She gave me his name and hung up.
And so this book began.
It was several months before I could make the trip. I packed a few clothes in the truck and made my way across the bleak landscape of America’s northern tier. Scrub pines gave way to fields. Morning mist rose over rolling prairies. Small towns, signaled in the distance by towering grain elevators or church steeples, shot by on the side of the highway, unnoticed, unvisited, undisturbed.
The radio came in and out, offering moments of rock or classical music before disappearing into static. I switched from FM to AM. Farm reports, local ads for hardware stores, specials on rakes and fertilizer and feed.
I checked the map and marked my progress. The reservations were defined only by slightly off-color squares surrounded by dotted lines. I tried to imagine an America seen from within these tiny islands in a sea of invading cities and farms. I thought of how a mild sense of discomfort overcame me whenever I crossed one of these borders into a reservation, and how I felt vaguely alien, unwanted, even threatened. How must it be for the Indians themselves, traveling across great expanses of country, feeling that same threat and alienation until they could reach the protective confines of one of the tiny off-color squares that were so few and separated on the vast map of our country?
I arrived on the old man’s reservation shortly after dark. The clerk at the local store was a heavyset Indian girl. She eyed me suspiciously when I gave her the name. Three young boys who were standing at the video rack stopped talking and watched me quietly.
“Over there,” she said, pointing toward the west. “He lives about three miles out. It’s kind of hard to find.”
I assured her that I was good at directions.
She drew a tiny map on the back of a napkin. It was full of turns and cutbacks and natural landmarks like creekbeds and fallen trees. I thanked her, bought a pack of Prince Albert tobacco, and set out.
Her map was good, better than I had expected. I soon found myself bouncing up a rutted path with weeds growing in its middle. The headlights formed a vague halo in the darkness. The eyes of small animals would gleam for a second on the side of the road, then disappear as shadowy forms made their way into the underbrush.
The road made a quick turn, then opened into a clearing. My headlights were shining directly onto a small clapboard house. Two cars sat outside. One was up on blocks. Three wooden steps made their way up to the front door. An old, low-bellied dog lay on the top stoop. When I opened the car door she came running toward me, barking and wagging her tail.
The front door opened and a figure emerged, silhouetted against the light inside the house.
“I’m Nerburn,” I said.
“Yeah. Come on in,” came the reply, as if he had been expecting me. The voice was old but warm. Suddenly I felt more at ease. There was that Indian sense of humor and grace — almost a twinkle — in its tone.
The dog continued barking. “Get away, Fatback,” the old man yelled. The dog fell silent and scrabbled her way under the car that was sitting on blocks. “Damn thing. Just showed up here one day. Now she thinks she owns the place.” The old man turned and walked back inside. He was slow and deliberate, hardly lifting his feet as he walked.
I made my way up the steps and into the door. The matter-of-fact way he accepted my arrival had me confused.
The house was full of man smell. Fried food. Stale cigarettes. Old coffee.
Dishes stood in the sink. One wall was covered with photographs — a 1940s-vintage sepiatone of a young man and woman standing in front of an old car; a department-store posing of a little girl in a taffeta party dress; a graduation photo of a solemn young man in a mortarboard. An old Life magazine photograph of John F. Kennedy stood framed on an end table.
“Sit down,” the old man said. He beckoned to a yellow Formica table that stood in the middle of the kitchen. “Do you drink coffee?”
I told him I did. “Good,” he answered, and poured me a cup of thin brown liquid from a white enamel pot he kept on the stove. Then he padded over and slid into a seat across from me.
He must have been almost eighty. His face was seamed and rutted, and his long grey hair was pulled back into a ponytail. He had on a plaid flannel shirt over a white T-shirt. His pants were held up by suspenders and he wore sheepskin-lined slippers. One eye was clouded over, but there was a twinkle in his look that matched the twinkle in his voice.
I reached into my pocket and handed him the Prince Albert. My days in Red Lake had taught me that the gift of tobacco was the gift of respect among Indian people.
The old man looked at it.
“Hmm,” he said. He reached across the table with a hand twisted by arthritis. He took the packet and shoved it into the breast pocket of his shirt. “You wrote those ‘Red Road’ books.”
“I helped the kids.”
He folded up the newspaper on the table. To Walk the Red Road lay underneath, as if it, too, had been awaiting my arrival. Small notations were written all over its cover.
“They’re pretty good.”
“We tried our best.”
He spit once into a coffee can he kept by his chair.
“I don’t like white people much,” he said. He was looking straight at me.
“That’s understandable.”
“Did they?”
“Who?”
“The old folks at Red Lake.”
“Not all of them.”
He picked up a can of snuff from the table and slid some behind his lip.
“What about you?”
“You mean, did they like me?”
He didn’t answer.
“I think so. Some didn’t. They thought I was a pushy white guy. But what could I do?”
“You did okay.” He tapped the cover of To Walk the Red Road. “Now, let me ask you something else. Do you know why they let you?”
I smiled a bit and took a sip of my coffee. “I think so. I think it’s because I like people and they could tell that. That I wasn’t going to screw them. That the kids thought I was okay so they decided to trust me.”
“No, I don’t think so,” he said. “There’s something else. You don’t try to be an Indian.”
I smiled at the compliment and let him continue. He was clearly a man who formed judgments quickly.
“White people that come around to work with Indians, most of them want to be Indians. They’re always wearing Indian jewelry and talking about the Great Spirit and are all full of bullshit.”
“Yeah, I know
