Sherman Alexie - Indian Killer

“Hey,” she said.

“Hey,” he said.

“I’m Marie. Are you a new student here?”

“No.”

“Oh,” she said, disappointed. She was the activities coordinator for the Native American Students Alliance at the University and thought she’d found a recruit. A potential friendship or possible romance.

“What’s your name?”

“John.”

“What tribe you are?”

He could not, would not, tell her he had been adopted as a newborn by a white couple who could not have children of their own. Along with the clipping about Father Duncan’s disappearance, John always carried the photograph of the day his parents had picked him up from the adoption agency. In the photograph, his father’s left arm is draped carefully over his mother’s shoulders, while she holds John tightly to her dry right breast. Both wear expensive, tasteful clothes. John had no idea who had taken the picture.

His adopted parents had never told him what kind of Indian he was. They did not know. They never told him anything at all about his natural parents, other than his birth mother’s age, which was fourteen. John only knew that he was Indian in the most generic sense. Black hair, brown skin and eyes, high cheekbones, the prominent nose. Tall and muscular, he looked like some cinematic warrior, and constantly intimidated people with his presence. When asked by white people, he said he was Sioux, because that was what they wanted him to be. When asked by Indian people, he said he was Navajo, because that was what he wanted to be.

“I’m Navajo,” he said to Marie.

“Oh,” she said, “I’m Spokane.”

“Father Duncan,” said John, thinking instantly of the Spokane Indian Jesuit.

“What?”

“Father Duncan was Spokane.”

“Father Duncan?” asked Marie, trying to attach significance to the name, then remembering the brief fragment of a story her parents had told her. “Oh, you mean that one who disappeared, right?”

John nodded his head. Marie was the first person he’d met, besides the Jesuits at St. Francis, who knew about Father Duncan. John trembled.

“Did you know him?” asked Marie.

“He baptized me,” said John. “He used to visit me. Then he disappeared.”

“I’m sorry,” said Marie, who was definitely not Christian. With disgust, she remembered when the Spokane Indian Assembly of God Church held a book burning on the reservation and reduced Catcher in the Rye , along with dozens of other books, to ash.

“I know a Hopi,” said Marie, trying to change the subject. “Guy named Buddy who works at the U. He’s a history teacher. Do you know him?”

“No.”

“Oh, I thought you might. He hangs around with the Navajo bunch. Jeez, but they tease him something awful, too.”

John barely made eye contact with Marie. Instead, he watched all of the Indians dancing in circles on the grass. It was an illegal powwow, not approved by the University. John could figure out that much when he noticed how the dancers were trampling on the well-kept lawn. Indians were always protesting something. Marie had organized the powwow as a protest against the University’s refusal to allow a powwow. Only a few of the Indians had originally known that, but most everybody knew now, and danced all that much harder.

Marie had been organizing protests since her days on the Spokane Indian Reservation, though she had often been the only protestor. A bright child who read by age three, she had quickly passed her classmates by. When they had all been five and six years old, Marie had friends because she was smart. Everybody wanted to be smart. But as the years passed, many of Marie’s reservation friends flunked classes, lost interest, were intimidated into silence by cruel, white teachers, or simply had no energy for school because of hunger. Marie felt more and more isolated. Some bright kids were more interested in Spokane Indian culture than in a public school education. Many of those kids skipped school so they could travel to powwows or attend various cultural events. During the summer, when powwow season was really in swing, those kids were too busy to pick up books. They could speak Spokane as fluently as many elders, but they could barely read English. They were intelligent and humorous, and never wanted to leave the reservation. They had chosen that life, and Marie both resented and envied them. Because she did not dance or sing traditionally, and because she could not speak Spokane, Marie was often thought of as being less than Indian. Her parents, who did speak Spokane, had refused to teach Marie because they felt it would be of no use to her in the world outside the reservation. Her mother, the speech therapist at the tribal school, and her father, the principal, knew their bright daughter belonged in that larger world. Instead of teaching her about Spokane culture, they bought her books by the pound at pawn shops, secondhand stores, and garage sales. She read those books and many others, studied hard at school, and endured constant bullying and taunting from many of her peers. Marie learned to fight, and her best friend, Sugar, a traditional dancer and accomplished street fighter, helped. Marie fought fiercely, without control or thought. She tackled people, bit and pinched, spat and kicked. She refused to accept beatings. She always wanted revenge, and would wait until the perfect moment, which could be months later, to ambush her enemies. In one memorable instance, she had stolen a knife from the high school cafeteria and chased Double Andy across the playground. Marie had really meant to stab Double Andy. Everybody had seen the crazy look in Marie’s eyes that day and nobody bullied her for months after that. Still, her nose had been broken four times before she graduated high school.

After two years at tribal college, she was accepted into the University of Washington on a full scholarship. Through her intelligence and dedication, Marie had found a way to escape the reservation. Now she was so afraid the reservation would pull her back and drown her in its rivers that she only ventured home for surprise visits to her parents, usually arriving in the middle of the night. Even then, she felt like a stranger and would sometimes leave before her parents knew she was there. And she rarely spoke to any of her reservation friends. She was twenty-three, near the end of her final year as an English major, when she met John Smith.

“You live around here?” Marie asked John.

“No,” he said.

“Man, you’re breathing hard,” she said, trying to make conversation. “What did you do, run here?”

“No, but I thought about it.”

Marie laughed because she thought he was making a joke. John looked at her, not really sure why she was laughing.

“I can’t believe the U wouldn’t let us have a powwow in Hec Ed this year,” Marie said.

“What’s Hec Ed?”

“In the Hec Ed Pavilion,” Marie said. “You know, the gym? Inside there? They wouldn’t let us rent it this year, so we’re messing up their nice lawn. I can’t believe the cops haven’t come yet.”

“The cops? Really?”

“No, not really. We’ve got too many reporters here already. The U isn’t going to stop us now. They’d look really bad. You know how white people are.”

“Oh, yeah.”

Expecting the usual Indian banter, Marie waited for him to say more. When he remained silent, she accepted that silence as being just as Indian as the banter, and turned away from him to watch the dancers. John knew that his silence was acceptable, but he also knew that he could have asked about her tribe, that Indians quizzed Indians about all the Indian friends, family, lovers, and acquaintances they might have in common. He was afraid she would discover that he was an Indian without a tribe.