Sherman Alexie - Indian Killer

“Or a magical woman,” said Marie, as she picked up a butter knife and waved it in the air. She turned toward Boo with a crazy look in her eyes. She vaguely threatened him with the knife. Boo feigned, and felt, fear. He rolled back in his chair.

“You know what I’ll turn you into, don’t you?” asked Marie as she tossed the knife from hand to hand.

“Yeah,” said Boo, at last. “Toast.”

Boo helped Marie with the last few sandwiches. As they loaded them into the delivery truck, Marie kept thinking about what Boo had said about the knife. Marie thought about John Smith. He was huge and had easily disarmed that cab driver outside Wilson’s apartment building. When he had towered over Wilson and the cabbie in the sandwich truck’s headlights, Marie had briefly wondered if John was going to kill the white men. No. No, that was not it at all. She had wondered if John was going to hurt them, maybe rough them up a little. She had never worried that he was going to kill them. John was a little strange and quiet, but most Indian men were kind of strange and quiet. Besides, John had not hurt either of the men. He threatened them with that sawed-off golf club and then ran off. After all, that golf club was the cabbie’s weapon, and Wilson was a vulture. She remembered being a little disappointed that John had not hurt them.

“Hey,” Marie said to Boo. “Come to think of it, what makes you think this Indian Killer is an Indian man? How many Indian serial killers do you read about?”

Boo shook his head.

“None is right,” said Marie. “Everybody is talking Indian Killer this, Indian Killer that. Reporters all over the place. What if the Indian Killer isn’t an Indian guy? What if this Indian Killer is just trying to make people think an Indian guy did it?”

Marie picked up a bologna sandwich that had fallen to the floor and threw it at Boo, who fielded it cleanly and tossed it into the back of the truck. Marie rolled Boo into the back of the truck, secured his chair, and then climbed into the driver’s seat. She started the truck, let it warm up for a few minutes, and pulled out of the shelter’s parking lot.

TRUCK WAS SMOKING HIS fifth cigar of the day and receiving dozens of phone calls, as he did every hour that he was on the air. The police had told him not to tell the public about his experience in the back alley.

“Listen,” the detective had said. “I don’t think there was anybody in that alley with you, but psycho bastards like the Indian Killer thrive on this kind of attention. They feed on it, breathe it. Don’t give him what he wants.”

Truck agreed not to talk about it, though he did so mainly because he was ashamed that he’d been so frightened. Truck watched the red lights on his phone blinking. George on line one knows who the Indian Killer is. Ronnie on line two is worried about the Indian Killer. Helen on line three wants to put all Indians in jail.

“Helen,” said Truck. “You’re on the air. What’s your problem?”

“Well, Truck, it’s about this Indian Killer. You see, I just don’t think we should take any chances. We should lock up all the Indians, just like we locked up the Japs during World War Two. I mean, it’s for our own safety. Once we catch the Indian Killer, we can let the other Indians go.”

“And where do you think we should keep these Indians?”

“Oh, I don’t know. Maybe on some island somewhere.”

“Well, Helen, that’s a very interesting idea, but it wouldn’t work very well. Indians are damn good swimmers. Folks, we have to take time out for some commercial messages. Stay with us. We’ll be back in a few.”

Truck dropped off the air, toked on his cigar.

“Truck,” said his assistant over the intercom. “It’s Johnny Law.”

Truck sat up quickly to take the call from his source in the Washington State Patrol office.

“What’s up?” Truck asked.

“They just found another body. Downtown. A white businessman. A guy named Edward Letterman.”

“Indian Killer?”

“Indian Killer, for sure. He was scalped. Two owl feathers left behind. And the fucking sick bastard ate his heart.”

“Ate his heart?”

“Like a fucking sandwich.”

Truck whooped. He turned to his microphone.

“Folks,” he said. “The Indian Killer has struck again.”

WILSON FELT TIED TO a dying typewriter. The writing had always come easy to him before, but he could barely manage to write a few paragraphs of Indian Killer before he had to stand up, stretch, read a magazine, watch television. Any excuse not to write. He knew he had to finish the book, but he was somehow afraid of it. His agent and publisher were waiting. But he had to find the ending, had to write the book that was more true than any of the other Indian Killer books he knew would be published. He dreamed constantly about the murders. He saw the face of that man in Fremont when the knife slid across his throat, and felt the weight of that little boy’s body. After those dreams, Wilson would lie awake for hours, staring at the walls.

Wilson looked at the blank page in his typewriter and at the Indian Killer manuscript stacked haphazardly on the table beside it. His manuscripts were always a disorganized mess, in stark contrast to his tidy apartment, balanced checking account, and simple eating habits. He supposed it was easy to be well-organized when you lived alone. Roommates, wives, kids, pets — they all added an element of randomness that Wilson could never have tolerated. That was probably why Wilson’s dreams troubled him so much. They were beyond his control. Still, he knew that Indians were supposed to listen carefully to their dreams. Aristotle Little Hawk had solved more than one crime by using information he had obtained in dreams. Wilson felt he’d been chosen for a special task. Maybe that was the reason for his dreams. People were dying horribly for reasons he alone understood, and he was the only one who could truly talk about the Indian Killer. Wilson knew that he was writing more than a novel. He would write the book that would finally reveal to the world what it truly meant to be Indian.

Obsessed with all of it, Wilson knew that more people were going to be hurt, and killed, and he also knew his book would be ignored when it was published. He was positive a dozen knockoffs were already on their way to the printers. Wilson picked up the ringing telephone.

“Hey, Wilson,” said Rupert, his agent in New York. “What the hell is going on out there? I thought you people gave up that cowboys-and-Indians shit.”

“Jesus,” said Wilson. “You wouldn’t believe the mess. Cameras everywhere. It’s a race war.”

“Yeah, well, I hope you’re getting it all down. It’s great material.”

“I’ve almost finished a first draft,” Wilson lied.

Rupert whistled.

“Hot damn, you should send me the pages. You got my Fed Ex number?”

“Yeah, but I’m not sure what to do.”

“Well, you stick the pages in an envelope and then mail them to me.”

“No, that’s not what I meant. I mean, there must be a dozen books coming out of this thing, right?”

“Listen up. You’re writing a novel, champ. That’s fiction. You get to make up shit. Besides, you know how this will turn out in real life. In the third act, they’ll find some white guy in eagle feathers is doing the killing. White guys are always the serial killers. Think about it. Bundy, Gacy, Gilmore. Where’s the drama in that? It’s been done. You get to tell a new story. You’re the Indian writer. This belongs to you, Wilson.”

Wilson hung up the phone. His little apartment seemed so much smaller with all the uncertainty shoved into it. He wanted the world to know about the real Indian Killer, and not just somebody else’s invention.