Cowboys and Indians

Essay by JulieLVB, June 2014

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Cowboys and Indians

1. "Cowboys and Indians" is a short story written by Lorien Crow in 2008. We are in New Mexico; it's a warm day in February. The narrator is a young girl/woman, and she is at her grandmother's funeral. She is old enough to attend this funeral as an adult, and she is expected to be there to shake hands with the last people leaving. But she still feels like a teenager that needs to escape. This longing to escape drives her to call her rebellion cousin, David. Together they ride on his Ducati. David is half outlaw - half Indian. After a stop at a local bar, they decide to watch the sunset up in the bluffs. As the sun goes down, they start to talk about their grandmother and her life. We hear about David's quilt, we get to know her thoughts about their grandmother's life and we start to notice the difference between them.

2. The narrator is no longer a teenager, but not a completely adult yet. David is her idol. She looks up to him, she feels protected and safe with him, and at some point she wants to be like him. He amazes her, scares her and challenges her. When she thinks about her grandmother, she believes that she had a full life. She understands the great meaning of hard work and she has a great respect towards her grandmother for all the work she did throughout her whole life.

She, like David, is the black sheep of the family - hated by the dead grandfather. She doesn't appear to be an ordinary girl. She has some half-vanished nail polish, but she doesn't want anyone to think of her as a frilly, she wants to appear tougher than she...