Sherman Alexie - Indian Killer

“Ira Hayes.”

“And what happened to him?”

“He was a hero.”

“No, you idiot. What really happened to him?”

“He died of exposure in the winter of 1955. Passed out in the snow.”

“Why did he do that?”

“Because he was a dirty Indian.”

“Exactly, and what tribe was he?”

“I don’t remember.”

Bird had slapped Reggie again and bloodied his nose.

“I want you to know I’m doing this for your own good,” Bird had said. “I don’t want you to end up like all the other Indians. I want you to be special. I don’t want you to be running around with a gun. I want you to love your country. I want you to know your history.” The white father gave his Indian son a handkerchief. “Here, clean your face.”

Trying to avoid his father’s beatings, Reggie had always studied hard and brought home excellent report cards. Bird would beam with pride and tape the reports to the refrigerator, that place of familial honor. On those rare occasions when Reggie had brought home a failed test or a flawed term paper, Bird would beat him.

“You stupid, dirty Indian,” Bird would say, never above a whisper. “You’ll never get into college this way. You want to be a drunk? You want to be one of those Indians staggering around downtown? What do you want to be, Reggie? What do you want to be?”

Over the years, Reggie had come to believe that he was successful because of his father’s white blood, and that his Indian mother’s blood was to blame for his failures. Throughout high school, he’d spent all of his time with white kids. He’d ignored his mother, Martha. He hadn’t gone to local powwows. He hadn’t danced or sang. He’d pretended to be white, and had thought his white friends accepted him as such. He’d buried his Indian identity so successfully that he’d become invisible.

Reggie had graduated from high school with honors and enrolled as a history major at the University of Washington. There he had met Dr. Clarence Mather.

“Hey,” Marie said to Reggie as she sat at the table across from him. “I’m taking a class with your favorite teacher.”

Reggie’s eyes narrowed.

“Yeah,” said Marie. “Dr. Clarence Mather.”

“He’s a fucking liar.”

“Yes, he is.”

Reggie was fuming. He’d never told Marie what had happened with Mather. She’d heard all kinds of stories from other Indian students. She’d heard Mather and Reggie had been lovers and that Reggie had threatened to kill Mather if he ever revealed it. She’d also heard that Reggie and Mather had fought because they’d fallen in love with the same Indian woman. She’d heard that Mather had stolen some of Reggie’s academic research and claimed it as his own. So many stories, so many half-truths and outright lies. But since Indians used gossip as a form of literature, Marie knew she’d never heard the true story about Reggie and Mather. She knew the real story was probably something very pedestrian.

“Hey,” said Marie, trying to be a good host. “You hungry or something? All I got is water and cereal.”

“What kind of cereal?”

“Apple Jacks.”

“Cool.”

Marie poured two bowls of cereal. As they ate that simple dinner, Marie smiled at the small tragedy of it all. The two smartest Spokane Indians in tribal history were forced to eat Apple Jacks cereal for dinner.

“Quite the feast, huh?” asked Marie and laughed.

“Well, at least it’s traditional,” said Reggie, fighting back a smile.

“Yeah, don’t mind us, we’re indigenous.”

They laughed together.

“So,” said Reggie, more friendly now. “How is school going?”

“Ah, you know,” said Marie. “It isn’t easy.”

Reggie knew.

“Are you working?” asked Marie.

“Mostly,” said Reggie, who’d been running through a series of minimum wage jobs since he’d been kicked out of college. He mostly played basketball, especially at the all-Indian tournaments held nearly every weekend on the local reservations.

“How’s your folks?” asked Marie.

“Mom’s okay. Bird’s got cancer.”

Bird had recently been diagnosed with terminal prostate cancer and spent a lot of time in hospitals. Once, when Martha had called to say that Bird had asked for him, Reggie had promised to come home to the hospital, but had traveled to a basketball tournament in Montana instead.

“Oh, shit,” Marie said. “I’m sorry. How is he? Really?”

“I don’t know. Don’t care much, either.”

They ate the rest of their dinner in silence, then settled in to watch a bad movie on Marie’s black-and-white television.

“Hey, cousin,” said Reggie after the movie was over. “I hate to ask. But do you got any money I could borrow?”

Marie knew that Reggie had been building up the courage to ask for money.

“Reggie,” she said. “If I had money, do you think we’d be eating Apple Jacks?”

Reggie smiled.

“Hey,” he asked. “Have you heard about the scalping of that white man?”

“Yeah.”

“What do you think?”

Marie shrugged her shoulders.

“Yeah, I agree,” said Reggie.

He slept on the couch that night, and when Marie woke up early the next morning, he was already gone.

FOR THE FIRST TIME since he had started construction work, John asked for permission to leave early, and went straight home to sleep. He was tired and willing to admit it to the foreman. A little after ten that night, he woke from a nightmare he could not remember, but he felt its residual effects, the sweat, racing heart, tensed muscles. He rubbed his stomach, remembered how, when he was twenty years old, he thought he was pregnant. No one had believed him, so he had forced himself to throw up every morning to prove it. For nine months, he waited to give birth, surprised by how little his belly had grown.

“This is going to be the smallest baby ever,” John had told Olivia. “You’re going to be a huge grandmother. Gigantic. The biggest grandmother ever.”

John had decided to have his baby at home because he hated hospitals and doctors, though he loved the nurses with their white nylons and long eyelashes. Using his latest paycheck, John made a list and then bought all the items he’d written down:

towels, clean and hot

hammer and nails

baby blankets and toys

bottle

graham crackers and milk

needle and thread

radio

sharp knife

soup

brand-new tool belt

rent money

newspapers with all the want ads cut out

On his delivery date, John lay naked on his bed, waiting for the baby. He watched the digital clock. 7:51. 7:52. 7:53. But the baby would not come. John felt his stomach, wished for labor pains, and heard the music growing louder and louder.

“No!” he’d shouted. “Don’t cheat me! Don’t cheat me again!”

But the baby never arrived, and John realized he had never been pregnant. He felt foolish. He had told everybody that he was pregnant, his mother and father, the woman who worked at the supermarket, his landlord. John packed up all his birthing supplies, the toys and blankets, knife and newspapers, and packed them into a box. He shoved the box under his bed and never looked at it. No. He opened it sometimes to take inventory, to make sure everything was still there. Criminals were everywhere these days, especially in his neighborhood. A girl had been shot and killed outside Ballard High School, just a few blocks away from his apartment. He was not going to take any chances with his possessions.

John smiled at the memory of his failed pregnancy. He was awake. He had to work the next day and he always tried to get plenty of sleep on work nights. The foreman liked to start early, so they would be done before that late afternoon sun took over. John thought this a strange belief, especially during winter in Seattle, when the skies were gray and rain fell constantly. John had seen one of his co-workers fall over with heat exhaustion a few summers earlier, but had never known it to happen since. Still, the foreman knew that an unconscious worker was an unproductive worker and made sure his men drank lots of water. John worried about what might have been in the water, but he usually drank it anyway.