Day Seventy-Six, Radio Silence

It is the considered opinion of some Indian elders that cell phones are not for the good. They think Facebook and Twitter and Angry Birds will erase their remaining traditions. So when the big city boys came to build their towers they told them all to piss off.

I'm not sure they're right, though I can't say they're wrong. I am in any case inconvenienced. I rather rely on the odd e-mail to buoy me up on the road. And there are things I want to know more about and words I have not learned to spell. Damn all cell phones, for all I care, but I have come to count on the Internet.

So you're not reading this and I am not sure you would, even if you had the chance. I try to keep things bright and charming but it is really just more of the same. I wake up, I walk, I bitch about my feet. I nod to a friendly cow. I blush in the presence of this girl or that. I drink Coke and eat hamburgers. I complain and I worry but no conclusions are reached. All writing is masturbation.

Speaking of which, I rather think I need glasses. I am 42 and I thought I was one of the lucky ones but recently I am having the damnedest time reading small print unless I hold it just the right distance from my face. My eyes are not focusing like they used to. I am hoping it is just exhaustion. Or poor blood flow or a brain tumor or something. If I had glasses I'd lose them.

I did spend the last two years of my life staring intently at a computer screen. Writing, if you really must know. Which brings us back to where this all started, with no conclusions reached.

Anyway, as regards my day, I got a very late start. My feet kept me up through the night. And there was elaborate bandaging to do and my tent was pitched on a slope. Getting in and out of my tent is difficult in the best of conditions. I have to fold myself up tight. If I were a midget I'd just stand up and walk out, which reminds me of a joke.

It is about a midget--or a Little Person, should you prefer--who, while dancing with a woman much taller than himself, says, "Gee, your hair smells teriffic!"

Lord, I apologise.

At any rate, I was slow getting back on the road, not least because I knew it was going to hurt like hell. But I was running out of water. Canned weeners do dry you out. So somehow or other I climbed up the bank and hiked another eight miles. Uphill, blast it, in awful heat, until I got to the top of my hill. There I found one scraggly little shrub of a tree and sat down in its sliver of shade. There were more pine trees scattered here and about, but none of them were near my road.

It was there I finished the rest of my water, with five lonely miles to go. You'd think I'd be able to hike that last bit without any problems at all. But I was still thirsty and the thought of much worse had caused my tongue to swell. I had developed a chill and a nausea and my knees were starting to shake. I was in fairly awful shape when I limped into Busby, Montana.

Busby is in Cheyenne country; I've said goodbye to the Crow. When Custer was murdering Cheyenne people it was Crow who served as his guides. This is not the cause of their current animosity. I merely mean to show how far back it goes.

Busby indeed has one very small store. Their prices would make you cross-eyed. But they do their best and there is nothing else for miles and miles and miles. I had ten dollars worth of Gatorade. They did not have much to eat. Sodas and snack foods and other such things, and six kinds of Hamburger helper. I wound up having two hamburgers which I heated up myself in their microwave. They are designed for the purpose, no doubt by NASA engineers, and were unspeakably foul.

"Some people here eat nothing else," said the woman in charge of the place. She was red-haired and freckled and twenty-one, with an overbite and a ring in her tongue. She is thoughtful and bright and spectacularly pregnant. At first I thought she was joking.

But no, your yuppie notions of good nutrition have not yet reached the Cheyenne. Most are reliant on government food stamps, which go for Hohos and Funyuns and Pop. It is no way to bring up the next generation of scholars. It is a country with its share of problems. There are children with rotting teeth.

"You should sell real food," I told the young woman.
"No one would buy it," she said.

When I lived in India I read every book Gandhi wrote. They were subsidised and cheap. Most of it is not directly political. He goes on and on about nutrition. And clean toilets and general hygeine. He thought people should be nice to each other, and he was big on Social Justice.

And you saw what they did to him.

I, for one, would not know where to begin to improve reservation life. India's still in an awful state and the Mahatma did all that he could. No one approach can fix it all. I do wish someone would do something. These are Americans after all, whether they like it or not.

"But social programs don't work," you tell me.
"Try harder," say I.

I was at the store for a very long time. A storm had rolled in. The weather service had issued a tornado warning. You wouldn't have gotten me out of there at spearpoint. Everyone was really friendly, though. It was a welcome change.

From there I hiked but a few more miles, until it began to get dark. Find me now camped just beside the road, glaringly visible to every passing car. I am not entirely at my ease and those burgers are making me woozy.


THE LITTLE MIRACLE, which may hatch any day, is to be called Jericho Felix Jiggs Bull Tail. I think that's a wonderful name.

THERE ARE on these praires herds of horses, running more or less free. It is a pretty picture and I can almost see why some people like the beasts.

IT IS POSSIBLE that my long internet silence has caused some of you undue concern. Good. I would hate to be the only one who thinks I might die out here.

COYOTES are howling at the nearly full moon. It rather enhances the mood.

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