em? Snap, Crackle, and Pop? Something like that.”
“Caroline,” said White Clay. “It’s me.” Her eyes moved slightly in White Clay’s direction, and Kurt threw his head back and mouthed some words to the ceiling. For him, it was all over. White Clay just moved his head very slightly from side to side, as if saying no. In a while he got up, bent over, and kissed Mother on the cheek. You couldn’t tell if she noticed. White Clay turned to speak to us. He said, “You were a couple of cute little boys. I understood why your mother wouldn’t go off with me. Now I see you again, and you are grown men. I must tell the truth. There doesn’t seem to be much to either one of you.” He nodded to me and went out. Then Kurt left, leaving me alone. I sat and watched Mother. There was nothing in her face, nothing like life, nothing except the rise and fall of her breathing. It felt safe, after so long, to ask her if she loved me. It was just the two of us. No reply. I didn’t expect one.
I met with Kurt at his clinic in the old ice-cream plant that had been stylishly renovated to house fashionable new businesses, but fashionable new businesses failed to arrive except for a doomed florist and a malodorous brisket palace. I couldn’t wait to speak to him, and sitting in one of his examination chairs, I felt I was confessing after a long interrogation. Kurt, who is never off duty, wandered around in his white tunic inspecting his weird tools while I told him the story.
“I spent almost three hours with Mother, and don’t ask me why, she was pretty lucid.”
“Lucid about what?”
“I’m going to tell you. Maybe the visit from White Clay, I don’t know, but she was kind of excited, kind of agitated, you could say, and I just sat there, and finally I said, ‘What’s on your mind?’ ”
“You think she has one?”
“Kurt, honestly.”
“All right, so go on.”
“Remember when Dad had his gallbladder surgery?”
“And the septicemia?”
“Exactly, and do you remember when it was?”
“No.”
“Well, I’ll tell you when it was. It was the same week as Crow Fair, one year later.”
“Earl, that’s not something I would ever remember. And in some ways it speaks to some of your issues, always looking back, always regretful.”
I ignored this. I felt it was important that Kurt hear the story and that it would maybe change his views of Mother and help him realize she was only human. “Well, when Dad was in the hospital you remember his sister Audrey came out from Spokane to help care for him. And Mom felt it was kind of insulting, and she went off by herself.”
“I vaguely remember. As I recall, Esther was a hell of a cook. But repetitious.”
“Oh, you thought it was a big improvement. That’s another thing that may have gotten Mom, this big fuss over Audrey. Anyway, she left.”
“Where did she go?”