Sherman Alexie - The Toughest Indian in the World

“Sir,” the large-nose soldier said, nearly whispered, to the large Indian man. “We don’t really have the time to answer your questions. We have quite a bit of work yet to do here.”

The large Indian man said nothing. The large-nose soldier studied the Indian’s garish red birthmark.

“Pity about your face,” said the large-nose soldier.

“They want our blood,” I said. “They’re vampires.”

Large nose turned away from the large Indian man, walked up close to my bed, and kneeled down in front of me.

“Son,” he said. “What is your name?”

“Jonah.”

“Ah, that’s a good name. Very strong name, that Jonah.” The large-nose soldier smiled. “Jonah, you can call me Ishmael. You see, we all have our whales.”

Then he slapped my face so hard that I momentarily blacked out. In those seconds, I dreamed of my mother and father, though I dreamed only of their hands because I could not remember their faces. When I regained consciousness, Large nose was standing again in the middle of our room.

“First of all,” he said, “we have a couple of basic rules here. Number one, you will not speak unless spoken to. Number two, you will follow our orders exactly. And by exactly, I mean you will not deviate in any form whatsoever. Any deviation will result in severe punishment. Continued rebellion will result in isolation and restraint.”

Large nose looked around the room.

“As you can see,” he said, “you have access to an unlimited amount of water for bathing and consumption. And you will receive six small meals a day. Three times a week, for one hour a day, you will be escorted into a recreation room where you will exercise your body. The lights will be dimmed for eight hours every night so that you may sleep.”

I wanted to lie down on my strange bed and fall asleep forever.

“Citizens,” said large nose, “you are here to perform a great patriotic service for your country. The sacrifices you have made and are going to make have been and will be greatly appreciated by your fellow Americans. And remember, please, that you are here for your own safety and we plan to take good care of you. Now, I wish you all a good night.”

Without ceremony, large nose and all of the soldiers filed out of the room and locked the door behind them. I harbored a brief and dangerous hope that the soldier-who-looked-like-me would turn back, open the door, and release us, but the locked door stay locked. We, the eight Indians, waited together in the silence as thin and strong as our own skins. None of us said a word for minutes that slowly became hours. I looked down at my bare and dirty feet. I felt the rough cloth of my red jumpsuit. I studied the meager details of the room until I could close my eyes and see them, in exact reproduction, on the blank walls of my imagination. The two young girls, who had been strangers before and would never be more than a few feet apart for the rest of their lives, continued to huddle together and weep. The pregnant woman laid down on her bed with her back to us, with her face toward the curved wall, and pretended to sleep, or fell asleep and made all of us jealous with her ability to hide in plain sight. The other Indian woman drank cup after cup of water.

Two parts hydrogen, one part oxygen. Two parts hydrogen, one part oxygen. Two parts hydrogen, one part oxygen.

The large Indian man pounded on the closed door while the small Indian man softly sang a tribal song. The boy with old eyes stared at me and I stared back. His eyes were two abandoned houses standing together on a grassy plain burned brown by the sun. Wooden flesh fell away from those houses and left only two skeletal frames. Crows and owls perched on rotting timbers. Wild grass and prodigal weeds burst through the foundation.

Everything is reclaimed, everything is reclaimed.

The boy with old eyes stood and walked toward me. He leaned down so close to me I could see the old black woodstove still smoldering in the houses of his eyes.

“Jonah,” he whispered.

“Yes,” I whispered back.

“Everybody here is full-blood.”

“I know.”

“What happened to the others?” he asked, meaning the half-breeds, the mixed-bloods, the people with just a trace of Indian blood, and the white people who had lived among Indians for so long that they had nearly become Indians.

“I don’t know,” I said, but I assumed they had been shipped to prisons of their own.

“The soldiers want our blood,” said the boy with old eyes.

“I know,” I said. “I dreamed it.”

“I dreamed it too.”

“We all dreamed it,” said the pregnant woman as she rose from sleep, or the illusion of sleep.

We all moved closer to one another, except for the small Indian man. He sat alone on his bed and continued to sing.

“We’ve got to escape,” said the large Indian man. He looked strong enough to tear down the door.

“How?” said the Indian woman who was not pregnant. For the first time, I noticed her beauty. She was beautiful even with her head shaved bald. I could not imagine how beautiful she must have been before her hair had been taken. I imagined her hair had been a black river flowing down the landscape of her back.

“Tell us,” she said. “Tell us how we’re supposed to get out of here?”

There was no possible answer to her question. If we could have somehow crawled out of the belly of that underground prison, we would have found ourselves standing alone in the desert, without water, without shoes, without compass, without destination, without home.

“I don’t want to die here,” said the two Indian girls, together, as if they possessed only one voice. They were small and dark.

“If they were going to kill us,” said the beautiful Indian woman, “they would have done it already. They need us for something.”

“I told you,” I said. “They want our blood.”

“It has to be more than that,” she said. “We must have some disease. The Black Plague or something.”

“That couldn’t be,” said the large Indian man. “Those soldiers weren’t wearing masks. They were breathing in some of the air we breathed out. They weren’t afraid of us.”

“But they kept talking about blood,” said the boy with old eyes.

“Yes,” I said. “I saw a soldier get beaten because he killed two Indians.”

“No blood, no blood,” said the two Indian girls together. “They kept saying that. No blood, no blood.”

“You’re right,” said the pregnant woman. “It’s our blood. There’s something in our blood.”

“You’re all wrong,” whispered the small Indian man. His voice sounded like a house fire.

We all turned toward him.

“You’re all wrong,” he said again.

“What do you think?” asked the beautiful woman.

“None of you,” said the small man, pointing a finger at each of us. “None of you knows who you are anymore. None of you knows who we’re going to be.”

“You’re talking riddles,” said the large man.

“Listen to me,” said the small man. “I’m talking truth. Don’t you know what we are to them? What we have always been?”

“No,” I whispered.

“You see,” said the small man. “Right outside that door, those soldiers, those people are getting things ready. They’ve got their own ceremonies, you know?”

The small man stood. He was barely over five feet tall, though his hands were large, his fingers long and feminine. His skin was as dark as a black man’s.

“Right outside that door,” he continued, “they have big rooms. Big rooms filled with the dead. Filled with their dead. All the dead white people lined up in rows and rows and rows.”

“What dead?” asked the large man.

“All of them. Every white person who has ever died. They’ve got them lying on beds, all clean and perfumed and naked.”