A Horse Named Sorrow

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209 47 Iowed her a call. So after pan­ cakes and a good dose of seven or eight cups of over­ caf­ fei­ nated ­ Denny’s cof­ fee to give me cou­ rage, I ­ dialed my ­ mother at home, where I knew she ­ wouldn’t be. Some cou­ rage. “Hi. This is Karen Blake. Leave a mes­ sage at the beep and I’ll call you back.” Every time I tried to tell you . . . all the words just came out wrong . . . so I’ll have to say I love you in a song . . . “Boise, Mom. All is well.” Click. I’m sure I was ir­ ri­ tat­ ing her, but at least I was check­ ing in. Lying too, be­ cause Boise was a ter­ rible place for a bi­ cy­ cle, as are most cit­ ies. And it had the added dis­ tinc­ tion of hav­ ing only one high­ way out of town head­ ing east. An inter­ state, which after two miles and a flat tire, I de­ cided was some­ thing I’d never at­ tempt again. The shoul­ der was a mess of ­ broken glass and lit­ ter, ­ chunks of truck tires and car parts, be­ cause the speed of the inter­ state pro­ duces a shrap­ nel all its own. Gar­ bage, but no flow­ ers. And if the wake of wind be­ hind a truck is bad at fifty miles an hour, it’s plain un­ nerv­ ing at ­ seventy or ­ eighty. I ­ pulled off at the first exit and set my­ self up to hitch­ hike at the ­ on-ramp. A wheat ­ farmer in a spank­ ing new red and sil­ ver Ford F-150 ­ picked me up not long after. He ­ talked about the ­ Basques in the area and how he “dick­ ered” with them in sell­ ing his wheat. “Dick­ ered?” My imag­ i­ na­ tion ran wild. 210 “Yeah, with whis­ key. Means nego­ tiat­ ing a price.” I’d done that. Dick­ ered with the ­ spirit of life (that’s what whis­ key means. I’d ­ learned that in ­ Health Ed.—some old Scot­ tish word, I think). “What are ­ Basques doing way out here in Idaho? ­ Aren’t they from Spain?” “Not if you heard them tell it. They got a whole nation­ alis­ tic thing going. I be­ lieve they con­ sider them­ selves the first Eu­ ro­ peans or some­ thing like that. Their ­ skulls are ­ shaped like Nean­ der­ thals or some non­ sense. I can’t fol­ low it. Any­ way, they know their wheat.” I ­ looked at him a lit­ tle sus­ pi­ ciously. “First Eu­ ro­ peans, eh?—like the In­ dians of Eu­ rope?” “I don’t know about that.” There was si­ lence for a while and then I asked him: “Isn’t Chief Jo­ seph from ­ around here some­ where?” “Not ac­ tu­ ally, no. Nez Perce are from Wash­ ing­ ton orig­ i­ nally, but ­ they’ve got a res­ er­ va­ tion up north” (and he ges­ tured with his head) “. . . near uh . . . Le­ wis­ ton, Mos­ cow—up that way. And there are a ­ couple res­ er­ va­ tions east of here.” He ­ looked tired in the tell­ ing, but also like the kind of guy who liked to be ­ thorough. “What are they like?” “Poor.” “It’s ­ tragic, isn’t it?” Two white guys talk­ ing. “They ­ played their cards wrong, as I see it.” “In terms of dick­ er­ ing?” He ­ grinned. “They ­ didn’t ­ dicker very well. They were bet­ ter at fight­ ing.” “Well, what about all those trea­ ties? No one dick­ ered fair with them.” “Don’t start in on all that. Where are you from?” I knew say­ ing Cal­ i­ for­ nia was an ad­ mis­ sion of guilt, so I ­ pulled one out of the hat: “South Da­ kota.” “The Da­ ko­ tas, eh? Good wheat coun­ try.” “Yup.” 211 “Where­ abouts?” “Uh, Rapid City.” I hoped he ­ wouldn’t start ask­ ing for de­ tails. “Then you know all about In­ dians. You got them Sioux out there.” Shak­ ing his head with bit­ ter­ ness, he was. I just ­ looked at him, my face a big ques­ tion. “I used to work for the bu­ reau years back.” “FBI?” “No, BIA.” Here we go again, as our mo­ ronic ­ ex-president liked...