Sherman Alexie - Ten Little Indians

“Domino’s Pizza, how can I help you?”

If the pizza guy repeated the question enough times, it might become a prayer.

“Domino’s Pizza, how can I help you?”

“I can’t believe you’re open.”

“Well, it’s just me. Everybody else left. I stayed. I didn’t know what else to do.”

“You’re not really going to deliver pizzas, are you?”

“I don’t know. You’re the first person to call since it happened.”

“Isn’t your family worried about you?”

“They know I’m okay. My dad told me to stay here and lock the door. He said I’d be safer here than trying to get home by myself.”

“What are you going to do now?”

“I don’t know. I’m scared. Do you think this is the start of World War Three?”

The pizza boy sounded like he was eighteen or nineteen years old. How could he know how many teenagers around the world had already survived bombings, and lived with the daily threat of more bombings, and still found courage enough to dance, sing, curse, and make love in the tall grass beside this or that river?

“Are you a cook or a driver?”

“I’m both.”

“Well, kid, I’ve got a great idea. Why don’t you start making pizzas? Make as many as you can and stack them high. A whole bunch of hungry people will be wandering the streets. Put a sign in the window that says, ‘Free Pizza for Rescue Workers!’ and you’ll be a hero.”

“I don’t think the corporate office will like that.”

“Forget the corporate office.”

Surely this young man was incapable of socialistic rebellion, no matter how smart or self-contained.

“What did you say?” the pizza boy asked.

“The city’s on fire. Make the pizzas. Forget the corporate office.”

The young man thought about it.

“Yeah, you’re right,” he said. “Forget the corporate office.”

“I can’t hear you.”

“Forget the corporate office.”

“What did you say?”

“Forget the corporate office.”

“That sounds good, but your language, it’s not acceptable.”

“What do you mean, sir?”

“‘Forget’ is not a powerful verb.”

“I don’t know about that, sir. I feel pretty bad when somebody forgets about me.”

“You’re right. That’s a fairly wise thing to say. But there is a more powerful verb, a more powerful F-word.”

“Oh, sir,” he said, “I can’t say that word. That’s cursing. And I’m a Christian.”

He was a Christian working for an international conglomerate and worried about foul language?

“All right, then, pizza man, you have your mission. Forget the other F-word and forget the corporate office. Make those free pizzas.”

“Yes, sir.”

He hung up the phone, laughed at the ceiling, then looked down at the crazy woman lying on the floor. She stared back at him.

“What did you just do?” she asked.

“I think I started a pepperoni and double-cheese revolution,” he said.

She laughed and winced. “Oh, man,” she said. “My head hurts.”

“You had a seizure,” he said.

“I know. I was sort of having it and watching me have it at the same time.”

For years, she’d been living a binary life as participant and eyewitness. She’d been so bored and unhappy, and so objective about her boredom and unhappiness, that she’d been conducting social experiments on her family. Last July, she’d served dinner five minutes later than usual, an innocuous change in the family ceremony. But the next evening, she’d served dinner ten minutes later than usual, and then fifteen minutes later than usual the night after that, and so on and so on. By the end of the month, she was serving the meat and potatoes as the eleven o’clock SportsCenter was beginning. Her husband and sons had never once uttered a comment or complaint about the gradual and profound change in dinnertime. How could they be so compliant and disinterested? How could they be so dependent on her and so unaware of her blatant manipulations? As they’d eaten and cursed at the football and hockey highlights, she’d studied the man and two boys, her personal space aliens, and couldn’t believe all three of them had spent significant time in her womb.

Now she lay on the floor of a stranger’s apartment, ambivalent about her life. Maybe she could lie on that floor forever. Maybe she could ossify or fossilize. Maybe she could change into a bizarre coffee table. As a piece of furniture, she might feel valued and useful. She closed her eyes and wondered if the other furniture would come to accept and love her.

“Wake up!” he shouted at her.

“I’m very tired,” she said.

“I bet you have a concussion or something,” he said. “We should get you to the doctor. But the thing is, I’m going to have to take you there. The phones aren’t working. I can order a pizza, but I can’t order an ambulance.”

“I don’t think I’d be able to walk very far. Not for a while. I need to rest first.”

“Okay, but if you seize again, I’m going to pick you up and carry you there, okay? It’s about a mile up to Harborview. I’ll drag you there if I have to.”

“I don’t think I’m going to seize again.”

“You don’t know that.”

“I’m pretty sure it’s not going to happen again.”

“You’re the one lying on the floor. I don’t think that says much for your psychic ability.”

“Have you always been funny?” she asked.

“Yes,” he said. His sense of humor had destroyed his marriage. With each joke, he’d punched a hole in his ex-wife’s heart. But he couldn’t help it. His entire family was hilarious and inappropriate. During his wedding, as his soon-to-be wife walked up the aisle toward him, his little brother had loudly told an AIDS joke. How grotesque was that? If his wife had been smarter and less in love, she would have turned around and fled the church. But she’d believed her soon-to-be husband was better than his homophobic and racist and wildly stupid brother, and when her husband proved to be kinder and more progressive but just as wildly stupid, she’d felt cheated.

On the night his wife had signed their divorce papers, she called him up and cursed him. She was drunk and lonely and enraged.

“All right, Mr. Funny!” she had yelled. “Let’s see how long you can go without telling a joke! How long! How long, Mr. Funny?”

“About seven seconds,” he’d said after seven seconds of silence.

She’d cried and cursed him again and hung up the phone. He’d sat alone in the dark and wondered how he could so easily hurt a woman he loved. Why was it more necessary for him to tell a joke than to acknowledge her pain?

And now, two years after his divorce, he stared down at the strange woman lying on his floor and wondered if she’d been delivered to him as punishment for his sins. Maybe God hated jokesters. Or maybe she was a test. Maybe he could prove his worth by helping her, by saving her. Maybe God was giving him a chance to be serious and reverential.

“My ex-wife used to call me Mr. Funny,” he said.

“That’s a cute name,” she said.

“It wasn’t meant as a compliment.”

“All right, Mr. Funny, let me rest here for a little while, and then you can take me to the hospital.”

“It’s a deal. But I’m not going to let you sleep. You’re going to stay awake. So you better start talking.”

“What should I talk about?”

“Tell me about your husband and kids.”

“I hate them.”

“You already told me that. Tell me why you hate them.”

She didn’t talk for a few moments. He nudged her with his foot. “Talk,” he said.

“Where were you on September eleventh?” she asked.

“On September eleventh, when I was seventeen, I lost my virginity to a girl named Atlanta.”