Sherman Alexie - The Toughest Indian in the World

Q: I’d love to talk to your sons. Where are they, on the reservation?

A: Oh, no, they live up on the men’s floor here. I baked them a cake. My whole family is coming.

Q: Your sons, what are their names?

A: Oh, look, here they come now. They’re early. Boys, I’d like you to meet Dr. Spencer Cox, he’s a good friend of the Indians. Dr. Cox, I’d like you to meet my sons, Marion and John.

Sitting alone in his car outside of the retirement home, Spencer ejected the cassette tape from his recorder. He could destroy the tape or keep it; he could erase Etta’s voice or transcribe it. It didn’t matter what he chose to do with her story because the story would continue to exist with or without him. Was the story true or false? Was that the question Spencer needed to ask?

Inside, an old woman kneeled in a circle with her loved ones and led them in prayer.

Outside, a white man closed his eyes and prayed to the ghosts of John Wayne, Ethan Edwards, and Marion Morrison, that Holy Trinity.

Somebody said nothing and somebody said amen, amen, amen.

OUTSIDE THE HOUSE, SWEETWATER and Wonder Horse were building a wheelchair ramp for my father. They didn’t need a blueprint, having built twenty-seven ramps on the Spokane Indian Reservation over the years, including five ramps that summer alone. They knew how to fix such things, and they knew how to work quietly, without needless conversation or interaction with their employers. Sweetwater was known to go whole weeks without uttering a single word, opting instead to communicate through monosyllabic grunts and hand gestures, as if he were a very bright infant. Consequently, on that day when my father’s wheelchair ramp needed only a few more nails, a coat of paint, and a closing prayer, Wonder Horse was deeply surprised when Sweetwater broke his unofficial vow of silence.

“Jesus was a carpenter,” said Sweetwater, trying to make it sound casual, as if he’d merely commented on the weather or the game (What game? Any game!) and then he said it again: “Jesus was a carpenter.”

Wonder Horse heard it both times, looked up from his nail and hammer, and stared into Sweetwater’s eyes. Though the two men had worked together for thirty years, building three or four generations of outhouses, picnic tables, and front and back porches, they’d never been much for looking at each other, for seeing. God forbid one of them ever turned up missing and the other became the only person who could provide a proper description to the authorities.

“Jesus was a carpenter,” said Sweetwater, this time in the Spokane language, to make sure that Wonder Horse understood all the inflections and nuances (the aboriginal poetry) of such a bold statement.

“What?” asked Wonder Horse, as simple a question as could possibly be tendered, though he made it sound as if he’d asked Where’s the tumor?

“Jesus was a carpenter,” said Sweetwater. He would have said it in Spanish, Russian, and German if he could have.

Wonder Horse could think of no logical reply (in any language) to such a complicated statement, especially coming from a simple man like Sweetwater. The whole conversation reeked of theology, and Wonder Horse wanted no part of that. Confused, maybe even a little frightened, he turned back to his work and pounded a nail into the wood, then another, a third, a fourth. He was a middle-aged man made older by too much exposure to direct sunlight and one-and-a-half bad marriages. He knew the cost of wood (six bucks for one standard two-by-four, by God!). With dark hair, eyes, and skin, he was fifty or eighty, take your pick. A small man with large hands, he had to resist the daily urge to get in his pickup and drive away from the reservation, never to return. Sure, the people, the residents of the reservation, be they Indian or white or whatever, certainly needed him to build things, but he also believed the whole of the reservation — the streams, rivers, pine trees, topsoil, and stalks of wild wheat — needed him, even loved him. And so he remained because he was loyal and vain.

“What did you say?” Wonder Horse asked again, hoping that Sweetwater would change the subject, take back the complicated thing he had said, and make their lives simple again.

They were building a wheelchair ramp for my father, who was coming home from the hospital without his diabetic, gangrenous feet.

“Jesus was a carpenter,” said Sweetwater for the fifth time. Surely, it had become a kind of spell, possibly a curse.

“I don’t care,” said Wonder Horse, though he cared very much about carpenters and carpentry, about those artists whose medium was wood, and about the art of woodworking itself. Wonder Horse respected wood. He touched it like good lovers touched the skin of their loved ones. He was a Casanova with the hammer, wrench, screwdriver, and circular saw. But now, he felt clumsy and desperate.

“Harrison Ford was a carpenter, too,” said Wonder Horse. It was all that he could think to say.

“Who?” asked Sweetwater.

“Harrison Ford, the guy who played Han Solo, you know? In Star Wars, the movie?”

“Oh,” said Sweetwater. “But Jesus was, you know, a real carpenter.”

Wonder Horse stared into Sweetwater’s eyes (Blue eyes! A half-breed who had never considered himself white, or been considered white by other Spokanes!) and wondered why his best friend had decided to become a casual enemy. Wonder Horse hoped it was an impulsive and individual act and not part of a larger conspiracy.

“So, what are you saying?” asked Wonder Horse. “Are you telling me that Jesus was a good carpenter?”

“You’d think so,” said Sweetwater. “Yeah, I bet he was.”

“But does it say that, anywhere in the Bible, in those exact words, does it say Jesus was a good carpenter?”

“I don’t know. I mean, maybe, yeah, of course. He had to be.”

“Have you ever read the Bible?”

“No, not really, but I know all about it.”

“Now you sound like a Christian.”

“Hey, that’s dirty.”

“Yeah, you’re right, I’m sorry,” said Wonder Horse. He wanted to get back to work. He wanted to jump in his pickup and drive away. He swung his hammer again and again, missed the head of the nail once, twice, three times, and drove it sideways into the plywood floor, splitting the two-by-four that lay beneath.

“Damn,” said Wonder Horse and punched the wood. He studied his bloody knuckles.

“Are you okay?” asked Sweetwater.

“Always,” said Wonder Horse as he tugged at the wayward nail.

They were building a wheelchair ramp for my father, who was coming home from the hospital with no more than six months to live, according to most of his doctors, and as little as two weeks left, according to the others.

“I mean,” said Wonder Horse. “What’s with all this Bible talk?”

“Ain’t Bible talk,” said Sweetwater. “It’s just something I learned. Jesus was a carpenter.”

“Well, hell, anybody can call themselves a carpenter,” said Wonder Horse. “I mean, those Tulee boys built themselves a tree house over yonder. I guess that makes them carpenters, but it sure don’t make them good carpenters. That thing is going to roll out of that tree like a bowling ball.”

“I suppose, but the thing is, Jesus was Jesus, enit? I mean, Jesus must have been a good carpenter. I mean, he was Jesus, enit? That’s pretty powerful right there.”

“You know,” said Wonder Horse. “I have no idea what you’re talking about. Why is that?”

“Come on,” said Sweetwater, his voice cracking with one emotion or another. “He was Jesus. He could walk on water and, like, conjure up fish and bread and stuff.”