Sherman Alexie - Indian Killer

“Go away!” shouted John.

“John, it’s your father. Let us in, champ. Let’s talk.”

“Go away! I don’t know you! I don’t know you!”

Sometimes, John opened the door and invited his parents into his apartment. Sometimes, he even telephoned his parents and invited them over. Once or twice, he had visited their home without their knowledge and stood over their bed as they slept. He talked to his parents every few days, just to be sure of their presence. However, he was never sure which Olivia and Daniel answered the phone, and he could never be sure which Olivia and Daniel came knocking at his door. He believed five different sets of Olivias and Daniels came to visit him, and he suspected there were many others, just waiting for him to weaken. One set of parents paid his rent, though John had plenty of money, and he had come to fear them most. They threatened him with words like “group home” and “medication.” John had a cardboard box filled with medication in his closet. All of the Olivias and Daniels who visited him brought him pills, more pills, and still more pills. Vitamins, cough drops, and other circles, brighter and smaller, that quieted the voices in his head for a little while. But John knew those pills slowly poisoned him, too. He could take the pills and die young, or ignore the pills and live forever with the music in his head. John ignored Olivia and Daniel’s knocking.

In his small, sparsely furnished apartment, John kept stacks of newspapers in all the corners, along with magazines, books, empty boxes, TV Guide , photo albums, a St. Francis yearbook. He slept on a twin bed with a red lamp, an apartment-warming gift from his mother, on the nightstand next to him. A tiny kitchen table ringed by more chairs than he needed. A refrigerator that held surprises, Tupperware containers filled with Olivia Smith’s decomposing casseroles. A sink full of dirty dishes. There were no cockroaches in John’s apartment. He had heard about cockroaches and feared them, though he had never seen one. He wondered if they carefully hid in the dark places of his apartment, and only came out when he was asleep. Cockroaches fear the light, and John understood that. He wondered if they talked to each other and whispered about him to the two other people who lived on the fourth floor with him. Though John rarely saw the human tenants, a Colombian woman who always seemed to be running off to play racquetball and an Irishman who played guitar long into the night, the roaches could have told them John’s secrets. As a defense against the roaches, John constructed elaborate homemade roach traps with shoe boxes and honey, and carefully set them in every cupboard.

Olivia and Daniel knocked for hours, but John stayed in bed. After they went away, John could hear another knocking on the door, which became a different door. He briefly wondered if it was Marie, the Indian woman who had danced with him. But he closed his eyes and could see Father Duncan walking across the desert floor. Duncan’s feet pounded so loudly that John covered his head with his pillow. Duncan was walking toward the stand of palm trees on the horizon. He looked disappointed and beaten, black robes coated with sand. His face sunburned, wrinkled. Duncan was a big bear of a man, half a foot taller than John and fifty pounds heavier, but with the most delicate hands. Those hands were completely contradictory placed at the ends of those huge, hairless arms. Those hands did not make sense, especially when Duncan was angry. Duncan would wave his arms in furious gestures, his beautiful hands floating like sails.

Still thinking of Father Duncan, John finally fell asleep and dreamed of the desert. He made it to work early that next morning. He walked carefully along the girders. Just after the morning break, John saw an image of Duncan’s hands so clear and startling that he nearly fell. John was attached to the building by a safety harness, but he knew that white men made the harnesses. It would only save white men. The leather, metal, and rope could tell the difference between white skin and Indian skin. But, despite his near fall, John kept working. As a good worker should be, he was always busy, but the foreman still watched him, and John knew he was being watched. He kept thinking of his mother, who had tried to visit him that morning. Olivia Smith was still exceptionally beautiful. Her few wrinkles just added a new regal quality. She had been absolutely stunning at thirty, thirty-five, forty. Clear pale skin and blue, blue eyes. She had been the object of many schoolboy crushes among John’s friends. John walked along the girder and into the lunchroom at St. Francis High School ten years earlier.

“John, buddy,” one friend whispered. “Your mom is a babe.”

“No shit,” a crass friend said. “If she was my mom, I would have never quit breast-feeding.”

John felt the rage rise inside him, up from his stomach to the back of his throat. He wanted to strike out, to break that friend’s nose, blacken another’s eyes. He wanted to cause them so much pain. He could not believe his friends would talk about his mother in that way. But they also talked about their mothers in the same way.

“My mom’s got a fat ass, all right,” a boy said. “You should see her panties hanging up to dry in the bathroom. They look like sails. Jesus, it’s like the goddamn America’s Cup in there.”

A huge jerk named Michael sat down beside John and started in.

“Smith,” Michael said to him, “I saw your mom at the store last night. You are a lucky fucker.”

Everybody at the table agreed and laughed, punched each other on the shoulders. John stared down at his sandwich. Sometimes he smiled and pretended to laugh when his friends teased him about his mother. He knew that was how he was supposed to react. Other times, he just ignored them and waited for the subject to change. A pretty girl would walk by and all his friends would launch into a long discussion of her alleged sexual history. But Michael would not leave it alone, even after John refused to acknowledge him.

“Smith,” Michael said, because white boys always called each other by their last names. “I was just wondering. I mean, you’re adopted, right? I mean, she’s not even your real mother. Not really. You could get a little of that nookie and it wouldn’t even be illegal, right? Not really.”

John looked at Michael, who was smiling. Michael, with his swollen, bright-pink face. Michael, who would grow up to become an investment banker, a rich man with a wife, two sons, and a relatively clean life.

“I mean,” Michael stage-whispered to John, so that everybody would be sure to listen closely. “Don’t you ever want to sneak into her bed at night and give it to her?”

Everybody at the table was stunned. A few laughed nervously, wanting the good times to continue, hoping their laughter would lessen the tension. One or two smiled, enjoying the torment. Most had no idea how to react, but they all knew that Michael had taken it too far. They waited for John’s reaction. When he sat frozen, Michael pushed further.

“Well,” Michael continued. “She’s a gorgeous white woman and you’re an Indian, right? Don’t you watch the movies? Don’t Indians always want to fuck white women?”

John moved quickly, grabbing Michael around the neck and wrestling him to the ground. They rolled around the floor, throwing ineffective punches and kicks, fighting like people who have never been in a fistfight. The other boys quickly circled them, excited by the violence, but just as quickly the teachers broke it up, and John and Michael were sent to the principal’s office. Michael went inside first, and came out with a forced smirk on his pimpled face.

“Now,” said Mr. Taylor, the principal, when John was finally in his office. “What was this all about?”