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lackeys riding out to get shot offa our horses by the wagon train folks. Or standing around on a corner in some city bumming smokes an’ change but yukking it up anyway. But the more they stick around the more they realize that Indians have a real good sense of humor and it’s that humor more than anything that’s allowed them to survive all the crap that history threw their way. Keeper says laughin’s about as Indian as bannock and lard. Most of the teaching legends are filled with humor on accounta Keeper says when people are laughing they’re really listening hard to what you’re saying. Guess the old people figured that was the best way to pass on learning.Once you stop to remember what it was you were laughing at you remember the whole story, and that’s how the teachings were passed on. Guess if it was thirty below and I was hunched around some little fire in a wigwam I’d wanna be laughing too instead of listening to some big deep talk.
    Teasing’s big around here too. You get lotta teasing from people on accounta teasing’s really a way of showing affection for someone and like me at first, a lotta people have a hard time figuring that out. Get all insulted and run away. But once you figure that out it’s a lotta fun being around a bunch of Indians.
    When Stanley and me got to his cabin that first day I was expecting a big warm family kind of scene like on “The Waltons.” I figured there’d be a big spread on the table, maybe a little wine, music and a party happening. Instead there was about ten people sitting around drinking tea they were pouring out of a big black old-fashioned metal pot on a pot-bellied stove in the middle of the room. There weren’t any decorations or anything unless you can call six or seven pairs of wool socks hung over the stove pipes decorations.
    They all looked up as we walked in. The silence was deafening.
    â€œHo! Whatchu got there, Stanley?” said a big gap-toothed guy with a brushcut. “Not Halloween yet, is it?”
    â€œHo-wah!” said a large fat woman with gumboots, a kerchief around her head and smoking a pipe. “Thought he was coming from T’rana, not Disneyland!”
    â€œReee-leee!” said another woman. “Who’d you say adopted him? Liberace?”
    â€œAhh, he’s just dressed fer huntin’,” said an old man with so many wrinkles he looked like he was folded up wet and left overnight. “Wanna make sure he don’t get mistook fer no deer.”
    â€œDeer? Maybe get mistook for the northern lights but sure ain’t nobody gonna be thinkin’ he’s a deer no matter how dark it gets,” said a tall spindly woman busy pouring herself another tea.
    Stanley eased me into the center of the room with his hand on my shoulder and I could feel the pressure of it getting a little firmer the more nervous I got. Like he wanted to hold me from bolting for the door, which was exactly the thought going through my mind at the time. He smiled at me and waved at a large round woman leaning in the doorway and staring real hard at us both.
    â€œYour sister,” was all he said. Or at least I think that’s all he said because I got swept up in her big brown arms and disappeared for about five minutes. I could feel her breathing deeper and deeper as she hugged me and when she finally let me surface for air she was crying real quiet and smiling at the same time. She was a lot wider than me, but it’s kinda spooky when you look at someone you swear you’ve never seen before and you can see your own eyes looking back at you. I didn’t doubt for a minute that this woman was my sister.
    â€œHi, bro’,” she said. “I’m Jane. Do you remember me at all?”
    â€œNo,” I said real quiet. “No, I don’t think I do.”
    â€œS’okay,” she said. “S’okay. I remember you real good. Little bigger than before