Far as the Eye Can See by Robert Bausch Page A

darker.
    “I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m not laughing at the name. It’s just that . . .”
    “I am Talking Boy when I am young man,” he said. He was indignant, but I think my laughing may of loosened him up a bit. He didn’t take it unkindly. It may of been some kind of opening for him to see me as a fellow, a human being, instead of just a wasichu.
    He lit his pipe, then settled back to enjoy it, with the little pouch in his lap. He held the pipe with his left hand and let his other hand rest over the pouch like he was going to protect it from me. I asked him if I could have some of his tobacco and he took my pipe from me and put some of the tobacco in it. He tamped it down with his thumb, then handed it back. “Good medicine.”
    “Thank you kindly,” I said. I didn’t believe in none of that hocus-pocus, but I didn’t see the point in telling him that. I wanted to know about his life. About how he come to know Theo, and work with him. But I’d have to ask questions to get those answers, and to tell the truth I was damn sick and tired of carrying the conversation.
    But then he started drinking from a canteen that I soon learned was full of whiskey. After a while he offered me a sip and I thought it was water. I’d already eaten the ham and drunk my coffee and I was a mite thirsty, so I took a big gulp and it damn near choked me to death, and this made him laugh louder and harder than I ever seen a body laugh. His laugh was like a elk barking in a canyon. After that, he kept snickering off and on for a long time, remembering the look on my face when I commenced to choke. I didn’t see as how it was so damn funny, but I liked it that he was laughing. It loosened him up a little more.
    He drunk a fair bit of the whiskey, then held it out toward me to see if I wanted some, but I shook my head and he laughed again. I lit my pipe and commenced to smoke, so I had nothing to say. But then he started talking. He told me about his parents, the first pair, then the second. How all four of them raised him. “My parents gave me life at a young time,” he said. “Their parents adopted me.” He told me they always kept their lodges close together. His voice was smooth while he remembered. Like affection run deep in him and it somehow smoothed his spirit and shrunk a bit of his natural hostility.
    At one point he said, “Where is your father?”
    I shook my head. “He could be dead.”
    “He die?”
    “I don’t know where he is. I was raised by my aunt.”
    “Theo’s father,” he said, gesturing with his pipe, “live in big city. New Jersey.”
    “I don’t think New Jersey is a city,” I said. “But they got a few big cities there.”
    “Theo’s father live there. In New Jersey.”
    I owned as it was probably so.
    “All white men leave their fathers,” he said. He looked at me with a kind of pity that could pretty fairly of been scorn. “You leave your father, or he leave you.”
    “I guess.”
    “It is different with my people. We never leave our fathers.”
    “Never?”
    “We all live in same village. Where my fathers go, I go with them.”
    “And you have more than one.”
    “All my people have more than one. It is Indian way to adopt the young men and women as they grow.”
    “I’ve heard it was such,” I said. “It’s a good idea.”
    “Why do wasichus go away from their fathers and mothers?”
    “I don’t know,” I said. “I guess it’s the way the world is.”
    “No,” he said. “It is wasichus. Not the world.”
    “Well, you ain’t with your father now.”
    “No. I live on land of my fathers.”
    I could see I had better not argue the point. I wanted to know how it was any different from white folks; most can locate their daddy if they’ve a mind to, but they just don’t necessarily hang around after a certain time of life. All I said was “Our villages don’t ordinarily move nor nothing. So most can find their daddy if they need to.” It was quiet for a while,