Sherman Alexie - The Toughest Indian in the World

“The soldiers are coming,” I said to my mother. “We have to hide.”

“Where are we going to hide?” she asked. She thought we were playing a game. She covered my face and eyes with the thick curtain of her hair.

“I can’t see,” I said.

“Of course,” she said. “If you can’t see the soldiers, they can’t see you.”

She was wrong. I could have seen those soldiers if I had been blind from birth. Flames rose from their footprints.

“We can hide between the walls,” I said. “Or beneath the floor.”

“Like Anne Frank,” said my mother.

“No,” I said. “She didn’t hide good enough.”

I knew the long history of children who had been forced to hide in clumsy places and were subsequently discovered.

“Hush, hush,” said my mother.

“We’re going to die,” I said.

“Don’t say that,” said my mother. “Don’t ever say that.”

I looked up into the salt seas of her eyes. She was my mother, my priest, my chair in the confessional. I sat in her lap and whispered in her ear.

“Please,” I said. “Believe me.”

My mother was supposed to be stronger than I would ever be. She was supposed to convince me that my dream was not real. She was supposed to tell me that the enemy soldiers were marching only through the killing fields of my imagination. She was supposed to heal me. All of my life, she had healed me whenever I was ill.

“Jonah,” she said, using my name as she might have used aspirin or penicillin. “It was a dream.”

“There was so much blood,” I said. “A whole river of blood. And the Indians were trying to swim through it. Trying to swim for home. But the soldiers kept pulling us out of the water. They skinned us and hung us up to dry. Then they ate us up. They ate every one of us. And they ate every part of us. Except our skins. They fed our skins to the dogs. And the dogs were fighting over our skins. Just growling and fighting. It’s true.”

“Oh, Jonah,” said my mother. “It was just a nightmare.”

“It’s real,” I said and wept. “I know it’s real.”

“Oh, Jonah,” said my mother as she wept with me.

We were still weeping together at the kitchen table when my father returned from the night shift at the mine. He stared at us with dark eyes. His black hair was cut close to his scalp. His face was a relief map: rivers of scars, the desert floor of skin, and the badlands of wrinkles. With tremendous power and grace, he strode across the kitchen toward us. He was a huge man whose clothes never seemed to fit him correctly. My father placed his left hand on my mother’s shoulder and his right hand on my head.

Though my father was a bad carpenter, he had always been a clever magician. I knew he could conjure up different spells with each hand. His left hand made my mother’s back arch in the night. His right hand pulled down ripe apples from the surprised pine trees. His left hand made the sky open up and rain. His right hand started fires when he snapped his fingers. When he clasped his hands together in prayer, or slapped them together in applause, the distance between the earth and moon changed.

On that morning, when my father set his left hand on my mother’s shoulder and his right on my head, I knew he was trying to stop our crying. I wanted him to stop the war from coming. But my mother and I continued to weep, and I knew the enemy soldiers continued to march toward us.

“What’s wrong?” asked my father, feeling powerless.

“He had a nightmare,” said my mother. “He thinks a war is coming.”

“Then why are you crying?” he asked her.

“He’s scaring me.”

My father wrapped his huge arms around his wife and son. He had no magic left in his hands. Bright tears fell from my father’s eyes and burned the kitchen table. He raised his face toward the ceiling and the sky beyond it, and opened his mouth to sing or scream. He was afraid too, for reasons he did not understand.

My dream of war filled the room like oxygen. The three of us breathed it in and choked on it. We tasted it. It tasted like salt; it tasted like blood.

I don’t know how long the three of us wept together. Minutes or hours could have passed. I burrowed into my mother and father. I wanted to hide between the walls of their ribs or beneath the floors of their hearts.

“Wait,” my father said after a long time. “Listen.”

My mother and I listened. We heard a storm approaching.

“Thunder,” said my mother.

“Lightning,” said my father.

“War,” I said.

“Rain,” said my mother.

“Dark clouds,” said my father.

“War,” I said.

“Floods,” said my mother.

“Famine,” said my father.

“War,” I said.

Together, my parents and I stepped into our front yard and stared up into the sky. We saw the big planes roar noisily through the rough air above the reservation. We saw the soldiers step from the bellies of those planes and drop toward the earth. We saw a thousand parachutes open into a thousand green blossoms. All over the Spokane Indian Reservation, all over every reservation in the country, those green blossoms fell onto empty fields, onto powwow grounds, and onto the roofs of tribal schools and health clinics. Those green blossoms fell between pine trees, beside deep and shallow rivers, and among the sacred and utilitarian headstones of our dead.

My parents and I watched one green blossom float down into our front yard. Then one more, and another, and a fourth. A fifth and sixth. The seventh landed in the back of our wagon.

A garden of parachutes.

With rifles raised, the soldiers advanced on us. I saw four white faces, two black faces, and a face that looked like mine.

“Step away from the house!” shouted the soldier-who-looked-like-me. “And lie facedown on the ground!”

My parents and I did as we were told. As I was lying on the grass, I watched an ant carry the dead body of another ant.

I was afraid.

I knew that other soldiers, white ones, black ones, and ones who looked like me, were parachuting onto every reservation in the country.

I could hear one million Indians holding their breath.

On our reservation, other soldiers soon arrived and swarmed into the house. I didn’t know what they were looking for.

“Your names!” a black soldier shouted at our backs as he stood above us. I couldn’t tell if he was making a statement or asking a question.

“What are your names?” asked the black soldier.

“We’re the Lots,” said my father. Still on the ground, I turned my head to look at my father’s face, but his head was turned the other way. I turned back to look at my mother’s face and saw that her eyes were closed tight. I wondered if she was praying.

“Joseph, Sarah, and Jonah Lot?” asked the black soldier. He knew our names.

“What are your names?” I asked.

“Quiet,” said the black soldier. I could hear the fear in his voice. He was afraid of us, or perhaps he was afraid of what was happening to the world, to him. He was the kind of soldier who had always followed orders, who had never questioned them, and who now did not know how to change at the moment when he desired, more than anything, to change.

Rifle shots in the distance. The earth trembled because somebody beautiful was running. Then more rifle shots. The wind shrieked because somebody beautiful was falling. Then more rifle shots. The earth trembled because somebody beautiful had fallen into dust. Then silence for twelve seconds. I counted them. One second, I inhaled. Two seconds, I exhaled. Six seconds, I inhaled. Seven seconds, I exhaled. Eleven seconds, I inhaled. Twelve seconds, I exhaled. Then one final rifle shot.

“What is your name?” I asked the black soldier. He ignored me.