Sherman Alexie - The Toughest Indian in the World

Salmon Boy closed his eyes and when he opened them again he was lying in a motel room in Flagstaff, Arizona.

Seymour quietly slept on the other side of the bed, or perhaps he wasn’t asleep at all.

Salmon Boy watched the television, watched a black-and-white movie where the people didn’t make any sense.

Salmon Boy remembered another time, when he was a child, when his father was driving the family back from some powwow or another, when Salmon Boy had picked up the newspaper to discover that the Batman movie was playing on local television. The old-time Batman, the Adam-West-as-Batman Batman.

Can you drive faster? Salmon Boy asked his father. He wanted to watch the movie.

We’ll never make it in time, said his father. But he loved his son and so he drove as fast as he could, through the tunnel of his son’s dreams, through a tunnel crowded with all of his son’s dreams.

They drove by a coyote nailed to a speed-limit sign.

They drove by a coyote howling from an overpass.

They drove by a coyote drinking a cup of coffee in a truck-stop diner.

When they reached the motel, Salmon Boy rushed into the room and switched on the television, expecting to see Batman, but saw only the last few moments of some other movie.

In that movie, a pretty white boy stares out a window into the falling snow, into a dark courtyard where the snow falls on a man riding a bicycle in circles, into the courtyard where a handsome man rides a bicycle around a statue of a broken heart, or perhaps it wasn’t a broken heart at all, but Salmon Boy remembers it that way.

He remembers it now as he stares at the black-and-white movie where the characters don’t make any sense, as Seymour sleeps on the other side of the bed, or pretends to be asleep.

Seymour, said Salmon Boy.

Yes, said Seymour.

I am the most lonely I have ever been.

I know.

Will you hold me close?

Yes, yes, I will.

Salmon Boy pushed himself into Seymour’s arms. They both wore only their boxer shorts. Seymour’s blue shorts contrasted with his pale skin while Salmon Boy’s white boxers glowed in the dark.

I don’t want to have sex, said Salmon Boy.

I don’t either.

But how will we fall in love if we don’t have sex?

I don’t know.

They held each other tighter and tighter. They were afraid.

I am happy in your arms, said Seymour.

And I am happy in yours.

Is this what it feels like?

What?

To be loved, to be held, to be intimate without the fear of penetration?

I think so.

Yes, I think so, too. I think this is what women have wanted from men for all of our lives. I think they want to be held in our arms and fall asleep in the absence of body fluids.

I think you may be right.

They held each other tighter and tighter. They were not aroused. They were warm and safe.

Can we be like this forever? asked Salmon Boy.

I don’t think that’s possible.

Together, they watched the black-and-white movie where nothing made sense. They watched it until they fell asleep together and when they woke up they were sitting in a McDonald’s in Tucson, Arizona.

They wore identical Grand Canyon T-shirts.

How much money do we have left? asked Seymour.

Counting the money the old woman gave us?

Of course.

Ten dollars.

That means we’re in some definite financial trouble.

Appears that way.

And we’ve just about run out of Arizona, too.

And almost all of the south this country has.

And most of the southwest, as well.

Seymour looked around the McDonald’s. He saw an Indian woman arguing with an Indian man. They spoke in some strange language.

What’s that they’re talking? asked Seymour.

Navajo, I think, said Salmon Boy. He’d always believed the Navajo were the most beautiful people on the planet. The man and woman arguing by the window were no exceptions. Their hair and skin were so dark that they looked purple, especially in the white light streaming through the glass.

Do you know what they’re saying? asked Seymour.

I don’t speak Navajo.

But you’re Indian.

But I’m not Navajo.

Seymour didn’t like to argue. He stared at the arguing Navajos until they sensed his attention, looked over, and flipped him off.

Seymour smiled and waved.

I don’t think that was Navajo, he said. Seymour said, They look like aliens.

Some people think the Navajos are aliens, said Salmon Boy, like they came down in spaceships ten thousand years ago and took over.

Seymour kept staring until the Navajo couple gathered up their belongings and left the restaurant. He felt an ache in his heart. He wondered if that coyote was still nailed to the fence post. He wondered what Navajos looked like when they were naked and in love.

Do you think they love each other? he asked.

If they do, said Salmon Boy, then it’s alien love. And I don’t know anything about alien love.

Steven Spielberg knows.

That’s because he’s an alien, said Salmon Boy. The Jews and the Navajos came down in the same ships, he said. Salmon Boy asked, Didn’t you know that Moses was a Navajo? He asked, Haven’t you heard of the lost tribes?

Everybody is lost, said Seymour.

Salmon Boy wondered how much farther they could go on ten dollars. He wondered how much south, how much southwest, could fit into the world. He remembered that he’d left the television on when he walked over to the International House of Pancakes. He remembered thinking, I’m just going to be a few minutes. He wondered if the television was still playing, if the woman who lived in the apartment next door was pounding on the wall, screaming at him to turn it down, turn it down, turn it down.

Salmon Boy wondered why he was homesick for a place where he had lived alone.

Seymour sipped at his coffee. He remembered the story of a woman who dropped McDonald’s coffee into her lap, burned herself to bits, and won a billion dollars in the lawsuit. He wondered if he should drop coffee into his lap, but then he realized his coffee was only lukewarm. If he dropped it into his lap, he might win fifty bucks for coffee-staining his blue jeans.

Seymour wondered if the world was a cruel place.

Are you learning how to love me? asked Seymour.

Salmon Boy sipped at his own coffee. He didn’t know how to answer that question.

I took you to the Grand Canyon, said Seymour.

Seymour said, I have made you promises and I have kept them.

The silence smelled like smoke.

It’s a difficult thing, Salmon Boy said after a long time. Salmon Boy whispered, It’s a difficult thing for one man to love another man, whether they kiss each other or not.

We’ve only kissed once, said Seymour. Maybe we’ll fall in love if we kiss a little more.

Do you think there’s a number? asked Salmon Boy. Do you think there’s a magic number written on every heart? Do you think you can kiss right up to some magic number and make a person love you?

Seymour looked around the Tucson McDonald’s. There were white people and Navajos; there were people who preferred their Quarter Pounders with cheese and those who didn’t care for cheese at all; and there were those who desperately wished that McDonald’s would introduce onion rings to its menu.

Oh, Seymour thought, there are so many possibilities.

Do you think? he asked. Do you think there’s somebody in here who might love me, who I might love?

I don’t know, said Salmon Boy, but you are my friend, and I believe in love.

Salmon Boy remembered the reservation Indian girl who drowned in three feet of water, wrapped up in knots of seaweed, while three other Indian girls tried to pull her free. Salmon Boy believed that the life of that one drowned girl was worth the lives of every person in Arizona.