Sherman Alexie - The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven

His uncles, Arnold and Adolph, gave up the fight and walked back into the house, into the New Year’s Eve party, arms linked, forgiving each other. But the storm that had caused their momentary anger had not died. Instead, it moved from Indian to Indian at the party, giving each a specific, painful memory.

Victor’s father remembered the time his own father was spit on as they waited for a bus in Spokane.

Victor’s mother remembered how the Indian Health Service doctor sterilized her moments after Victor was born.

Adolph and Arnold were touched by memories of previous battles, storms that continually haunted their lives. When children grow up together in poverty, a bond is formed that is stronger than most anything. It’s this same bond that causes so much pain. Adolph and Arnold reminded each other of their childhood, how they hid crackers in their shared bedroom so they would have something to eat.

“Did you hide the crackers?” Adolph asked his brother so many times that he still whispered that question in his sleep.

Other Indians at the party remembered their own pain. This pain grew, expanded. One person lost her temper when she accidentally brushed the skin of another. The forecast was not good. Indians continued to drink, harder and harder, as if anticipating. There’s a fifty percent chance of torrential rain, blizzardlike conditions, seismic activity. Then there’s a sixty percent chance, then seventy, eighty.

Victor was back in his bed, lying flat and still, watching the ceiling lower with each step above. The ceiling lowered with the weight of each Indian’s pain, until it was just inches from Victor’s nose. He wanted to scream, wanted to pretend it was just a nightmare or a game invented by his parents to help him sleep.

The voices upstairs continued to grow, take shape and fill space until Victor’s room, the entire house, was consumed by the party. Until Victor crawled from his bed and went to find his parents.

“Ya-hey, little nephew,” Adolph said as Victor stood alone in a corner.

“Hello, Uncle,” Victor said and gave Adolph a hug, gagged at his smell. Alcohol and sweat. Cigarettes and failure.

“Where’s my dad?” Victor asked.

“Over there,” Adolph said and waved his arm in the general direction of the kitchen. The house was not very large, but there were so many people and so much emotion filling the spaces between people that it was like a maze for little Victor. No matter which way he turned, he could not find his father or mother.

“Where are they?” he asked his aunt Nezzy.

“Who?” she asked.

“Mom and Dad,” Victor said, and Nezzy pointed toward the bedroom. Victor made his way through the crowd, hated his tears. He didn’t hate the fear and pain that caused them. He expected that. What he hated was the way they felt against his cheeks, his chin, his skin as they made their way down his face. Victor cried until he found his parents, alone, passed out on their bed in the back bedroom.

Victor climbed up on the bed and lay down between them. His mother and father breathed deep, nearly choking alcoholic snores. They were sweating although the room was cold, and Victor thought the alcohol seeping through their skin might get him drunk, might help him sleep. He kissed his mother’s neck, tasted the salt and whiskey. He kissed his father’s forearm, tasted the cheap beer and smoke.

Victor closed his eyes tightly. He said his prayers just in case his parents had been wrong about God all those years. He listened for hours to every little hurricane spun from the larger hurricane that battered the reservation.

During that night, his aunt Nezzy broke her arm when an unidentified Indian woman pushed her down the stairs. Eugene Boyd broke a door playing indoor basketball. Lester FallsApart passed out on top of the stove and somebody turned the burners on high. James Many Horses sat in the corner and told so many bad jokes that three or four Indians threw him out the door into the snow.

“How do you get one hundred Indians to yell Oh, shit?” James Many Horses asked as he sat in a drift on the front lawn.

“Say Bingo,” James Many Horses answered himself when nobody from the party would.

James didn’t spend very much time alone in the snow. Soon Seymour and Lester were there, too. Seymour was thrown out because he kept flirting with all the women. Lester was there to cool off his burns. Soon everybody from the party was out on the lawn, dancing in the snow, fucking in the snow, fighting in the snow.

Victor lay between his parents, his alcoholic and dreamless parents, his mother and father. Victor licked his index finger and raised it into the air to test the wind. Velocity. Direction. Sleep approaching. The people outside seemed so far away, so strange and imaginary. There was a downshift of emotion, tension seemed to wane. Victor put one hand on his mother’s stomach and placed the other on his father’s. There was enough hunger in both, enough movement, enough geography and history, enough of everything to destroy the reservation and leave only random debris and broken furniture.

But it was over. Victor closed his eyes, fell asleep. It was over. The hurricane that fell out of the sky in 1976 left before sunrise, and all the Indians, the eternal survivors, gathered to count their losses.

“GODDAMN IT, THOMAS,” JUNIOR yelled. “How come your fridge is always fucking empty?”

Thomas walked over to the refrigerator, saw it was empty, and then sat down inside.

“There,” Thomas said. “It ain’t empty no more.”

Everybody in the kitchen laughed their asses off. It was the second-largest party in reservation history and Thomas Builds-the-Fire was the host. He was the host because he was the one buying all the beer. And he was buying all the beer because he had just got a ton of money from Washington Water Power. And he just got a ton of money from Washington Water Power because they had to pay for the lease to have ten power poles running across some land that Thomas had inherited.

When Indians make lots of money from corporations that way, we can all hear our ancestors laughing in the trees. But we never can tell whether they’re laughing at the Indians or the whites. I think they’re laughing at pretty much everybody.

“Hey, Victor,” Junior said. “I hear you got some magic mushrooms.”

“No way,” I said. “Just Green Giant mushrooms. I’m making salad later.”

But I did have this brand new drug and had planned on inviting Junior along. Maybe a couple Indian princesses, too. But only if they were full-blood. Well, maybe if they were at least half-Spokane.

“Listen,” I whispered to Junior to keep it secret. “I’ve got some good stuff, a new drug, but just enough for me and you and maybe a couple others. Keep it under your warbonnet.”

“Cool,” Junior said. “I’ve got my new car outside. Let’s go.”

We ditched the party, decided to save the new drug for ourselves, and jumped into Junior’s Camaro. The engine was completely shot but the exterior was good. You see, the car looked mean. Mostly we just parked it in front of the Trading Post and tried to look like horsepowered warriors. Driving it was a whole other matter, though. It belched and farted its way down the road like an old man. That definitely wasn’t cool.

“Where do you want to go?” Junior asked.

“Benjamin Lake,” I said, and we took off in a cloud of oil and exhaust. We drove down the road a little toward Benjamin Lake when we saw Thomas Builds-the-Fire standing by the side of the road. Junior stopped the car and I leaned out the window.

“Hey, Thomas,” I asked. “Shouldn’t you be at your own party?”