Sherman Alexie - Indian Killer

AFTER SHE’D LEFT DAVID Rogers standing in the street outside the convenience store, Marie walked home to her small apartment. As she walked, her anger began to fade. She’d always had a quick temper, was the first to shout obscenities or throw fists, but she was also the first to laugh nervously and apologize. By the time she opened the door of her apartment and saw Reggie Polatkin sitting at the shabby kitchen table, Marie was calm. She’d neither seen nor heard from Reggie in over a year, but she was not surprised to find him waiting for her. Indian relatives had a way of just showing up at the doorstep.

“Hey, cousin,” Reggie said to Marie.

“How’d you get in?” Marie asked as she placed her milk in the refrigerator. Her apartment had one microscopic bedroom, a bathroom with just enough room for toilet, sink, and small shower stall, and a third room that functioned as living room, kitchen, dining room, and study. Dozens of books were piled onto every free space. Books served as furniture by propping up the black-and-white television, by supporting shelves that held yet other books, and by serving as impromptu coffee and end tables. Overpriced, depressingly cold, and battered by generations of student renters, the apartment felt like some tiny box of a reservation in the middle of a city. Marie had tried to brighten the place with flowers and colorful prints, but she still felt miserable whenever she came home.

“I got in by magic,” said Reggie. “And I told the landlord I was your long lost brother.”

“Long lost is right.”

Reggie smiled. He was a very handsome man, with a strong nose, clear brown skin, and startling blue eyes that instantly revealed his half-breed status. In an attempt to look more traditionally Indian, he braided his long black hair into two thick ropes. He was just a few inches over five feet, which was pretty short even for a small people like the Spokanes. Like many short men, Indian and not, Reggie tried to compensate for his stature by growing a mustache. But he had an Indian mustache, meaning that ten or twelve thick black whiskers poked out from the corners of his mouth.

Reggie had grown up in Seattle with his white father, Bird, and his Spokane Indian mother, Martha. Though he’d visited the reservation a few times during his youth, Reggie had always been a stranger to Marie. Reggie was the mysterious urban Indian, the college student, the ambitious half-breed, the star basketball player, the Indian who would make a difference. On the reservation, among Marie’s family, that was how Reggie had always been described, as the one who would make a difference. Reggie carried with him the collective dreams of the family. Marie had always been jealous of that, and when Reggie got himself kicked out of college because of an altercation with Dr. Clarence Mather, she’d felt a strange combination of relief and sadness. She’d felt sadness because she’d come to the University of Washington precisely because Reggie was enrolled there. She’d thought she would feel safer if she was near a relative, no matter how distant and aloof he was. And she’d felt relief because she’d hoped that Reggie’s failure somehow made the possibility of her failure less likely, as if Reggie’s expulsion from college had somehow paid in full her family’s psychic debt.

Now, as Reggie Polatkin sat at her kitchen table, smiling and acting as if he were a regular visitor, Marie wondered how such an intelligent man could have sabotaged himself in such a profound way.

Reggie Polatkin, ten years old and little, had stared up at his white father, Bird Lawrence, a small man, barely taller than his son, but with huge arms and a coarsely featured face that made him appear larger than he was.

“Come on, you little shit,” Bird had whispered. “You want to be a dirty Indian your whole life? What’s the answer?”

“Dad, I don’t know.”

“What?”

“I don’t know, I’m sorry.”

Bird had slapped Reggie across the face.

“Okay, now for the second question. What year did the Pilgrims arrive in Massachusetts, and what was the name of the Indian who helped them survive?”

“Sixteen twenty,” Reggie had whispered. “And his name was Squanto.”

“And what happened to him?”

“He was sold into slavery in Europe. But he escaped and made his way back to his village. But everybody was dead from smallpox.”

“And was the smallpox good or bad?”

“Bad.”

“Wrong,” Bird had said and slapped Reggie again. “The smallpox was God’s revenge. It killed all the hostile Indians. You want to be a hostile Indian?”

“No,” Reggie had said.

At that time, in the early seventies, Bird had been the area director for the Bureau of Indian Affairs, which was under siege by the American Indian Movement. All over the country, hostile AIM members had been attacking peaceful BIA Indians and non-Indians. Bird had known that the murder rate in Pine Ridge, South Dakota, was the highest in the country. All because of the hostiles. And those hostiles had been making it tough to help the good Indians. It had been happening since Europeans had first arrived in the United States. In the nineteenth century, while a peaceful and intelligent chief like Red Cloud had been trying to help his people, a hostile Indian like Crazy Horse had been making it worse for everybody. But Bird had always believed that Crazy Horse got what he deserved, a bayonet in his belly, while Red Cloud had lived a long life.

Martha Polatkin had married Bird because she was searching for a way off the reservation. She’d wanted to have a big house, a nice car, green grass, and, no matter how cruel Bird was, she’d known he could provide her with all of that. And because he had, in fact, provided her with all of that, she’d tried to ignore Bird’s hatred of “hostile” Indians, even after he’d impregnated her and she’d given birth to Reggie. As for Bird Lawrence, he’d hated hostile Indians so much that he insisted Reggie use Polatkin, his Indian surname, until he’d earned the right to be a Lawrence, until he’d become the appropriate kind of Indian.

“Do you want to be a hostile?” Bird had asked Reggie again.

“No,” Reggie had said.

“Good, good. What was the name of the Indian who led the Pueblo Revolt of 1680 through 1692, and why did he begin the revolt?”

“His name was Pope. He was from San Juan Pueblo, and he said a spirit had told him to rid his homeland of the Spanish.”

“What was the name of the Spanish commander who ended the revolt?”

“Uh, Diego. Diego.”

“Diego what?”

“Diego…I don’t remember.”

Bird had punched Reggie in the stomach, knocking the wind out of him. When Reggie could speak again, Bird had continued the surprise quiz.

“You remember that crazy Indian’s name, but not the name of the white man who saved thousands of lives? Why is that?”

“I don’t know.”

“You’re hopeless. Can you explain why the Iroquois Confederacy fell apart from the years 1777 to 1783?”

“Because of the Revolutionary War.”

“And?”

“Well, some Iroquois, like the Mohawks, wanted to fight with the British. But the Oneidas and the Tuscaroras wanted to fight with the United States. And the Seneca and the Onondaga didn’t want to fight at all. Nobody could get along, so they broke apart from the Confederacy.”

“And which Indians were right?”

“The Oneidas and Tuscaroras.”

“Correct. Name the four Indian cowards who were indicted for the murder of two FBI agents on July twenty-sixth near Pine Ridge, South Dakota.”

“Leonard Peltier, Bob Robideau, an Eagle, and, and…”

“I’ll give you that one. Now, for the last question. What was the name of the Indian who helped raise the flag on Iwo Jima during World War Two?”