IF WE DIDN’T LAUGH WE’D CRY

Last winter I drove six and a half hours to central Wyoming, to my friend Stanford’s place on the Wind River Indian Reservation. I did the usual – hung around the kitchen table, chatting and drinking Folgers, then entered the sweat lodge for an evening-long ceremony. There were several breaks, which just about everyone spent lying on the floor of the lodge, gossiping and making jokes. During one of these, one of the men I knew best, a guy who happened to be white, said he was under investigation