The Fancy Dancer

scattered all over.”
    I could see he was relaxing a little. One of the things I’d learned in my first year was roundabout gentle questioning.
    “What does your father do?”
    “He’s one of the tribal policemen.”
    “You went to college, didn’t you?”
    "Yeah,” he said. “I was class salutatorian and on the basketball team and that sorta shit, and I won a scholarship to Montana U. But that was where things kinds started to go wrong, there at Missoula.”
    “How do you mean?”
    His mismatched magnificent eyes moved up from the hat to my face. “Oh . . he said evasively. “I don’t know. I wanted to study education, be a teacher back on the reservation. Not many Indian teachers. That was why I was really happy to go to Missoula. But . . . the pressures, maybe. Something got to me. The first year I studied hard, and I even got engaged to this girl, Georgia Keough. Her dad’s in the state legislature.”
    “Oh, yeah, Mike Keough. My dad knows him.”
    He looked back down and tossed the hat gently in his hands.
    “Maybe I studied too hard. Anyway, that summer I went up home to Browning, and I kinda fell apart. I got real wild. My dad tried to knock some sense into me, but he couldn’t. Drinking and fighting and gambling. Indian kids have got a special way of being wild. I used to lose a lot of money playing Hand. Lost a lot at the horse races over at Starr School. I don’t know any more about racehorses than I know about saddle horses!” He laughed ruefully. “Broke up with Georgia. One thing led to another, I owed a lot of money, and then I did a real dumb thing. I robbed a liquor store, and I got caught by one of the regular town cops. My dad had a fit. They sent me to Deer Lodge for three years. Got out in two on good behavior, because of my school record, I guess....”
    He trailed off, then started up again, as if the booze and dope made it hard to collect his thought.
    “Didn’t feel like going back to Browning, lost my scholarship. So I went down to see my sister in L.A. for a couple weeks. Didn’t like L.A. but I met my wife down there. When I came back, the prison placement service found me the job here.”
    I sat there just letting him talk. He was talking without prodding now, and I kept wondering what
    horrible (to him) sin he was going to come out with.
    “And, well, Father, the thing is, I’m a young man on the way down. It’s not just that I drink a little too much. I smoke a little dope too, but it’s really the whiskey that’s getting me. I want to stop. But I want to turn my life around too. Somehow I want to get my feeling of commitment back. I’ve tried by myself, but I just can’t seem to ..
    Commitment. The word hung in the air in the little office. It wasn’t merely a strange word from a grease monkey. It was a strange word to be linking with a horrible mysterious sin. What was so horrible about drinking a lot, compared to, say, rape or murder?
    He sat there waiting for me to say something.
    “Is that all?” I said.
    He nodded and sighed heavily.
    “I don’t believe you,” I said softly.
    He smiled. “Okay. You don’t believe me. What else do you want to hear?”
    “Where the hell do you get hard drugs in this one-horse town?”
    He retrenched hastily. “Oh, there isn’t much hard stuff in Cottonwood, Father. Why, I bet you’d have to go clear to Chicago for heroin. Not even much acid around—you gotta go to Missoula for that. But hell, Father, Cottonwood is the grass capital of the Northwest. Tons of the stuff come in on the railroad.”
    I had to laugh at his pitiless picture of the big dope scene in town. “What is it, Mexican?”
    Vidal grinned. “It’s mostly that stuff that grows wild over in the Bitterroot. You smoke, Father? I’ll get you some.”
    I had to grin back. There we were, grinning at each other like a couple of college students. Again I had that eerie feeling that I hadn’t grinned for ages.
    “I used to, a little,” I said. “I even admit to taking once when I was in the seminary. But now I’m straight. You can’t offer mass if you’re buzzed. Besides, Father Vance would have me crucified if he smelled pot in the rectory.”
    Suddenly we were lapped in that conspiratorial 42
    warmth of the "younger generation.” At that moment, nothing linked me to Father Vance but the sacramental mark of the priesthood on my soul and the cassock he made me wear. Since it was obvious that Vidal was going to lie to me for a little while,