Ten Little Indians: Stories

  “That’s terrible. I’m sorry.”

  “Yeah, my great-uncle could never figure out why he did it. He went to prison forever, you know, and he always wrote these long letters. Like fifty pages of tiny little handwriting. And he was always trying to figure out why he did it. He’d write and write and write and try to figure it out. He never did. It’s a great big mystery.”

  “Do you remember your grandfather?”

  “A little bit. I remember the funeral. My grandmother wouldn’t let them bury him. My father had to drag her away from the grave.”

  “I don’t know what to say.”

  “I don’t, either.”

  We stopped in front of the detox center.

  “We’re here,” Officer Williams said.

  “I can’t go in there,” I said.

  “You have to.”

  “Please, no. They’ll keep me for twenty-four hours. And then it will be too late.”

  “Too late for what?”

  I told him about my grandmother’s regalia and the deadline for buying it back.

  “If it was stolen,” he said, “then you need to file reports. I’ll investigate it myself. If that thing is really your grandmother’s, I’ll get it back for you. Legally.”

  “No,” I said. “That’s not fair. The pawnbroker didn’t know it was stolen. And besides, I’m on a mission here. I want to be a hero, you know? I want to win it back like a knight.”

  “That’s romantic crap.”

  “It might be. But I care about it. It’s been a long time since I really cared about something.”

  Officer Williams turned around in his seat and stared at me. He studied me.

  “I’ll give you some money,” he said. “I don’t have much. Only thirty bucks. I’m short until payday. And it’s not enough to get back the regalia. But it’s something.”

  “I’ll take it,” I said.

  “I’m giving it to you because I believe in what you believe. I’m hoping, and I don’t know why I’m hoping it, but I hope you can turn thirty bucks into a thousand somehow.”

  “I believe in magic.”

  “I believe you’ll take my money and get drunk on it.”

  “Then why are you giving it to me?”

  “There ain’t no such thing as an atheist cop.”

  “Sure there is.”

  “Yeah, well, I’m not an atheist cop.”

  He let me out of the car, handed me two fives and a twenty, and shook my hand. “Take care of yourself, Jackson,” he said. “Stay off the railroad tracks.”

  “I’ll try,” I said.

  He drove away. Carrying my money, I headed back toward the water.

  8:00 A.M.

  On the wharf, those three Aleut men still waited on the wooden bench.

  “Have you seen your ship?” I asked.

  “Seen a lot of ships,” the elder Aleut said. “But not our ship.”

  I sat on the bench with them. We sat in silence for a long time. I wondered whether we would fossilize if we sat there long enough.

  I thought about my grandmother. I’d never seen her dance in her regalia. More than anything, I wished I’d seen her dance at a powwow.

  “Do you guys know any songs?” I asked the Aleuts.

  “I know all of Hank Williams,” the elder Aleut said.

  “How about Indian songs?”

  “Hank Williams is Indian.”

  “How about sacred songs?”

  “Hank Williams is sacred.”

  “I’m talking about ceremonial songs, you know, religious ones. The songs you sing back home when you’re wishing and hoping.”

  “What are you wishing and hoping for?”

  “I’m wishing my grandmother was still alive.”

  “Every song I know is about that.”

  “Well, sing me as many as you can.”

  The Aleuts sang their strange and beautiful songs. I listened. They sang about my grandmother and their grandmothers. They were lonely for the cold and snow. I was lonely for everybody.

  10:00 A.M.

  After the Aleuts finished their last song, we sat in silence. Indians are good at silence.

  “Was that the last song?” I asked.

  “We sang all the ones we could,” the elder Aleut said. “All the others are just for our people.”

  I understood. We Indians have to keep our secrets. And these Aleuts were so secretive that they didn’t refer to themselves as Indians.

  “Are you guys hungry?” I asked.

  They looked at one another and communicated without talking.

  “We could eat,” the elder Aleut said.

  11:00 A.M.

  The Aleuts and I walked over to Mother’s Kitchen, a greasy diner in the International District. I knew they served homeless Indians who’d lucked in to money.

  “Four for breakfast?” the waitress asked when we stepped inside.

  “Yes, we’re very hungry,” the elder Aleut said.

  She sat us in a booth near the kitchen. I could smell the food cooking. My stomach growled.

  “You guys want separate checks?” the waitress asked.

  “No, I’m paying for it,” I said.

  “Aren’t you the generous one,” she said.

  “Don’t do that,” I said.

  “Do what?” she asked.

  “Don’t ask me rhetorical questions. They scare me.”

  She looked puzzled, and then she laughed.

  “Okay, Professor,” she said. “I’ll only ask you real questions from now on.”

  “Thank you.”

  “What do you guys want to eat?”

  “That’s the best question anybody can ask anybody,” I said.

  “How much money you got?” she asked.

  “Another good question,” I said. “I’ve got twenty-five dollars I can spend. Bring us all the breakfast you can, plus your tip.”

  She knew the math.

  “All right, that’s four specials and four coffees and fifteen percent for me.”

  The Aleuts and I waited in silence. Soon enough, the waitress returned and poured us four coffees, and we sipped at them until she returned again with four plates of food. Eggs, bacon, toast, hash-brown potatoes. It is amazing how much food you can buy for so little money.

  Grateful, we feasted.

  Noon

  I said farewell to the Aleuts and walked toward the pawnshop. I later heard the Aleuts had waded into the saltwater near Dock 47 and disappeared. Some Indians said the Aleuts walked on the water and headed north. Other Indians saw the Aleuts drown. I don’t know what happened to them.

  I looked for the pawnshop and couldn’t find it. I swear it wasn’t located in the place where it had been before. I walked twenty or thirty blocks looking for the pawnshop, turned corners and bisected intersections, looked up its name in the phone books, and asked people walking past me if they’d ever heard of it. But that pawnshop seemed to have sailed away from me like a ghost ship. I wanted to cry. Right when I’d given up, when I turned one last corner and thought I might die if I didn’t find that pawnshop, there it was, located in a space I swore it hadn’t been filling up a few minutes before.

  I walked inside and greeted the pawnbroker, who looked a little younger than he had before.

  “It’s you,” he said.

  “Yes, it’s me,” I said.

  “Jackson Jackson.”

  “That is my name.”

  “Where are your friends?”

  “They went traveling. But it’s okay. Indians are everywhere.”

  “Do you have my money?”

  “How much do you need again?” I asked and hoped the price had changed.

  “Nine hundred and ninety-nine dollars.”

  It was still the same price. Of course it was the same price. Why would it change?

  “I don’t have that,” I said.

  “What do you have?”

  “Five dollars.”

  I set the crumpled Lincoln on the countertop. The p
awnbroker studied it.

  “Is that the same five dollars from yesterday?”

  “No, it’s different.”

  He thought about the possibilities.

  “Did you work hard for this money?” he asked.

  “Yes,” I said.

  He closed his eyes and thought harder about the possibilities. Then he stepped into his back room and returned with my grandmother’s regalia.

  “Take it,” he said and held it out to me.

  “I don’t have the money.”

  “I don’t want your money.”

  “But I wanted to win it.”

  “You did win it. Now, take it before I change my mind.”

  Do you know how many good men live in this world? Too many to count!

  I took my grandmother’s regalia and walked outside. I knew that solitary yellow bead was part of me. I knew I was that yellow bead in part. Outside, I wrapped myself in my grandmother’s regalia and breathed her in. I stepped off the sidewalk and into the intersection. Pedestrians stopped. Cars stopped. The city stopped. They all watched me dance with my grandmother. I was my grandmother, dancing.

  What Ever Happened to Frank Snake Church?

  FRANK’S HEART FIBRILLATED AS he walked along a tree-line trail on the northern slope of Mount Rainier. He staggered, leaned against a small pine tree for balance, but tumbled over it instead, rolled for twenty or thirty yards down the slope, and fell over a small cliff onto the scree below. A moment later, Frank’s arrhythmic heart corrected itself and resumed beating normally, but he wondered if he was going to die on the mountain. He was only thirty-nine years old and weighed only eleven more pounds than he had when he graduated from high school, but he’d been smoking too many unfiltered Camels, and his cholesterol level was a dangerous 344, exactly the same as Ted Williams’s career batting average. But damn it, Frank thought, he was a Spokane Indian, and Indians are supposed to die young. Thirty-nine years is old for a Spokane. Old enough to join the American Association of Retired Indians. Frank laughed. Bloody and hurt on this mountain, his heart maybe scarred and twisted beyond repair, and he was still making jokes. How indigenous, Frank thought, how wonderfully aboriginal, applause, applause, applause, applause for me and my people. Still laughing, Frank pushed himself to his hands and knees and sat on a flat rock. His heart beat slow and steady. He breathed easily. He felt no tingling pain in his chest, arms, or legs. He wasn’t lightheaded or nauseated. He seemed to be fine. Maybe his heart was okay; maybe it had missed only one dance step in a lifetime of otherwise lovely coronary waltzes. He was cut and scraped, a nasty gash on his arm would probably need stitches, but none of his wounds seemed to be too serious. He didn’t have any broken bones or sprains. So there was the diagnosis: His heart had played a practical joke on him—how terribly amusing, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha—and he was bruised and battered and had one hell of a headache, but he’d live.

  Carefully, painfully, Frank crawled back up the slope to the trail. Once there, while still on his hands and knees, he took a few deep breaths and promised himself that he’d visit a superhero cardiologist as soon as he got off the mountain. He’d promise to see an organic nutritionist, aromatherapist, deep-tissue masseuse, feng shui consultant, yoga master, and Mormon stand-up comedian if those promises would help him get off this mountain. Frank stood, tested his balance, and found it to be true enough, so he resumed his rough trek along the trail. He felt stronger with each step. He was now convinced he was going to be okay. Yes, he was going to be fine. But after a few more steps, an electrical charge jolted him. Damn, Frank thought, I have a heart attack, fall down a damn mountain, and then I crawl back only to get struck by lightning. Frank imagined the newspaper headline: HEART-DISEASED FOREST RANGER STRUCK BY LIGHTNING. Frank was imagining the idiot readers laughing at the idiot park ranger when another electrical bolt knocked him back ten feet and dropped him to the ground, where a third lightning strike shocked him again. Damn, Frank thought, this lightning has a personal vendetta against me. He felt a fourth electrical charge shoot up his spine and into his brain. He convulsed and vomited. He kicked and punched at the air, and then he couldn’t move at all. As he lay paralyzed on the trail, Frank thought: This is it, now I’m really dead, and I have crapped my pants; I’m going to die with half-digested pieces of mushroom and sausage pizza stuck to my ass; humiliation, degradation, sin, and mortal shame. But Frank didn’t die. Instead, as the electricity fired inside his brain, Frank saw an image of his father, Harrison Snake Church, as the old man lay faceup on the floor of his kitchen in Seattle. Harrison’s eyes were open, but there was no light behind them; blood dripped from his nose and ears. In great pain, Frank understood that he hadn’t suffered a heart attack or been struck by lightning. No, he’d been gifted and cursed with the first real vision of his life, and though Frank was one of the very few Indian agnostics in the world, he accepted this vision as a simple and secular truth: His father was dead.

  How much can one son love one father? Frank loved his father enough to stand and stagger five miles to the logging road where he’d parked his truck. He knew he should get on the radio and call for help. He was exhausted and in no safe shape to drive. But he also knew that his father was lying dead on the kitchen floor. Covered with blood and food, half naked in a ratty bathrobe that his father called a valuable antique, Jerry Springer or Dr. Phil lecturing on the television. Frank needed to be the first on the scene. He needed to restore his father’s dignity before the proper authorities were called. Perhaps his father’s spirit was waiting for him. But Frank didn’t believe in spirits, in souls, in the afterlife. Why was he thinking about his father’s soul? Mr. Death, Frank thought, you have entered my house and rearranged the furniture. But it didn’t matter what Frank believed. With or without soul and spirit, Harrison was lying dead on the kitchen floor and should be lifted, cleaned, and covered with old quilts. Frank needed to perform burial ceremonies. Harrison needed to have his honor restored, and Frank was the only one who could, or should, do the restoration.

  So Frank drove his truck dangerously fast along fifteen miles of logging and undeveloped roads. He didn’t need a map; he’d been a forest ranger at Mount Rainier for ten years and had driven thousands of miles on these roads. As he drove, Frank thought of his father and wondered how the old man should be remembered. As he traveled toward his father’s dead body, Frank composed the eulogy: “Thank you all for coming here today to say good-bye to my father. For those of you who know me, you know I’m not a man of words. But I do have a few things I’d like to say about my father. Harrison was a beloved man. Beloved. I guess you’re supposed to use words like that at a funeral. Fancy words. But I guess I should just say it simple. Most people liked my dad, and quite a few loved him. He was an active member of St. Therese Church. He was always a good Catholic, maybe the only Indian of his generation who went to Catholic boarding school on purpose. That was a joke. I don’t know if it was funny or not. But I’m an Indian, and Indians are supposed to be funny at funerals. At least that’s what it says in the Indian Funeral Handbook. That was another joke.

  “Here at St. Therese, my dad volunteered for the youth programs, and he was one of the most dependable readers and Eucharistic ministers. He read the gospels with more passion and pride than the Jesuits. Ay, jokes. Sorry about that, Father Terry, but you know it’s true. Ay, jokes.

  “My dad, Harry, he was fond of telling people how he would’ve become a priest if he hadn’t loved the ladies so much. And there were always a few ladies who would have loved him back, and you know who you are. You’re the ones crying the most. Ay, jokes. But of course my loyal dad has been chaste since his wife, my mother, Helen, died of brain cancer twenty-one years ago. So maybe my dad was like a Jesuit, except he didn’t have sex, unlike most of the Jesuits. Ay, jokes.

  “My mom died only three days after I graduated from high school. It was a terrible, ugly death. And my dad was never really happy again and never looked to be loved again by another woman, but he
stayed active like a shark: Don’t stop moving or you die. Ha, he was the Great Red Whale, my dad. Ay, jokes. Maybe my dad and I were the Great Red Whale together. We were always together. I’ve lived in the same house with him all of my life. I guess, in some real way, my father became my mother. Harrison was Helen. He adopted some of her mannerisms, you know, like he scratches his head whenever he’s frustrated, just like she does.

  “Listen to me. I keep talking about them in the present tense. And then I talk about them in the past tense. And I was never any good at English grammar anyway. So you can blame my high school English teacher for that. Sorry about that, Ms. Balum. Ay, jokes.

  “After he got old, my dad was the crossing guard at Thirty-fourth and Union and knew the names of all of his kids. Since they were all Catholic kids, they only had twelve names. Or maybe eleven, since nobody has named their kid Judas since Judas was named Judas by his folks. Ay, jokes.

  “My old man was strong for an old man, you know, and he could still hit ten or twelve of those long-range set shots in a row. Basketball was always my dad’s passion. He was Idaho State High School Basketball Player of the Year in 1952. He loved the Lakers when they played in Minneapolis, and he loved them more after they moved to Los Angeles. Elgin Baylor. Gail Goodrich. Jerry West. Wilt Chamberlain. Happy Hairston. Those guys won thirty-three in a row in 1973.

  “After my mother died, my dad and I watched thousands of basketball games on television and in person. Sometimes, on cold Saturday nights, he and I would drive for hours to watch small-town high school teams, not because we knew any of the players but because they were playing a small-town version of basketball, and it was ragged and beautiful and passionate and clumsy and perfect. Davenport Gorillas. Darrington Loggers. Selkirk Rangers. Neah Bay Red Devils. Toutle Lake Fighting Ducks.

  “And now my father is gone, and my mother is gone, and they’re gone together, and I’m a thirty-nine-year-old orphan. I didn’t even say good-bye to my father before I left the house on the day he died. I never really said good-bye to my mother before she died. I will have to live the rest of my life with a failed son’s regrets. I don’t even know what I’m going to do now.”