Sherman Alexie - The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven

This is not the story John-John tells himself just before he falls asleep. In his story, Joseph comes back on a bus, on a train, hitchhiking. In his story, Joseph’s feet never leave the ground again. But that kind of vision is costly; it rips sweat from John-John’s sleep and skin. He wakes up with a thirst that is so large that nothing can be forgiven. He wakes up with the sound of Joseph’s voice in his nose. Reverberation.

“Hey, John-John, why do you got two first names?”

“’Cuz you have to say anything twice to make it true?”

“No, that ain’t it.”

“’Cuz our parents really meant it when they named me?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Maybe it’s just a memory device?”

“Who knows?”

Joseph sitting at the kitchen table as they replay this conversation, this way of greeting, each day. Ever since John-John could form a sentence, Joseph began the morning with the same question.

“Hey, John-John, why do you got two first names?”

“’Cuz I’m supposed to be twins?”

“No, man, that’s too easy.”

“’Cuz Mother always had a stutter?”

Laugher. Then more laughter. Then coffee and buttered toast. Sometimes, a day-old doughnut. The sun came in through the windows. It was there, just as much as the tablecloth or the salt and pepper shakers.

Hey, John-John, why do you got two first names?

Now John-John waiting at the window. Watching. Telling the glass his stories, whispering to the pane, his breath fogging the world. His house, his family’s house, closed in all around him. Too many photographs. Too many stray papers and tattered magazines. The carpet has fleas.

There have been smaller disasters .

Mother and father, sister and sister, rush, rush. Fumigate, bleach and vinegar in the laundry, old blankets driven to the dump. The dog, lonely and confused, chained to a spare tire in the yard.

“John-John,” his mother says. “You have to leave. I mean, we all have to leave the house for a few hours. It’ll be toxic for a while, you know?”

He is dragged from the window, sat down beside the dog on the lawn. They both howl.

Once, John-John dreamed of flight. He imagined a crazed run into the forest, into the pine. Maybe then they would search for him, search for Joseph out there in the dark. John-John wanted to build fires with no flame or smoke. He wanted to hide in the brush while searchers walked by, inches away, calling out his name. He wanted helicopters with spotlights, all-terrain vehicles, the local news. Together, they would lift stones and find Joseph; they would shake trees and Joseph would fall to the ground; they would drink Joseph from their canteens; they would take photographs of Joseph crawling like a bear across snow, stunned by winter. The rescue team would find John-John and Joseph huddled together like old men, like children, like small birds tensing their bodies for flight.

John-John sits at his window. Waits. Watches. His face touches the glass. Hot and cold. His eyes follow the vapor trails that appear in the reservation sky. They are ordinary and magical.

Next time , John-John thinks. Next time, it will be Joseph .

Maybe it is winter again. Maybe it is just summer disguised. There is no one left to notice. Dust. Cold wind. Noise. John-John hears it all in his head. He counts his dollar bills, one, two, three , all the way up to ten before he starts again. He waits; he watches.

He wants to escape.

IN THE DREAM HE sometimes had, Junior Polatkin would be a gunfighter. A gunfighter with braids and a ribbon shirt. He wouldn’t speak English, just whisper Spokane as he gunned down Wild Bill Hickok, Bat Masterson, even Billy the Kid. Junior dreamed his name would be Sonny Six-Gun and he dreamed that white and Indian people would sing ballads about him.

But Junior always had to wake up, stagger from bed, and make his way to his first class at Gonzaga University in Spokane, Washington. Junior was the only Indian at Gonzaga, a small Jesuit school originally founded to educate the local tribes. Now, it catered to upper-middle-class white kids running away from their parents. Hardly anybody was actually from around Spokane. The students were from California, Montana, Hawaii.

“Everywhere but here,” Junior said to himself often. “Anywhere but here.”

As he sat in his history class on the first day of December, Junior watched the beautiful blond woman who sat in the front row. Now, Junior would never have called her beautiful. That was a word he couldn’t really relate to. No, he would’ve called her pretty, nice-looking, maybe even attractive. But more than her looks, Junior liked the way she talked, how she continually challenged the professor’s lecture points. Everyone else in the class grumbled when the blonde raised her hand to speak, but Junior leaned forward to be sure to hear every word she said.

“Yes, Lynn.” The professor recognized the blonde and took a deep breath.

“Don’t you think we spend too much time mythologizing the West? I mean, look at how it really was. Dirty, violent, illiterate. It wasn’t an age for heroes, that’s for sure.”

The professor ignored Lynn’s comments and proceeded with his lecture. Junior nearly fell in love at that moment. At least, he fell in love with the idea of falling in love with Lynn, and that’s powerful medicine in itself. Junior spent the rest of the class watching Lynn and dreaming.

After class, he followed Lynn to the cafeteria, stayed just a few steps behind her. He thought he was being a good Indian, sneaky and all, but she suddenly turned around and confronted him.

“What the fuck do you want?” Lynn asked.

Junior couldn’t think of a thing to say, had no quick and clever response, no words that would convey what he felt. He’d waited for this moment for most of the semester, had dreamed of it, had nearly lived it in his imagination, and now he was silent.

“Well,” Lynn asked again. “What the fuck do you want?”

Junior searched his mind and pockets, tried to remember some stunning piece of poetry from his English class or a line of dialogue from a romantic movie. He licked his lips, cleared his throat.

“Coffee,” he said and exhaled heavily, as if he had just changed the world.

“What?” Lynn asked, surprised.

“Just coffee,” Junior said, then amended himself. “Just going, cafeteria, coffee.”

Lynn looked hard at Junior, dismissed him as a threat, and continued her walk to the cafeteria. Junior waited until she was a good distance ahead and followed her, wondered if there was a bigger asshole in the world than he was.

“Nope, I’m the biggest,” he said to himself as he walked into the cafeteria and took a seat as far as possible from where Lynn sat.

“Can I help you?” the waiter asked, suddenly appearing, as good waiters will do.

“Coffee,” Junior said. “Just coffee.”

Over Christmas break, Junior lived in the dorms because he didn’t want to go back to his reservation and endure the insults that would be continually hurled at him. Instead, he stayed in the dorms by himself and read books. Nearly a book a day. On Christmas, Junior read two books, switched back and forth by chapters. One book was a cheap western and the other was a children’s book. He pretended it was one big book, a strange book, a multiple-personality book. After a while, he switched back and forth by paragraph:

Johnny Star stared out over the edge of the cliff and watched Bull Steedham ride his beautiful horse. That man is too ugly to have a horse that pretty , Johnny thought as he balanced his six-gun on his left forearm, took aim at Bull’s hat, and pulled the trigger.