Sherman Alexie - Indian Killer

Even though he had felt like a fraud at urban powwows, he had always loved them. Often, when he was a child, Olivia and Daniel had taken him. Through years of observation and practice, he had learned how an Indian was supposed to act at a powwow. When he got old enough to go without Daniel and Olivia, he could pretend to be a real Indian. He could sit in a huge crowd of Indians and be just another anonymous, silent Skin. That was what real Indians called each other. Skins. Other Indian men might give him that indigenous head nod, which confirmed a connection he did not feel. Indian women might give him that look which implied an interest he ignored. But he had always known that if he remained silent, he would receive a respectful silence in return. If he pursued conversation, the real Indians would be happy to talk. With Marie, he had chosen his usual silence.

She stood beside him. He could feel her there, but he continued to watch the dancers move in circles. A tall fancydancer caught his attention. The fancydancer cartwheeled across the grass, his brightly colored feathers nearly shocking in their clarity. Reds and blues, yellows and greens. The crowd gasped at the cartwheels. The fancydancer was bold, original, dangerous. Many Indian elders would surely disapprove of the cartwheels. Many elders dismissed any kind of fancydancing. It was too modern, too white, the dance of children who refused to grow up.

“Jeez,” Marie said of the fancydancer. “He’s good.”

John turned his head to look at her. She smiled. She was a pretty, small-boned woman at least a foot shorter than he was. Her black hair was very long, hanging down below her waist. With her wire-rimmed glasses and black blazer, she looked scholarly and serious, even as she smiled. Her teeth were just a little crowded, as if there were one tooth too many. Her nose looked as if it had been broken once or twice. She had large, dark eyes magnified by her prescription.

“Do you dance?” she asked.

“No,” he said.

“You don’t talk much, do you?” she asked.

He shook his head.

“The strong silent type?” she asked. “All stoic and stuff, huh? How long you been working on that Tonto face? You should try out for the movies.”

He swallowed hard and tried to concentrate on the dancers again. She stared at him. With his looks and stature, she thought, John could have been a wonderful traditional dancer. The old style, slow and dignified, a proud man’s dance. John felt the power of her gaze, and was about to make an escape when the powwow’s master of ceremonies called for an owl dance.

“It’s ladies’ choice,” said the emcee. “Ladies, go snag yourself a warrior. If he says no, you bring him to me. Men, you know you can’t refuse a woman who asks you to dance. You’ll either pay up or tell everybody why you broke her heart.”

“Hey,” Marie said. “Do you want to dance?”

“I guess,” he said. He had learned about owl dances, but feared them. John knew many Indian tribes believed the owl was a messenger of death. For those Indians, the owl was death itself. Yet, those same Indians who feared the owl still owl danced. John had always been confused by that. Were the Indians dancing out of spite? Were they challenging the owl? Or perhaps they were dancing to prove their courage. With Indians, death was always so close anyway. When Indians owl danced, their shadows were shaped like owls. What was one more owl in a room full of Indians dancing like owls?

She led him to the dance floor, where all the other couples had already formed a circle. There were old married couples, newlyweds, potential lovers, siblings, mothers and sons, a few reluctant teenagers, and a handful of preschoolers. Marie took John’s left hand in her right, and placed her left hand on his right shoulder. He reluctantly placed his right hand on her left hip. Together like that, they waited for a few other stragglers to join the circle, all of the dancers waiting for the drums to begin.

“I’m not any good at this,” he said. He had danced clumsy near-waltzes at high school dances with white girls, but had never danced with an Indian woman. He had never been close enough to an Indian woman to dance.

“Just like a foxtrot,” she said as the drums began. “Two steps forward, one step back. With the beat. Twirl me around when everybody else does.”

“Okay,” he said. He did as he was told. He looked down at his feet, tried to stay in rhythm, failed miserably.

“You’re a horrible dancer,” she said with a laugh. He dropped her hand, stopped dancing, stepped back.

“I’m sorry,” he said, wanting to run again.

“Jeez, it’s okay,” she said and smiled. “Just keep dancing. You can’t quit.”

It was a broom owl dance. One woman stood alone in the middle of the circle of dancers, holding a broom. She ran up to another dancing woman, gave her the broom, and they switched places. The displaced woman took the broom, ran around the circle, and gave the broom to a third woman. A kind of Indian musical chairs. There was much laughter. Friends chose friends. Sisters chose sisters. The broom passed from hand to hand. A tiny girl, barely able to lift the broom, dragged it around the circle, and gave it to her mother, who was dancing with the little girl’s father. More laughter. The emcee encouraged everybody, told bad jokes, teased the young lovers. Everybody kept dancing, two steps forward, one step back. As John danced with Marie, he looked at the other dancers, men, women and children, all with dazzling eyes and bright smiles. So much happiness so close to him, but John could not touch it.

Marie saw the sadness in John’s eyes. She had approached him because she thought he was a fellow student, another urban Indian, but now she felt his confusion and loss. He didn’t know how to dance, didn’t seem to recognize anybody at the powwow. Nobody shouted out his name in an effort to embarrass him as he danced. He was a stranger here, and Marie understood that isolation. Though she had blossomed in college and would be graduating with honors, her work for the Native American Students Alliance and her job at a downtown homeless shelter had led Marie to so many Indians who were, as John was, as she was, outcasts from their tribes. They were forced to create their own urban tribe. Some had been forced to leave their reservations because they were different, like Fawn, the Crow who would not talk about what had happened to her in Montana. Some had never lived on their reservations and had very little connection to their tribes. Nick, the son of a Ute doctor and Cheyenne nurse, had grown up upper-middle-class in St. Louis.

But, somehow, most every urban Indian still held closely to his or her birth tribe. Marie was Spokane, would always be Spokane. But she was also an urban Indian, an amalgamation that included over two hundred tribes in the same Seattle area where many white people wanted to have Indian blood. Marie was always careful to test people, to hear their stories, to ask about their tribes, their people, and their ties to the land from which they originated. The pretend Indians had no answers for these questions, while real Indians answered the questions easily, and had a few questions of their own for Marie. Indians were always placing one another on an identity spectrum, with the more traditional to the left and the less traditional Indians to the right. Marie knew she belonged somewhere in the middle of that spectrum and that her happiness depended on placing more Indians to her right. She wondered where John belonged.

“Hey,” Marie said to him. “You’re getting it now.”

John listened carefully to the drums, which had drowned out all the other noises in his head. He concentrated on the music, his brow furrowed. Sweat, deep breaths.