Sherman Alexie - The Toughest Indian in the World

He’d shaken hands with two different Popes, waded in the Mediterranean Sea, and walked one hundred miles atop the Great Wall of China. After a solid and unspectacular college basketball career — his name had never been mentioned on ESPN’s SportsCenter —he’d played professionally in Norway, Italy, Japan, Des Moines, Russia, Hartford, Yugoslavia, Greece, Australia, Kamloops, British Columbia, Germany, France, Kalamazoo, and every other Spanish-speaking country in South America.

No habla Español. Indios de Norte Americanos.

Every autumn for ten years, Roman had attended NBA training camps — mostly for Eastern Conference teams because he had a great jump shot and slow feet — but he’d never even played in one exhibition game, let alone a regular-season contest, a feat that would have made him the first federally recognized Indian since Jim Thorpe to play professional basketball. But it had never happened, no matter how well he’d played in training camps. He’d been cut from fifteen different NBA teams in those ten years, and had always ended up as the second-best American player on third-rate international teams.

Then, one morning, after a particularly horrid game where he’d missed fifteen straight shots and turned the ball over seven times, he’d woken up in a Hilton Hotel in Madrid, Spain, with the sure knowledge that it was time to quit basketball for good and return to the reservation.

On the morning after the first snow, Grace Atwater could hear the television playing out in the living room, could hear the replay of Michael Jordan’s famous press conference.

I’m back.

Grace knew that her husband had fallen asleep out there again. He often fell asleep on the couch, leaving her alone in the bed. She didn’t mind. He snored loudly and usually stole the covers. She smiled at the thought of her sloppy husband. He’d once been thin and beautiful.

She was a Mohawk Indian from the island of Manhattan — her father had been an iron worker who’d help build most of the New York skyline — but she’d lived on the Spokane Indian Reservation for so many years, and had spent so much time with the Spokanes, that she’d realized she was more Spokane than anything else. She’d always understood that an Indian could be assimilated and disappear into white culture, but she’d discovered, too, that an Indian of one tribe could be swallowed whole by another tribe. She was Jonah; the Spokanes were the stomach, ribs, and teeth of the whale.

I’m back.

She taught fourth grade at the Spokane Tribal School, and loved her job, though it had convinced her never to have her own children. Sometimes, she wondered what she was missing, if her life was somehow incomplete because she didn’t see the reflection of her face in the face of a son or daughter. Maybe. That’s what mothers told her: Oh, you don’t know what you’re missing; it’s spiritual; I feel closer to the earth, to the creator of all things. Perhaps all of that was true — it must be true — but Grace also knew that mothering was work, was manual labor, and unpaid manual labor at that. She’d known too many women who’d vanished after childbirth; women whose hopes and fears had been pushed to the back of the family closet; women who’d magically been replaced by their children and their children’s desires. But what about the maternal instinct? Well, for eight hours a day, over the last eight years, within the four walls of a fourth-grade classroom, she’d loved one hundred and thirty-six Spokane Indian boys and girls, had loved them well and kept them safe, and had often been the only adult in their lives who’d never actively or inactively broken their hearts. How many nights had one of her former students shown up at her house and asked to be sheltered?

Still, Grace had never thought of herself as any kind of saint. More likely, she was just a good teacher; nothing wrong with that, but nothing uncommon or special about it either. She’d often wondered if she was doing everything she could to ensure the survival of the Spokanes, the Mohawks, of all Indian people. Maybe she should have given birth to a dozen indestructible Indian children, part-Mohawk, part-Spokane, and part-Kevlar. Most of her fellow Mohawks, and most members of every other tribe, were marrying white partners and conceiving fragile children. Grace knew how fractions worked; Indians were disappearing by halves. But then again, she was only half-Mohawk herself and lived three thousand miles away from her people. Her people — what an arrogant concept! They didn’t belong to her and she didn’t belong to them. She was friendly with only twenty other Mohawks, having learned long ago that she preferred the company of these Spokanes, as bitter and sarcastic as they could be. Hell, these Spokanes started fistfighting one another in first grade and only stopped punching and kicking with the arrivals of their first Social Security checks. Then those former brawlers suddenly became respected elders and clucked their tongues at the young and violent. She was convinced the Spokanes survived out of spite. After a nuclear war, the only things left standing would be Spokane Indians, cockroaches, farmers, and Michael Jordan.

I’m back.

Inside their small house, Grace listened as Roman stood from the couch and walked into the bathroom. He sat down to piss. She thought that Roman’s sit-down pisses were one of the most romantic and caring things that any man had ever done for any woman.

After the piss, Roman pulled up his underwear, climbed into a pair of sweatpants hanging from the shower rod, slipped his feet into Chuck Taylor basketball shoes, and stepped into the bedroom.

Grace pretended to be asleep in their big bed, warm and safe beneath seven generations of sheets, blankets, and quilts. She was a big woman with wide hips, thick legs, large breasts, and a soft stomach. She was deep brown and beautiful.

Still holding the basketball, Roman leaned close to Grace, his face just inches away from hers.

“There’s a strange woman in my bed,” said Roman.

“I know,” said Grace, without opening her eyes.

“What should I do about her?”

“Let her sleep.”

Roman touched the basketball to Grace’s cheek.

“Michael Jordan is coming back again,” he said.

“You can’t fool me,” said Grace. “I heard it. That was just a replay.”

“Yeah, but I wish he was coming back again. He should always come back.”

“Don’t let it give you any crazy ideas.”

Roman pulled the basketball away and leaned even closer to Grace. His lips were brushing against her ear.

“It snowed last night,” he whispered.

“I can smell it,” said Grace.

“What do you want for breakfast?”

“Make me some of your grandma’s salmon mush.”

Roman made the mush in the way he’d been taught to make it. Then he brought the mush, along with two slices of toast, a cup of coffee, and the morning newspaper, to Grace and watched her eat breakfast in bed.

Up until her death, Grandmother Fury had been the very last Spokane Indian who knew how to make salmon mush in the way that Spokane Indians had been making salmon mush for the last hundred years or so. In terms of the entire tribal history, salmon mush was a recent addition to the traditional cuisine — just as human beings were among the most recent life-forms on the whole planet — but salmon mush was a singular and vitally important addition. After all, Grandmother Fury’s own grandmother had served salmon mush to Chief Joseph just a few days before he led the Nez Perce on their heroic and ultimately failed thousand-mile flight from the Ninth Cavalry. Though he was captured and sent to the prison of some other tribe’s reservation, Joseph praised the salmon mush he’d eaten and often hinted that the strange combination of fish, oats, and milk was the primary reason why he’d nearly led his people into the wild freedom of Canada.