“Hey,” I said. “Forget the Slushie. What I want to know is if you know all the words to the theme from ‘The Brady Bunch’?”
He looked at me, confused at first, then laughed.
“Shit,” he said. “I was hoping you weren’t crazy. You were scaring me.”
“Well, I’m going to get crazy if you don’t know the words.”
He laughed loudly then, told me to take the Creamsicle for free. He was the graveyard-shift manager and those little demonstrations of power tickled him. All seventy-five cents of it. I knew how much everything cost.
“Thanks,” I said to him and walked out the door. I took my time walking home, let the heat of the night melt the Creamsicle all over my hand. At three in the morning I could act just as young as I wanted to act. There was no one around to ask me to grow up.
In Seattle, I broke lamps. She and I would argue and I’d break a lamp, just pick it up and throw it down. At first she’d buy replacement lamps, expensive and beautiful. But after a while she’d buy lamps from Goodwill or garage sales. Then she just gave up the idea entirely and we’d argue in the dark.
“You’re just like your brother,” she’d yell. “Drunk all the time and stupid.”
“My brother don’t drink that much.”
She and I never tried to hurt each other physically. I did love her, after all, and she loved me. But those arguments were just as damaging as a fist. Words can be like that, you know? Whenever I get into arguments now, I remember her and I also remember Muhammad Ali. He knew the power of his fists but, more importantly, he knew the power of his words, too. Even though he only had an IQ of 80 or so, Ali was a genius. And she was a genius, too. She knew exactly what to say to cause me the most pain.
But don’t get me wrong. I walked through that relationship with an executioner’s hood. Or more appropriately, with war paint and sharp arrows. She was a kindergarten teacher and I continually insulted her for that.
“Hey, schoolmarm,” I asked. “Did your kids teach you anything new today?”
And I always had crazy dreams. I always have had them, but it seemed they became nightmares more often in Seattle.
In one dream, she was a missionary’s wife and I was a minor war chief. We fell in love and tried to keep it secret. But the missionary caught us fucking in the barn and shot me. As I lay dying, my tribe learned of the shooting and attacked the whites all across the reservation. I died and my soul drifted above the reservation.
Disembodied, I could see everything that was happening. Whites killing Indians and Indians killing whites. At first it was small, just my tribe and the few whites who lived there. But my dream grew, intensified. Other tribes arrived on horseback to continue the slaughter of whites, and the United States Cavalry rode into battle.
The most vivid image of that dream stays with me. Three mounted soldiers played polo with a dead Indian woman’s head. When I first dreamed it, I thought it was just a product of my anger and imagination. But since then, I’ve read similar accounts of that kind of evil in the old West. Even more terrifying, though, is the fact that those kinds of brutal things are happening today in places like El Salvador.
All I know for sure, though, is that I woke from that dream in terror, packed up all my possessions, and left Seattle in the middle of the night.
“I love you,” she said as I left her. “And don’t ever come back.”
I drove through the night, over the Cascades, down into the plains of central Washington, and back home to the Spokane Indian Reservation.
When I finished the Creamsicle that the 7-Eleven clerk gave me, I held the wooden stick up into the air and shouted out very loudly. A couple lights flashed on in windows and a police car cruised by me a few minutes later. I waved to the men in blue and they waved back accidentally. When I got home it was still too hot to sleep so I picked up a week-old newspaper from the floor and read.
There was another civil war, another terrorist bomb exploded, and one more plane crashed and all aboard were presumed dead. The crime rate was rising in every city with populations larger than 100,000, and a farmer in Iowa shot his banker after foreclosure on his 1,000 acres.
A kid from Spokane won the local spelling bee by spelling the word
rhinoceros
.
When I got back to the reservation, my family wasn’t surprised to see me. They’d been expecting me back since the day I left for Seattle. There’s an old Indian poet who said that Indians can reside in the city, but they can never live there. That’s as close to truth as any of us can get.
Mostly I watched television. For weeks I flipped through channels, searched for answers in the game shows and soap operas. My mother would circle the want ads in red and hand the paper to me.
“What are you going to do with the rest of your life?” she asked.
“Don’t know,” I said, and normally, for almost any other Indian in the country, that would have been a perfectly fine answer. But I was special, a former college student, a smart kid. I was one of those Indians who was supposed to make it, to rise above the rest of the reservation like a fucking eagle or something. I was the new kind of warrior.
For a few months I didn’t even look at the want ads my mother circled, just left the newspaper where she had set it down. After a while, though, I got tired of television and started to play basketball again. I’d been a good player in high school, nearly great, and almost played at the college I attended for a couple years. But I’d been too out of shape from drinking and sadness to ever be good again. Still, I liked the way the ball felt in my hands and the way my feet felt inside my shoes.
At first I just shot baskets by myself. It was selfish, and I also wanted to learn the game again before I played against anybody else. Since I had been good before and embarrassed fellow tribal members, I know they would want to take revenge on me. Forget about the cowboys versus Indians business. The most intense competition on any reservation is Indians versus Indians.
But on the night I was ready to play for real, there was this white guy at the gym, playing with all the Indians.
“Who is that?” I asked Jimmy Seyler.
“He’s the new BIA chief’s kid.”
“Can he play?”
“Oh, yeah.”
And he could play. He played Indian ball, fast and loose, better than all the Indians there.
“How long’s he been playing here?” I asked.
“Long enough.”
I stretched my muscles, and everybody watched me. All these Indians watched one of their old and dusty heroes. Even though I had played most of my ball at the white high school I went to, I was still all Indian, you know? I was Indian when it counted, and this BIA kid needed to be beaten by an Indian, any Indian.
I jumped into the game and played well for a little while. It felt good. I hit a few shots, grabbed a rebound or two, played enough defense to keep the other team honest. Then that white kid took over the game. He was too good. Later, he’d play college ball back East and would nearly make the Knicks team a couple years on. But we didn’t know any of that would happen. We just knew he was better that day and every other day.
The next morning I woke up tired and hungry, so I grabbed the want ads, found a job I wanted, and drove to Spokane to get it. I’ve been working at the high school exchange program ever since, typing and answering phones. Sometimes I wonder if the people on the other end of the line know that I’m Indian and if their voices would change if they did know.
One day I picked up the phone and it was her, calling from Seattle.
“I got your number from your mom,” she said. “I’m glad you’re working.”
“Yeah, nothing like a regular paycheck.”
“Are you drinking?”
“No, I’ve been on the wagon for almost a year.”
“Good.”
The connection was good. I could hear her breathing in the spaces between our words. How do you talk to the real person whose ghost has haunted you? How do you tell the difference between the two?
“Listen,” I said. “I’m sorry for everything.”
“Me, too.”
“What’s going to happen to us?” I asked her and wished I had the answer for myself.
“I don’t know,” she said. “I want to change the world.”
These days, living alone in Spokane, I wish I lived closer to the river, to the falls where ghosts of salmon jump. I wish I could sleep. I put down my paper or book and turn off all the lights, lie quietly in the dark. It may take hours, even years, for me to sleep again. There’s nothing surprising or disappointing in that.
I know how all my dreams end anyway.
THE APPORXIMATE SIZE OF MY FAVORITE TUMOR
After the argument that I had lost but pretended to win, I stormed out of the HUD house, jumped into the car, and prepared to drive off in victory, which was also known as defeat. But I realized that I hadn’t grabbed my keys. At that kind of moment, a person begins to realize how he can be fooled by his own games. And at that kind of moment, a person begins to formulate a new game to compensate for the failure of the first.
“Honey, I’m home,” I yelled as I walked back into the house.
My wife ignored me, gave me a momentary stoic look that impressed me with its resemblance to generations of television Indians.
“Oh, what is that?” I asked. “Your Tonto face?”
She flipped me off, shook her head, and disappeared into the bedroom.
“Honey,” I called after her. “Didn’t you miss me? I’ve been gone so long and it’s good to be back home. Where I belong.”
I could hear dresser drawers open and close.
“And look at the kids,” I said as I patted the heads of imagined children. “They’ve grown so much. And they have your eyes.”
She walked out of the bedroom in her favorite ribbon shirt, hair wrapped in her best ties, and wearing a pair of come-here boots. You know, the kind with the curled toe that looks like a finger gesturing
Come here, cowboy, come on over here
. But those boots weren’t meant for me: I’m an Indian.
“Honey,” I asked. “I just get back from the war and you’re leaving already? No kiss for the returning hero?”
She pretended to ignore me, which I enjoyed. But then she pulled out her car keys, checked herself in the mirror, and headed for the door. I jumped in front of her, knowing she meant to begin her own war. That scared the shit out of me.
“Hey,” I said. “I was just kidding, honey. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean anything. I’ll do whatever you want me to.”
She pushed me aside, adjusted her dreams, pulled on her braids for a jumpstart, and walked out the door. I followed her and stood on the porch as she jumped into the car and started it up.
“I’m going dancing,” she said and drove off into the sunset, or at least she drove down the tribal highway toward the Powwow Tavern.
“But what am I going to feed the kids?” I asked and walked back into the house to feed myself and my illusions.
After a dinner of macaroni and commodity cheese, I put on my best shirt, a new pair of blue jeans, and set out to hitchhike down the tribal highway. The sun had gone down already so I decided that I was riding off toward the great unknown, which was actually the same Powwow Tavern where my love had escaped to an hour earlier.
As I stood on the highway with my big, brown, and beautiful thumb showing me the way, Simon pulled up in his pickup, stopped, opened the passenger door, and whooped.
“Shit,” he yelled. “If it ain’t little Jimmy One-Horse! Where you going, cousin, and how fast do you need to get there?”
I hesitated at the offer of a ride. Simon was world famous, at least famous on the Spokane Indian Reservation, for driving backward. He always obeyed posted speed limits, traffic signals and signs, even minute suggestions. But he drove in reverse, using the rearview mirror as his guide. But what could I do? I trusted the man, and when you trust a man you also have to trust his horse.
“I’m headed for the Powwow Tavern,” I said and climbed into Simon’s rig. “And I need to be there before my wife finds herself a dance partner.”
“Shit,” Simon said. “Why didn’t you say something sooner? We’ll be there before she hears the first note of the first goddamned song.”
Simon jammed the car into his only gear, reverse, and roared down the highway. I wanted to hang my head out the window like a dog, let my braids flap like a tongue in the wind, but good manners prevented me from taking the liberty. Still, it was so tempting. Always was.
“So, little Jimmy Sixteen-and-One-Half-Horses,” Simon asked me after a bit. “What did you do to make your wife take off this time?”
“Well,” I said. “I told her the truth, Simon. I told her I got cancer everywhere inside me.”
Simon slammed on the brakes and brought the pickup sliding to a quick but decidedly cinematic stop.
“That ain’t nothing to joke about,” he yelled.
“Ain’t joking about the cancer,” I said. “But I started joking about dying and that pissed her off.”
“What’d you say?”
“Well, I told her the doctor showed me my X-rays and my favorite tumor was just about the size of a baseball, shaped like one, too. Even had stitch marks.”