Neither Wolf nor Dog by Kent Nerburn

cowboy show on his television. He didn’t even turn toward us when Dan opened the door.
    â€œHey, Grover,” Dan shouted. “How come you don’t have any junk cars in your yard?”
    Grover didn’t move a muscle. “Don’t have a dog,” he answered. The two men roared with laughter, as if this were part of some longstanding joke between them.
    Grover made an elaborate charade of looking out the window toward the sun. “Must be about lunchtime.”
    He gestured me toward a brown wooden chair with green tweed cushions. It was like the chairs in a cheap motel, with aslanted back and flat, foam rubber cushions. I lowered myself into its sagging seat. Dan was already at the refrigerator.
    I stared blankly at the scratchy image on Grover’s television. A group of cowboys were riding as fast as they could through some nondescript sagebrush. They were leaning over the fronts of their horses, waving their guns as they shot as if they were throwing the bullets out of the barrels. The sound track of tinny music, thundering hooves, and gunshots echoed off the walls of the trailer. I wanted to reach over and turn the sound down, but knew I didn’t dare.
    Dan shuffled over with a loaf of white bread, a half-full cellophane pack of baloney, a jar of Miracle Whip, and a bottle of ketchup. Grover laid a butter knife and three light-green melmac plates on the coffee table in front of the television. Dan fumbled with the little red wire tie that held the bread bag closed and finally managed to get the bag open. The two men started rummaging around and constructing their sandwiches.
    â€œBetter get on with it, Nerburn,” Grover said. “The old man can really pack them away.”
    Dan made a grunt of acknowledgment and piled a third slice of baloney on his bread. Then he hammered the bottom of the ketchup bottle until a large blob splotted onto the meat.
    â€œDamn!” Grover said. “I hope I can eat like you when I’m eighty.” He reached across and turned up the volume on the television.
    â€œHere, watch. Pretty soon they’ll go by a rock and an Indian will jump on them.”
    The gang of cowboys rumbled across the countryside, dust flying and music blaring. Soon the camera switched to a shot of a rocky cliff. The music changed to some ersatz Indian melody with a heavy tom-tom beat, and a group of suspiciously Italian-looking Indians emerged, like sphinxes, to stand on thetop of the rock outcropping. They were bare-chested except for vests, and had big scarves tied around their heads.
    â€œToo high,” Dan said. “They won’t jump from there.”
    He was right. The Indians saw the oncoming bustle of cowboys and said something to each other in a guttural approximation of an Indian language. They ran to their horses — all pintos — and vaulted onto their backs from behind, like gymnasts mounting a pommel horse, and rode off yipping and hollering.
    The scene shifted back to the cowboys. One of them held up his hand and the others all reined to a stop. “There,” the lead cowboy pointed, “Comanches!” The pack surged off to the left in hot pursuit, hooves pounding and guns blazing.
    â€œMy God,” I said. “How can you watch this? Doesn’t it make you crazy?”
    â€œHell,” Grover said. “I used to go to the movies as a kid and root for the cowboys. I probably even saw this one.”
    â€œYep,” said Dan. “In the old show houses everyone used to cheer and boo at movies. We all booed the Indians; cheered when the cavalry came. I really liked John Wayne.”
    I had heard this same story many times from the older Indians. It seemed astonishing to me. But always, the response was the same: we didn’t even feel those were Indians like us. We cheered the cowboys and booed the Indians just like the white kids.
    â€œSo it doesn’t bother you?” I asked.
    â€œA lot of things bother