Sherman Alexie - Indian Killer

After seeing the reading list, Marie knew that Dr. Mather was full of shit.

“Excuse me, Dr. Mather,” Marie said. “You’ve got this Little Tree book on your list. Don’t you know it’s a total fraud?”

“I’m aware that the origins of the book have been called into question,” said Mather. “But I hardly believe that matters. The Education of Little Tree is a beautiful and touching book. If those rumors about Forrest Carter are true, perhaps we can learn there are beautiful things inside of everybody.”

“Yeah, well, whatever was inside that man, it wasn’t Cherokee blood.” Marie’s voice grew louder. “And there are only three Indians on this list, and their books were really written by white guys. Not exactly traditional or autobiographical. I mean, I think there’s a whole lot more biography than auto in those books. And there aren’t any Northwest Indian writers at all.”

“Ah, yes,” Dr. Mather said. “And your name is?”

“Marie. Marie Polatkin.”

“By your appearance, Ms. Polatkin, I assume you’re Native American.”

“I’m Spokane.”

“Ah, yes,” Dr. Mather said. “I taught a Spokane named Reggie Polatkin. A relative of yours?”

“My cousin,” said Marie suspiciously. She knew Reggie and Mather had been close at one time. But Reggie had been expelled from the University after assaulting Mather for reasons that were never clear. While Marie recognized that Mather was a pompous jerk, she also knew that Reggie was no saint. In fact, he’d been involved in more than a few fistfights in his life. And after he’d been expelled, Reggie had simply disappeared. No member of their family had heard from him in over a year. Marie didn’t want Mather to give her a poor grade simply because she was related to her crazy cousin. If she was going to get a poor grade, she wanted to receive it because of her own craziness.

“I trust you are aware that Reggie and I had, well, let’s say it was an academic conflict.”

“Yeah,” said Marie.

“Well,” said Mather with a smile. “I hope you don’t hold a familial grudge against me, Ms. Polatkin?”

“Reggie is Reggie. I’m me.”

“Fine, fine. Now, let’s see, where were we? Ah, yes. The Spokane Indians. Columbia Plateau, Interior Salish, closely related to the Colville, Coeur d’Alene, Flathead, and others. A salmon tribe whose reservation is bordered by the Columbia River to the north, the Spokane River to the south, and Chimakum Creek to the east. A veritable island of a reservation, is it not?”

“I guess,” said Marie.

“Well, Ms. Polatkin, I understand your concerns. But I must correct your math. We do have four Native American authors in this course. Mr. Black Elk, Mr. Lame Deer, and Ms. Crow Dog did have help transcribing their stories, but many people use professionals to help write their books. And Mr. Wilson, as you can see by the syllabus, is a Shilshomish Indian, which, unless I’m mistaken, is a Northwest tribe.

“You see, Ms. Polatkin, I envision this course as a comprehensive one, viewing the Native American world from both the interior and exterior. One would hope that we can all benefit from a close reading of the assigned texts, and recognize the validity of a Native American literature that is shaped by both Indian and white hands. In order to see that this premise is verifiable, we need only acknowledge that the imagination has no limits. That, in fact, to paraphrase Whitman, ‘Every good story that belongs to Indians belongs to non-Indians, too.’”

Mather dismissed any further questions with a slight nod of his head, and proceeded to launch into a detailed lecture about the long tradition of European-Americans who were adopted into Indian tribes. A red-headed, green-eyed Irish and British mix, Mather proudly revealed that he’d been adopted into a Lakota Sioux family, an example of the modern extension of that long tradition.

“Dr. Mather,” Marie said. “What about the long tradition of white guys who were killed by Indians? How about the white guy they found dead in Fremont? Can we talk about him, too? How about the modern extension of that long tradition?”

“Ms. Polatkin, I hardly see how the murder of one poor man has anything to do with the study of Native American literature.”

Dr. Mather tried to ignore Marie, but she felt compelled to challenge him and constantly interrupted his first lecture. She was enjoying herself. She’d found an emotional outlet in the opportunity to harass a white professor who thought he knew what it meant to be Indian. For Marie, being Indian was mostly about survival, and she’d been fighting so hard for her survival that she didn’t know if she could stop. She needed conflict and, in those situations where conflict was absent, she would do her best to create it. Of course, conflict with whites didn’t need much creating. Her struggle with Dr. Mather, which started out as intellectual sparring, became personal, and intensified as that first class hour went along.

David Rogers, who had taken the class because of a specific sense of guilt and a vague curiosity, was fascinated by Marie. She seemed exotic and impossibly bold, speaking to a college professor with such disdain and disrespect. He had never known any woman who behaved in such a manner. David’s mother had died when he was five years old, so he had only vague and completely pleasant memories of her. And most of the white girls in his hometown had been quietly conservative and unfailingly polite. David had not bothered to approach those few hometown white girls who had been even slightly rebellious. And he had never spoken to an Indian woman.

David had grown up on a farm near Marie’s reservation. Throughout his life, his only real contact with Indians happened in the middle of the night when reservation Spokanes crept onto his family’s farm to steal camas root, the spongy, pungent bulbs of indigenous lilies that had been a traditional and sacred food of the local Indians for thousands of years. The Spokanes arrived in the middle of the night because David’s father, Buck, refused to allow them to gather camas, even though it grew on a few acres of their otherwise useless land.

On one particular night when he was twelve years old, David Rogers had been sitting for hours in the family hunting blind with his older brother Aaron and their father, Buck. Twenty feet off the ground, the blind, camouflaged by leaves and sod, had stretched between trees in a stand of windbreak pines. Ordinarily, the blind was used to hunt for the deer that often wandered through the open fields of the Rogers family farm. That night, however, Buck Rogers and his sons had been waiting for the Indians who came to steal camas root.

“Is that weapon clean?” Buck Rogers had asked Aaron.

“Yes, sir,” Aaron had said and had given a smart salute. Though only a year older than David, Aaron had been much more experienced with weapons and held a vintage AK-47, semi-automatic, a full clip.

“How about yours?” Buck had asked David.

David had looked down at the small twenty-two-caliber rifle in his hands. Wood stock, metal trigger, smell of gunpowder. He’d looked back at his father and older brother.

“It’s ready, sir,” David had said, his voice breaking a little. He’d been scared.

Buck had heard the fear in his youngest son’s voice. David had always been a strange one, and if left to himself, would have spent all of his time reading. Buck loved David, but thought he was probably queer. Buck had always known that Aaron Rogers was a whole different animal. He had been staring out into the camas fields, waiting for the Indians to appear. Wanting the Indians to appear.

“You see anything?” Buck had asked.

“No, sir,” Aaron had said.

David had peered out of the blind. The fields brightly illuminated by the moon. Fallow fields reaching north to south. To the west, a dirt access road. David had swallowed hard when he saw the car, without headlights, appear over the horizon.