Sherman Alexie - Indian Killer

“What do you have there?” John would ask.

“Nothing,” the Indian boys would whisper.

“You can’t go to recess until you show me,” John would say.

The Indian boys would stare out the classroom window and watch the Indian girls run up and down the basketball court.

“Here,” the Indian boys would say and reveal their drawings. “It ain’t no good.”

“It’s very good,” John would say, which always made the Indian boys shrug their shoulders. “Go to recess.”

The boys would run to join the girls on the basketball court. John loved the children’s laughter, the way those stoic, silent boys became so loud and excited, those bright, talkative girls so intense and competitive on a basketball court. Basketball was all math and science.

John had studied hard in high school. His grades and basketball had won him a scholarship from the state university and he now was heading off to college to be a pre-medicine major. He would be only a hundred miles away, but it might as well have been a thousand miles.

“I’ll come back every weekend,” he says to his mother as he slams the trunk shut.

“Don’t do that,” she says. “You need to make friends.”

John smiles at his mother. He would have come back every weekend if she had wanted that, but she has released him. John breathes deeply, fighting back tears. He has always wanted to go to college. He has dreamed of it, dreamed of walking through the hallways with serious purpose, his backpack filled with complicated books and reams of paper. Drinking coffee and arguing important points with other students. Finding the professor who would be a father figure, who would guide him carefully toward his future. An Indian man, or a black man, or maybe a Chinese man. Yes, a tall Chinese man with a passion for the Pittsburgh Pirates. College would transform John. He would become a doctor and return to the reservation to practice. It is all he has ever wanted. To help his tribe.

John had known he wanted to go to college when he was three years old. He had learned to read then, and reading taught him everything he needed to know about life outside the reservation. He picked up a book before he could read, when the words were still a mess of ink and implications, and somehow understood the purpose of a paragraph. The paragraph was a fence that held words. All the words inside a paragraph had a reason for being together. They shared a common history. John began to see the entire world in paragraphs. He knew the United States was a paragraph within the world. He knew his reservation was a paragraph within the United States. His house was a paragraph distinct from the houses to the west and north. Inside the house, his mother was a paragraph, completely separate from the paragraph of John. But he also knew that he shared genetics and common experiences with his mother, that they were paragraphs that belonged next to each other. John saw his tribe as a series of paragraphs that all had the same theme. They all belonged to the same tribe, shared the same blood. John could step into his classroom and see his features in his classmates. The wide face and brown skin, the high cheekbones and strong jawline, the large ears and long eyelashes. No matter their heights, they all had long bodies and short legs. Girls and boys, men and women, everyone had narrow hips and a flat ass.

John looks at his mother crying on the porch and sees himself in her features. She is a beautiful woman, somehow more beautiful as she cries. John does not quite understand why this is true. He cannot understand why he likes to see those tears on his mother’s face. It is proof of her love, certainly, but it touches something else inside of him so strongly that he takes a step backward.

“Don’t cry,” he says to his mother, but they both know she is going to cry for hours. John feels a single, hot tear roll down his face.

“You’re going to be somebody important,” she says.

John tries to smile. He goes to his mother and takes her in his arms. She is a small woman, but John can feel the strength in her arms and back when he hugs her.

“Don’t let them hurt you,” she whispers.

John holds his mother.

“They’re going to try to stop you,” she says. “They’re going to try to humiliate you. They’re going to call you names. They’ll want you to fail.”

“I’m going to be fine,” says John.

She looks up at her son, takes his face in her hands.

“Listen to me,” she says. “Don’t let them change you.”

John kisses his mother and turns away from her. He climbs into the car and starts it. He drops it into drive and pulls away from their small house. His mother stands still and quiet on the porch, watching him leave the reservation. She closes her eyes and listens to the sounds of the car fading into the distance. Then all is quiet.

AT FIVE THAT FOGGY morning, Truck Schultz stood at the back door of the KWIZ studio. On a cigar break, he was thinking about how the Indian Killer, that sick bastard, had actually made Truck’s show the highest-rated radio program in the Pacific Northwest. Truck smiled, tossed his cigar away, and tried to open the door. It was locked. Truck pounded on it — the buzzer was broken — but there was no response. He knew the janitor and a neurotic producer or two were inside. Darla, his assistant, was in her office. Truck pounded on the door until his hand hurt.

“Shit,” he said and stared into the fog surrounding him. He’d have to walk to the front, through the parking lot and a dark alley. The fog was thick, the sun had not yet risen, the air cold and heavy. Vernon Schultz, Truck’s father, would have called it good hunting weather. A garbage truck rumbled down a street in the distance.

“Double shit,” Truck said and stepped away from the back door. He was immediately surrounded by a strangely dark and dense fog. Fucking Hound of the Baskervilles, Truck thought as he walked through the parking lot. He could make out the dim shapes of cars. Shrouded in fog, the cars looked like large animals, monsters even, ready to pounce. Truck laughed nervously, and heard his laughter echo loudly across the parking lot. His own pickup sat in the best space. He briefly thought about driving the truck to the front, but then remembered he’d left his keys inside the studio.

“Triple shit,” he said as he thought about the Indian Killer and perfect hunting weather. Truck wondered how it felt to kill a man. Truck himself had never been able to kill a deer, let alone a man.

“There,” Vernon Schultz had whispered to his son as they sat together in the hunting blind. A doe had emerged from the fog just fifty feet away. The twelve-year-old Truck took aim, watching the deer daintily step across the cold ground, but could not pull the trigger.

“Now,” whispered Vernon, but Truck couldn’t shoot.

“Now,” Vernon said, much louder, and the doe, suddenly aware of their presence, bounded back into the fog.

“Oh, damn,” said Vernon and gave his son a gentle nudge. “Couldn’t do it, huh?”

With tears in his eyes, Truck looked up at his father.

“Next time,” Vernon said.

“Next time,” Truck said as he made his way through the foggy parking lot outside the KWIZ studio. He wondered how the Indian Killer had found the courage to cut a man’s throat. Truck shivered out of fear, though he told himself it was because of the cold. He knew the alley was close because he could smell the garbage Dumpster. Something made a noise out there in the fog, and Truck had to resist the urge to run. The flight instinct.

“Darla?” Truck asked, wondering if his assistant had realized he hadn’t come back from his smoke break. No response, but he had heard footsteps, then a painful scratching noise, as if two pieces of metal were being rubbed together. Truck walked faster, stepped into the alley, and felt a powerful claustrophobia. He couldn’t see the walls of the alley, but he knew they were there, just beyond his reach. He could see neither the parking lot behind him nor the street ahead of him. He realized he’d blundered into an enclosed space. Panicked prey, he thought, a hunter’s dream.