Sherman Alexie - Ten Little Indians

6:00 P.M.

With one dollar in my pocket, I walked back to Junior. He was still passed out, so I put my ear to his chest and listened for his heartbeat. He was alive, so I took off his shoes and socks and found one dollar in his left sock and fifty cents in his right sock. With two dollars and fifty cents in my hand, I sat beside Junior and thought about my grandmother and her stories.

When I was sixteen, my grandmother told me a story about World War II. She was a nurse at a military hospital in Sydney, Australia. Over the course of two years, she comforted and healed U.S. and Australian soldiers.

One day, she tended to a wounded Maori soldier. He was very dark-skinned. His hair was black and curly, and his eyes were black and warm. His face was covered with bright tattoos.

“Are you Maori?” he asked my grandmother.

“No,” she said. “I’m Spokane Indian. From the United States.”

“Ah, yes,” he said. “I have heard of your tribes. But you are the first American Indian I have ever met.”

“There’s a lot of Indian soldiers fighting for the United States,” she said. “I have a brother still fighting in Germany, and I lost another brother on Okinawa.”

“I am sorry,” he said. “I was on Okinawa as well. It was terrible.” He had lost his legs to an artillery attack.

“I am sorry about your legs,” my grandmother said.

“It’s funny, isn’t it?” he asked.

“What’s funny?”

“How we brown people are killing other brown people so white people will remain free.”

“I hadn’t thought of it that way.”

“Well, sometimes I think of it that way. And other times, I think of it the way they want me to think of it. I get confused.”

She fed him morphine.

“Do you believe in heaven?” he asked.

“Which heaven?” she asked.

“I’m talking about the heaven where my legs are waiting for me.”

They laughed.

“Of course,” he said, “my legs will probably run away from me when I get to heaven. And how will I ever catch them?”

“You have to get your arms strong,” my grandmother said. “So you can run on your hands.”

They laughed again.

Sitting beside Junior, I laughed with the memory of my grandmother’s story. I put my hand close to Junior’s mouth to make sure he was still breathing. Yes, Junior was alive, so I took his two dollars and fifty cents and walked to the Korean grocery store over in Pioneer Square.

7:00 P.M.

In the Korean grocery store, I bought a fifty-cent cigar and two scratch lottery tickets for a dollar each. The maximum cash prize was five hundred dollars a ticket. If I won both, I would have enough money to buy back the regalia.

I loved Kay, the young Korean woman who worked the register. She was the daughter of the owners and sang all day.

“I love you,” I said when I handed her the money.

“You always say you love me,” she said.

“That’s because I will always love you.”

“You are a sentimental fool.”

“I’m a romantic old man.”

“Too old for me.”

“I know I’m too old for you, but I can dream.”

“Okay,” she said. “I agree to be a part of your dreams, but I will only hold your hand in your dreams. No kissing and no sex. Not even in your dreams.”

“Okay,” I said. “No sex. Just romance.”

“Good-bye, Jackson Jackson, my love, I will see you soon.”

I left the store, walked over to Occidental Park, sat on a bench, and smoked my cigar all the way down.

Ten minutes after I finished the cigar, I scratched my first lottery ticket and won nothing. So I could win only five hundred dollars now, and that would be just half of what I needed.

Ten minutes later, I scratched my other lottery ticket and won a free ticket, a small consolation and one more chance to win money.

I walked back to Kay.

“Jackson Jackson,” she said. “Have you come back to claim my heart?”

“I won a free ticket,” I said.

“Just like a man,” she said. “You love money and power more than you love me.”

“It’s true,” I said. “And I’m sorry it’s true.”

She gave me another scratch ticket, and I carried it outside. I liked to scratch my tickets in private. Hopeful and sad, I scratched that third ticket and won real money. I carried it back inside to Kay.

“I won a hundred dollars,” I said.

She examined the ticket and laughed. “That’s a fortune,” she said and counted out five twenties. Our fingertips touched as she handed me the money. I felt electric and constant.

“Thank you,” I said and gave her one of the bills.

“I can’t take that,” she said. “It’s your money.”

“No, it’s tribal. It’s an Indian thing. When you win, you’re supposed to share with your family.”

“I’m not your family.”

“Yes, you are.”

She smiled. She kept the money. With eighty dollars in my pocket, I said good-bye to my dear Kay and walked out into the cold night air.

8:00 P.M.

I wanted to share the good news with Junior. I walked back to him, but he was gone. I later heard he had hitchhiked down to Portland, Oregon, and died of exposure in an alley behind the Hilton Hotel.

9:00 P.M.

Lonely for Indians, I carried my eighty dollars over to Big Heart’s in South Downtown. Big Heart’s is an all-Indian bar. Nobody knows how or why Indians migrate to one bar and turn it into an official Indian bar. But Big Heart’s has been an Indian bar for twenty-three years. It used to be way up on Aurora Avenue, but a crazy Lummi Indian burned that one down, and the owners moved to the new location, a few blocks south of Safeco Field.

I walked inside Big Heart’s and counted fifteen Indians, eight men and seven women. I didn’t know any of them, but Indians like to belong, so we all pretended to be cousins.

“How much for whiskey shots?” I asked the bartender, a fat white guy.

“You want the bad stuff or the badder stuff?”

“As bad as you got.”

“One dollar a shot.”

I laid my eighty dollars on the bar top.

“All right,” I said. “Me and all my cousins here are going to be drinking eighty shots. How many is that apiece?”

“Counting you,” a woman shouted from behind me, “that’s five shots for everybody.”

I turned to look at her. She was a chubby and pale Indian sitting with a tall and skinny Indian man.

“All right, math genius,” I said to her and then shouted for the whole bar to hear. “Five drinks for everybody!”

All of the other Indians rushed the bar, but I sat with the mathematician and her skinny friend. We took our time with our whiskey shots.

“What’s your tribe?” I asked them.

“I’m Duwamish,” she said. “And he’s Crow.”

“You’re a long way from Montana,” I said to him.

“I’m Crow,” he said. “I flew here.”

“What’s your name?” I asked them.

“I’m Irene Muse,” she said. “And this is Honey Boy.”

She shook my hand hard, but he offered his hand like I was supposed to kiss it. So I kissed it. He giggled and blushed as well as a dark-skinned Crow can blush.

“You’re one of them two-spirits, aren’t you?” I asked him.

“I love women,” he said. “And I love men.”

“Sometimes both at the same time,” Irene said.

We laughed.

“Man,” I said to Honey Boy. “So you must have about eight or nine spirits going on inside of you, enit?”

“Sweetie,” he said, “I’ll be whatever you want me to be.”

“Oh, no,” Irene said. “Honey Boy is falling in love.”

“It has nothing to do with love,” he said.

We laughed.