Sherman Alexie: Blasphemy: New and Selected Stories

I watched Junior lean over and backhand Dr. Bob. Then again. And again.

He’s had enough, I said, let’s get out of here.

Junior laughed.

Yeah, he said, this fucker will never hit another woman again.

Junior and I walked toward the door together. I thought it was over. But Junior turned back, pressed that pistol against Dr. Bob’s forehead, and pulled the trigger.

I will never forget how that head exploded. It was like a comet smashing through a planet.

I couldn’t move. It was the worst thing I’d ever seen. But then Junior did something worse. He flipped over the doctor’s body, pulled down his pants and underwear, and shoved that pistol into Dr. Bob’s ass.

Even then, I knew there was some battered train track stretching between Junior’s torture in prison and that violation of Dr. Bob’s body.

No more, I said, no more.

Junior stared at me with such hatred, such pain, that I thought he might kill me, too. But then his eyes filled with something worse: logic.

We have to get rid of the body, he said.

I shook my head. At least, I think I shook my head.

You owe me, he said.

That was it. I couldn’t deny him. I helped him clean up the blood and bone and brain, and wrap Dr. Bob in a blanket, and throw him into the trunk of the car.

I know where to dump him, Junior said.

So we drove deep into the forest, to the end of a dirt road that had started, centuries ago, as a game trail. Then we carried Dr. Bob’s body through the deep woods toward a low canyon that Junior had discovered during his tree-painting job.

Nobody will ever find the body, Junior said.

As we trudged along, mosquitoes and flies, attracted by the blood, swarmed us. I must have gotten bit a hundred times or more. Soon enough, Junior and I were bleeding onto Dr. Bob’s body.

Blood for blood. Blood with blood.

After a few hours of dragging that body through the wilderness, we reached Junior’s canyon. It was maybe ten feet across and choked with brush and small trees.

He’s going to get caught up in the branches, I said.

Jesus, I thought, I’m terrified of my own logic.

Just throw him real hard, Junior said.

So we somehow found the strength to lift Dr. Bob over our heads and hurl him into the canyon. His body crashed through the green and came to rest, unseen, somewhere below us.

Maybe you want to say a few words, Junior said.

Don’t be so fucking mean, I said, we’ve done something awful here.

Junior laughed.

You should throw that gun down there, too, I said.

I paid five hundred bucks for this, Junior said. I’m keeping it.

He stuffed the gun down the back of his jeans. I didn’t like it but I didn’t want to piss him off.

As we slogged back toward the car, Junior started talking childhood memories. He and I, as babies, had slept in the same crib, and we’d lost our virginities at the same time in the same bedroom with a pair of sisters. And now we had killed together, so we were more than cousins, more than best friends, and more than brothers. We were the same person.

Of course, I kept reminding myself that I didn’t touch Dr. Bob. I didn’t pistol-whip him or punch him or slap him. And I certainly didn’t shoot him. But I’d helped Junior dispose of the body and that made me a criminal.

When we made it back to the car, Junior stopped and stared at the stars, newly arrived in the sky.

Then he pulled out the pistol and pointed it at the ground.

You’re going to keep quiet about this, he said.

I stared at the gun. He saw me staring at the gun. I knew he was deciding whether to kill me or not. And I guess his love for me, or whatever it was that he called love, won him over. He turned and threw the pistol as far as he could into the dark.

We silently drove back down that dirt road. As he dropped me at my house, he cried a little, and hugged me.

You owe me, he said.

After he drove away, I climbed onto the roof of my house. It seemed like the right thing to do. Folks would later me call me Snoopy, and I would love laughing with them, but at the time, it seemed like a serious act.

I wanted to be in a place where I’d never been before and think about the grotesquely new thing that I’d just done, and what I needed to do about it. But I was too exhausted for much thought or action, so I closed my eyes and fell asleep.

The next morning, I woke wet and cold, climbed off the roof, and went to the Tribal Police. A couple hours after I told them the story, the Feds showed up. And a few hours after that, I led them to Dr. Bob’s body.

Later that night, as the police laid siege to his trailer house, Junior shot himself in the head.

He’d chosen death over a return to prison.

I wasn’t charged with any crime. I could have been, I suppose, and maybe should have been. But I guess I’d done the right thing, or maybe something close enough to the right thing.

And Jeri? She left the rez. I hear she’s working on another rez in Arizona. I pray that she never falls in love again. I’m not blaming her for what happened. I just think she’s better off alone. Who isn’t better off alone?

I didn’t go to Junior’s funeral. I figured somebody might shoot me if I did. Most everybody thought I was evil for turning against Junior. Yeah, I was the bad guy because I betrayed another Indian.

And, yes, it’s true that I betrayed Junior. But if betrayal can be righteous, then I believe I was righteous. But who knows except God?

Anyway, in honor of Junior, I started war-dancing. I had to buy my regalia from a Sioux Indian who didn’t care about my troubles, but that was okay. I think the Sioux make the best outfits anyway.

So I danced.

I practiced dancing first in front of a mirror. I’d put a powwow CD in my computer and I’d stumble in circles around my living room. After a few months of that, I felt confident enough to make my public debut.

It was a minor powwow in the high school gym. Just another social event during a boring early December.

At first, nobody recognized me. I’d war-painted my whole face black. I wanted to look like a villain, I guess.

Anyway, as I danced, a few people recognized me and started talking to everybody around them. Soon enough, the whole powwow knew it was me swinging my feathers. A few folks jeered and threw curses my way. But most just watched me. I felt like crying. But then one of the elders, a great-grandmother named Agnes, trilled like a bird. She said my name quietly but everybody heard it anyway. Indians stand to honor people, so she stood for me. Then another elder woman trilled and said my name. And then a third. Soon enough, a dozen elder women were standing for me. I wept. I realized that I wasn’t dancing for Junior. No, I was dancing for the old women. I was dancing for all of the dead. And all of the living. But I wasn’t dancing for war. I was dancing for my soul and for the soul of my tribe. I was dancing for what we Indians used to be and who we might become again.

In a little town on an Indian reservation, whose name I don’t want to mention, there lived a man, a Native American, who owned a shotgun. This was forty or so years ago, in the early part of the twenty-first century, just before the government hired thousands of hungry, desperate people to build the windmills. How many windmills did they build? I suppose there is a bureaucrat willing to apply for the grant that would pay her to do the extensive research that would yield a number, but one might as well try to count all of the grains of rice in the world. But, wait, before I continue, let me make something clear: I am not afraid of large numbers. Just write down a number, any number, and follow it with more numbers, and keep writing numbers for a week. You will find, in that strange exercise, more patterns than you’d ever imagine. And you’ll find mysteries, too. There is beauty and magic in numbers. Take, for instance, the windmills spinning off the Southern California coast. I’ve been there and I’ve seen them, with their huge white wings slowly rotating and their long legs buried deep in the ocean floor. On the most blustery of days, they look like an infinite flock of giant birds lifting into flight, forever caught in that moment of leaving the water for the sky.