American Indian Culture and Research Journal

There is hope; and it is in hope that we have written The Good Red Road for the children, as the Elders who have spoken to us have asked. We have delivered ourselves of a burden writing these things, that the people may be free, and live. —Allogan Slagle, Keetoowah Cherokee He reminded me of the great white rabbit Wakdjungkaga, a Winnebago creator divinely tricky and amicably randy—always a bit frumpy, a cotton plaid shirt and baggy jeans before grunge was in, squeaky tennis shoes. He had a turned-in, tip-toey walk, as though on eggs or ice, and a wild bright alertness to edges and corners. I thought of a bird’s quickness to spot danger, a mouse curiously scurrying. Logan walked right out of The Hobbit with a shuffle and mutter to himself, wrinkling his nose, squinting behind seriously thick glasses, and looking down at the ground like Wordsworth’s leech-gatherer. Only this boy was an advanced high school student in my first freshman honors class at UCLA, winter 1970. Eyesight grounded, he found playing cards, jokes, tarot images, stones, bits of wood, bones, and all matter of debris that proved interesting. Think of a blackbird gathering flotsam for a nest. Logan had deep dark eyes behind coke-bottle lenses, thick black eye- brows, and curly cobalt hair always disheveled. His skin was powdery, rice paper gentle with a disarming humility. No roughness about him, no calloused knuckles—he had artist’s hands, a doctor’s touch. He moved with his elbows turned in, his knees bent like a slow-motion jogger, a slightly forward tip to his walk. All this made sense when he told me he had minus 1400 visual myopia and deteriorating retinas. Doctors said he would go blind by twenty-five. There was no time to lose. If I could see this thing, if I knew where it was, a Southern Cheyenne warrior said of cholera, I would go there and kill it.