Sherman Alexie: Blasphemy: New and Selected Stories

Forget crack, my cousin, Junior, said, meth is the new war dancer.

World Champion, he said.

Grand Entry, he said.

Five bucks, he said, give me five bucks and I’ll give you enough meth to put you on a Vision Quest.

For a half-assed Indian, Junior talked full-on spiritual. Yeah, he was a born-again Indian. At the age of twenty-five, he war-danced for the first time. Around the same day he started dealing drugs.

I’m traditional, Junior said.

Whenever an Indian says he’s traditional, you know that Indian is full of shit.

But, not long after my cousin started dancing, the powwow committee chose him as Head Man Dancer because he was charming and popular. Powwow is like high school, except with more feathers and beads.

Before he sold drugs, Junior used them. He started with speed and it made him dance for hours. Little fucker did somersaults. I’ve seen maybe three somersaulting war dancers.

You war-dance that good, Junior said, and the Indian women will line up to braid your hair.

No, I don’t wear rubbers, he said. I want to be God and repopulate the world.

I wondered, since every Indian boy either looks like a girl or like a chicken with a big belly and skinny legs, how he could tell which kids were his.

He was all sexed up from the cradle.

He used to go to the Assembly of God, but when he was fifteen, he made a pass at the preacher’s wife. Grabbed her tit and said, I’ll save you.

Preacher man punched my cousin in the face.

I thought you were supposed to forgive me, Junior said.

Preacher man packed up his clothes, books, and wife and left the rez forever. I felt sorry for the wife — who’d made good friends among the Indian women — but was happy the preacher man was gone.

I didn’t like him teaching us how to speak tongues.

Anyway, after the speed came the crack and it took hold of my cousin and made him jitter and shake the dust. Earthquake — his Indian name should have changed to Earthquake. Saddest thing: Powwow regalia looks great on a too-skinny Indian man.

Then came the meth.

Indian Health Service had already taken Junior’s top row of teeth and the meth took the bottom row.

Use your drug money to buy some false teeth, I said.

I was teasing him, but he went out and bought new choppers. Even put a gold tooth in front like some kind of gangster rapper wannabe. He led a gang full of reservation-Indians-who-listened-to-hardcore-rap-so-much-they-pretended-to-be-inner-city-black. Shit, we got fake Bloods fake-fighting fake Crips. But they aren’t brave or crazy enough to shoot at one another with real guns. No, they mostly yell out car windows. Fuckers are drive-by cursing.

I heard some fake gangsters had taken to throwing government commodity food at one another.

Yeah, my cousin was deadly as a can of cling peaches.

And this might have gone on forever if he’d only dealt drugs on the rez and only to Indians. But he crossed the border and found customers in the white farm towns that circled us.

Started hooking up the Future Farmers of America.

And then he started fucking the farmers’ daughters.

So they charged him for possession, intent to sell, and statutory rape. And I figured he deserved whatever punishment he’d get during the trial.

Hey, Cousin, he said to me when I visited him in jail, they’re going to frame me.

You’re guilty, I said, you did all of it, and if the cops ever ask me, I’ll tell them everything I know about your badness.

He was mad at first. Talked about betrayal. But then he softened and cried.

You’re the only one, he said, who loves me enough to tell the truth.

But I could tell he was manipulating me. Putting the Jedi shaman mind tricks on me. But I didn’t fall for his magic.

I do love you, I said, but I don’t love you enough to save you.

While the lawyers and judges and jury were deciding my cousin’s future, some tribal members showed up at the courthouse to protest. They screamed and chanted about racism. They weren’t exactly wrong. Plenty of Indians have gone to jail for no good reason. But plenty more have gone to jail for the exact right reasons.

Of course, it didn’t help that I knew half of those protestors were my cousin’s loyal customers.

So I felt sorry for the protestors who believed in what they were doing. They were good-hearted people looking to change the system. But when you start fighting for every Indian, you end up defending the terrible ones, too.

That’s what being tribal can do to you. It traps you in the tipi with the murderers and rapists and drug dealers. It seems everywhere you turn, some felon-in-buckskin elbows you in the rib cage.

After a few days of trial and testimony, when things were looking way bad for my cousin, Junior plea-bargained his way to a ten-year prison sentence in Walla Walla State Penitentiary.

Maybe out in six with good behavior. Yeah, like my cousin was capable of good behavior.

And, oh, man was he terrified.

You’re right to be scared, I said, but just find all the Indians and they’ll keep you safe.

But what did I know? The only thing I’d learned about prison was what I’d seen on HBO, A&E, and MSNBC documentaries.

Halfway through his first day in prison, my cousin got into a tussle with the big boss Indian.

Why did you fight him? I asked.

Because he was a white man, Junior said, as fucking pale as snow.

My cousin wasn’t too dark himself but I guess he was dark enough.

That fucker had blue eyes, Junior said, and you know Indians can’t be blue-eyed.

My cousin wasn’t smart enough to know about recessive genes, but he was speaking some truth.

But no matter how Junior felt about that white Indian, he should have kept the peace. He should have looked for the Indian hidden behind those blue eyes.

I tried to explain myself, Junior said. I told him I was just punching the white guy in him.

Like an exorcism, I said when Junior called me collect from the prison pay phone. I think jail is the only place where you can find pay phones anymore.

Yeah, Junior said, I’m a devil-killer.

But here’s the saddest thing: My cousin’s late mother was white. A blonde and blue-eyed Caucasian beauty. Yeah, my cousin is half white. He just won the genetic lottery when he got the black hair and brown eyes. His late brother had the light skin and pale eyes. We used to call them Sunrise and Sundown.

Anyway, my cousin lost his tribal protection damn quick, and halfway through his second day in prison, he was gang-raped by black guys. And halfway through his third day, those black guys sold Junior to an Aryan dude for five cartons of cigarettes.

One thousand cigarettes.

It’s cruel to say, but that doesn’t seem near enough to buy somebody. If it’s going to happen to you, it should cost a lot more, right?

But what do I know about prison economics? Maybe that was a good price. I hoped that it was a good price.

My cousin was pretty. He had the long, black hair and the skinny legs and ass. It didn’t take much to make him look womanly. Just some mascara, lipstick, and prison pants scissored into short shorts.

Suddenly, Junior said, I am Miss Indian USA.

But I’m not gay, he said.

It’s not about being gay, I said, it’s about crazy guys trying to fill you with their pain.

Jesus, Junior said, all these years since Columbus landed and now he’s finally decided to fuck me in the ass.

Yeah, we could laugh about it. What else were we going to do? If you sing the first note of a death song while you’re in prison, you’ll soon be singing the whole damn song every damn day.