Sherman Alexie - Ten Little Indians

“Are you okay?” a man asked her.

She turned to look at him. He was a short forty-something Caucasian in a black leather coat. Handsome, with kind eyes and a stupid mustache, he was maybe twenty pounds overweight and would certainly carry thirty extra pounds in ten more years and forty in twenty and so on and so on. The inevitable obesity of the American male! But for now, he looked like the sexy bass player for a bad garage band. Maybe his belly was soft, but his art was rock-hard! In another place or time, she would have smiled at him, flirted, and possibly thought of him the next time she made love with her awful husband. Why was she thinking about sex at a time like this? Worse, why was she thinking about adulterous sex? The world, or at least a small part of the world, was coming to an end, and she was thinking about another man’s naked body. How perverse! Or was it a reflexive and natural reaction? With so much death and pain around her, wouldn’t it be good to throw this man down in the middle of the rubble and make love to him? Wouldn’t it be good to create life, to conceive it? After all, didn’t these self-martyring terrorists believe they would be rewarded with seventy-two virgins in heaven? Political posturing aside, didn’t a few thousand stupid men believe terrorism was another way to get laid? What would happen if the United States offered seventy-three virgins to each terrorist if he would abstain from violence? Instead of deploying an army of pissed-off U.S. soldiers to Afghanistan and Iraq, we could send a mercy team of patriotic virgins. Oh, God, what is happening to me, she thought, I’m losing my mind. She was in shock, of course, but she wondered if her brain had been more seriously damaged by the blast than she’d thought. Maybe her skull had been ripped open and her brain was exposed for all to see. Wouldn’t that be the most extreme form of public nudity? Wouldn’t that be the greatest shame? My brains are leaking out of my head, she thought, and I don’t even know it. She touched the top of her head and expected to feel soft tissue but felt only her strong and bony skull. She was going crazy, and she welcomed it. She wanted to be crazy.

“Were you in there?” the chubby bass player asked her and pointed at the destroyed restaurant. He was strangely calm, she thought. What kind of man can calmly point at an exploded building? Maybe he’d gone crazy along with her. Maybe everybody had gone crazy.

“I wasn’t in there,” she said. She lied, and it felt good to lie. “I saw it. I just saw it.”

“What happened?” he asked.

“A bomb guy ran into the restaurant,” she said. “With a bomb. He opened up his coat, and there was a bomb, and he screamed something. I don’t know what language it was. After he screamed, he blew up the bomb.”

“Were you in there?” he asked again. Of course, she thought, of course I was in there, you idiot! How could she know exactly what had happened if she hadn’t been inside to witness it? He knew something was wrong with her story but was too confused and frightened to figure it out.

“No, I wasn’t in there,” she said. “I was standing right here when it happened.”

“Are you okay?” he asked. He was close to her. She could smell the cigarettes on his breath. Or maybe everybody smelled of fire and smoke. Maybe everybody would always smell of fire and smoke.

“No,” she said. Given the opportunity to tell the truth, she kept lying. “I was just walking by.”

“I saw you coming out of there,” he said. He was interrogating her. How dare he question her at a time like this?

“I was looking for people,” she said. “I was trying to save them, but there’s nobody. There’s just pieces of people.”

She realized she was shouting to be heard over the din.

“Are you hurt?” he shouted back at her. What kind of conversation was this? What kind of madness were they sharing? “Are you hurt?” he asked. He kept asking her the same question. She had to stop him from asking it again.

“No, no,” she said. “Just get me out of here. I don’t want to be here. Help me get out of here.”

He took her hand and led her away from the crime scene. For ten blocks, he pushed through the advancing crowds of would-be rescuers, media saints, journalistic vultures, emergency workers, and the curiously morbid. Everywhere there were still and video cameras. She wondered how many thousands of photographs would be taken, how many films would be made. How many of those photographs and films might include her image? Had somebody captured the very moment when she emerged Jesus-like from her exploded tomb? After all, she thought, Jesus is still here because Jesus was once here and parts of Jesus are still floating in the air. Jesus’ DNA is part of the collective DNA. We’re all part of Jesus; we’re all Jesus in part. If you breathe deep during the storm, you can sometimes taste Jesus in a good hard rain. Maybe pieces of Jesus have burned into skin and bone and cement and wood. Maybe you can see the face of Jesus in every bloodstain. Maybe you can see Jesus in my bloody face, she thought, maybe I look like Jesus. Or maybe I’m not Jesus-like, maybe I’m Jesus himself. Maybe I’m a resurrection of the resurrected.

“Where do you live?” he asked. “Do you want me to take you home?”

“No,” she said. “Take me where you live.”

He hesitated. He didn’t understand what was happening. He wanted to be logical. He wanted to make it make sense. He lived at the end of the next block. It was close and safe, and therefore he decided it was logical to take this stranger, this strange woman, to his apartment. He wondered if they were going to have sex. He knew it happened. He’d read of strangers who fell into each other’s arms during earthquakes and tornadoes and hurricanes and wars. His uncle Ernie, a Vietnam War veteran, had rescued a young Vietnamese woman and her infant son in 1967, married her, adopted the kid, and brought them back to Seattle. They were still married, somewhat unhappily, but stayed together. Who can explain these things? Maybe I’m supposed to take this woman home, he thought, maybe we’re supposed to fall in love. Okay, maybe it’s not logical, maybe it’s nonsensical. But what makes any sense in a world where a man can run into a crowded restaurant and explode a bomb? He looked at this woman with her long black hair and brown skin and brown eyes, and wondered if she was Iraqi or Saudi Arabian or Afghani. Maybe she was a Muslim terrorist who’d exploded the restaurant and was using him to make her escape. God, he thought, I’ve watched too many action movies and too much FOX News, and worse, I’m a racist who has watched too many Stallone flicks and too much Bill O’Reilly.

“I don’t know what to do,” he said. He was being honest. He wondered if his honesty was real.

“Just take me where you live,” she said again. “And then we’ll figure it out.”

He led her to his apartment building in Pioneer Square and three flights up to his place. He unlocked the door, followed her inside, closed the door behind them, and sat her down on his living room couch.

“Do you want something to drink?” he asked. How basic and inane! Why hadn’t he offered her something important, like world peace or spiritual redemption? He couldn’t have delivered either of those wonderful abstractions, but his offer would have been solid.

“I’d love some water,” she said.

“Water is important,” he said. “Whenever I’m depressed or lonely or whatever, I drink a glass of water, and I usually feel better.”

What the hell was he talking about? What kind of fool was he? He walked into the kitchen to get the water. He was happy to step away from her. He wondered if his charity was not really charity at all. Perhaps he’d helped her, a smallish act of human goodness, as a way of dealing with a larger fear. What if this one explosion was only the first? How many more terrorists were walking the streets of Seattle? How many more suicide bombers were building bombs? There was no way of knowing. That information would be forever unknowable. He would sooner know if God were real.