Sherman Alexie - Blasphemy - New and Selected Stories

“Buddy,” the cops would say. “You don’t fit the profile of the neighborhood.”

I almost laughed out loud at my joke. That would have been a stupid way to get caught.

Then I stood next to the mattress and realized that I hadn’t figured out how I was supposed to carry that heavy, awkward, waterlogged thing two blocks to the truck.

Given more time, I probably could have rigged up a pulley system or a Rube Goldberg contraption that would have worked. But all I had that night was brute strength, without the brute.

I kicked the mattress a few times to flush out any rats. Then I grabbed the mattress’s plastic handles — thank God they were still intact — and tried to lift the thing. It was heavier than I expected, and smelled and felt like a dead dolphin.

At first I tried to drag the mattress, but that made too much noise. Then I tried to carry it on my back, but it kept sliding from my grip. My only option was to carry the mattress on my head, like an African woman gracefully walking with a vase of water balanced on her head, except without her grace.

Of course, the mattress was too heavy and unbalanced to be carried that way for long. It kept slipping off my head onto the sidewalk. It didn’t make much noise when it fell; I was more worried that my lung-burning panting would wake everybody.

It took me twenty minutes to carry that mattress to the truck and another ten to slide it into the flatbed. Then I got behind the wheel and drove to the city’s waste disposal facility in the Fremont neighborhood. But it wouldn’t open for another two hours so I parked on the street, lay across the seat, and fell asleep in the truck.

I was awakened by the raw noise of recycling and garbage trucks. I wiped my mouth, ran my fingers through my hair, and hoped that I wouldn’t offend anybody with my breath. I also hoped that the facility workers wouldn’t think that filthy mattress was mine. But I shouldn’t have worried. The workers were too busy to notice one bad-breathed man with one rat-stained mattress.

They charged me forty bucks to dispose of the mattress, and it was worth it. Then I returned the truck to the U-Haul rental site and took a taxi back to my house.

I felt clean. I felt rich and modest, like an anonymous benefactor.

When I stepped out of the taxi I saw my neighbors — mother, father, and two adult sons — sitting in the usual places on their porch. They were drinking Folgers instant coffee, awful stuff they’d shared with me on many occasions.

I waved to them but they didn’t wave back. I pretended they hadn’t noticed me and waved again. They stared at me. They knew what I had done.

“You didn’t have to do that,” said the son with the African name. “We can take care of ourselves.”

“I’m sorry,” I said.

“You think you’re better than us, don’t you?”

I wanted to say that, when it came to abandoned mattresses, I was better.

“Right now, I feel worse,” I said.

I knew I had done a good thing, so why did I hurt so bad? Why did I feel judged?

“You go home, white boy,” the son said. “And don’t you bother us anymore.”

I knew the entire block would now shun me. I felt pale and lost, like an American explorer in the wilderness.

You’ve seen the viral video of the zoo lion, in its enclosure, trying to eat a toddler girl through the observation glass, right?

I was there, at the zoo, and watched it live.

Three million people think it’s the cutest thing ever. And the toddler’s mother, as she filmed the scene, laughed and laughed.

I didn’t think it was funny. I kept thinking, Shit, that lion wants to eat that kid’s face. But, yeah, yeah, laugh at the lion. Laugh at the apex predator trapped behind glass.

I was only at the zoo because I was trying to impress a woman who made balloon animals. She worked part-time near the primate enclosure, but I met her when she worked my niece’s birthday party at the local community center.

Her giraffes were great; her elephants were passable; her tarantulas looked like tarantulas so nobody wanted them.

She made fifty bucks for each party she worked. The zoo paid her minimum wage plus commission. But who comes to the zoo for balloon animals? If you’re going to buy something for a kid at the zoo, then you’re going to get a stuffed animal.

So she was a beautiful woman with an eccentric skill that was financially unsustainable.

I liked her well enough to think about being in love with her. We’d been on two dates.

Later that afternoon, over coffee, halfway through our third date, she told me I had a great face but weighed thirty pounds too much.

Get skinny, she said, like we could wear each other’s jeans, and then maybe I’ll have sex with you.

I knew I’d never be thin enough. So we dumped our coffees and I walked her home. We didn’t talk. What needed to be said? I probably should have let her walk home alone, but I faintly hoped she’d change her mind about me.

It was a security building, and she didn’t revise her opinion of me, so I said goodbye on the sidewalk.

She apologized for rejecting me.

I said, Apologies offered and accepted are what make us human.

She laughed and walked into her building. Through the lobby window, I watched her step into her elevator and disappear behind the closing doors.

I knew she was rising away from me.

I wasn’t angry. I was lonely. I was bored. And I half-remembered a time when I’d been feared.

Nostalgic, I pressed my mouth against the glass and chewed.

If somebody had filmed me and posted it online then I would have become that guy with the teeth. I would have become a star.

A few months ago, my wife, Sarah, and I went to a dinner party at Aaron’s house. He’s a longtime friend of Sarah’s. They were counselors at a summer Bible camp in the ’70s. I suspected they fell in love, but I doubt they’d consummated that teenage infatuation. Or maybe they did it in a boathouse and felt elated and guilty. I never asked them. Who wants to know such a thing? Both of them had grown up in strict Evangelical families. Aaron was still a Jesus freak, but Sarah had become an American Catholic. Like me, she was disinterested in the Pope and in love with Eucharist, that glorious metaphoric cannibalism of our Messiah. We had baptized our daughter, Jessica, but she hadn’t been confirmed. And we only went to Mass on Easter and Christmas and maybe three other random Sundays during the year.

Aaron’s dinner party was less about pot roast and more about group prayer. He’d called for a gathering of his old and new Evangelical friends. And he’d invited Sarah despite her conversion to my religion. I’ve always hated any party, but was especially wary of one that included conservative Christians. My wife had an Evangelical streak that surfaced when she was around Jesus freaks, and I thought it was ugly and unsexy.

“If they start faith-healing,” I said to Sarah, “I am out of there.”

“It’s just dinner,” she said.

Five minutes after we arrived at the party, and one minute into a conversation with a couple we’d just met, a fifty-something blonde said, “I have an artificial leg.” Just like that. Boom. After somebody says that, you have to work hard to not look down and try to figure out which leg was which. And if I’d been in any other environment except for that bunch of repressed Christians, I would have said, “Cool. Which one?” And probably asked to touch it. But all I could do was sort of stammer. She was wearing a knee-length black skirt, black stockings, and long black boots, so it was impossible to tell which leg was which. I suspected she’d often tried to shock people with sudden announcements about her prosthetic limb. Perhaps she was self-conscious about it. Or maybe she was just funny. Maybe she used humor, consciously or subconsciously, to gain power over the situation. Fair enough.