Indian Killer

  “David,” Buck had said. “Aaron wouldn’t do something like that. We were just trying to scare them. Right, Aaron?”

  “Right, Dad.”

  David had thought his big brother was lying.

  “Did you see them Indians run?” Aaron had asked his father.

  “I saw it,” Buck had said.

  “Just like the old days must have been, huh?” Aaron had asked. “Just like the old days!”

  David had looked down at the rifle in his hands. He’d felt like crying.

  “Hey,” Buck had said to David. “What’s wrong with you?”

  David had looked at his father.

  “Oh, Jesus,” Buck had said. “You ain’t going to cry?”

  David had ducked his head.

  “You look at me when I’m talking to you,” Buck had said impatiently. He hated it when his son avoided eye contact. It showed fear. Buck had always hated fear.

  “Yes, sir,” David had whispered. With great effort, he’d looked into his father’s blue eyes. David and Aaron had inherited the same color and shape of their father’s eyes. Buck had seen a shadow of his face in his youngest son’s. More important, he had also seen his late wife’s fine features in David’s face.

  “Listen,” Buck had said, softening. “I know this is a tough thing to do, shooting after people like this. But we ain’t trying to hurt them. We’re just trying to teach them a lesson. They’re stealing from us, son. This is our land. My land. Your land. Your brother’s land. This land has been in our family for over a hundred years. And those Indians are stealing from us. They’re trying to steal our land. We just can’t have that. Okay, son?”

  “But they were kids,” David said. “And an old woman.”

  “Indian is Indian,” his father had said, close to losing his temper.

  “Hey, Dad,” Aaron had said, trying to divert attention away from his little brother. “Let’s go see if those Indians dropped anything. Maybe one of those weird digging sticks.”

  Buck had stared at David for a few seconds, trying to understand how this boy could have been his son. But there could be no getting around it. David was his son, one of two. All the family he had left in the world. Buck had shrugged his shoulders, mussed David’s hair, and then climbed down from the stand. Just before he’d followed, Aaron smiled at his brother.

  “Hey, bro,” Aaron had said. “Don’t worry about it. You’ll get them next time.”

  Thinking about the camas field, David Rogers barely heard Dr. Clarence Mather lecturing during that first session of the Native literature class.

  “Jack Wilson is much more than a mystery novelist,” said Mather. “He is a social realist. Unlike many other Native writers whose work seems to exaggerate the amount of despair in the Indian world, Wilson presents a more authentic and traditional view of the Indian world.”

  “Oh, God,” Marie blurted out.

  “Do you have something to add, Ms. Polatkin?” asked Dr. Mather. “Yet again?”

  “How can Wilson present an authentic and traditional view of the Indian world if he isn’t authentic and traditional himself?” asked Marie. “I mean, I’ve done some research on this guy. He isn’t even Indian at all. How would he know about the despair, or happiness, in the Indian world?”

  “Ms. Polatkin,” said Dr. Mather, speaking very slowly. “Since this is the first session of this class, perhaps you might let me actually conduct the class? But, in answer to your questions, Mr. Wilson is, in fact, a Shilshomish Indian.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “Because he says so and I have no reason to doubt him.”

  “But the Shilshomish don’t exist as a tribe anymore. There are no records of membership. Lots of people claim to be Indians, and Wilson’s vague statements about his Shilshomish ancestors can’t be verified.”

  “Are you going to blame Mr. Wilson for the shoddy bookkeeping of others?”

  “No, but don’t you find it highly ironic that all of these so-called Indian writers claim membership in tribes with poor records of membership? Cherokee, Shilshomish? I mean, there’s not a whole lot of people claiming to be Spokane. And do you know why? Because we’re not glamorous and we keep damn good records.”

  “I fail to understand your point, Ms. Polatkin.”

  “There’s more,” Marie said. “I’ve been more and more curious about Wilson. I’m active in all the Indian organizations around here and I’ve asked around. Nobody at the Seattle Urban Indian Health Center has ever met Wilson, and nobody at the United Indians of All Tribes Foundation knows him. Nobody at Indian Heritage High School. And he’s never been in contact with anybody at the Native American Students Alliance here at the University. I also called all of the local reservations and nobody has heard of him. Not the Lummi, Puyallup, Tulalip, or anybody else.”

  “Ms. Polatkin, please.”

  “And I called the American Indian College Fund and Wilson has never donated any time or money. About the only person who’d ever heard of Wilson was the owner of Big Heart’s, the Indian bar over on Aurora Avenue. And the owner was white.”

  “Ms. Polatkin, will you please make your point.”

  “Well, for somebody who is supposed to be so authentic and traditional, Wilson sure doesn’t have much to do with Indians. I mean, there are so many real Indians out there writing real Indian books. Simon Ortiz, Roberta Whiteman, Luci Tapahonso. And there’s Indian writers from the Northwest, too. Like Elizabeth Woody, Ed Edmo. And just across the border in Canada, too. Like Jeannette Armstrong. Why teach Wilson? It’s like his books are killing Indian books.”

  “Are you finished now, Ms. Polatkin?” asked Dr. Mather.

  “Yes.”

  “Fine, may we all continue with the study of literature?”

  “If that’s what you want to call it.”

  After class, David stopped Marie in the hallway. He wasn’t sure what he wanted to say. He just knew he wanted to talk to the pretty Indian woman.

  “Man,” he said. “You’ve got a lot of guts, talking to a professor like that.”

  Marie looked at the short, stocky white man. He was a decent-looking guy, with pale blue eyes and sandy hair.

  “It doesn’t take guts to tell the truth,” she said.

  “Where I’m from, it does,” he said.

  “Where you from?”

  “From Spokane. Well, from a farm outside of Spokane.”

  “You don’t look much like a farm boy.”

  “Yeah, I know. That’s what my dad tells me. My brother, too.”

  Marie laughed. David thought he was being charming.

  “Hey,” said David. “What do you think about the scalping of that guy? Do you think an Indian could do something like that?”

  Marie gave him a cold, hard stare.

  “Listen,” he said, trying to change the subject. “You think maybe we could get together and study or something? I mean, I don’t know much about Indians. Maybe you could help me?”

  “Help you what?”

  “You know. Help me get a good grade. I mean, I know about Hemingway, but I don’t know anything about this Jack Wilson guy.”

  “I don’t think so,” said Marie. “I don’t care much for study partners.”

  “Oh, well, how about lunch or something? Maybe a movie?”

  “Are you asking me out? For a date?” asked Marie. She wasn’t surprised. It had happened to her before. She thought David was just another white guy who wanted to rebel against his white middle-class childhood by dating a brown woman. He wouldn’t have been the first white guy to do such a thing. She had watched quite a few white guys pursue brown female students, especially Asian nationals, with a missionary passion. Go to college, find a cute minority woman, preferably one with limited English, and colonize her by sleeping with her. David Rogers wanted a guilt fuck, Marie thought, something to ease his pain.

  “Uh, yeah, I guess,” said David. “Yeah, I’m asking you out.”

  “I don’t date white men.”
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  With that, Marie turned and left David standing alone in the hallway. Disappointed, he walked home to the place he shared with his brother, Aaron, a mechanical engineering major, and two other U of W engineering students, Sean Ward and Barry Church. Sean and Barry were studying upstairs while Aaron was watching television downstairs.

  “So, how was your Indian class?” Aaron asked David. He had not wanted David to take the class especially since Aaron had heard Truck Schultz reveal that a white man had been killed by an Indian. David was always taking useless classes, like African American literature and women’s literature. Yet, David had been the only male student in the women’s literature class, and Aaron certainly appreciated those odds.

  “It was okay,” David said. “Only one Indian in there, though. A woman.”

  Aaron saw the interest in David’s eyes.

  “Is she fuckable?” Aaron asked.

  David blushed.

  “Oh, yeah, she must be a babe,” said Aaron. “I hear Indian women like it up the ass. Like dogs, you know?”

  “She isn’t like that. She’s smart. Besides, she said she didn’t date white guys.”

  “Hey, bro, that’s reverse discrimination,” said Aaron and turned back to the television, where Robert De Niro and John Savage were playing a game of Russian roulette with some Viet Cong soldiers. De Niro held the pistol against his temple and pulled the trigger.

  8

  Testimony

  “MR. RUSSELL, COULD YOU please tell us what you saw on the Burke-Gilman Trail that night?”

  “I’m sorry, Officer, I was really drunk. I barely remember anything from that night.”

  “You were with a group of friends?”

  “Yeah, we’d just come from one party and were headed for another.”

  “One of your friends said you all ran into, how did she say it, a shadow carrying a white guy on his shoulder. That sounds pretty memorable to me. She said you talked to this so-called shadow.”

  “I don’t remember, Officer. I mean, I just don’t remember.”

  “What did this shadow look like?”

  “I don’t remember. I remember long hair. But that’s it. I don’t think any of my friends remember much, do they?”

  “It’s pretty sketchy.”

  “Officer, can I be honest?”

  “That’s what we want you to be.”

  “Well, you see, there was this fog that night. Not like a real fog. But something else was happening, you know? It’s like when you get real drunk and nothing seems real. You know how that feels? Well, it was like that, except worse. It was like everything was turned around. Up was down, left was right. I mean, I started looking at my friend Darren and thinking he was pretty damn cute. It was like everything went contrary, you know?”

  “Did you take any drugs that night?”

  “No, Officer. I was just drunk. And I know this sounds crazy. But you know what I think? I think I don’t remember anything about that night because somebody wants me not to remember.”

  9

  Building

  JOHN WAS WALKING IN a cold, persistent rain. He was not sure where he walked, or how he came to arrive at his apartment building in Ballard, the Scandinavian neighborhood of Seattle north of downtown.

  John lived in one of the few areas in Ballard with trees still left in the yards. The Scandinavian immigrants who’d settled Ballard had cut down most of the trees upon their arrival. The Danes, Swedes, and Norwegians had missed the monotonously flat landscapes of their own countries, and wanted their new country to remind them of home. Since the first days of their colonization of the Americas, European immigrants had strived to make the New World look exactly like the Old. They either found similar geographical or climatic locations, such as the Swedes had in Minnesota and the Germans in North Dakota, or they plowed, tunneled, clear-cut, and sculpted the land into something ethnically pleasing.

  All John knew was that everything in this country had been changed, mutated. He kept walking. He had been walking for hours. He was exhausted. He made his way upstairs to his apartment and, fully dressed, climbed into bed, but Father Duncan kept him awake. No. He had briefly fallen asleep, but Father Duncan shouted him awake. No. The phone was ringing and John refused to answer it. He knew it was his parents, trying to contact him. Then, a knocking on the door. His parents again. They always showed up in the middle of the night, hoping to catch John when his defenses were down.

  “John, sweetheart,” said Olivia. “Let us in. We’ve brought some food. Some breakfast. We’ve got oranges. Donuts. Wouldn’t you like some breakfast?”

  “Go away!” shouted John.

  “John, it’s your father. Let us in, champ. Let’s talk.”

  “Go away! I don’t know you! I don’t know you!”

  Sometimes, John opened the door and invited his parents into his apartment. Sometimes, he even telephoned his parents and invited them over. Once or twice, he had visited their home without their knowledge and stood over their bed as they slept. He talked to his parents every few days, just to be sure of their presence. However, he was never sure which Olivia and Daniel answered the phone, and he could never be sure which Olivia and Daniel came knocking at his door. He believed five different sets of Olivias and Daniels came to visit him, and he suspected there were many others, just waiting for him to weaken. One set of parents paid his rent, though John had plenty of money, and he had come to fear them most. They threatened him with words like “group home” and “medication.” John had a cardboard box filled with medication in his closet. All of the Olivias and Daniels who visited him brought him pills, more pills, and still more pills. Vitamins, cough drops, and other circles, brighter and smaller, that quieted the voices in his head for a little while. But John knew those pills slowly poisoned him, too. He could take the pills and die young, or ignore the pills and live forever with the music in his head. John ignored Olivia and Daniel’s knocking.

  In his small, sparsely furnished apartment, John kept stacks of newspapers in all the corners, along with magazines, books, empty boxes, TV Guide, photo albums, a St. Francis yearbook. He slept on a twin bed with a red lamp, an apartment-warming gift from his mother, on the nightstand next to him. A tiny kitchen table ringed by more chairs than he needed. A refrigerator that held surprises, Tupperware containers filled with Olivia Smith’s decomposing casseroles. A sink full of dirty dishes. There were no cockroaches in John’s apartment. He had heard about cockroaches and feared them, though he had never seen one. He wondered if they carefully hid in the dark places of his apartment, and only came out when he was asleep. Cockroaches fear the light, and John understood that. He wondered if they talked to each other and whispered about him to the two other people who lived on the fourth floor with him. Though John rarely saw the human tenants, a Colombian woman who always seemed to be running off to play racquetball and an Irishman who played guitar long into the night, the roaches could have told them John’s secrets. As a defense against the roaches, John constructed elaborate homemade roach traps with shoe boxes and honey, and carefully set them in every cupboard.

  Olivia and Daniel knocked for hours, but John stayed in bed. After they went away, John could hear another knocking on the door, which became a different door. He briefly wondered if it was Marie, the Indian woman who had danced with him. But he closed his eyes and could see Father Duncan walking across the desert floor. Duncan’s feet pounded so loudly that John covered his head with his pillow. Duncan was walking toward the stand of palm trees on the horizon. He looked disappointed and beaten, black robes coated with sand. His face sunburned, wrinkled. Duncan was a big bear of a man, half a foot taller than John and fifty pounds heavier, but with the most delicate hands. Those hands were completely contradictory placed at the ends of those huge, hairless arms. Those hands did not make sense, especially when Duncan was angry. Duncan would wave his arms in furious gestures, his beautiful hands floating like sails.

  Still thinking of Father Duncan, John finally fell
asleep and dreamed of the desert. He made it to work early that next morning. He walked carefully along the girders. Just after the morning break, John saw an image of Duncan’s hands so clear and startling that he nearly fell. John was attached to the building by a safety harness, but he knew that white men made the harnesses. It would only save white men. The leather, metal, and rope could tell the difference between white skin and Indian skin. But, despite his near fall, John kept working. As a good worker should be, he was always busy, but the foreman still watched him, and John knew he was being watched. He kept thinking of his mother, who had tried to visit him that morning. Olivia Smith was still exceptionally beautiful. Her few wrinkles just added a new regal quality. She had been absolutely stunning at thirty, thirty-five, forty. Clear pale skin and blue, blue eyes. She had been the object of many schoolboy crushes among John’s friends. John walked along the girder and into the lunchroom at St. Francis High School ten years earlier.

  “John, buddy,” one friend whispered. “Your mom is a babe.”

  “No shit,” a crass friend said. “If she was my mom, I would have never quit breast-feeding.”

  John felt the rage rise inside him, up from his stomach to the back of his throat. He wanted to strike out, to break that friend’s nose, blacken another’s eyes. He wanted to cause them so much pain. He could not believe his friends would talk about his mother in that way. But they also talked about their mothers in the same way.

  “My mom’s got a fat ass, all right,” a boy said. “You should see her panties hanging up to dry in the bathroom. They look like sails. Jesus, it’s like the goddamn America’s Cup in there.”

  A huge jerk named Michael sat down beside John and started in.

  “Smith,” Michael said to him, “I saw your mom at the store last night. You are a lucky fucker.”

  Everybody at the table agreed and laughed, punched each other on the shoulders. John stared down at his sandwich. Sometimes he smiled and pretended to laugh when his friends teased him about his mother. He knew that was how he was supposed to react. Other times, he just ignored them and waited for the subject to change. A pretty girl would walk by and all his friends would launch into a long discussion of her alleged sexual history. But Michael would not leave it alone, even after John refused to acknowledge him.