On a cool autumn evening, a sedan passed a man walking in the ditch of a rural county road. Its driver saw the thin, slightly stooped man in the beam of the headlight, carrying a small duffel bag in one hand. But it was not the man’s bag or his posture that caught the driver’s eye. It was a slightly crooked light-colored cane.
The cane was made of the gnarly roots of a tree. This the driver learned after he stopped, reversed, and asked the man if he wanted a ride. Without a moment’s hesitation the man accepted the offer. After he was in the front seat and the car was back on the road, the driver glanced at the man and his cane. It was hard to tell how old he was, since the interior of the car was dim and the man’s skin was dark. Age was often hard to discern on dark-skinned people, it seemed.
“My name is Wentworth,” the driver said, keeping his hands on the wheel and casting only quick glances at his passenger. “You know, I never take this road. You are lucky I did tonight. Where are you going, if I may ask?”
“To the nearest hotel room,” replied the man, in an old, melodious voice. “My name is Wolf.”
“Well,” Wentworth chuckled. “Mr. Wolf, that is a very specific answer that tells me exactly nothing.”
“Forgive me,” said Wolf. “Beyond the next hotel room, I have no plans. Thank you, nonetheless, for stopping and giving me a ride.”
“You are most welcome. Actually, I was curious about your cane. My father—God rest his soul—had one very similar to that.”
Wolf patted his cane. “What a coincidence,” he said. “This is my father’s cane. Made from the roots of a cottonwood tree, nearly a hundred years ago.”
“Unique, then, for at least two reasons,” decided Wentworth. He pushed his steel-rimmed glasses up on the bridge of his nose and concentrated on the road ahead. That he had actually picked up a hitchhiker on a lonely, little-used road began to bother him. He watched out of the corner of his eye as Wolf took a small bottle from his bag. From the bottle he shook out two pills and swallowed them with a drink from a small canteen.
Wentworth sighed inwardly. Luck seemed to be on his side. The man seemed frail, and likely not given to violence. He was dressed neatly and his hair was thin, worn in a long braid down the back. But who knew what kind of past he carried, along with that duffel bag and gnarly cane?
“Tell me, Mr. Wolf,” he ventured. “If you don’t know where you are going, can you tell me where you are coming from?”
The man chuckled. “From west of here, a small town called Mormon Crossing. I grew up near there, on the Indian reservation.”
That explained the dark skin. “I haven’t heard of it, but I’m afraid I have spent much of my life poring over ledger entries rather than maps,” Wentworth admitted. “I am from the town at the end of this narrow road, River Bend.”
“I see. You are a banker then, I wager.”
“Yes. It was my father’s business, and his father before him. Pray tell, what is it you do, Mr. Wolf?”
“I fix things,” replied Wolf.
“A repairman?”
Wolf nodded. “You can say that.”
“One thing puzzles me, sir. How did you—I mean, why this road? This is as backcountry as there is around here. The main highway is miles and miles north.”
Wolf chuckled again. “A trucker gave me a ride to a crossroads. I chose this road because it seemed like the thing to do. Life gives us many choices, but I am certain you know that, Mr. Wentworth.”
Wentworth sighed. “Indeed I do.”
“Do you travel this road often?” Wolf asked.
“No. I arrived at the same intersection you did and made a right turn, and here we are. I guess I was not in a hurry to get home. Perhaps I was wishing for time to think.”
Wolf nodded, glancing for an instant at the driver’s face. “I apologize, then, for disrupting your plan. Quiet time to think is much overlooked these days. Especially if what one must think about is not pleasant, or—”
“You got that right,” Wentworth interrupted. “Difficult situations I have always wrestled with alone. However, I am facing one I have never faced before.”
“We all come to those moments, I have learned,” Wolf said softly. “More than one, I am afraid. But there is always one that will eclipse the rest.”
“Right again,” agreed Wentworth.
“And we wonder if there are answers, or where they are,” Wolf pointed out. “Perhaps on a lonely road.”
“Well,” sighed Wentworth, “a lonely road might really be a place to hide. Yet I know better. We can never hide from those moments in life that require us to step forward.”
“You do not strike me as one who avoids tough circumstances,” observed Wolf.
“I haven’t in the past, but the current situation is the toughest for me,” Wentworth confessed. “It involves family.”
Wolf nodded. “I have been there,” he said. “Most of the time we would rather take the suffering on ourselves, instead of holding a loved one to the fire. At least that has been my experience. It has cost me dearly, however. I do not recommend it.”
Wentworth found himself squeezing the steering wheel. How did this total stranger know of his situation? This moment went against the grain of his well-ordered, tangible, tactile life. But life was more than numbers on a ledger page. He decided to take a leap of faith, hoping it was not a leap of foolishness.
“Mr. Wolf,” he said, hoarsely, “my son-in-law works in my bank. He is next in line to become branch manager after I retire in a few weeks. He started out as a teller, as I did. Some months ago, however, I discovered that he had been diverting funds to an offshore account. He has apparently been doing this for many years, a few dollars and even pennies at a time. But over the years, it added up.”
Strangely, Wentworth felt a sense of relief. It was the first time he had given voice to the situation. He was terrified of telling his wife because she thought their son-in-law could walk on water.
Wolf nodded as he gazed out the windshield, his eyes probing the darkness with the headlight beams. “I have often wondered,” he said gently, “which is more of a thief, the person who steals one dollar or the person who steals a million dollars. Yet the hard reality is that a thief is a thief because he has stolen. It matters not how much.”
“Perhaps I can’t accept the reality that my son-in-law is a thief,” Wentworth admitted. “But more than that, I can’t destroy the lives of my daughter and grandchildren by turning him over to the authorities.”
“Begging your pardon, sir,” Wolf countered immediately. “You will not destroy your daughter and grandchildren’s lives. Your son-in-law has already done that. The question that comes to mind is how long you will enable him to live the lie.”
Wentworth sighed deeply. “I have thought of that as well.”
“What about the people who put their trust in your bank, as well as their money? Unless I am mistaken, there are mechanisms in place for banks to recoup financial losses. Perhaps you have a way to rebuild trust as well.”
“You have a point,” Wentworth said, after several moments of silence. “I have made that point to myself over and over again. I carried on after my father developed the business. We were a small community bank providing the usual services in a rural area. My father was known for his compassion and his honesty and our default rate was much smaller than other banks, because of his reputation. Twenty years ago we were bought out by a much larger regional bank because of our customer base. A loyal customer base, I might add.”
“Your son-in-law has violated that trust,” Wolf pointed out. “He has harmed the human equation.”
“The human equation?”
“Yes. I am not a rich man,” replied Wolf. “But I have worked hard to make a living for my family. By the sweat of my brow and the ache in my back I put food on the table, clothes on their backs, and shelter over their heads. That was my responsibility. The people who put their money in your bank have done no less. Therefore, when you look at the bottom line, your profit and loss statements, and your quarterly earnings, you are looking at more than dollars and cents. You are, sir, looking at the sweat equity of hundreds if not thousands of people who trust that you will care for their money. They are entrusting more than their money, as you well know. They are entrusting their futures, their families’ welfare. By putting their money in your bank, they are trusting that their aching backs have paid off. So your son-in-law is not just taking someone else’s money. He’s taking their humanity.”
Wentworth glanced at his passenger. “I have never heard such an eloquent and forceful argument from a simple repairman, ever,” he said, smiling.
Wolf waved a hand. “Be that as it may, I think you see my point.”
A soft glow of lights appeared on the skyline. “We’re getting close to River Bend,” Wentworth said, pointing to the lights. “There are several reputable hotels, and I’m sure they are comfortable. May I recommend one to you?”
“Please do, keeping in mind my modest means,” Wolf replied.
They rode in silence until Wentworth turned onto the main street and then into the entryway of a hotel. “I know the couple that own this place,” he told Wolf. “They are good and honest people. Please tell them that I brought you here.”
“I will. Thank you for the ride.”
“It was my pleasure, I assure you.” Wentworth held out a hand. “Thank you for a stimulating and enlightening conversation.”
Wolf shook the offered hand. “I will think of you in the days to come,” he said. “Just remember, life goes on.” Then he opened the door and stepped out of the car. Wentworth watched as his passenger stopped at the front door of the hotel, holding up his gnarly cane in a salute, then disappeared inside.
Twenty minutes later, in the confines of his living room, Wentworth telephoned the River Bend Hotel and asked the owners to bill him for Wolf’s accommodations. Then he made coffee and invited his wife to share a cup with him.
“I have something to tell you,” he said to her.
“If the look on your face is any indication,” she said, “we may need something stronger than coffee.”
Morning came as it always did. It had been a long night, but Mrs. Wentworth prepared breakfast for her husband as she always did. Her eyes were puffy from weeping, yet there was an inner strength emerging, too. Wentworth saw it in the way she carried herself and in the certainty of her movements. Wolf was right, he thought, life does go on. When he left the house to face the difficult tasks of this coming day, she embraced him long and lovingly.
On his way to the bank Wentworth stopped at the River Bend Hotel. He was told, however, that the man with the gnarly cane had checked out early and had insisted on paying for his own room.
“Where did he go?” he asked the proprietor.
“He asked for directions,” the man told him. “It seems he is walking to his destination. So we sent him to the truck stop because he was hoping for a ride.”
At the truck stop on the edge of town, Wentworth found two people who had seen and talked to the man with the cane. It seemed he had caught passage somewhere with a long-distance trucker.
The banker drove a mile out on the main road that led from town. Before he turned back he gazed at the rolling hills stretching away, and watched the several vehicles heading east. Wentworth knew he would never see the man with the gnarly cane again. Yet he seemed to sense his presence, and in no way did that feel strange.
He managed to arrive at the office at his usual time, and answered the usual greetings as he opened the door to his corner office. At precisely nine o’clock, 30 minutes before the lobby was opened for the day’s business, he dialed his son-in-law’s telephone extension. When the younger man knocked on the door, Wentworth knew exactly what he needed to say.
“Jim,” said Tom Clements, tall and fair-haired, dressed in his usual blue suit. “What did you want to talk to me about?”
Wentworth sighed deeply. “Choices,” he said. “You need to make some choices.”
Two mornings later the man with the gnarly cane sat at the counter in a restaurant. He had finished breakfast and was reading the newspaper while he sipped his coffee. On the inside of the front page, a headline in bold type caught his attention:
Assistant Branch Manager of Local
Bank Surrenders to Authorities After
Admitting to Embezzlement
Wolf read the story, which described how Thomas Clements had voluntarily confessed to banking officials that he had been siphoning funds. The article went on to say that Clements’s lawyer would likely arrange a plea bargain; Clements had promised to return the stolen money, since none of it had been spent.
There was much the article did not say, but not because the writer was withholding facts. Wolf guessed that Wentworth had walked a fine line in order to soften the blow for his daughter and grandchildren. The article did say that Clements had been released on bail, though he had lost his job and a promising career with the bank.
“They sure do take care of their own, I think.”
Wolf turned toward the speaker, a husky black man with salt-and-pepper hair and a broad, friendly face. He was pointing at the article in the paper.
“Ah, yes, well, it does seem that way, on the face of it,” Wolf said.
“Yeah, I mean someone steals thousands of dollars and then promises to give it back, so they slap him on the wrist.” The man leaned over, conspiratorially, and lowered his voice. “If that was me, or you, they’d throw away the key even if it was just ten bucks. Know what I mean?”
“I know exactly what you mean. That is the nature of things around here.”
The man nodded, sadly and thoughtfully. “The thing is, it used to be worse. My daddy grew up in the South. He was in the army and it was bad there, too. Served in a segregated unit in Korea. After he got out, he went north thinking it would be better there.”
Wolf nodded and waited for the rest of the story.
“Wasn’t as bad, but the attitudes are everywhere. I’m sure you know all about it. By the way, name’s Walker. Thad Walker. I drive a truck.”
Wolf shook the man’s thick, strong hand. “Name’s Wolf,” he said. “I fix things. Glad to meet you.”
Walker pointed to the duffel bag on the seat between them, and the gnarly cottonwood cane. “You a traveling man, Mr. Wolf?”
“I am.”
“Headed anywhere special?”
“Up north, past the big city, to see my youngest daughter,” Wolf said.
“Hey.” Walker grinned. “I just happen to be taking a load of appliances up that way. Got an empty seat if you need a ride.”
Two hours later Thad Walker’s 18-wheeler was humming along on the interstate. “Up ahead is a weigh station,” he said drily. “I’ve had to stop there eleven times in the past six months. I own this rig, believe it or not, so I can freelance, pick and choose my loads. Seen every part of this country.” He punctuated the air with a thick finger. “But that station there, they always give me grief.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, the last time I was hauling a bulldozer, a small one,” he said, exasperated by the memory. “They held me aside for four hours while they measured the load, front to back and side to side. They knew I was within the regs and it wasn’t a wide load. I just gritted my teeth and waited. Nothing else for me to do.”
“They were doing that just because they could. They were within their authority but on the outside of being a pain in the ass.”
Walker laughed, the booming laugh of a big man. “Yeah, you got that right! Sounds like you been there and done that.”
Wolf nodded. “Got out of the service in sixty-eight,” he said. “I had a U.S. government check, back pay for hazardous duty, eight hundred dollars. None of the banks on or near the reservation would cash it.”
Walker shook his head, lips set grimly. “What’s your take on stuff like that, Mr. Wolf? I mean beyond the obvious reasons they give about ‘authority’ and ‘policy.’”
“It’s power,” Wolf said. “I remember going with my grandpa when I was a boy, back on the reservation, to a white rancher’s place to collect lease money he owed us. My grandpa was a quiet, dignified man, and physically strong even into his midseventies. But when we arrived at the rancher’s house, we waited in the wagon. We did not get down and knock on his front door. We waited until he felt like coming out and giving us 20 dollars.
“Fact of the matter was, my grandpa could have taken that rancher, easily, in a fair fight. He knew it and the rancher knew it, but there was something else they both knew. If my grandfather had even looked at that man crossways, the sheriff would have come knocking on our door.
“My father came home from his war, shortly after I was born, full of spit and vinegar. He took on all comers, didn’t back down. He was more than a match for any one man, or even two at a time. So they hauled him off to jail, beat him badly. They almost sent him to the penitentiary. After that he got the message.”
Walker nodded knowingly. “They have that kind of power. My game, my rules.”
“There’s still a law on the books in a town in the western part of the state,” Wolf said. “If more than three Indians gather, they can be shot by a peace officer.”
“You got to be kidding!”
“I’m afraid not. It hasn’t been enforced since nineteen hundred, and that’s good,” Wolf went on, shaking his head as well. “I’ll be impressed when the town fathers repeal it. That would show me they’re growing up.”
Walker sighed, a deep, sad sigh. “So what do we do until they do grow up?”
“Stay low, pick the fights we can win, decide which issue is worth dying for.”
“Doesn’t sound like an easy way, but I guess it never has been.”
Wolf took out a pocket watch and opened the cover to check the time. “It boils down to this,” he said, taking a pill bottle from his duffel. “We need to be strong to beat it, take a few punches now and then, but we get up each time we get knocked down. We’ll win in the long run because racism doesn’t thrive on strength, it thrives on weakness and mean-spiritedness.”
“You mean we have to outlast them.”
“Absolutely.” Wolf paused to take two pills then put the canteen and pill bottle away. “We can outlast them; we have to. Part of the victory came in our parents’ generation, part of it in ours, another piece will happen in our children’s time. I read that in fifty years or less most of the world’s population will be dark-skinned. That means that our values, our beliefs, our philosophies will have the opportunity to prevail. The answer is to stay strong, teach our children to stay strong, and so on.”
Walker nodded and geared down to slow for the turning ramp onto the weigh station. “Well, here we go,” he muttered under his breath. He eased his rig onto the scales and waited uneasily, watching the two scale operators inside the building as they checked monitors in front of them.
“There is my friend,” Walker whispered to Wolf. “The short one. The good thing is they have a bathroom inside, just in case we’re here for a bit.”
After a minute a metallic voice came over the loudspeakers. “You are cleared to go, big rig. Thanks for your time, and have a good day.”
Thad Walker’s jaw dropped. “That’s the last thing I expected,” he said, shifting the transmission into first gear. “We’re leaving before he changes his mind.”
Back on the interstate the 18-wheeler flowed back into the line of traffic. Walker grinned at his companion. “Hey, if you got nothing to do sometime, give me a call and you can ride with me anytime. I think there was something magic back there, and it might have been you.”
Wolf chuckled. “I’ll keep that in mind.”
Two hours later Walker turned his big rig skillfully in a cul-de-sac at the end of a suburban street. The big man reached out his hand to Wolf.
“Thanks,” he said. “Sure enjoyed your company, and thanks for your wise words.”
“Not at all. I owe you for the ride.” Wolf shook hands with the smiling Walker. “Maybe I’ll see you on down the road somewhere.”
As he watched the big rig ease its way out of the neighborhood, a growling, rolling behemoth, a voice called out from a nearby house.
“Dad!”
Over coffee at the kitchen table, Doreen Talman gazed at her father’s tired face. “How long can you stay?” she asked.
“Until you get tired of me. Where’s my granddaughter?”
“School. Bus will be here shortly. Why didn’t you tell me you were coming?”
Wolf smiled. “I did. I wrote you a letter two weeks ago.”
The young woman threw up her hands. “Dad, you didn’t say when! But I’m glad you’re here. Randy is coming home, next week I think. His unit will be flying back into the city airport. Mary and I will go meet him.”
Wolf studied her face. “You’re worried.”
She nodded. “This was his third tour, Dad. We were just getting things together from the last one, he was settling back in at his job and then his unit was activated again. I … I don’t know what to expect. So I’m glad you’re here.”
“Are you still laid off?”
“Well, in a way, I guess. I’m back on half time, money’s tight. I’m hoping Randy will get his job back.”
Eight days later Sergeant Randy Talman dropped his rucksack inside the front door and gazed at the Welcome Home banner hanging on the wall. Above the left breast pocket of his Class A uniform, above his shooting badges, were three rows of service ribbons—one more row than he had after his last combat tour. His mouth was smiling but his eyes were not. In a moment he noticed his father-in-law standing in the corner.
“Hey, son,” Wolf greeted him. “Good to see you back. Welcome home.”
Randy crossed the room to shake hands. “Thanks, Dad. It’s good to see you, too.”
After midnight Wolf was in the kitchen waiting for the coffee maker to finish brewing, and listening to the soft footsteps enter behind him. “Almost done if you want a cup,” he offered.
“Coffee was on my mind, thanks,” Randy said, taking a seat at the table.
They sat quietly for several minutes after Wolf poured coffee. The wall clock seemed especially loud. Wolf waited, giving his son-in-law the first opportunity to say whatever he wanted. The older man had never been one to be pushy or intrusive. He wondered how Randy felt about him being here.
“I wish you could have met my dad,” the younger man said suddenly. “He was a talker. He’d walk up to anyone, even someone he didn’t know, and strike up a conversation. I think the two of you would have hit it off.”
“Likely so, because I like to listen to people talk,” Wolf replied, smiling.
“He had one withered hand,” Randy went on. “Don’t know if you knew that. Anyway, it kept him out of the service, and he was kind of ashamed of that. If he were here, I’d tell him he’s got nothing to be ashamed of. He didn’t miss nothing.”
“I think your mom mentioned it to me, about your dad’s hand,” Wolf recalled. “And I think I would have told him the same thing. He didn’t miss nothing.”
The younger man stared into his coffee. “Yeah, but I don’t know if he would have understood. My cousin told me not to enlist, after his first tour. I know now that he was trying to spare me, but it’s too late.”
“We’re all the same way when we’re young,” Wolf assured him. “We don’t know how to listen. We learn the hard way. Trick is to listen once you know how.”
“Are you sorry you enlisted?” Randy asked.
“For the most part, no. I learned things, met good people. I don’t know how other guys felt, but combat gave me an appreciation for life. There’s a lot a person can do when no one’s shooting at you.”
“You never had the guilt syndrome?”
Wolf sighed and nodded. “Oh, yeah. Big time. Then one day my mom got exasperated with me and told me I should be glad to be alive. She said the guys who got killed would choose to be alive. That pulled me up short.”
Wolf saw the pain and confusion in the younger man’s eyes as Randy rubbed his face. “I know our casualty rate wasn’t as high as you guys in Vietnam,” he said, exhaling sharply. “Seven guys in our platoon were wounded, one lost his left arm and leg from an IED. I can still see the torn stumps as the medic worked on him. The guy lived, as far as I know, he was only twenty. We did lose three KIAs. I see them all the time, hear them talking, laughing. I didn’t see them die, but I saw them dead. Seems like they won’t go away.”
Wolf stood and refilled their cups and sat down again. “You know,” he said, sighing, “the thing is, they won’t go away, not completely.”
“I was afraid of that.”
“No.” Wolf waved a finger. “No, don’t be, and I’ll tell you why. Your memories of them are their last hold on this life. In a very real way, they still live in you. Don’t make them go away, or try to. Let me ask you this: Don’t you think those young men have earned something by dying? Don’t you think they’ve at least earned the right to be remembered?”
After a deep breath, Randy nodded. “Yeah, they have.”
“Then remember them. Let them come into your memory. Keep them there.”
Randy’s blue eyes filled and a tear slid down his pale cheek. “Yeah, yeah, I will.” Then, in a moment, he whispered, “Who ever thought war is the answer to anything?”
“No one wise,” Wolf replied.
Two days later when no one was looking Randy took down the Welcome Home sign, folded it neatly and put it away. In the afternoon he and Doreen went for a walk before the bus brought Mary home. “I have a plan,” he told her. “I talked to the manager of the warehouse and there is an opening there, not my old job so the money’s a little less. But it’s a job and it’ll help us get caught up. In the meantime I think you should go back to school—you’re only two semesters from finishing. Go part-time if you like. When you finish and get a job, I’ll go to school since the army will pay my way.”
“I like your plan,” Doreen said. “When do you go back to work?”
“Next week. How long is your dad planning to stay?”
A worried expression slid across the young woman’s pretty face. “I don’t know, he didn’t say. Is there … is there a problem?”
“No, no, not at all. He and I have been sitting up nights talking. He knows a lot.” Randy paused, a frown wrinkling his brow. “But I noticed he’s lost some weight and I think he’s taking pills. Is he sick, do you know? Because the last time he came to visit he drove.”
“I think he is sick, but he hasn’t said anything.”
Doreen broached the issue of her father’s health in the only way she could. She asked him about his pickup truck.
“Is your truck still running?” she said over lunch.
“Still running,” he replied.
“Then why didn’t you drive, like the last time you came to visit?”
Wolf smiled, a nearly imperceptible upward bend to the corners of his mouth. Doreen had seen that smile many times. There was always something mysterious behind it.
“The spirits told me to walk,” he told her.
“You mean hitchhike? That’s kind of dangerous these days, Dad.”
Wolf chuckled. “So what about life isn’t dangerous, these days? You live on the edge of the largest city on the plains, one with a high crime rate. How does that compare to hitchhiking?”
“Is this your way of turning the conversation into another one about us moving away from here?” she asked suspiciously.
“No. I thought we were talking about hitchhiking.”
Doreen shook her head. “Okay. So the spirits told you to walk. Does that mean you’re going home the same way?”
Wolf smiled patiently. “No, I thought I’d take the bus. Is this your way of telling me I’ve worn out my welcome?”
“Oh, for heaven’s sake, Dad! No! I’m just … I’m just worried about you, that’s all.”
“You noticed the pills.”
Doreen reached out and grabbed her father’s hands. “What are they for?”
“An infection in my gastrointestinal tract,” he told her.
“Are they helping?”
He nodded. “Seem to be.”
“Okay. Have you gone to another medicine man? Isn’t that what you do when one of you gets sick? You treat each other, right?”
Wolf smiled. “I have.” He patted her hands reassuringly. “It will be okay. I promise.”
Something in his tone bothered Doreen. On their way to a movie that evening she mentioned the conversation with her father to Randy.
“You don’t believe him?” he asked.
“Yes, I do, but I don’t think he’s telling me everything.”
In the days after Doreen could see that her father was getting restless. So she did not object when he talked about buying a bus ticket home. Her older sister, Lucinda, who made her home on the reservation, had called a few times. She would meet their father at the bus station, she promised.
Wolf left the city on a bright but cold day. Randy, Doreen, and Mary watched the big silver- and-blue bus blend into the traffic and then disappear. When they returned home they found a small envelope, with all their names on it, sitting on the kitchen table. Inside was a blank card.
Taped in the fold of the card was a postal money order for a thousand dollars.
Wolf leaned back in his seat and watched the rural landscape beyond the city flow past his window. Taking a moment, he found his reading glasses and looked at the face of his paper ticket. Five hundred miles and three bus changes and he would be home, or at least close. Lucinda would drive him the last 20 miles.
He sensed the stares before he glanced sideways and saw a young couple across the aisle, whom he guessed to be Asian, smile and wave at him.
“Forgive the intrusion,” the man said, pointing to Wolf’s crooked cane. “We noticed your unique cane, but we are curious. Are you a native North American?”
Wolf chuckled under his breath. Native North American. Well, that was the most accurate of all the labels favored by one group or another. “Yes,” he said. “I am.”
“Wonderful!” the man exclaimed. “A pleasure to meet you. We are from China.”
Wolf reached across the aisle and shook hands with the couple. A hundred miles later they sat at a table in a roadside convenience store doubling as a bus station. Their next bus was not due for an hour.
“This is my wife, Sarah Wu,” the man told him. “I am John Tay. We are from Yulin, which is north of Zhanjiang, which is on the coast on the South China Sea.”
“If you say so,” Wolf smiled. “I am afraid my geographic knowledge of your part of the world is woefully lacking. Your names, a combination of English and Chinese, I presume?”
“Yes,” said Tay. “A necessary thing. How we Chinese give and use names is a source of confusion for most people here. Such a combination of English and Chinese is easier to do. Both of us were doctoral students at the university. We are going home, to fly from the west coast. We take the bus to Denver, then fly to Los Angeles.”
“I’m glad you will not ride a bus the whole way to the coast,” Wolf said.
“We thought to see some of the country, the landscape, especially the plains,” explained Sarah. “There was little opportunity for us to travel while we were in school.”
“Please,” interjected Tay. “May we know your name?”
“Ah, forgive my poor manners. Yes, my name is Wolf. I am going home.”
They shook hands all around again.
“May I ask what it is that you do?” said Sarah.
“I fix things,” Wolf told her.
“I see. A repairman?” she said.
“You can say that. Are your doctorates in the same field, or different?” Wolf asked.
“I am an archaeologist,” replied Tay. “My wife is a hydrologist. I am the romantic, she is the practical one. I am the past, she is the future.”
They laughed together. “Well,” said Wolf, “it takes both to run the world. We have to understand where we have been to know where we’re going.”
“You seem also to be a philosopher,” observed Sarah.
“I’d rather be a realist,” Wolf replied.
After a waitress refilled their coffees, Tay leaned across the table. “There is one thing I am curious about.”
“Would that be the Bering Land Bridge theory?” Wolf guessed.
“This is astonishing! Yes, it is.”
“And are we native North Americans related to present-day Asians, Mongolians, and indigenous Siberians?” Wolf went on. “I should think that you are in a better place to answer that question than I.”
Tay nodded thoughtfully. “Evidence strongly suggests so, of course. DNA testing is incontrovertible. Biological connection is one thing, Mr. Wolf, but what about culturally? How do you, for example, feel about that ancient connection?”
“Who are we and where do we come from? That’s the ultimate question, as far as I am concerned, Mr. Tay.”
“Why is that, for you?” wondered Sarah.
“Because if we ever factually prove that and we truly come to understand it, we might have a chance to eliminate some basic misconceptions that we’ve labored under for millennia. For example, if we can accept that all biological human variations are less than one-tenth of one percent, and that we are the same on the order of ninety-nine and nine-tenths percent, maybe we can see beyond the archaic myth that the color of our skin matters.”
“Indeed,” said Tay, nodding.
“So, to answer your first question, yes, I think your people and my people, and the Koreans and the Japanese for that matter, are related. How do I feel about that culturally? Well, let’s throw caution and politics aside and strengthen the ties that bind.”
“How and when will that ever happen?” asked Sarah.
Wolf sipped his coffee. “When wisdom rules the world,” he said.
“Mr. Wolf,” she said, smiling nervously. “I think you are something more than a repairman.”
“No. That is what I do, what I have done for most of my life. I fix things.”
“Do you meditate?” asked Tay.
“Yes, I do.”
“What do you meditate about?” Tay pressed.
“Connections,” Wolf replied. “I am a traditionalist; that is, I live according to the spiritual beliefs my people have had for God knows how long. There is a prayer that we use in every one of our religious ceremonies, a very simple prayer. All my relations. That phrase includes everything that is; not just humans, but everything in the world.
“When we pray or meditate and say All my relations, we invoke the essence of all that is in the world. Think of the power that is there. It’s not magic, it is unbridled and awesome power. We must bring it together unselfishly, for the good of all that is.
“Now, the next time I say it I will think of you, my new friends.”
After a moment of silence, Sarah reached across the table and touched Wolf’s hand. “We will be indebted to you for that.”
“Not at all,” he replied, “because you can do the same for me.”
At the next stop Wolf had to part company with his new friends. John Tay and Sarah Wu waved as they boarded the southbound bus to Denver. Tay was holding a small, sealed envelope Wolf had given him. On the front was scrawled a short note:
To my friends Sarah Wu and John Tay.
Do not open until you arrive home.
Inside the station Wolf took his pills and sat down to wait for the westbound bus. When it came, it was a smaller bus and nearly full. As always with connecting routes, it stopped at just about every small town along the way. Wolf tried to sleep but managed only to doze off and on. They came to his stop at one o’clock in the morning.
Lucinda Wolf Day watched her father get off the bus and walk toward the pickup truck where she waited with her husband, George. The old man seemed a bit unsteady to her as he picked his way, leaning on his cane. He seemed thinner as well. She hurried forward to meet him as Doreen’s concerned voice played in her memory. “What’s wrong with Dad? I know he’s sick, but he wouldn’t tell me exactly what’s going on.”
“Dad,” Lucinda called out. “It’s good to see you. I just called Doreen to tell her your bus was pulling in.”
“Ah, thank you,” he said, his voice somewhat hoarse. He hugged his oldest daughter and shook hands with his son-in-law.
Though it was only a 20-minute drive to Lucinda’s house, Wolf was asleep 5 minutes after they left the small town. He awoke at ten the next morning in Lucinda and George’s spare bedroom, barely remembering how he had gotten there.
Though he soaked for over 20 minutes in the guest bathtub, in water as hot as he could stand it, the pain in his back did not subside. Dressed in gray cotton sweat clothes, he walked stiffly into the kitchen to join Lucinda. It was just past ten thirty.
She noticed how pale he looked, but did not mention it. It was hard to mask her concern, however, when he could not finish his breakfast. “Dad,” she said softly. “What’s going on? I know you don’t feel well.”
Wolf nodded slowly. In a tired voice he said, “I think you should take me to the hospital.”
Lucinda was shocked when the doctor at the Indian hospital admitted her father after reading the results of a blood test. At just past two in the afternoon she sat, stunned into silence, as she listened to the doctor break the news to her. Her first tearful call was to George, who took time off from work to be with Lucinda while she called Doreen.
“Yeah, hon, that’s what it is,” Lucinda said to Doreen, trying to sound brave. “Pancreatic cancer, advanced. Even if it had been detected sooner, it wouldn’t have made much difference, according to the doctor. Dad’s known about it for months.”
After two weeks in the hospital Wolf insisted on going home, back to his own house. His attending physician agreed and signed the discharge order. He sent Wolf home with pain pills. Lucinda moved in with her father.
Every day a nurse from a rural hospice program came to administer morphine. In spite of the pain, Wolf was lucid, telling stories and visiting with anyone who came.
After a week two medicine men came and stayed, sitting with Wolf day and night. The day Doreen arrived Wolf gave his daughters a scrap of paper with words scrawled on it. “Just simple requests,” he told them. Requests they promised to carry out.
On a cold, late autumn night the spirits came for Wolf. Lucinda would swear that she saw something misty and shimmering rise from her father’s chest. The two medicine men sang and prayed, then announced to the nearly 30 people packed into the small house, as well as an equal number waiting in the cold night outside, that their brother Wolf had finished his earthly journey.
Over 200 people came to Wolf’s funeral. They buried him on a hill overlooking a river valley, next to his wife. That had been one of his requests.
A month later a stone carver came and erected Wolf’s marker, a slim red granite slab that matched his wife’s. The man labored for most of a morning and left behind the new marker connected to the first with a three-foot length of steel chain. Sometime later Lucinda and George came to finish fulfilling Wolf’s final request. George attached the crooked cane to his father-in-law’s stone.
Before the first heavy snows of winter, two men came to Lucinda’s house, one several days ahead of the other. The first was a big black man and the other was a white man in steel-rimmed glasses and a gray suit. Both said the same thing to Lucinda; they had seen an obituary in a newspaper, and they wanted to see Wolf’s grave.
She took each of them to the graves on the hill, and they smiled at the words on the new headstone. “I wish I could have visited with him a lot longer,” they both told Lucinda. “I never learned so much in such a short span of time.”
Lucinda never saw either of them again. But before they drove away, each of them asked her a question: “He said he fixed things. I know he was much more than a repairman. What did he do, really?”
Lucinda told each of them with a smile, “He was telling you the truth. When you translate our native word for ‘medicine man’ into English, it literally means ‘the man who fixes.’ He healed people, took away their cares, their pain. Took them onto himself. He fixed things.”
On the other side of the world a young couple finished building their new house. A small house, to be sure, but it would be a fine place to raise children. One of the first things they pinned to the wall in their small living room was a card. On it, in Wolf’s writing, were a few words. Words that Sarah Wu and John Tay looked at each day and vowed to live by. They were the same words on his headstone:
Wisdom travels many roads and knows no boundaries.
It is a fleeting gift. Grasp it while you can, for it is
not yours to keep, but to use and pass on.