The second person to sit next to me stays there for a long time. He�s a Native American dude with John Lennon sunglasses and long, silky black hair. He�s wearing a long T-shirt and a black coat, both of which are covered, Jackson-Pollack-style, with bright pink paint splotches. He�s reading a book, which is odd enough to begin with on a bus like this one, but odder still, he seems to be actually reading it, and thinking about the words. I try to read the spine every time the bus sways, but he�s got the pages folded back over it. Finally, at a long stop, I tap his arm (maybe too hard? I am like a pecking bird sometimes, looking for information. Peck peck peck) and ask what he�s so enraptured in. He looks thrilled to be asked.
�Spirit tales,� he says in a Chief Powum sort of booming baritone. �They were passed down to me from my great-great-grandfather. They are about the buffalo, and the wind.�
I pause, unsure of how to answer, and he laughs. An inexplicable hyena laugh that makes the other citizens of the bus twist around and makes my toes wiggle.
�It�s Yeats� he says, all traces of the accent gone. �I have to read it for my English Lit class.�
And I am glad, so so glad that he has said that, and I just say: �Oh.�
He laughs again, and impishly wags his tongue at the nosy old lady who turns to admonish. She turns pink and giggles her way back around, and he gives his tongue a salutatory flip. I suppose I should say for posterity that it was a magnificent tongue, a miracle of cherry-redness and length and flexibility, but in reality it is quite normal. Pinkish-purple, average length, and slightly skuzzy. He turns to me again and asks if I really believed that whole spirit tales thing. I say no, but I kind of did.
He says: I love working the whole brave thing in places like this. People with skin like you are so jumpy about the fact that people who looked like you hurt people who looked like me a long time ago, but look�my people ain�t apologizing to the Lakota, and we near wiped them out in the sixteens.
This is interesting talk, I say, my voice scrambling to be like his, but I bet you didn�t do to them like we did to you.
Oh? says he. I think we did. My great-great grandfather had a necklace of toes.
I giggle, even though it�s not nice. And then I realize that the only reason we�re so horrible in the eyes of the Native Americans is that we�re Europeans. If it was there own kind (and it was, for a bit), they�d be cool. They are cool. But we�re guilty by nature, so why not exploit it? It makes sense. I voice this, and he nods, once.
But you�re still thinking of these dead Europeans as part of you, he says. The only �we� here is you and me. Those guys are dead, and so are the injuns. Let em sit. They could use the rest�gotta be pulled out every time some poor wracked white person meets a person like me.
He laughs again, quieter. And also, please tell them to stop assuming that I can slip through the woods like a ghost in my moccasins. I mean, I can� most every injun�s born with the skill, but�he stretches out his arms languorously�when you imagine we�ve got moccasins too, that�s just presumptuous.
I laugh, and the more I think about it, the funnier it seems. So I laugh a little louder, and so does he, and we�re both laughing way too loudly. The cat lady turns at us, and we just die. It�s great.