Sherman Alexie - Indian Killer

“What if I caused all of this? What if David is dead because I tried to shoot that Indian?”

“That’s nonsense, Aaron. You were just a kid. You didn’t know any better.”

THE KILLER WATCHED MARK sleeping in the dark place. The little boy had been sleeping constantly. It was getting harder and harder to wake him, and then he wouldn’t eat or drink much when he was awake.

The killer knew that a decision had to be made. The world now knew of the killer’s power and beauty. The newspapers were filled with interviews with the mother and father of Justin Summers, the first murder victim. Justin’s parents wept, and the killer loved their pain. Mark’s parents were subdued, in shock, too numb to show much emotion.

I just want the person who kidnapped Mark to know this , said Mrs. Jones in the largest article. Mark is a very special boy. He’s got a mother and a father who love him very much. He’s got a grandmother and two aunts. His nanny, Sarah, loves him like a son. He’s just a little boy. Please give Mark back to us.

The killer looked at the sleeping boy, dirty, smudged with dust from the dark room. His face was stained with juice and food. The killer sat in the dark and thought about the future, the ceremony. The killer left the dark place, filled a bucket with warm, soapy water, grabbed a hand towel from the bathroom, and went back inside to clean Mark. The killer was gentle. Mark didn’t wake as the killer carefully undressed him, removing the filthy Daredevil pajamas. Mark didn’t wake as the killer washed his face and body, his arms and genitals, his legs and feet. Mark didn’t wake as the killer dressed him in a large T-shirt.

The killer took the special knife down from the wall, slid it into the handmade sheath, and looked down at the sleeping boy. The killer picked up Mark Jones and, holding the boy as a parent would hold a child, left that dark place, and went out to finish the ceremony.

JOHN SEES THE SADNESS in his mother’s eyes as he prepares to leave the reservation for college. She wears a simple dress, something she sewed herself late at night. Lately, she has not slept well because she constantly worries about her son. She had given birth to him when she was very young, fourteen years old, and had greeted his arrival with a combination of fear, love, and ignorance. Her own mother had died while giving birth to her, and her father had been killed in Korea. Raised by a series of cousins and near-relatives, an orphan, she was not sure she knew how to be somebody’s daughter, let alone somebody’s mother. When John was born, the result of a random powwow encounter, he might as well have been an alien. Brown-skinned and bloody, twisted with the shock of birth, John screamed. But was he screaming out of rage, hunger, terror, or something more? She held him to her chest and prayed. Please, she whispered to him, stop. Ever since his birth, she has expected those screams, even now as she stands on the porch and watches John pack the car with his last piece of luggage. He is leaving her, leaving for college, and she is terrified of the life that awaits him in the white world.

“Are you sure about the car?” he asks.

“Yes, yes,” she says. “I don’t need it. I can use the tribal van. Or I can walk if I need to go to town. It’s not far.”

“But what about winter?”

“I’ll walk faster,” she says, and they both laugh.

She looks at her son. He has grown into a handsome man, tall and strong. But more than that, he is smart and generous, good to children and the tribal elders. For ten years, she has driven the tribal lunch van, which delivers meals to the elders, and John has often helped her. That was the way they both learned to speak the tribal language.

“Etigsgren,” said the elders upon their arrival.

“Etigsgren,” said John, perfectly mimicking the elder’s guttural stops and singsong accent.

“Ua soor loe neay. Reliw yerr uo hove?” asked the elders.

John smiled and shook his head. He did not have a girlfriend. He spent most of his free time with the elders. He vacuumed their carpets. He chased down rogue spiders in their bathtubs. He never killed the spiders; the elders had taught him that was bad luck. But the elders didn’t want little monsters slinking around their houses either. So John would gently scoop the spiders into his hands and carry them outside. He could feel the spiders’ legs wildly kicking and tickling his palm. He had always felt guilty about taking the spiders from their familiar surroundings and abandoning them in the wilds of a reservation backyard. John was not sure what spiders had to fear, but he was sure it was out there somewhere, waiting and watching. While the elders watched from their kitchen windows, John would kneel in the grass, set his hand close to the ground, open his fingers, and let the spiders loose. In their panic, the spiders would blindly scramble away, somehow convinced that they had broken free of their prisons and needed to quickly hide. John studied the grass as the spiders climbed over leaves and twigs, small stones and broken glass, until they disappeared into the small shadows.

“Ua roob gey da yoo,” said the elders when he returned.

“Not so good,” said John, feeling guilty and privileged.

“Ah,” said the elders in halting English. “You’d feel better if you had a girlfriend, yes?”

John had been too busy with school, basketball, and his work for the children and elders to worry about girlfriends. John had always been good in mathematics and science and had become an excellent teacher. The little Indian girls were the quickest learners, and they were beautiful. Much taller than the boys and more mature, the girls publicly recognized the magic of mathematics and science, how they proved the existence of God.

John had read about a species of South American ants that raised aphids like cattle. He had described this to Indian boys, who made a conspicuous display of their feigned skepticism, and to Indian girls who believed it wholeheartedly.

“Listen,” John had said. “The aphids, these small insects that suck the juice from plants, well, they eat this one kind of plant that the ants cannot eat. The aphids eat it all up and clear it out of the way, you know? Then as the aphids digest this plant, some chemical process inside the stomach changes the plant into a sugar. The aphids secrete this sugar, which the ants harvest to feed to their larvae. Really. The ants keep the aphids in little stockyards inside their nests. Isn’t that great? The ants collect this plant, carry it back inside the nest, and feed the aphids in the little stockyards. Isn’t that amazing?”

The Indian girls would laugh and write long essays about ordinary magic, about their grandmothers, who could make stews out of anything. They would remember beautiful stews crafted from a single potato, a can of tomato soup, and deer jerky.

“Remember that?” the Indian girls would ask themselves and other girls, and they would all remember the stories, and would laugh at the memories. Then they would hand in their essays, shyly smile at John, and run outside to the basketball court. Meanwhile, the Indian boys would sulk in the back of the room. They would answer questions in rough monosyllables, all the while drawing amazing landscapes filled with impossible animals: the buffalo with intelligent blue eyes; the salmon with arms and delicate hands; the deer driving a pickup; the bear dribbling a basketball down the court. When John came around to check on the boys, they would hurriedly cover their drawings, both ashamed and proud of their artistic impulses.