Sherman Alexie - The Toughest Indian in the World

After his sit-down piss, Roman stood and 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. She loved this game. Still holding the basketball, Roman laid down next to her and pressed his body against 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. He wondered if she wanted to make love. She usually did, and had approached him as often as he’d approached her, but he’d always liked to delay, to think about her — the taste, smell, and sound of her — for hours, or even days, before he’d make a pass.

“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. He loved her, of course, but better than that, he chose her, day after day. Choice: that was the thing. Other people claimed that you can’t choose who you love — it just happens! — but Grace and Roman knew that was a bunch of happy horseshit. Of course you chose who you loved. If you didn’t choose, you ended up with what was left — the drunks and abusers, the debtors and vacuums, the ones who ate their food too fast or had never read a novel. Damn, marriage was hard work, was manual labor, and unpaid manual labor at that. Yet, year after year, Grace and Roman had pressed their shoulders against the stone and rolled it up the hill together.

In their marriage bed, Roman chose Grace once more and brushed his lips against her ear.

“It snowed last night,” he whispered.

“I can smell it,” said Grace, choosing him.

“What do you want for breakfast?”

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

Grandmother Fury had died of cancer the previous winter. On her deathbed, she’d pulled Roman close to her. She’d kissed him full on the lips and cried in his arms.

“I don’t want to go,” she’d said in Spokane.

“I know,” he’d said and felt the heat leave her body.

“I’m cold.”

“I love you.”

“Listen,” she’d said. “You better keep making that salmon mush. You’re the only one now. You have to keep it alive.”

“I’ll teach Grace.”

“She’s a good woman, that one, a good person. You better hang on to her. She could live without you easily, but you’d be lost without her.”

“She loves you as much as I do.”

“I am happy to hear that. But listen, the important thing is the salmon mush. You have to remember one thing, the big secret.”

“I know, I know, pour the milk in just before serving.”

“No, no, that’s the most obvious secret. You don’t know the biggest secret. You don’t know it. Let me tell you.”

Roman had leaned close to her ear and heard that secret. He’d listened to his grandmother’s last words and then she’d died.

On his first day at St. Jerome the Second University, Roman walked alone into the freshman dormitory. Everybody else carried new luggage, stereos, bicycles, books, but Roman carried all of his possessions in a Hefty garbage bag slung over his shoulder. He found his room, walked inside, and met his roommate.

“Hey,” said the kid with blue eyes and blond hair. “You must be my roomie. I’m Alex Weber.”

“Roman.”

“I thought you were Indian.”

“I am Indian. Roman is my name.”

“First or last?”

“The first name is Roman, the middle name is Gabriel, the last name is Fury.”

“A spectacular moniker.”

“Thank you.”

“Is that your luggage?”

Roman tossed his Hefty bag onto his bed. He was ashamed of it, his poverty, but pretended to be proud.

“Yeah,” said Roman. “I got ninety-nine of them back home. The whole matching set.”

“Scholarship student, huh?”

“Yeah. Do you have a problem with that?”

“No, not at all. I’m a legacy.”

“A what?”

“My great-grandfather went to school here, as did my grandfather, my father, and now, I’m here. As long as there’s been a St. Junior, there’s been a Weber.”

“Family tradition.”

“My family is all about tradition. So, where you from? What’s your major?”

Before Roman could answer, Alex pulled out a silver flask of whiskey.

“You want a drink?” asked the legacy.

“I’m undeclared,” said Roman.

“About the drink or your major?”

“I don’t drink.”

“More for me.”

Roman looked at Alex’s side of the room. All of the white boy’s possessions still carried price tags.

“Well,” said Alex. “Get your stuff unpacked, that shouldn’t take too long, and let’s head upstairs where the lovely young women make their abodes.”

“I’m not much for parties,” said Roman. “I think I’m just going to hang around the room.”

“Suit yourself. But I’ve got to get a little tonight, you know what I mean?”

“I assume you’re referring to sexual intercourse.”

“You make it sound so romantic. Listen. My great-grandfather had sexual intercourse on his first night at St. Junior. As did my grandfather, my father, and now, me.”

“You’re a legacy.”

“Exactly. See you later, Chief.”

With a nod of his head and a click of his tongue, Alex left the room. A little stunned and bewildered by his roommate — how had the personal-tastes questionnaire put them together? — Roman sat down on his bed. Then he noticed a box sitting on the desk. It was a “WELCOME TO ST. JUNIOR” care package.

He opened the box and discovered its contents.

“Donuts,” said Roman.

Six months into their freshman year at St. Junior, Roman and Grace made love for the first time. Afterward, squeezed together in his narrow dorm room bed, they’d nervously tried to fill the silence.

“So,” he’d asked. “You must be the only Indian in New York City, enit?”

“There are lots of Indians in New York City. Lots of Mohawks.”

“Are you full-blood?”

“No, I’m Mohawk and Chinese.”

“Chinese? You’re kidding.”

“What? You have something against Chinese?”

“No, no. I just never heard of no Chinese Indians. I mean, I know black Indians and white Indians and Mexican Indians and a whole bunch of Indian Indians, but you’re the first Chinese Indian I’ve ever met. Was it some kind of Bering Strait land bridge thing?”

“No. My mom was Chinese. She was playing piano in this bar in Brooklyn. That’s where my mom and dad met.”

“Where are they now?”

“Gone, all gone.”

Over the next four years of college, they’d slept together maybe twenty more times without formal attachment, and each of them had run through quick romances with a few other people, and each had also experienced the requisite homoerotic one-night stand — both with Hawaiians, coincidentally — before he’d run up to her after his last college game, still in uniform and drenched in sweat, and hugged her close.

“You’re the best Indian I’m ever going to find,” he’d said. “Marry me.”

Not the most romantic proposal in the world, to be sure, but a true and good moment, demographically speaking.

“Okay,” she'd said.

In bed, on the Spokane Indian Reservation, eighteen years after their graduation from St. Jerome the Second, Grace ate her salmon mush, drank her coffee, and read the newspaper aloud. Roman laid back on his pillow and listened to her. This was one of their ceremonies: she’d read aloud every word of the newspaper, even the want ads, and then quiz him about the details.