Sherman Alexie - Flight

Another Indian warrior will betray Crazy Horse. Little Big Man will hold Crazy Horse’s arms as a white soldier punches a bayonet into the strange one’s belly.

A bayonet will kill Crazy Horse. Like the bayonet in my hand.

My father yells at me in his language. He wants me to be a warrior.

I’m only twelve or thirteen. This body is only twelve or thirteen. I am only a child.

I stare at the white soldier in front of me. He’s probably eighteen. Or younger. He’s seventeen or sixteen or fifteen. He’s a child and I’m a child and I’m supposed to slash his throat.

What do I do?

I close my eyes.

I OPEN MY EYES to reveille. Somebody blares away on his trumpet. No, a bugle. The military uses a bugle. What is the difference between a trumpet and a bugle? I try to picture a bugle in my mind. And a trumpet.

The bugle doesn’t have valves or keys. The bugle is a naked trumpet. I wonder who plays that bugle.

I get out of bed. No, it’s a cot. And I realize I’m in a tent, with maybe ten or twelve other cots. But they’re all empty. I’m alone here.

I can hear people running and yelling outside the tent.

Oh, yeah, that’s reveille. That means it’s morning. Everybody must be up getting breakfast or getting ready to fight. I guess I must be a soldier now. I wonder which war I’m going to be fighting.

I wonder who I might have to kill now. I want this to stop. But what can I do? There must be some way to escape. I have to make something happen. So I walk outside the tent.

One hundred U.S. Cavalry soldiers are rushing around. These are old-time soldiers, nineteenth or eighteenth century, like the soldiers at the Little Bighorn, I think. Jesus, I hope this isn’t Custer’s Seventh Cavalry.

I need a mirror. I want to look at my reflection to see who I am this time. But then I notice that the other soldiers are looking at me. Some are laughing and pointing. Then all of them are laughing and pointing.

There’s something wrong. With me.

I look at myself: I am naked as a bugle.

I guess this guy likes to sleep naked.

I’m embarrassed but also relieved. I am not that kid soldier. Nope. I am an old man, skinny and wrinkly. That’s bad enough, but you know what’s worse? My pubic hair is gray.

So, okay, I suddenly realize I’ve been staring at my nakedness for way too long. I look up to see the soldiers laughing even harder at me. So I dash back into my tent. Well, I go as fast as I can. I limp, really. But I limp fast, damn it. I notice that my body is not too responsive to my commands. My legs hurt, especially my knees. I bet I have arthritis; old people get that disease, and I’m old.

So I limp to my cot and look for clothes, my uniform. I find it. I guess it’s my uniform. It seems to be my size. I sniff it. It smells like the old man I am now. I try to put the thing on, but it has snaps and buttons and suspenders and belts I don’t understand. And my fingers don’t work too well. I have to concentrate on making them work right. And they hurt. It’s like little knives stabbing my knuckles.

Then I remember that God is really, really old. So maybe God has God arthritis. And maybe that’s why the world sucks. Maybe God’s hands and fingers don’t work as well as they used to.

Maybe God looks down on earth and sees the bad guys and tries to pick them up. Maybe he wants to squish them like bugs. But God’s arthritis is so bad he can’t make his fingers work.

Maybe God saw me pull out my guns in the bank and tried to reach down and squish me before I could kill anybody. But God’s hands were too slow. He got me, but only after I shot a bunch of people.

I’m ashamed of myself. Who was I? Well, I was me. I don’t have any excuses. I shot people. That’s all I can say. I deserve whatever punishment comes my way.

But no punishment will be big enough. My punishment will not bring back the dead. It doesn’t work that way.

I will be punished and the dead will stay dead. And the world will keep going on like that.

Frustrated, I keep losing my grip as I try to button my uniform. I am late for reveille. And I’m sure it’s bad to be late for reveille.

So, okay, now I’m dressed and I limp out of the tent to join the other soldiers. Everybody else is already lined up in neat rows — or semi-neat rows, I guess. All of these soldiers are young and hungry. I wonder how long they’ve been on the march. They’re not starving to death, but they look hollow-eyed and barren, like they’ve been fed just enough food but never enough happiness.

But why am I so worried about their happiness? About their loneliness? I know I’m going to get my ass kicked if I can’t figure out where I belong in this formation. But I don’t see a sign that says OLD-FART SOLDIERS BELONG HERE.

“Gus!”

I hear somebody shout that name but I don’t connect to it, so I keep walking up and down the rows of young soldiers, looking for my place. I’m about to shove some kid aside and take his place in line. I already hate these little shits. They’re still laughing and insulting me with quiet voices. They snicker.

Are soldiers allowed to snicker? I thought military training gets rid of snickering.

This feels like a nomadic high school in the middle of the Old West. These guys are soldiers, sure, and they might be good soldiers. But they’re still just kids, cruel and impulsive.

It reminds me of the time when I was twelve years old, and this rich Seattle dude decided to start a charity for disadvantaged youth. He was going to take us homeless and pointless kids on “educational journeys” all over the world.

The rich guy’s motto: “How can you be a part of the world if you haven’t seen the world?”

My motto: “I don’t need to see the world in order to know the world is filled with homeless and pointless kids.”

Each day, worldwide, twelve thousand children starve to death. That is fucked up.

So, anyway, this rich guy picked twelve of us Seattle kids and we went to New York City. It was fun, I guess. We stayed in a fancy hotel and went to museums and Broadway plays and the Statue of Liberty. But it was at Newark Airport where I received a real education.

At the baggage claim, I saw a bunch of army soldiers waiting for their baggage. Three or four soldiers grabbed another soldier’s bag and played keep-away with it. They were all dressed in their best uniforms with all their little medals and ribbons, and they were playing keep-away from this nerd soldier, who was wearing thick black army glasses and had big old army-nerd zits on his face. His zits were worse than mine.

Yeah, sure, these guys were serving their country, and a few of them might become big-time heroes, but they were just kids, all eighteen or nineteen years old: immature and goofy and mean and acne-scarred and funny and stupid and silly and unsure about everything.

And these are the children we send to fight our wars. I’m the child that Justice sent to war. And all of us children fight to defend adults. Doesn’t that seem backward?

“Gus! You deaf dusty bastard! Get up here!”

Somebody is yelling at me. I guess my name is Gus. Stupid name, really. But who am I to judge? I’m a time-traveling mass murderer and my name is Zits.

“Gus!” the guy shouts again. He’s a little general dude with a mustache that probably weighs more than he does. “Have you gone mad? Please, sir, get up here now.”

“All right, all right,” I say, and I notice that I’m speaking with this weird accent, like I’m Irish or something. Maybe I am finally Irish. Gus doesn’t sound like an Irish name, but Zits isn’t exactly a highly sacred Indian name, either.

“Okay, troops,” General Mustache shouts to the assembled children, “I want you to meet Augustus Sullivan. You can call him Gus. He’s the best Indian tracker in the entire U.S. Army.”