Summary

In first-person narration, the unnamed narrator identifies himself as a Spokane Indian. He prologues the main part of his story by describing how, when he was a child, his father always picked up Indians who were hitch-hiking, even if there were large groups of them. The narrator says this is one reason why he, as an adult, always picks up Indian hitchhikers, and only Indians. He also recalls stories his father told him about the spiritual nature of salmon, and how there used to be so many of them. He then describes how, when he “was a boy, [he] leaned over the edge of one dam or another … and watched the ghosts of the salmon rise from the water to the sky and become constellations” (21). Finally, he comments that his father never picked up white hitch-hikers, which is how...