Sherman Alexie - Ten Little Indians

Corliss was puzzled by the interview. Harlan Atwater seemed to be an immodest poet who claimed to be highly sacred and traditional and connected to his tribe, but his tribe had never heard of him. He seemed peacefully unaware of his arrogance and pretension. Most important, Corliss’s mother had never heard of him. No Spokane Indian had ever known him. Exactly who were this mythical grandmother and grandfather who’d lived on the reservation? Who was Harlan Atwater? And where was he? He must be a fraud, and yet he was funny and hopeful, so maybe he was a funny, hopeful, and self-absorbed fraud.

Corliss kept searching for more information about Atwater. She found him listed in the 1971 edition of Who’s Who Among American Writers. There was a Seattle address and phone number. Corliss picked up the phone and dialed the number. Naturally, it was pointless. That number was thirty-three years old. The phone rang a dozen times. What kind of American doesn’t have an answering machine or voice mail? But after ten more rings, as Corliss wondered why in the hell she let it ring so long, she was surprised to hear somebody answer.

“Hello,” a man said. He was tired or angry or both or didn’t have any phone manners. He sounded exactly like a man who wouldn’t have an answering machine or voice mail.

“Yes, hello, my name is Corliss Joseph, and I—”

“Is this a sales call?”

She knew he’d hang up if she didn’t say the exact right thing.

“Are you in the reservation of your mind?” she asked and heard silence from the other end. He didn’t hang up, so she knew she’d asked the right question. But maybe he was calling the police on another phone line: Hello, Officer, I’m calling to report a poetry stalker. Yes, I’m serious, Officer. I’m completely serious. I am a poet, and a lovely young woman is stalking me. Stop laughing at me, Officer.

“Hello?” she asked. “Are you there?”

“Who are you?” he asked.

“I’m looking for, well, I found this book by a man named Harlan Atwater—”

“Where’d you find this book?”

“In the Washington State University library. I’m a student here.”

“What the hell do you want from me?”

Excited, she spoke quickly. “Well, this used to be Harlan Atwater’s phone number, so I called it.”

“It’s still Harlan Atwater’s phone number,” the man said.

“Wow, are you him?”

“I used that name when I wrote poems.”

Corliss couldn’t believe she was talking to the one and only Harlan Atwater. Once again, she felt she’d been chosen for a special mission. She had so many questions to ask, but she knew she needed to be careful. This mysterious man seemed to be fragile and suspicious of her, and she needed to earn his trust. She couldn’t interrogate him. She couldn’t shine a bright light in his face and ask him if he was a fraud.

“Your poems are very good,” she said, hoping flattery would work. It usually worked.

“Don’t try to flatter me,” he said. “Those poems are mostly crap. I was a young man with more scrotum than common sense.”

“Well, I think they’re good. Most of them, anyway.”

“Who the hell are you?”

“I’m a Spokane Indian. I’m an English literature major here.”

“Oh, God, you’re an Indian?”

“Well, mostly. Fifteen sixteenths, to be exact.”

“So, fifteen sixteenths of you is studying the literature of the other one sixteenth of you?”

“I suppose that’s one way to put it.”

“Shoot, it’s been a long time since I talked to an Indian.”

“Really? Aren’t you Indian?”

“I’m of the urban variety, bottled in 1947.”

“You’re Spokane, enit?”

“That’s what I was born, but I haven’t been to the rez in thirty years, and you’re the first Spokane I’ve talked to in maybe twenty years. So if I’m still Spokane, I’m not a very good one.”

Self-deprecating and bitter, he certainly talked like an Indian. Corliss liked him.

“I’ve got so many things I want to ask you,” she said. “I don’t even know where to begin.”

“What, you think you’re going to interview me?”

“Well, no, I’m not a journalist or anything. This is just for me.”

“Listen, kid, I’m impressed you found my book of poems. Shoot, I only printed up about three hundred of them, and I lost most of them. Hell, I’m flattered you found me. But I didn’t want to be found. So, listen, I’m really impressed you’re in college. I’m proud of you. I know how tough that is. So, knock them dead, make lots of money, and never call me again, okay?”

He hung up before Corliss could respond. She sat quietly for a moment, wondering why it had ended so abruptly. She’d searched for the man, found him, and didn’t like what had happened. Corliss was confused, hurt, and angry. Long ago, as part of the passage into adulthood, young Indians used to wander into the wilderness in search of a vision, in search of meaning and definition. Who am I? Who am I supposed to be? Ancient questions answered by ancient ceremonies. Maybe Corliss couldn’t climb a mountain and starve herself into self-revealing hallucinations. Maybe she’d never find her spirit animal, her ethereal guide through the material world. Maybe she was only a confused indigenous woman negotiating her way through a colonial maze, but she was one Indian who had good credit and knew how to use her Visa card.

Eighteen hours later, Corliss stepped off the Greyhound in downtown Seattle and stared up at the skyscrapers. Though it was a five-hour drive from Spokane, Corliss had never been to Seattle. She’d never traveled farther than 110 miles from the house where she grew up. The big city felt exciting and dangerous to her. Great things happened in big cities. She could count on one hand the amazing people who’d grown up in Spokane, but hundreds of superheroes had lived in Seattle. Jimi Hendrix! Kurt Cobain! Bruce Lee! What about Paris, Rome, and New York City? You could stand on Houston Street in Lower Manhattan, throw a rock in some random direction, and hit a great poet in the head. If human beings possessed endless possibilities, then cities contained exponential hopes. As she walked away from the bus station through the rainy, musty streets of Seattle, Corliss thought of Homer: “Tell me, O Muse, of that ingenious hero who traveled far and wide after he sacked the famous town of Troy.” She was no Odysseus, and her eight-hour bus ride hardly qualified as an odyssey. But maybe Odysseus wasn’t all that heroic, either, Corliss thought. He was a drug addict and thief who abused the disabled. That giant might have been tall and strong, Corliss thought, but he still had only one eye. It’s easy to elude a monster with poor depth perception. Odysseus cheated on his wife, and disguised himself as a potential lover so he could spy on her, and eventually slaughtered all of her suitors before he identified himself. He was also a romantic fool who believed his wife stayed faithful during the twenty years he was missing and presumed dead. Self-serving and vain, he sacrificed six of his men so he could survive a monster attack. In the very end, when all of his enemies had massed to kill him, Odysseus was saved by the intervention of a god who had a romantic crush on him. If one thought about it, and Corliss had often thought about it, the epic poem was foremost a powerful piece of military propaganda. Homer had transformed a lying colonial asshole into one of the most admired literary figures in human history. So, Corliss asked, what lessons could we learn from Homer? To be considered epic, one needed only to employ an epic biographer. Since Corliss was telling her own story, she decided it was an autobiographical epic. Hell, maybe she was Homer. Maybe she was Odysseus. Maybe everybody was a descendant of Homer and Odysseus. Maybe every human journey was epic.