Something's wrong with Pine Ridge High's best runner, a three-time state cross-country champ. There's a blank look in his eyes. He can barely talk. Rumors fly all summer on the reservation: Is he drunk? High? Giving up? Will he ever run again?

BY COLLEEN KENNEY | Lincoln Journal Star

WHITECLAY - The man's face is swollen. Last night, he climbed into a car here with a driver he didn't know. Near the reservation town of Oglala, S.D., some 20 miles north, the car hit a horse.

His face hit the windshield.

Clifford Grass sits here tonight on a concrete slab, boots in the dust, eating a jerky string, passing around cans of malt liquor with his friends.

Cars pull up. People go in the beer store and come out carrying sixpacks and cases. Clifford and his friends lean inside the open car windows, bumming coins for more 24-ounce cans of Hurricane and Camo Silver.

When the cars leave, he and his friends settle back down with the dust.

Sometimes they sit like this for days until a family member pulls up to coax them into a car, give them a bed and food and wash their clothes.

Dust covers this town like a web. It's on Nebraska 87, the highway that cuts through on the way to the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation just north across the South Dakota border. It's on the men and the women who gather in clumps along this stretch of beer stores in the day and on the urine-stained blankets they share at night.

It's on their open sores, their open cans of beer. It mingles with the car fumes and the sweat and the booze on their breath.

"Blank is when you get all drunk and sit up here and raise hell - that's what they call it. Blank."

Clifford speaks more softly than his friends.

"I watch people around here and see them get blitzed. I like to drink once in a while, too."

His swollen face still can smile. It's a warm smile, the front top teeth missing. He's 45. His home is in the town of Pine Ridge, an easy two-mile walk sober.

He knows an abandoned car behind the liquor stores on the other side of the road. Maybe he'll sleep there tonight.

It's early June, the nights still cool. Maybe he'll hunt for boxes, burn them in that metal barrel over there.

"My daughters and sons come up here with their friends. That's what gets them in trouble."

He offers the string of jerky. There's a spider tattoo on his hand.

"I'm a full-blood," he says. "I did the Sun Dance. I got pierced. When I was 19, I didn't smoke or drink."

He once sat on a sacred hill near his grandfather's ranch for four days and nights, he says. He ate nothing, drank nothing. The ghosts of ancestors came to him the final night. Told him he's a good man.

Once he was a great runner. The fastest boy around. People knew his name.

He can still see his grandfather's horses. There was a black pinto, a beige pinto, some quarter horses. He'd run alongside them for miles.

"Write it down. I once ran with horses."

Running is sacred here. His people used to run from camp to camp carrying messages. They celebrated the best runners. Still do.

"I have a son who is a great runner. He's in all the newspapers."

His son runs cross-country at the high school. All the little runners on the reservation want to be him.

Tomorrow at graduation in the Pine Ridge High gym, he says, his boy will be getting some big award for his running. And he'll be sitting up there in the gym to see it. Somewhere up there in the bleachers.

Not here in the dust of Whiteclay.

v v v

The next morning, families fill the gym.

The seniors wear red gowns, eagle feathers pinned to mortarboards. Bright new star quilts of red and orange, blue and yellow drape over the backs of their metal folding chairs.

Old Oliver Red Cloud, great-grandson of the famous chief, speaks from his wheelchair about the traditional values.

"Remember, have some respect in your life."

The fastest boy around walks slowly through the crowd.

He wears a black Nike T-shirt and light pants, same as yesterday. He hasn't showered.

His eyes are dark, wide-set. They scan the faces in the bleachers. They move on, empty.

His father is not there.

The boy carries a cup of Gatorade in one hand, a cup of tea in the other.

The wife of the cross-country coach sees him and waves. The boy comes over, hands her the drinks and walks on, saying nothing.

She hadn't asked for the drinks.

A few minutes later, coaches are handing out the year's athletic honors. People applaud as the fastest boy around takes the stage.

The cross-country coach talks about the boy's successes - his three state Class A cross-country titles, the first one coming in the eighth grade. His leadership, his work ethic, his place on the national All-American team even though he's just a junior.

A teacher ties an eagle feather to his hair. But the boy seems unaware of the crowd or the happiness in the air or the big banner rising slowly to the top of the gym.

Male Athlete of the Year… Patrick Grass.

He stands in a trance, staring straight ahead, looking a little startled at times, as if he's not sure why he's here.

He walks back down the steps and heads out an open door behind the stage. The coach and a few friends follow him outside. Standing before him on the grass, they try to get him to speak. His voice is little more than a whisper; his words make little sense.

His mom drives him home.

Is he high? Is he drunk? Did he snap?

The rumors that will last all summer are just beginning.

There's something wrong with Patrick Grass, the runner who can leave everyone in the dust. He's not the same.

His face is blank.

Reach Colleen Kenney at 473-2655 or ckenney@journalstar.com.