The Noble Savage
The problem with identifying as Native American is that even the positive imagery winds up reversing into a negative. It is bad enough to be castigated as a lazy alcoholic, of course, but even the stereotypical portrayal often played for comic effect of treating everything as “sacred” winds up coming back to bite them:
“We were told in movies and books that Indians had a sacred relationship with the land, that we worshipped and nurtured it. But staring at Nathan, I didn’t feel any mystical bond with the rez. I hated our shitty unpaved roads and our falling-down houses and the snarling packs of dogs that roamed freely in the streets and alleys. But most of all, I hated that kids like Nathan—good kids, decent kids—got involved with drugs and crime and gangs, because there was nothing for them to do here. No after-school jobs, no clubs, no tennis lessons.”
The Lakota Way
Readers hoping to learn something about a culture that is mostly foreign to them—or, worse, corrupted through white people’s storytelling—are in for a treat. Much of the most memorable imagery in the novel is directed toward sharing illuminating insight into the Lakota culture:
“I wondered if I should let Guv go, show him the mercy I’d never been given. That was the Lakota way, wasn’t it? Wacantognaka, one of the seven Lakota values—it meant compassion, generosity, kindness, forgiveness. I remembered the lessons from my teachers back at school. They’d taught that the greatest honor, the greatest bravery, came when a warrior chose to let his enemy go free and touched him with the coup stick. Legend was that even Crazy Horse had shown his courage by counting coup on a Pawnee warrior once, chasing him across the river, but deciding not to kill him, to honor his bravery and grant him his freedom.”
Mile High Baseball
Part of the story takes place in Denver. Denver is home to the Colorado Rockies baseball team. When Denver was first awarded a new MLB franchise there was some concern over how the high altitude would affect play. It still remains an intriguing idea today even though Colorado has not be either particularly successful or particularly terrible in a consistent way:
“To my surprise, Marie knew quite a bit about pro baseball and the Denver team, the Colorado Rockies. Dennis was passionate about the Rockies and talked about the lack of respect the team got around the country. According to Dennis, people believed the high elevation and dry climate in Denver changed the nature of the game and made the ball travel farther when hit. He said the Rockies stored the balls in a cigar humidor to counter this effect and slow them down. The moisture changed the nature of the balls, turned them into something different.”
Gravesite Revelation
The narrator drives to a certain grave on a cold winter day. The aching desire to explain how things have gone off the rails is there, but the words are elusive. It is one of those moments in life when everything makes sense and nothing makes sense at the same time:
“I sat there, and the wind stopped. The sun set, but I remained. I didn’t want to get up and face what I’d almost certainly lost. What I’d lost and still had yet to lose. The country of the living was gone to me, and I knew that I’d entered a different space, one that offered no solace but only the wind and the cold and the frost. Winter counts. This was the winter of my sorrow, one I had tried to elude but which had come for me with a terrible cruelty.”
