hundreds of miles from where Fatback had lived and, apparently, died. That, and the small deerskin pouch of tobacco that was tied to it.

    Fatback was a black Lab — a good dog — who had belonged to Dan, an elderly Lakota man who lived far out on the Dakota plains. Years before, as a result of a book of elders’ memories I had done with students at Red Lake, Dan had contacted me to come out to his home to speak with him. His request was vague, and I had been both skeptical and apprehensive. But, reluctantly, I had gone, and it had changed my life. We had worked together, traveled together, and created a book together in which the old man told his stories and memories and thoughts about Indian people and our American land.

    However, for reasons that I cannot easily explain, after the book was published he and I had not stayed in touch. Perhaps it was because we were from

such different worlds. Perhaps it was because the intimacy we had achieved was uncomfortable to both of us — he was, in some measure, allowing me to make up for my guilt about what I had left unsaid and undone with my father at the time of his passing, and I, in some measure, had served as a surrogate for Dan’s son who had died an untimely death in a car accident and to whom he had initially entrusted the task of writing his story and collecting his thoughts.

    But whatever it was, when we had stood together on the dusty Dakota roadside fifteen years ago, hands clasped in a bond of promise and friendship, we had both known, in some deep part of ourselves, that our time together was finished. We had shared a moment in time; we had done something worthy; and that, for each of us, was enough.

    But now it was all coming back to me. He had reached out to me again — if, indeed, it was him —