Sherman Alexie - The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven

I’m traveling heavy with illusions.

1972

Every day I’m trying not to drink and I pray but I don’t know who I’m praying to and if it’s the basketball gathering ash on the shelf or the blank walls crushing me into the house or the television that only picks up public channels. I’ve seen only painters and fishermen and I think they’re both the same kind of men who made a different choice one time in their lives. The fisherman held a rod in his hand and said yes and the painter held a brush in his hand and said yes and sometimes I hold a beer in my hand and say yes. At those moments I want to drink so bad that it aches and I cry which is a strange noise in our house because James refuses tears and he refuses words but sometimes he holds a hand up above his head like he’s reaching for something. Yesterday I nearly trip over Lester FallsApart lying drunk as a skunk in front of the Trading Post and I pick him up and he staggers and trembles and falls back down. Lester I say you got to stand up on your own and I pick him up and he falls down again.

Only a saint would have tried to pick him up the third time.

1972

The streetlight outside my house shines on tonight and I’m watching it like it could give me vision. James ain’t talked ever and he looks at that streetlight like it was a word and maybe like it was a verb. James wanted to streetlight me and make me bright and beautiful so all the moths and bats would circle me like I was the center of the world and held secrets. Like Joy said that everything but humans keeps secrets. Today I get my mail and there’s a light bill and a postcard from an old love from Seattle who asks me if I still love her like I used to and would I come to visit?

I send her my light bill and tell her I don’t ever want to see her again.

1973

James talked today but I had my back turned and I couldn’t be sure it was real. He said potato like any good Indian would because that’s all we eat. But maybe he said I love you because that’s what I wanted him to say or maybe he said geology or mathematics or college basketball. I pick him up and ask him again and again what did you say? He just smiles and I take him to the clinic and the doctors say it’s about time but are you sure you didn’t imagine his voice? I said James’s voice sounded like a beautiful glass falling off the shelf and landing safely on a thick shag carpet.

The doctor said I had a very good imagination.

1973

I’m shooting hoops again with the younger Indian boys and even some Indian girls who never miss a shot. They call me old man and elder and give me a little bit of respect like not running too fast or hard and even letting me shoot a few more than I should. It’s been a long time since I played but the old feelings and old moves are there in my heart and in my fingers. I see these Indian kids and I know that basketball was invented by an Indian long before that Naismith guy ever thought about it. When I play I don’t feel like drinking so I wish I could play twenty-four hours a day seven days a week and then I wouldn’t wake up shaking and quaking and needing just one more beer before I stop for good. James knows it too and he sits on the sideline clapping when my team scores and clapping when the other team scores too. He’s got a good heart. He always talks whenever I’m not in the room or I’m not looking at him but never when anybody else might hear so they all think I’m crazy. I am crazy. He says things like I can’t believe. He says E = MC 2and that’s why all my cousins drink themselves to death. He says the earth is an oval marble that nobody can win. He says the sky is not blue and the grass is not green.

He says everything is a matter of perception.

1973

Christmas and James gets his presents and he gives me the best present of all when he talks right at me. He says so many things and the only thing that matters is that he says he and I don’t have the right to die for each other and that we should be living for each other instead. He says the world hurts. He says the first thing he wanted after he was born was a shot of whiskey. He says all that and more. He tells me to get a job and to grow my braids. He says I better learn how to shoot left-handed if I’m going to keep playing basketball. He says to open a fireworks stand.

Every day now there are little explosions all over the reservation.

1974

Today is the World’s Fair in Spokane and James and I drive to Spokane with a few cousins of mine. All the countries have exhibitions like art from Japan and pottery from Mexico and mean-looking people talking about Germany. In one little corner there’s a statue of an Indian who’s supposed to be some chief or another. I press a little button and the statue talks and moves its arms over and over in the same motion. The statue tells the crowd we have to take care of the earth because it is our mother. I know that and James says he knows more. He says the earth is our grandmother and that technology has become our mother and that they both hate each other. James tells the crowd that the river just a few yards from where we stand is all we ever need to believe in. One white woman asks me how old James is and I tell her he’s seven and she tells me that he’s so smart for an Indian boy. James hears this and tells the white woman that she’s pretty smart for an old white woman. I know this is how it will all begin and how the rest of my life will be. I know when I am old and sick and ready to die that James will wash my body and take care of my wastes. He’ll carry me from HUD house to sweathouse and he will clean my wounds. And he will talk and teach me something new every day.

But all that is so far ahead.

“BROOM, DUSTPAN, SWEEP, TRASH can,” Samuel Builds-the-Fire chanted as he showered and shaved, combed his hair into braids. Samuel was a maid at a motel on Third Avenue. He wanted to be early to work this morning because it was his birthday. But he didn’t expect any presents or party from his co-workers, from the management. Being really early to work that morning was a kind of gift to himself.

The walk from his studio apartment on Hospital Row to downtown only took five minutes on a sunny day and four minutes on a rainy day, but Samuel left home nearly half an hour before he was supposed to clock in. “Early, early, real early,” he chanted. It was a good day: sun, light wind, and small noises like laughter from open car windows and fast-food restaurants.

All the previous week, Samuel had opened his mailbox expecting to find a card or letter from his children. Happy Birthday from Gallup; Best Wishes from Anchorage; I Love You from Fort Bliss, Texas. Nothing had arrived, though, and Samuel was hurt some. But he understood that his children were busy, busy, busy.

“Got their own fry bread cooking in the oven. Got a whole lot of feathers in their warbonnets,” Samuel said as he walked into the motel.

“Oh, Samuel,” the motel manager said. “You’re early. Good. We need to talk.”

Samuel followed the manager into the back office. They both sat down at the big desk, Samuel on one side and the manager on the other.

“Samuel,” the manager said. “I don’t know exactly how to tell you this. But I’m going to have to let you go.”

“Excuse me, sir?” Samuel said. He was sure the manager had said something entirely different.

“Samuel, this damn recession is hurting everyone. I need to cut back on expenses, trim the sails. You understand, don’t you?”