Sherman Alexie - The Toughest Indian in the World

“She’s my daughter,” shouted Sid as he turned to attack Tracy. But she slapped him hard. Surprised, defeated, Sid dropped to the floor beside Low.

The two Indian men sat on the ground as the white woman stood above them.

Tracy turned away from the men and ran after Sara.

Sid climbed to his feet. He pointed an accusing finger at Low, who rose slowly to his feet. Sid turned and walked back toward his wife, back toward Estelle, who held her husband close and cried in his arms.

“What are you going to do?” Low called after him. “What are you going to do when she’s gone?”

THAT WINTER, ON A full-moon Monday on the Spokane Indian Reservation, the first snow fell sometime between midnight and dawn, when most of the reservation residents — Indian and white alike — were asleep, except for the Cold Springs Singers, those six Spokane Indian men who sat at a drum on top of Lookout Mountain and sang the indigenous blues:

Way, ya, hey, yi, hey, yo.

On the road and on the street,

They’re just trying to keep the beat.

Way, ya, hey, ya, ya.

On the road and on the moon,

They’re just trying to keep the tune.

Way, ya, hey, yi, hey, yo.

Way, ya, hey, yi, hey, yo.

On the road and on the run,

Two little lovebirds having fun.

Will their love survive the test?

Romeo and Juliet.

Way, ya, hey, yi, hey, yo.

Wearing only T-shirts, blue jeans, and baseball caps, the Cold Springs Singers ignored howling winds and the impossibly white snow piling up on their shoulders. Three of the men wore their long black hair in careful braids, two wore crew cuts, and the last was chemotherapy bald. They’d all known one another since birth, since they’d spent their nine months in the wombs of six Indian mothers who’d sat together at their own drum — Big Mom’s Daughters — and sung their own songs. Those mothers had taught their sons public and private songs and the most secret difference between the two. To show their devotion and love, those sons had kept their mothers’ secrets safely hidden from the rest of the world.

From the age of three, those Indian boys sang and drummed together. Over the course of a twenty-year career, the Cold Springs Singers had traveled to one hundred different reservations and had fallen in love with three hundred and nineteen Indian women and sixteen Indian men. They’d fathered seven daughters and three sons. Three of them had married and two had divorced. They’d learned how to sing seven hundred and nine different songs:

Ha, ya, ha, ya, ha, ya.

Don’t tell me you love me

Unless you mean it.

Ha, ya, ha, ya, ha, ya.

Don’t tell me you love me

Unless you mean it.

Ha, ya, ha, ya, ha, ya.

I love you, I love you,

I want to marry you.

Ha, ya, ha, ya, ha, ya.

Marry me once, marry me twice

Marry me three times.

Ha, ya, ha, ya, ha, ya.

But now, as they sang on top of Lookout Mountain, the Cold Springs Singers were in love with the drum and only the drum. They’d forgotten what it meant to love anything other than the feel of stick in hand and song in throat. Of course, the Cold Springs Singers were ghosts, having all been killed when their blue van collided with a logging truck on the S-curves of Little Falls Road, just a few feet away from the natural spring that provided the namesake for the group, but those Indian boys still sang and pounded the sticks better than any other drum alive or dead:

Hey, ya, hey, ya, ho, ya, ho.

I don’t have any money, honey.

I don’t have a nice car.

Hey, ya, hey, ya, ho, ya, ho.

I don’t have a big house, mouse.

I don’t have a fast car.

Hey, ya, hey, ya, ho, ya, ho.

I don’t have fancy shoes, Lou.

I don’t have a new car.

Hey, ya, hey, ya, ho, ya, ho.

Will you still love me?

Will you still love me?

Will you still love me

When I’m old and broke?

Hey, ya, hey, ya, ho, ya, ho.

All night, they sang indigenous songs called “49s,” though there’s not an Indian alive who remembers exactly why they’re called 49s. Some say those songs were invented after fifty Indian warriors went out to battle and only one came back alive. Distraught, the lone survivor mourned his friends by singing forty-nine songs, one for each of the dead. Others believe the 49s were invented when fifty warriors went out to battle and forty-nine came back alive. Distraught, they remembered the lost one by singing forty-nine songs, one by each of the living. Still others believe the 49s were invented by a woman who fell in love with forty-nine men and had her heart broken by each and every one of them. And still more believe the 49s were invented by forty-nine men who mourned the loss of one good woman. However they were invented, those songs have always been heavy with sadness and magic. However they were invented, the Cold Springs Singers knew all of the words and vocables, all the 4/4 signatures and atonal cries in the night.

On the Spokane Indian Reservation, with the coming of that first snow, the Cold Springs Singers sang 49s until every Indian was startled awake and sang along. They all sang because they understood what it meant to be Indian and dead and alive and still bright with faith and hope:

Basketball, basketball.

Way, ya, hi, yo, way, ya, hi, yo.

Give me the ball, give me the ball.

Way, ya, hi, yo, way, ya, hi, yo.

And let me shoot, and let me shoot.

Way, ya, hi, yo, way, ya, hi, yo.

And win the game, and win the game.

Way, ya, hi, yo, way, ya, hi, yo.

And then she’ll love me, then she’ll love me.

Way, ya, hi, yo, way, ya, hi, yo.

Forever and ever, forever and ever.

First snow was a good time for most Indians, even the ghosts, and especially the Indians and ghosts of Indians who possessed a good sense of rhythm and irony. After all, it took a special kind of courage for an Indian to look out a window into the deep snow and see anything special in that vast whiteness.

On that night, in that reservation whiteness, the falsetto voices of the Cold Springs Singers drifted down from their mountain onto an outdoor basketball court covered with two feet of new snow. On that court, a Spokane Indian named Roman Gabriel Fury ran fast breaks with the ghosts of his mother and father, seven cousins, nine dead dogs, and his maternal and paternal grandparents. He was the best basketball player his reservation had ever known, though he was older now and no longer a magician. He was the only Fury left alive in the world, but he was not alone. He had his basketball, his ghosts, and an Indian woman named Grace Atwater asleep at home.

Roman Gabriel Fury lived with Grace Atwater in a shotgun shack set down like a lighthouse in a small field about five miles north of Wellpinit, the only town on the Spokane Indian Reservation. Outside the shack, a mammoth satellite dish rose from the snow like the gray sail of a landlocked ship. Of course, unlike most others, that metal sail was covered with reservation bumper stickers and tribal graffiti:

Custer had it coming!

Proud to be a Spokane Indian

E = MC 2

Fry bread power!

American Indians for Nixon

Roman had no idea who’d plastered the Nixon sticker on his dish — Indians were capable of the most self-destructive behavior — but Roman had never removed it because he believed wholeheartedly in free expression. Roman’s entire political philosophy revolved around the basic tenet that a person, any person, had only enough energy at any given time to believe in three things.