Sherman Alexie - The Toughest Indian in the World

“Hey,” she said. “What’s the phone number of the guy who is selling the Ping-Pong table that has only been used once?”

“Harry.”

“Uh, good remembering. That earns you a kiss, with tongue.”

“A hand job would be better.”

“God, you’re so charming.”

She smacked him with a pillow. He kissed her cheek, then walked from the bedroom into the kitchen. Still holding the basketball, he opened the refrigerator, pulled out another big bottle of Diet Pepsi, and swallowed deeply. He breathed the sweet fluid in, as if it were oxygen. He set the Pepsi back on the shelf, among a dozen other bottles, and then pulled out a donut. A maple bar. He sniffed at it, took a bite, spit it back out, and threw the donut back into the fridge.

Roman slammed the fridge shut and walked outside into the backyard. Two feet of the first snow had covered the basketball half-court. Roman looked at the snow, at the hoop and backboard rising ten feet above the snow.

Smiling, Roman gave a head fake, took a step left, and dribbled the basketball, expecting it to bounce back up into his hand.

When the ball didn’t return to his hand, Roman stared down to see the orange Rawlings embedded in the white snow. The contrast was gorgeous, like the difference between Heaven and Hell.

He had always been a religious man, had participated in all of the specific Spokane Indian ceremonies, most involving salmon, and in many of the general American Indian ceremonies like powwows and basketball tournaments. He’d also spent time in all three of the Spokane Reservation’s Christian churches, singing Assembly of God hymns, praying Presbyterian prayers, and eating Catholic Communion wafers. Roman had always known that God was elusive. All his life, Roman had been chasing God and had never once caught sight of him, or her.

During her first night at St. Junior, Grace was standing in the middle of a room full of drunken white kids when Alex Weber, the drunkest white kid, stepped up to her.

“Hey, sweetheart,” he slurred.

“Hey,” she said, a little nauseated by the whiskey smell of his breath. She’d never even sipped a glass of wine at dinner.

“Okay,” he said. “Tell me. Have you enjoyed your St. Junior experience so far?”

“Yeah, I guess.”

He kissed her then, a wet kiss that was meant for her lips but landed on her chin. She pushed him away.

“Hey, listen,” she said, strangely polite. “You’re drunk, man, and you’re making a big mistake. Why don’t you just leave before you do something really stupid? How does that sound?”

She didn’t understand why she was negotiating. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.

“Can I ask you a personal question?” he asked.

“Yeah, you ask one question. I answer once. Then you leave. Deal?”

“Did you get in here because of affirmative action?”

“What?”

“Really. I want to know, did you get in here on account of some quota or something? Because you’re Indian, right, excuse me, I mean, Native American?”

“I belong here. Just as much as you or anybody else.”

“No, no, no, I’m not questioning your intelligence. Believe me, I’m not. Honestly. I just want to know if you got admitted because of affirmative action.”

“If I tell you, will you leave?”

“Yeah.”

“No, man, I got perfect scores on my CAT.”

“Really?”

“Truth.”

“I got in because of affirmative action.”

“What do you man? You? You’re white.”

“Well, not because of affirmative action, not exactly. I got in here because I’m a legacy. Do you know what that is?”

“Yes, I do.”

“My father went here. My father, my grandfather, and my great-grandfather. I’m a legacy.”

“So what?”

“So, they let me in because of my family’s money. Not because I deserve to be here. I don’t have the grades. My test scores were, like, lower than football players’.”

“Those tests don’t mean anything. They’re culturally biased.”

“But they’re biased for white guys, for me. And I flunked. I don’t deserve to be here, man. I cheated my way in. I cheated.”

Then he cried. Huge, sobbing, drunken tears.

She touched his face and then left him alone there with the rest of his tribe.

Outside his house on the Spokane Indian Reservation, Roman stared down at the orange leather ball embedded in the white snow. Then he stomped through the snow to his storage shed, and carried back a gallon of kerosene. He poured the kerosene onto the snow covering the basketball court.

After the can was empty, Roman took a step back, lit a match, and dropped it onto the kerosene-soaked snow. The fire flared up wonderfully and began to melt the snow down to the frozen ground.

Even as the snow was still burning, Roman was dribbling the ball around the court, throwing up lazy shots. He was not playing very hard, just enjoying the mechanics of the game, the physical meditation. He was out of shape and breathing hard, his breath making small clouds in the air. He was missing many more shots than he was making.

Some of the snow was still burning.

Then Grace Atwater stepped out of the house. She wore a huge red parka and big black boots. She walked onto the court, stepped around her husband, and stood directly beneath the basket. Roman stood at the free-throw line. He shot and missed. Grace rebounded the ball and threw it back to him.

“Nice shot,” she said.

“I used to be good,” said Roman. “Back when it meant something.”

“You’re still good. But I’m better.”

In the pocket of her coat, she carried a letter from a small press in Brooklyn, New York, that had agreed to publish a book of her poems. The press had consolidated all of the poems published under her various pseudonyms and would present them for the first time as her own, as her work, as her singular achievement.

Roman shot again, missed again. Grace rebounded the ball and threw it back to her spouse.

“Michael Jordan,” she said.

Roman smiled, threw up a wild hook shot that missed everything, the rim, the backboard, everything, and landed with a thud in the snow behind the court. In fact, the ball disappeared in the deep white.

Grace and Roman stared out into the snow where the ball had disappeared.

“Help,” said Roman.

“What?” asked Grace.

“Help me.”

“Always.”

Grace trotted out into the deep snow and searched for the basketball. Roman watched her with eyes stung red by the cold air. She had never been a skinny woman, not once, and was growing larger every year. She was beautiful, her long black hair dirty and uncombed. Roman patted his own prodigious belly and closed his eyes against the sudden tears welling there.

“Brilliant,” he whispered to himself. His love for his wife hit him like a strong wind and forced him to take a step or two back.

Grace found the basketball and carried it back onto the court. Holding the ball with both hands, she stood beneath the basket while Roman was now standing at least twenty feet away from the rim. In his youth, he had been a hungry and angry player, an exceptionally good shooter, as dependable as gravity, but age and weight and happiness had left him with slow hands and slower feet.

“Hey,” said Grace.

Roman opened his eyes.

“You know,” she said, “I’m not wearing anything under this coat.”

“I suspected.”

She threw the ball back to Roman, who caught it neatly.

“He’s beautiful,” she said.

“Who?”

“Michael Jordan.”

“Yes, he is,” said Roman.

Grace then opened her coat to flash her nudity at Roman. Flesh and folds of flesh. Brown skin and seventeen moles. He had counted them once when they were younger, and he hoped there were still seventeen moles now. New moles made Roman nervous, especially since the reservation skies still glowed down near the uranium mine.