Sherman Alexie - The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven

It was a dance.

Still, we can be surprised.

My sister told me she could recognize me by the smell of my clothes. She said she could close her eyes and pick me out of a crowd by just the smell of my shirt.

I knew she meant to say I love you .

With all the systems of measurements we had available, I remember the degree of sunlight most. It was there continuously, winter or summer. The cold came by accident, the sun by design.

Then there was the summer of sniffing gas. My sisters bent their heads at impossible angles to reach the gas tanks of BIA vehicles. Everything so bright and precise, it hurt the brain. Eardrums pounded by the slightest noise; a dog barking could change the shape of the earth.

I remember my brother stretched out over the lawnmower, his mouth pressed tightly to the mouth of the gas tank. It was a strange kiss, his first kiss, his lips burnt and clothes flammable. He tried to dance away, he named every blade of grass he crushed when he fell on his ass. Everything under water, like walking across the bottom of Benjamin Lake, past dead horses and abandoned tires. Legs tangled in seaweed, dance, dance again, kick the feet until you break free. Stare up at the surface, sunlight filtered through water like fingers, like a hand filled with the promise of love and oxygen. WARNING: Intentional misuse by deliberately concentrating and inhaling the contents can be harmful or fatal .

How much do we remember of what hurts us most? I’ve been thinking about pain, how each of us constructs our past to justify what we feel now. How each successive pain distorts the preceding. Let’s say I remember sunlight as a measurement of this story, how it changed the shape of the family portrait. My father shields his eyes and makes his face a shadow. He could be anyone then, but my eyes are closed in the photo. I cannot remember what I was thinking. Maybe I wanted to stand, stretch my legs, raise my arms above my head, open my mouth wide, and fill my lungs. Breathe, breathe . Maybe my hair is so black it collects all the available light.

Suddenly it is winter and I’m trying to start the car.

“Give it more gas,” my father shouts from the house.

I put my foot to the fire wall, feel the engine shudder in response. My hands grip the steering wheel tightly. They are not mine this morning. These hands are too strong, too necessary for even the smallest gestures. I can make fists and throw my anger into walls and plasterboard. I can pick up a toothbrush or a pistol, touch the face of a woman I love. Years ago, these hands might have held the spear that held the salmon that held the dream of the tribe. Years ago, these hands might have touched the hands of the dark-skinned men who touched medicine and the magic of ordinary gods. Now, I put my hand to gearshift, my heart to the cold wind.

“Give it more gas,” my father yells.

I put the car into Drive and then I am gone, down the road, carefully, touching the brake like I touch my dreams. Once, my father and I drove this same road and he told the story of the first television he ever saw.

“The television was in the window of a store in Coeur d’Alene. Me and all the guys would walk down there and watch it. Just one channel and all it showed was a woman sitting on top of a television that showed the same woman sitting on top of the same television. Over and over until it hurt your eyes and head. That’s the way I remember it. And she was always singing some song. I think it was ‘A Girl on Top of the World.’”

This is how we find our history, how we sketch our family portrait, how we snap the photograph at the precise moment when someone’s mouth is open and ready to ask a question. How?

There is a girl on top of the world. She is owldancing with my father. That is the story by which we measure all our stories, until we understand that one story can never be all.

There is a girl on top of the world. She is singing the blues. That is the story by which we measure heartbreak. Maybe she is my sister or my other sister or my oldest sister dead in the house fire. Maybe she is my mother with her hands in the fry bread. Maybe she is my brother.

There is a girl on top of the world. She is telling us her story. That is the story by which we measure the beginning of all of our lives. Listen, listen, what can be calling? She is why we hold each other tight; she is why our fear refuses naming. She is the fancydancer; she is forgiveness.

The television was always loud, too loud, until every emotion was measured by the half hour. We hid our faces behind masks that suggested other histories; we touched hands accidentally and our skin sparked like a personal revolution. We stared across the room at each other, waited for the conversation and the conversion, watched wasps and flies battering against the windows. We were children; we were open mouths. Open in hunger, in anger, in laughter, in prayer.

Jesus, we all want to survive.

I KNEW NORMA BEFORE she ever met her husband-to-be, James Many Horses. I knew her back when there was good fry bread to be eaten at the powwow, before the old women died and took their recipes with them. That’s how it’s going. Sometimes it feels like our tribe is dying a piece of bread at a time. But Norma, she was always trying to save it, she was a cultural lifeguard, watching out for those of us that were so close to drowning.

She was really young, too, not all that much older than me, but everybody called her grandmother anyway, as a sign of respect.

“Hey, grandmother,” I said when she walked by me as I sat at another terrible fry bread stand.

“Hi, Junior,” she said and walked over to me. She shook my hand, loosely, like Indians do, using only her fingers. Not like those tight grips that white people use to prove something. She touched my hand like she was glad to see me, not like she wanted to break bones.

“Are you dancing this year?” I asked.

“Of course. Haven’t you been down to the dance hall?”

“Not yet.”

“Well, you should go watch the dancing. It’s important.”

We talked for a while longer, told some stories, and then she went on about her powwow agenda. Everybody wanted to talk to Norma, to share some time with her. I just liked to sit with her, put my reservation antennas up and adjust my reception. Didn’t you know that Indians are born with two antennas that rise up and field emotional signals? Norma always said that Indians are the most sensitive people on the planet. For that matter, Indians are more sensitive than animals, too. We don’t just watch things happen. Watching automatically makes the watcher part of the happening. That’s what Norma taught me.

“Everything matters,” she said. “Even the little things.”

But it was more than just some bullshit Native religion, some fodder for the crystal-happy. Norma lived her life like we should all do. She didn’t drink or smoke. But she could spend a night in the Powwow Tavern and dance hard. She could dance Indian and white. And that’s a mean feat, since the two methods of dancing are mutually exclusive. I’ve seen Indians who are champion fancydancers trip all over themselves when Paula Abdul is on the jukebox in the bar. And I’ve seen Indians who could do all this MTV Club dancing, electric slides and shit, all over the place and then look like a white person stumbling through the sawdust of a powwow.

One night I was in the Powwow Tavern and Norma asked me to dance. I’d never danced with her before, hadn’t really danced much at all, Indian or white.

“Move your ass,” she said. “This ain’t Browning, Montana. It’s Las Vegas.”

So I moved my ass, shook my skinny brown butt until the whole bar was laughing, which was good. Even if I was the one being laughed at. And Norma and I laughed all night long and danced together all night long. Most nights, before James Many Horses showed up, Norma would dance with everybody, not choosing any favorites. She was a diplomat. But she only danced with me that night. Believe me, it was an honor. After the bar closed, she even drove me home since everybody else was headed to parties and I wanted to go to sleep.