«Think of that Thoreau fellow. I've read some of his books. He went out and lived in a shack and looked at a pond. No he's one of your heroes. If I go out and live in a shack and look at a pond, pretty soon I'll have so many damn social workers beating on my door that I won't be able to sleep.
«They'll start scribbling in some damn notebook: ´No initiativ. No self-esteem.`They will write reports, get grants, start som government program with a bunch of forms. Say it's to help us.
«That's what happened with allotment. They said they were trying to help us. They cut up our reservations into chunks and told us we had to be farmers. When we didn't farm, they said we were lazy. I don't remember anything about Thoreau being a farmer. He mostly talked about how great it was to do nothing, than he went and ate dinner at his friend's house. He didn't want to farm and he's a hero. We don't want to farm and we're lazy. Send us to a social worker.»

Grover and Dan rode in the front seat in silence. It had been years since I had ridden in a silent car. I generally tried to fill the space with music or talk from the radio or a tape. I counted it a defiency when I was forced to ride in quiet.
Now, in the enveloping dark of Grover’s old Buick, the pleasure of silent travel came back to me from my childhood. I slid down in the back seat and listened to the whining of the tires and the steady, purring throb of the ancient V-8 under the hood. Fatback crawled over and put her head on my lap. The sky outside had changed from golden to orange to a blazing red, and was beginning to deepen to a velvet purple. My truck, my indecision, and my petty grivances and angers seemed light years away. I was in Indian country, and I was traveling on Indian time.