Sherman Alexie - The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven

Anyway, there we were, eating bad food and talking more stories.

“Hey,” I asked my father. “If you knew who killed Jerry Vincent, would you tell the police?”

“Don’t think so.”

“Why not?”

“Because I don’t think they care much anyway. Just make more trouble for Indians is all.”

“Have you ever killed anyone?” I asked.

My father took a big drink of his Diet Pepsi, ate a few fries, bit into his burger. In that order. Then he took another bigger drink of his Diet Pepsi.

“Why do you want to know?” he asked.

“Don’t know. Just curious, I guess.”

“Well, I never killed anybody on purpose.”

“You mean you killed somebody accidentally?”

“That’s how it was.”

“How do you kill somebody accidentally?”

“I got in a head-on wreck with another car. Killed the other driver. He was a white man.”

“Did you go to jail?”

“No. I got lucky. He had alcohol in his blood.”

“You mean he was drunk?” I asked.

“Yeah. And even though the wreck was mostly my fault, he got the blame. I was sober and the cops couldn’t believe it. They’d never heard of a sober Indian getting in a car wreck.”

“Like Ripley’s Believe It or Not?”

“Something like that.”

We finished our lunch and drove over to the police station. Spokane is a small city. That’s all there is to say about that. We made it to the police station in a few minutes, even though my father drives very slowly. He drives that way because he’s tired of accidents. Anyway, we pull into the parking lot and park. That’s what you’re supposed to do.

“Are you scared?” I asked my father.

“A little bit.”

“Should I come with you?”

“No. Wait out here in the car.”

I watched my father walk toward the police station. Wearing old jeans and a red T-shirt, he looked very obvious next to the police uniforms and three-piece suits. He looked as Indian as you can get. I could spend my whole life on the reservation and never once would I see a friend of mine and think how Indian he looked. But as soon as I get off the reservation, among all the white people, every Indian gets exaggerated. My father’s braids looked three miles long and black and shiny as a police-issue revolver. He turned back and waved to me just before he disappeared into the station.

I imagined that he walked up to the receptionist and asked for directions.

“Excuse me,” he might have said. “I have an appointment with Detective Moore.”

“Detective Moore is out,” she said.

“Well,” my father said. “How about Detective Clayton?”

“Let me check.”

I imagined that the receptionist led my father back to the detective’s desk, sat him down, and gave him that look reserved for criminals and pizza delivery men. You know exactly what I mean.

“Detective Clayton will be with you in a few minutes.”

I imagined that my father waited for half an hour. I know that I sat in the car for half an hour before I finally got out and walked up to the police station. I wandered around the building until I finally stumbled upon my father, sitting alone and quiet.

“I told you to wait in the car,” he said.

“It’s too cold.”

He nodded his head. He understood. He almost always did.

“Why’s it taking so long?” I asked.

“Don’t know.”

Just then a white man in a suit walked up to us.

“Hello,” he said. “I’m Detective Clayton.”

The detective offered his hand to my father and my father took it. They shook hands quickly, formally. The detective sat down behind the desk, ruffled through a few sheets of paper, and looked hard at both of us. Looked at me as if I might have answers. Of course, I didn’t. But he gave me a look up and down, just in case. Or maybe he always looked at people that way, with those detective eyes. I wouldn’t want to be his son. Just as much as I wouldn’t want my father to be an undertaker or astronaut. The undertaker’s eyes always look like they’re measuring you for a coffin and the astronaut’s eyes are always looking up into the sky. My father was mostly unemployed. His eyes had stories written across them.

Anyway, the detective looked at his papers some more. Then he cleared his throat.

“I’m sure you know why you’re here,” he said to my father.

“It’s about Jerry Vincent.”

“Yes, it is. And I see here that you’ve been questioned about this before.”

“Annually,” my father said.

“Do you have anything new to add?”

“I’ve told you guys everything I know about what happened.”

“And nothing has changed? You haven’t remembered something different, some detail you may have forgotten?”

“Nothing.”

The detective wrote for a while, his tongue poking out of his mouth a little. Like a little kid. Like I did when I was six, seven, and eight years old. I laughed.

“What’s so funny?” the detective and my father asked me. They were both smiling.

I shook my head and laughed harder. Soon all three of us were laughing, at mostly nothing. Maybe we were all nervous or bored. Or both. The detective opened his desk drawer, pulled out a piece of hard candy, and handed it to me.

“There you go,” he said.

I looked at the candy for a while and gave it to my father. He looked at it for a while, too, and handed it back to the detective.

“I’m sorry, Detective Clayton,” my father said. “But my son and I are diabetics.”

“Oh, sorry,” the detective said and looked at us with sad eyes. Especially at me. Juvenile diabetes. A tough life. I learned how to use a hypodermic needle before I could ride a bike. I lost more of my own blood to glucose tests than I ever did to childhood accidents.

“Nothing to be sorry for,” my father said. “It’s under control.”

The detective looked at us both like he didn’t believe it. All he knew was criminals and how they worked. He must have figured diabetes worked like a criminal, breaking and entering. But he had it wrong. Diabetes is just like a lover, hurting you from the inside. I was closer to my diabetes than to any of my family or friends. Even when I was all alone, quiet, thinking, wanting no company at all, my diabetes was there. That’s the truth.

“Well,” the detective said. “I don’t think I have anything else to ask you. But if you remember anything else, make sure you contact me.”

“Okay,” my father said and we stood up. The detective and my father shook hands again.

“Was Jerry Vincent your friend?” the detective asked.

“He still is,” my father said.

My father and I walked out of the police station, feeling guilty. I kept wondering if they knew I shoplifted a deck of cards from Sears when I was ten years old. Or if they knew that I once beat up a little kid for the fun of it. Or if they knew I stole my cousin’s bike and wrecked it on purpose. Kept wrecking it until it was useless.

Anyway, my father and I walked to the car, climbed in, and pulled out of the parking lot.

“Ready to head home?” he asked.

“Been ready.”

There wasn’t much to say during the drive back to the reservation. I mean, Jerry Vincent was gone. What more could I ask my father about him? At what point do we just re-create the people who have disappeared from our lives? Jerry Vincent might have been a mean drunk. He might have had stinky feet and a bad haircut. Nobody talks about that kind of stuff. He was almost a hero now, Jerry Vincent, who probably got shot in the head and might be buried somewhere in Manito Park. Sometimes it seems like all Indians can do is talk about the disappeared.

My father got completely out of control once because he lost the car keys. Explain that to a sociologist.