Sherman Alexie - The Toughest Indian in the World

During lovemaking, I would get so exhausted by the size of her erotic vocabulary that I would fall asleep before my orgasm, continue pumping away as if I were awake, and then regain consciousness with a sudden start when I finally did come, more out of reflex than passion.

Don’t get me wrong. Cindy is a good one, cute and smart, funny as hell, a good catch no matter how you define it, but she was also one of those white women who date only brown-skinned guys. Indians like me, black dudes, Mexicans, even a few Iranians. I started to feel like a trophy, or like one of those entries in a personal ad. I asked Cindy why she never dated pale boys.

“White guys bore me,” she said. “All they want to talk about is their fathers.”

“What do brown guys talk about?” I asked her.

“Their mothers,” she said and laughed, then promptly left me for a public defender who was half Japanese and half African, a combination that left Cindy dizzy with the interracial possibilities.

Since Cindy, I haven’t dated anyone. I live in my studio apartment with the ghosts of two dogs, Felix and Oscar, and a laptop computer stuffed with bad poems, the aborted halves of three novels, and some three-paragraph personality pieces I wrote for the newspaper.

I’m a features writer, and an Indian at that, so I get all the shit jobs. Not the dangerous shit jobs or the monotonous shit jobs. No. I get to write the articles designed to please the eye, ear, and heart. And there is no journalism more soul-endangering to write than journalism that aims to please.

So it was with reluctance that I climbed into my car last week and headed down Highway 2 to write some damn pleasant story about some damn pleasant people. Then I saw the Indian hitchhiker standing beside the road. He looked the way Indian hitchhikers usually look. Long, straggly black hair. Brown eyes and skin. Missing a couple of teeth. A bad complexion that used to be much worse. Crooked nose that had been broken more than once. Big, misshapen ears. A few whiskers masquerading as a mustache. Even before he climbed into my car I could tell he was tough. He had some serious muscles that threatened to rip through his blue jeans and denim jacket. When he was in the car, I could see his hands up close, and they told his whole story. His fingers were twisted into weird, permanent shapes, and his knuckles were covered with layers of scar tissue.

“Jeez,” I said. “You’re a fighter, enit?”

I threw in the “enit,” a reservation colloquialism, because I wanted the fighter to know that I had grown up on the rez, in the woods, with every Indian in the world.

The hitchhiker looked down at his hands, flexed them into fists. I could tell it hurt him to do that.

“Yeah,” he said. “I’m a fighter.”

I pulled back onto the highway, looking over my shoulder to check my blind spot.

“What tribe are you?” I asked him, inverting the last two words in order to sound as aboriginal as possible.

“Lummi,” he said. “What about you?”

“Spokane.”

“I know some Spokanes. Haven’t seen them in a long time.”

He clutched his backpack in his lap like he didn’t want to let it go for anything. He reached inside a pocket and pulled out a piece of deer jerky. I recognized it by the smell.

“Want some?” he asked.

“Sure.”

It had been a long time since I’d eaten jerky. The salt, the gamy taste. I felt as Indian as Indian gets, driving down the road in a fast car, chewing on jerky, talking to an indigenous fighter.

“Where you headed?” I asked.

“Home. Back to the rez.”

I nodded my head as I passed a big truck. The driver gave us a smile as we went by. I tooted the horn.

“Big truck,” said the fighter.

I haven’t lived on my reservation for twelve years. But I live in Spokane, which is only an hour’s drive from the rez. Still, I hardly ever go home. I don’t know why not. I don’t think about it much, I guess, but my mom and dad still live in the same house where I grew up. My brothers and sisters, too. The ghosts of my two dead siblings share an apartment in the converted high school. It’s just a local call from Spokane to the rez, so I talk to all of them once or twice a week. Smoke signals courtesy of U.S. West Communications. Sometimes they call me up to talk about the stories they’ve seen that I’ve written for the newspaper. Pet pigs and support groups and science fairs. Once in a while, I used to fill in for the obituaries writer when she was sick. Then she died, and I had to write her obituary.

“How far are you going?” asked the fighter, meaning how much closer was he going to get to his reservation than he was now.

“Up to Wenatchee,” I said. “I’ve got some people to interview there.”

“Interview? What for?”

“I’m a reporter. I work for the newspaper.”

“No,” said the fighter, looking at me like I was stupid for thinking he was stupid. “I mean, what’s the story about?”

“Oh, not much. There’s two sets of twins who work for the fire department. Human-interest stuff, you know?”

“Two sets of twins, enit? That’s weird.”

He offered me more deer jerky, but I was too thirsty from the salty meat, so I offered him a Pepsi instead.

“Don’t mind if I do,” he said.

“They’re in a cooler on the backseat,” I said. “Grab me one, too.”

He maneuvered his backpack carefully and found room enough to reach into the backseat for the soda pop. He opened my can first and handed it to me. A friendly gesture for a stranger. I took a big mouthful and hiccupped loudly.

“That always happens to me when I drink cold things,” he said.

We sipped slowly after that. I kept my eyes on the road while he stared out the window into the wheat fields. We were quiet for many miles.

“Who do you fight?” I asked as we passed through another anonymous small town.

“Mostly Indians,” he said. “Money fights, you know? I go from rez to rez, fighting the best they have. Winner takes all.”

“Jeez, I never heard of that.”

“Yeah, I guess it’s illegal.”

He rubbed his hands together. I could see fresh wounds.

“Man,” I said. “Those fights must be rough.”

The fighter stared out the window. I watched him for a little too long and almost drove off the road. Car horns sounded all around us.

“Jeez,” the fighter said. “Close one, enit?”

“Close enough,” I said.

He hugged his backpack more tightly, using it as a barrier between his chest and the dashboard. An Indian hitchhiker’s version of a passenger-side air bag.

“Who’d you fight last?” I asked, trying to concentrate on the road.

“Some Flathead,” he said. “In Arlee. He was supposed to be the toughest Indian in the world.”

“Was he?”

“Nah, no way. Wasn’t even close. Wasn’t even tougher than me.”

He told me how big the Flathead kid was, way over six feet tall and two hundred and some pounds. Big buck Indian. Had hands as big as this and arms as big as that. Had a chin like a damn buffalo. The fighter told me that he hit the Flathead kid harder than he ever hit anybody before.

“I hit him like he was a white man,” the fighter said. “I hit him like he was two or three white men rolled into one.”

But the Flathead kid would not go down, even though his face swelled up so bad that he looked like the Elephant Man. There were no referees, no judge, no bells to signal the end of the round. The winner was the Indian still standing. Punch after punch, man, and the kid would not go down.

“I was so tired after a while,” said the fighter, “that I just took a step back and watched the kid. He stood there with his arms down, swaying from side to side like some toy, you know? Head bobbing on his neck like there was no bone at all. You couldn’t even see his eyes no more. He was all messed up.”