If you ain't hooky-bobbed a muscle car on a powwow dirt road at midnight then you ain't an Indian. Or maybe you're just one of them city Indians who knows how to ride the subway or call a Lyft but has never identified the owner of a rez car just by the specific sound of its engine as it rolled past the Assembly of God Church then the Catholic Church and then the Presbyterian Church.
Okay, I ain't saying that I'm a better person than those city Indians. When it comes to living in the world, I'm just another human. But, when you start talking about Indians, you gotta talk about the hilarity in sorrow and the sorrow in hilarity.
This past year, a state trooper, knowing the rez roads are sparsely traveled at any time and especially on the graveyard shift, has been speeding like crazy from east to west. Witnesses say he flies at more than 100 miles per hour. What are we supposed to do? That cop was playing a deadly lottery with our lives and his life. The losers die. Or maybe it’s the winners who die. Things get twisted when you’re traveling at maximum speed. Some people think the world got so much worse when cavemen found oil. I think they're probably correct.
Anyway, last night, I was driving back from my girlfriend's house, around four in the morning, and saw that trooper's car had broken down near Turtle Lake.
"Hey, partner," I said when I pulled up next to that trooper and rolled down my window.
"Hello," he said.
"You need some help?" I asked
"You know how to fix cars?" he asked me.
"Do you know how to fix cars?" I asked him.
"No " we both said and laughed.
It took a couple hours for the government tow truck to arrive.
The sun was stretching its back and legs, getting ready to rise, and the moon was yawning big, ready to bed down.
The trooper waved to me when he got into the tow truck. He was embarrassed, I think. Not by his broken car. But by the secrets he’d shared. He’d shown me a photo of his wife and said, "She's leaving me."
"I'm sorry," I said. "Why's she leaving?"
"She can't take the danger anymore," he said. “She wants to have kids but doesn't want them to feel as scared as she does. She doesn't want to be a cop's wife anymore and she doesn't wanna have a cop's children."
"Damn," I said. "That's a tragedy."
"Yeah," he said. "I guess it is."
I felt bold.
"Is this why you've been speeding through our rez late at night?" I asked.
He looked at me. Studied my face. He could've arrested me, I suppose. Made up some excuse to do so. Could've taken me down and sprained my wrists putting on the handcuffs. But he was just looking for some empathy, I think. Ain't we all looking for empathy?
"I just started seeing a therapist," he said. "She worries that I'm self-destructive."
"Yeah," I said. "They tell me I'm self-destructive, too,"
"How so?" he asked.
"My girlfriend," I said. "She's married to a gun-owning warrior named Bloody Wolf Claw."
"Has he threatened you?" he asked.
"Nah," I said. "He doesn't even know about us. Not yet. And his name is just Wolf Claw. I added the Bloody."
The trooper laughed.
"You Indians are different."
"Yes, we are."
"And I'm pretty sure that Mr. Wolf Claw knows what you're up to."
"Ah," I said. "He'll probably shack up with my ex-girlfriend. The rez is a small place. It's all compromise and silence."
He nodded his head. Maybe we Indians ain't so different. Maybe the whole world is compromised and silent.
"Hey," I said. "Slow down on these roads. The trees around here, they’ll tell you good stories if you're calm enough to listen."
"Okay," he said.
I watched the tow truck pull the cop car away. Then I drove over to the tribal cafe for breakfast. Four slices of toast and three eggs, yellow side up, with the yolk bursting onto the plate.
I always like to sop up the last bit of life.
"The trees around here, they’ll tell you good stories if you're calm enough to listen."
THIS LINE! My long-gone 1967 Plymouth Barracuda and I salute this line.
I paused on the line about the sun stretching his legs, but even longer on "The rez is a small place. It's all compromise and silence." Whew.