Blasphemy
BLASPHEMY
ALSO BY SHERMAN ALEXIE
Fiction
War Dances
The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian
Flight
Ten Little Indians
The Toughest Indian in the World
Indian Killer
Reservation Blues
The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven
Screenplays
The Business of Fancydancing
Smoke Signals
Poetry
Face
Dangerous Astronomy
Il powwow della fine del mondo
One Stick Song
The Man Who Loves Salmon
The Summer of Black Widows
Water Flowing Home
Seven Mourning Songs for the Cedar Flute I Have Yet
to Learn to Play
First Indian on the Moon
Old Shirts & New Skins
I Would Steal Horses
The Business of Fancydancing
BLASPHEMY
Sherman Alexie
Grove Press
New York
COPYRIGHT © 2012 BY FALLSAPART PRODUCTIONS, INC.
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“Green World” appeared in slightly different form in the June 2009 issue of
Harper’s Magazine.
“Cry Cry Cry” appeared in slightly different form in
The Speed Chronicles,
ed. Joseph Matson, Akashic Books.
“Idolatry” appeared in slightly different form in
Narrative
.
“Fame” appeared in slightly different form in
The Stranger
.
Published simultaneously in Canada
Printed in the United States of America
ISBN-13: 978-0-8021-9406-0
Grove Press
an imprint of Grove/Atlantic, Inc.
841 Broadway
New York, NY 10003
Distributed by Publishers Group West
www.groveatlantic.com
FOR RED GROUP, YOU KNOW WHO YOU ARE.
CONTENTS
The Toughest Indian in the World
This Is What It Means to Say Phoenix, Arizona
What Ever Happened to Frank Snake Church?
The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven
The Approximate Size of My Favorite Tumor
Because My Father Always Said He Was the Only
Indian Who Saw Jimi Hendrix Play
“The Star-Spangled Banner” at Woodstock
CRY CRY CRY
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.