Sherman Alexie - War Dances

MY MOTHER: “Why did you wait so long to tell us?”

MY FATHER: “I didn’t want to make a quick decision.”

Do you think that religious ceremony is an effective treatment for grief?

My mother once made a quilt from dozens of pairs of second- and third- and fourth-hand blue jeans that she bought at Goodwill, the Salvation Army, Value Village, and garage sales. My late sister studied my mother’s denim quilt and said, “That’s a lot of pants. There’s been a lot of ass in those pants. This is a blanket of asses.”

If your reservation is surrounded on all sides by two rivers and a creek, doesn’t that make it an island?

A Coeur d’Alene Indian holy man — on my father’s side — received this vision: Three crows, luminescent and black, except for collars of white feathers, perched in a pine tree above my ancestor’s camp and told him that three strangers would soon be arriving and their advice must be heeded or the Coeur d’Alene would vanish from the earth. The next day, the first Jesuits — three men in black robes with white collars — walked into a Coeur d’Alene Indian fishing camp.

Do you believe that God, in the form of his son, Jesus Christ, once walked the Earth?

Thus the Coeur d’Alene soon became, and remain, among the most Catholicized Indians in the country.

Has any member of the clergy ever given you a clear and concise explanation of this Holy Ghost business?

Therefore, nuns taught my father, as a child, to play classical piano.

Do you think that Beethoven was not actually deaf and was just having a laugh at his family’s expense?

By the time I was born, my father had long since stopped playing piano.

ME: “Dad, what did the nuns teach you to play?”

HIM: “I don’t want to talk about that shit.”

After you catch a sliver from a wooden crucifix, how soon afterward will you gain superpowers?

When he was drunk, my father would sit at the kitchen table and hum an indecipherable tune while playing an imaginary keyboard.

Did your mother ever make a quilt that featured a real piano keyboard?

I have mounted my father’s imaginary keyboard on my office wall.

ME: “And, here, on the wall, is my favorite work of art.”

GUEST: “I don’t see anything.”

ME: “It’s an installation piece created by my father.”

GUEST: “I still can’t see anything.”

ME: “Exactly.”

If you could only pick one word to describe your family, then what would that word be?

Honorificabilitudinitas.

Is that a real word?

Yes, Shakespeare used it. It means “The state of being able to achieve honors.”

So you’re stating your multisyllabic, overeducated, and pretentious belief that your family is and was in a state of being able to achieve honors?

Yep.

What kind of honors?

Whenever anybody in my family did something good, my mother would make an honor blanket. She used pieces of people’s clothes and stitched in little photographs and images or important dates and names. Very ornate.

So if your mother were going to honor your family’s religious history with an honor blanket, what shape would it take?

It wouldn’t be an honor blanket. It would be a quilt of guilt.

Do you actually believe in God?

My mother kept scraps of God in our hallway closet. My big brother arranged these scraps of God into shapes that approximated a mattress and pillows, and slept in that closet. My mother once used these scraps of God to make an epic quilt. My late sister studied this quilt and said, “That’s a lot of God. There’s been a lot of God in this God. This is a blanket of God.” However, my late father, when drunk, would sit at the kitchen table and sing to an indecipherable God while playing an imaginary keyboard.

But what do you think about God?

I’m at my kitchen window, and I’m watching three crows perched on the telephone wire. I think they’re talking trash about me.

O, when you are driving through a blizzard

And your vision has been reduced—

Has been scissored—

Into two headlights and a noose,

How joyous to come upon the Wizard

Of Snowplows driving his glorious machine.

Now you will survive if you ride

In his slipstream.

He pushes back the fear and ice.

This is not a time for prayer, so you scream

With joy ( Snowplow! Snowplow! Snowplow! Snowplow! )

As he leads you into the next

Snowed-in town.

You are not dead! You did not wreck!

And you know a family who live here — the Browns.

They run that little diner on Main Street.

It must be shut at this dark hour—

Quarter past three—

But the son, Mark, plays power

Forward for the high school, the Wolverines—

And once broke your nose with a stray elbow

While playing some tough-ass defense—

And you know him and call him friend.

So you park your car and trudge through the snow—

Cursing and/or blessing this fierce winter—

To find Mark and his dad awake

And cooking chicken-fried steaks

For a dozen other survivors and sinners.

“Dang,” Mark says. “Why are you out in this stuff?”

“For a girl,” you say. And Mark nods.

Mortals have always fought the gods

And braved epic storms for love and/or lust.

So don’t be afraid to speak honestly

About how you obeyed beauty’s call.

And though your triumph was small,

You can still sing of your teenage odyssey.

I HADN’T SEEN MY best friend in sixteen years, half of our lives ago, so I didn’t recognize him when I pulled him out of the car and hit him in the face. I’d taken a few self-defense classes, so I’d learned to strike with the heel of my open hand. It’s too easy to break fingers if one slams a fist against the hard bones of the head. A good student, I also remembered to stand with my feet a shoulder’s width apart, for maximum balance, and to twist my hips and shoulders back before I thrust forward, for maximum leverage and striking power. And so, maximally educated, I hit my best friend and snapped his nose.

It made an astonishing noise. I imagine it could have been heard a block away. And the blood! Oh, his red glow drenched my shirt. He screamed, slumped back against his car, and slid to the ground. After that, it would have been impossible to recognize him because his face was a bloody mask. Drunk and enraged, I tried to kick him and might have beaten him unconscious or worse, but Bernard, my old college friend and drinking buddy, wrapped me in a bear hug and dragged me away.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the car, a faggot was winning his fight with Spence and Eddie, my other friends. They’d picked the wrong guy to bash. He was a talented fighter and danced, ducked, and threw mean kicks and elbows that snap-snap-snap ped into my friends’ faces. This guy had to be one of those ultimate fighters, a mixed-martial artist.

This was in Seattle, on a dark street on Capitol Hill, the Pacific Northwest center of all things shabby, leftist, and gay. What was I, a straight Republican boy, doing on Capitol Hill? Well, it’s also the home of my favorite Thai joint. I love peanut sauce and Asian beer. So my friends and I had feasted in celebration of my new junior partnership in the law firm of Robber Baron, Tax Dodger & Guilt-ridden Pro Bono. I was cash-heavy, lived in a three-bedroom condo overlooking Elliott Bay, and drove a hybrid Lexus SUV.

My father was in his first term as U.S. senator from Washington State, and he was already being talked about as a candidate for U.S. president. “I’m something different,” he said to me once. “This country wants Jimmy Stewart. And I am Jimmy Stewart.”