Sherman Alexie - Indian Killer

“How much?” John asked her.

“How much for what?” she asked, smiling with a full set of dentures.

“Bigfoot,” John said, pointing to the sign.

The old woman looked up at John. She saw a tall, handsome Indian man.

“What tribe you are?” she asked.

“Navajo.”

“Ah, one of them, huh?” she asked and laughed loudly. John’s face went hot. “Yeah, I knew a Navajo once. Laura was her name. Laura Tohe. You know her?”

John shook his head.

“Ah, she was a good one,” said the old woman. “Haven’t heard from her in a long time. A long time.”

Thinking of Laura, the old woman sipped at her Pepsi.

“What’s your name, anyways?” she asked after a moment or two.

“John.”

The old woman studied John’s face, trying to determine if the name fit his features. It did not.

“My name is Lu,” she said. “But everybody calls me Sweet Lu.”

She extended her hand and John shook it in the Indian way. He had learned some small things.

“You know,” she said. “Most people call them Sasquatch these days. Makes it sound more Indian, don’t it?”

John nodded his head.

“I’ll take you to find ol’ Sasquatch,” she said. “And I’ll give you the Indian discount, too, okay? How’s twenty bucks sound?”

John handed her the money. Sweet Lu then packed up her folding chair and sign, threw them into the back of a rusty yellow pickup, and hopped into the driver’s seat. John had to push a pile of newspapers and magazines to the floor before he could sit in the passenger seat.

“You better buckle in,” she said. “It’s a rough ride.”

Sweet Lu drove that pickup deep into the woods, using logging roads and cattle trails. Once or twice, she simply imagined a path through the trees and followed it. They traveled for hours, mostly not speaking, though Sweet Lu would occasionally break the silence.

“You speak your language?” she asked John.

“No.”

“Ah, too bad. That Navajo language is beautiful. Jeez, I remember when Laura Tohe would talk Navajo and all the Indian boys would come running. There was this one guy, named Phil something-or-other. Ah, he had it something fierce for her. Would ask her to speak in Navajo. Laura, say chair . Laura, say horse . Laura, say desert .”

Sweet Lu laughed at the memory.

After a few hours, Sweet Lu dropped the pickup into low gear and chugged up a steep hill. She narrowly avoided a fallen tree, then stopped the pickup atop a rise. A small creek wound its way through the wash below. A few birds, which John could not identify, startled by the presence of humans, excitedly flew from tree to tree and chattered in their bird languages.

“Sasquatch fishes here, so keep your eyes open,” said Sweet Lu, then promptly leaned back in her seat and fell asleep.

John waited and watched. Sweet Lu snored loudly. The creek water was green from that distance, and John knew that it must be cold, ice cold. A small doe gracefully stepped from the trees to sip water from the creek. The birds had quieted, finally accepting John and Sweet Lu’s presence. A military jet, thousands of feet above them, left a vapor trail across the otherwise clear blue sky. John wondered if Sasquatch was out there in the woods, watching and waiting for the humans to leave. John knew he did not belong there or anywhere, but he never wanted to leave.

Near dark, Sweet Lu woke up with a sudden start. She had been dreaming about her late husband, a Hupa man who never did learn to speak English.

“You see him?” asked Sweet Lu.

John shook his head.

“Ah, too bad. I’ll give you half your money back, okay?”

John shook his head.

“You sure?” asked Sweet Lu.

“Yes,” said John.

Sweet Lu gave John a ride to the border of the reservation.

“I can’t cross the border,” she said with a laugh. “I don’t have my passport.”

John shook her hand again and waved as she pulled away. He stood there in the dark for a while, as cars filled with strangers passed him by, as the night sky became so clear that every constellation was visible. The Big and Little Dippers, Orion, Pegasus. John knew that stars were suns, that each was the center of its own solar system, with any number of planets dependent on its warmth and gravity. John, a falling star, brief and homeless, began the long walk back to Seattle, wondering what Olivia and Daniel would think of this adventure. Pragmatic people. When they swallowed the bread and wine at Mass, did they ever consider the magic of it all? There was magic in the world. John knew that real Indians felt it every day. He had only brief glimpses of it, small miracles happening at the edges of his peripheral vision, tiny wonders exploding while his back was turned.

John hitchhiked back to Seattle and made it to work that Monday morning. He was waiting when the foreman arrived early that morning, but John did not understand a word when the foreman tried to talk to him. All that morning, the foreman spoke a strange, unintelligible language. And worse than that, the foreman’s face changed. Deep beneath the changes, he still looked like the foreman, but he resembled Daniel Smith, too. No. That wasn’t quite right. The foreman could look like anybody. He could change his face at will. John knew that if he were a good Indian, he would have known the foreman was a shape changer, a loup-garou, a werewolf. Good Indians can always spot monsters. John also knew he could not stay on this job. He was frightened by the foreman and by all his co-workers. They were white men and he knew they talked about him. He knew they were plotting against him. There were too many of them and too few of John.

“Hey, John, you want to get a beer?” they always asked him, even after he had declined dozens of previous offers. Somewhere inside himself, John knew they just wanted him to be a part of the team. He understood what it meant to be a teammate. He’d been a teammate once. But he did not want to deal with the complications, the constant need to reassert his masculinity, the graphic talk about women. John could no longer stand such talk about women. Rain washed the windows of the building across the street, and John could see the blurry image of a woman talking on the telephone. She gestured wildly. From that distance, she was just a beautiful series of shapes and colors. Blond hair, a red dress, small hands, long fingers. He knew she was beautiful but, strangely enough, all he wanted was to watch her. He felt no need to touch her or even speak to her. His teammates and co-workers would have spoken of all the horrible things they might do to the beautiful white woman across the street. Or to a woman like Marie, the pretty Indian. John had heard such talk from the rich white men at his father’s parties and from the working white men at the construction site. All poison and anger. John knew his co-workers wanted to poison him with their alcohol and mean words. They wanted to get him drunk and helpless. John had never taken a drink of alcohol in his whole life and he was not about to start now. He knew what alcohol did to Indians. Real Indians did not drink. John knew he could not stay in that place any longer. Father Duncan was praying in the desert. Perhaps he was praying for John’s salvation. But John knew he needed to find his own salvation. He thought about the old woman, Sweet Lu, and wondered if she ever shared a salmon meal with Sasquatch. He thought about the beauty of myths and the power of lies, how myths told too often became lies, and how lies told too often became myths. He looked at the city’s skyline, understanding the myth and lies of its construction, the myths and lies of its architects. John knew there was one white man who should die for all the lies that had been told to Indians. Understanding that, he set down his gear and walked away from the construction site without saying a word to anyone. The foreman watched John leave with no way of knowing if he would ever come back to work. As John walked away, the foreman remembered when the Indian had first appeared nine years earlier.