Sherman Alexie - Ten Little Indians

At five minutes to six, the Orange Top taxi pulled into the driveway. The driver, a short and thin black man, stepped out of the cab and waved. William rushed down the stairs and across the pavement. He wanted to get away from the house before he changed his mind about leaving.

“Is that everything, sir?” asked the taxi driver, his accent a colonial cocktail of American English, formal British, and French sibilants added to a base of what must have been North African.

“Yes, it is, sir,” said William, self-consciously trying to erase any class differences between them. In Spain the previous summer, an elderly porter had cursed at William when he insisted on carrying his own bags into the hotel. “Perhaps there is something wrong with the caste system, sir,” the hotel concierge had explained to William. “But all of us, we want to do our jobs, and we want to do them well.”

William didn’t want to insult anybody; he wanted the world to be a fair and decent place. At least that was what he wanted to want. More than anything, he wanted to stay home with his fair and decent family. He supposed he wanted the world to be fairer and more decent to his family. We are special, he thought, though he suspected they were just one more family on this block of neighbors, in this city of neighbors, in this country of neighbors, in a world of neighbors. He looked back at his house, at the windows behind which slept his beloved wife and daughter. When he traveled, he had nightmares about strangers breaking into the house and killing and raping Marie and Grace. In other nightmares, he arrived home in time to save his family by beating the intruders and chasing them away. During longer business trips, William’s nightmares became more violent as the days and nights passed. If he was gone over a week, he dreamed about mutilating the rapists and eating them alive while his wife and daughter cheered for him.

“Let me take your bags, sir,” said the taxi driver.

“What?” asked William, momentarily confused.

“Your bags, sir.”

William handed him the briefcase but held on to the heavier garment bag. A stupid compromise, thought William, but it’s too late to change it now. God, I’m supposed to be some electric aboriginal warrior, but I’m really a wimpy liberal pacifist. Dear Lord, how much longer should I mourn the death of Jerry Garcia?

The taxi driver tried to take the garment bag from William.

“I’ve got this one,” said William, then added, “I’ve got it, sir.”

The taxi driver hesitated, shrugged, opened the trunk, and set the briefcase inside. William laid the garment bag next to his briefcase. The taxi driver shut the trunk and walked around to open William’s door.

“No, sir,” said William as he awkwardly stepped in front of the taxi driver, opened the door, and took a seat. “I’ve got it.”

“I’m sorry, sir,” said the taxi driver and hurried around to the driver’s seat. This strange American was making him uncomfortable, and he wanted to get behind the wheel and drive. Driving comforted him.

“To the airport, sir?” asked the taxi driver as he started the meter.

“Yes,” said William. “United Airlines.”

“Very good, sir.”

In silence, they drove along Martin Luther King Jr. Way, the bisector of an African American neighborhood that was rapidly gentrifying. William and his family were Native American gentry! They were the very first Indian family to ever move into a neighborhood and bring up the property values! That was one of William’s favorite jokes, self-deprecating and politely racist. White folks could laugh at a joke like that and not feel guilty. But how guilty could white people feel in Seattle? Seattle might be the only city in the country where white people lived comfortably on a street named after Martin Luther King, Jr.

No matter where he lived, William always felt uncomfortable, so he enjoyed other people’s discomfort. These days, in the airports, he loved to watch white people enduring random security checks. It was a perverse thrill, to be sure, but William couldn’t help himself. He knew those white folks wanted to scream and rage: Do I look like a terrorist? And he knew the security officers, most often low-paid brown folks, wanted to scream back: Define terror, you Anglo bastard! William figured he’d been pulled over for pat-down searches about 75 percent of the time. Random, my ass! But that was okay! William might have wanted to irritate other people, but he didn’t want to scare them. He wanted his fellow travelers to know exactly who and what he was: I am a Native American and therefore have ten thousand more reasons to terrorize the U.S. than any of those Taliban jerk-offs, but I have chosen instead to become a civic American citizen, so all of you white folks should be celebrating my kindness and moral decency and awesome ability to forgive! Maybe William should have worn beaded vests when he traveled. Maybe he should have brought a hand drum and sang “Way, ya, way, ya, hey.” Maybe he should have thrown casino chips into the crowd.

The taxi driver turned west on Cherry, drove twenty blocks into downtown, took the entrance ramp onto I-5, and headed south for the airport. The freeway was moderately busy for that time of morning.

“Where are you going, sir?” asked the taxi driver.

“I’ve got business in Chicago,” William said. He didn’t really want to talk. He needed to meditate in silence. He needed to put his fear of flying inside an imaginary safe deposit box and lock it away. We all have our ceremonies, thought William, our personal narratives. He’d always needed to meditate in the taxi on the way to the airport. Immediately upon arrival at the departure gate, he’d listen to a tape he’d made of rock stars who died in plane crashes. Buddy Holly, Otis Redding, Stevie Ray, “Oh Donna,” “Chantilly Lace,” “(Sittin’ on) The Dock of the Bay.” William figured God would never kill a man who listened to such a morbid collection of music. Too easy a target, and plus, God could never justify killing a planeful of innocents to punish one minor sinner.

“What do you do, sir?” asked the taxi driver.

“You know, I’m not sure,” said William and laughed. It was true. He worked for a think tank and sold ideas about how to improve other ideas. Two years ago, his company had made a few hundred thousand dollars by designing and selling the idea of a better shopping cart. The CGI prototype was amazing. It looked like a mobile walk-in closet. But it had yet to be manufactured and probably never would be.

“You wear a good suit,” said the taxi driver, not sure why William was laughing. “You must be a businessman, no? You must make lots of money.”

“I do okay.”

“Your house is big and beautiful.”

“Yes, I suppose it is.”

“You are a family man, yes?”

“I have a wife and daughter.”

“Are they beautiful?”

William was pleasantly surprised to be asked such a question. “Yes,” he said. “Their names are Marie and Grace. They’re very beautiful. I love them very much.”

“You must miss them when you travel.”

“I miss them so much I go crazy,” said William. “I start thinking I’m going to disappear, you know, just vanish, if I’m not home. Sometimes I worry their love is the only thing that makes me human, you know? I think if they stopped loving me, I might burn up, spontaneously combust, and turn into little pieces of oxygen and hydrogen and carbon. Do you know what I’m saying?”

“Yes sir, I understand love can be so large.”

William wondered why he was being honest and poetic with a taxi driver. There is emotional safety in anonymity, he thought.

“I have a wife and three sons,” said the driver. “But they live in Ethiopia with my mother and father. I have not seen any of them for many years.”