The Toughest Indian in the World: Stories

  “Please,” he said. “Call me Chuck.”

  “My name is Eryn.”

  Low Man wondered if he was going to sleep with her, this Eryn. He’d spent many nights in hotel rooms with various bookstore employees and literary groupies. That was one of the unpublicized perks of the job. He always wondered what the women saw in him, why they wanted to have sex with a stranger simply based on his ability to create compelling metaphors, or even when he failed to create compelling metaphors. The women were interested in him no matter what The New York Times Book Review had to say about his latest novel. Low Man was bored with his own writing, with his books, and to be honest, he’d grown bored with his literary life and the sexual promiscuity that seemed to go with it. Last year, after meeting Carlotta at the Native American Children of Alcoholics convention in Albuquerque, after sharing a bed with her for five nights, he’d vowed to remain faithful to her—and had been faithful to her and the idea of her—even though they’d made no promises to each other, even though she’d talked openly of the three men who were actively pursuing her, of the one man that she still loved, who had never been named Chuck.

  “Mr. Smith, Chuck?” asked Eryn, the Barnes and Noble manager. “Are you okay?”

  “Yes, sorry,” said Low Man. “I’m very tired.”

  “I wish we’d known you were going to be in town,” she said. “We would have ordered more copies of your books.”

  She smiled. Low Man decided that she was the kind of woman who lost sleep so that she could finish reading a good novel. He wondered if he was going to wake up before her the next morning and pass the time by scanning the titles of the books stacked on her nightstand.

  “I didn’t know I was going to be in Missoula,” he said. “I was supposed to be spending a week up on the Flathead Reservation.”

  “Oh, I thought you might be here to see Tracy.”

  “Who?”

  “Tracy,” said the manager, and when that elicited no response from Low Man, she added, “Tracy Johnson. You went to college together, right?”

  “She lives here?”

  “Actually, she works here at the bookstore.”

  “Really?”

  “Well, she’s here part-time while she’s getting her MFA at the university.”

  “She’s a writer?”

  “Yes. Didn’t you know that?”

  “I haven’t seen Tracy in ten years,” said Low Man.

  He closed his eyes and when he opened them again two uniformed police officers were standing in front of him. One of the officers, the tall one with blue eyes, carried Low Man’s suitcase.

  “Mr. Smith,” said the tall cop. “Are you Mr. Smith?”

  “No, no,” said Low Man. “You must be mistaken. My name is Crazy Horse.”

  Later, in the police station, Low Man paged through another telephone directory. He hoped that Tracy Johnson’s number was listed.

  He found her.

  “This better be you,” she said when she answered the phone, clearly expecting somebody else.

  “Hi, Tracy, it’s Low Man.”

  Low Man remembered, when it came to poetry, that a strategic pause was called a caesura.

  “Bah,” she said.

  “No bah.”

  “Damn, Low, it’s been forever. Are you still an Indian?”

  “Yes, I am. Are you still a lesbian?”

  They both remembered their secret language, their shared ceremonies.

  “Definitely,” she said. “In fact, I thought you were my partner. I’m supposed to pick her up after work. We’ve got a big date tonight.”

  “Well, you think maybe you could pick me up, too?”

  “Are you in town?” she asked, her voice cracking with excitement. Low Man hoped it was excitement, though he feared it was something else. His chest ached with the memory of her. During college, when he was still drinking, he had once crawled through her apartment window and slept on her living room floor, though he’d made sure to wake up before dawn and leave before she’d ever known he was there. During the long walk home, he’d veered off the road into a shallow swamp, not because he was too drunk to properly navigate but because he wanted to do something self-flagellating and noble, or at least something that approximated nobility—a drunk twenty-year-old’s idea of nobility. He’d wanted to be a drunk monk in love.

  “Damn, Low,” she said. “Why didn’t you call me before? I would have gone out and bought a dress. I know how much you like me in dresses.”

  She remembered him so well. He liked that.

  “I didn’t know I was going to be here,” he said. “And I didn’t know you lived here.”

  “So, how’d you get my number?”

  “Well, your manager at the bookstore told me you were getting an MFA.”

  “Eryn,” she said. “I bet you were wondering if she was going to hop on you, right?”

  Low Man couldn’t answer.

  “Damn, Low,” she said, laughing loudly. Her laughter had always been too loud, impolite, and wonderful. “Eryn is a lesbian. You always fall for the lesbians.”

  Low Man had once kissed Tracy, though they each remembered it differently. She’d thought the kiss was a desperate attempt to change her mind about him in particular, and about men in general, but he believed that he’d kissed her only because he wanted to know how it felt, how she smelled and tasted, before he put his feelings into a strongbox and locked them away forever.

  “Yeah, that’s me,” said Low. “The Dyke Mike. Now, can you pick me up?”

  “Low, I can’t, really,” she said. “I mean, my partner’s parents are coming over for dinner. They drove over here from Spokane Rez and, like, it’s the first time I’ve met them, and they’re not exactly happy their daughter has come roaring out of the closet on the motorcycle called Me.”

  “I really need you to pick me up.”

  “Low, I want to see you, I really do, but the time is so bad. How about tomorrow? Can’t we do this tomorrow? Hell, we’ll talk for three days straight, but I really need tonight, okay?”

  “I’m in jail.”

  Low wondered if there was a word in Navajo that meant caesura.

  “What did you do?”

  “I broke my heart.”

  “I didn’t realize that was illegal.”

  “Well,” he said. “In Missoula, it seems to be a misdemeanor.”

  “Are you arrested?”

  “No,” said Low. “Not really. The police said they just don’t want me to be alone tonight.”

  “Low, what happened?”

  “I came here to see a woman. I was going to ask her to marry me.”

  “And she said no.”

  “Not exactly.”

  “What then?”

  “She married Chuck yesterday and moved to Flagstaff.”

  “I hate Arizona.”

  She’d always known exactly what to say.

  “Low, honey,” she added. “I’ll be right there.”

  Tracy Johnson drove a 1972 half-ton Chevrolet pickup. Red with long streaks of gray primer paint. Four good tires and one bad alternator. Hay-bale molding in the bed.

  “This truck,” said Low as he climbed in. “What stereotype are you trying to maintain?”

  “There are no stereotypes in Missoula, Montana,” she said, appraising his face and body. “You’ve gained weight. A lot of weight.”

  “So have you,” he said. “I love all of your chins.”

  Forty pounds overweight, she was beautiful, wearing a loose T-shirt and tight blue jeans. Her translucent skin bled light into her dark hair.

  On the radio, Hank Williams sang white man blues.

  “You’re lovely,” said Low. “Just lovely.”

  “Yes, I know,” she said. “But don’t get your hopes up.”

  “My hopes have never been up,” he said, though he knew he was lying. “Your partner, what’s her name?”

  “Sara Polatkin,” said Tracy. “She’s Indian.”

  “Indian dot-in-t
he-head or Indian arrow-in-the-heart?”

  “She’s Spokane. From the rez. Unlike your lame urban Indian ass.”

  “Yes,” said Low Man. “And you can say that, given you’ve spent so much time on reservations.”

  Tracy dropped the truck into gear and drove down a narrow street.

  “Yeah,” she said. “I’m freaking out her parents. Completely. Not only am I a lesbian but I’m also white.”

  “The double whammy.”

  “She’s in law school,” said Tracy. “She’s smart. Even smarter than you.”

  “Good for you.”

  “We’re getting married.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah, that’s why Sara’s parents are coming over. They’re going to try to talk her out of it.”

  “Jesus,” said Low Man, wondering why he had bothered to get on the flight from Seattle.

  “Jesus has nothing to do with it,” said Tracy as she stared ahead and smiled.

  Ahead, on the right side of the street, Sara Polatkin was waiting outside the coffee joint. She was short, thin, very pretty, even with her bad teeth and eccentric clothes—a black dress with red stockings, and Chuck Taylor basketball shoes with Cat in the Hat socks.

  Low Man couldn’t look Sara in the eye when she climbed into the truck. He remembered how Crazy Horse—that great Indian warrior, that savior, that Christ-figure—was shot in the face by his lover’s husband.

  Low Man sat on the bench seat between Tracy and Sara. He watched as the women leaned over him to kiss each other. He could smell their perfumes.

  “So, you’re Low,” said Sara, her voice inflected with a heavy singsong reservation accent. She probably had to work hard to keep that accent. Her black hair hung down past her waist.

  “It’s Low Man, both words, Low Man,” he said. Only three people had ever been allowed to call him Low: his mother, his late father, and Tracy.

  “Okay, Low Man, both words, Low Man,” said Sara. “So, you’re the one who is madly in love with my wife.”

  “Yes, I was,” he said, careful with the tense. “And she’s not your wife, yet.”

  “Details. Do you still love her?”

  Low Man hesitated—caesura—and Tracy rushed to fill the silence.

  “He just got his heart broken by an Indian woman,” she said. “I don’t think you want to be the second one today, huh, Sara?”

  Sara’s face went dark, darker.

  “Did you ever fuck her?” Sara asked him, and Low Man heard the Spokane River in her voice, and heard the great Columbia as well, and felt the crash of their confluence.

  “Sara, let it go,” said Tracy, with some traces of laughter still in her voice.

  “Do they talk like that in law school?” Low Man asked Sara.

  “Yeah,” she said. “Except it’s in Latin.”

  Low Man could feel the Indian woman’s eyes on him, but he didn’t return the stare. He watched the road moving ahead of them.

  “Sara, let it go,” said Tracy, and there was something else in her voice then. “Remember, you’re the one who used to sleep with guys.”

  Tracy put her hand on Low’s knee.

  “Sorry, Low,” she said. “But these born-again dykes can be so righteous.”

  “Yeah, yeah, I’m sorry, Low Man,” said Sara. “I’m just nervous about my ma and pa.”

  “So, you’re a new lesbian, huh?” asked Low Man.

  “I’m still in the wrapper,” said Sara.

  “She’s still got that new-car smell,” said Tracy.

  “What made you change teams?” asked Low.

  “I’m running away from the things of man,” she said.

  At dinner, Low Man sat at the small table between Tracy and Sara. Directly across from him, Sid Polatkin, longtime husband, held the hand of Estelle Polatkin, longtime wife. All five of them had ordered the salmon special because it had just seemed easier.

  “Do you think the salmon will be good?” asked Estelle, her voice thick with a reservation accent, much thicker than her daughter’s.

  “It’s the Holiday Inn,” said her husband. He was president of the Spokane Indian Reservation VFW. “The Holiday Inn is dependable.”

  Sid’s hair was pulled back in a gray ponytail. So was Estelle’s. Both of their faces told stories. Sid’s: the recovering alcoholic; the wronged son of a wronged son; the Hamlet of his reservation. Estelle’s: the tragic beauty; the woman who stopped drinking because her husband did; the woman who woke in the middle of the night to wash her hands ten times in a row.

  Now they were Mormons.

  “Do you believe in God?” Sid had asked Low Man before they sat down.

  “Sure,” said Low Man, and he meant it.

  “Do you believe in Jesus?” asked Sid as he unrolled his napkin and set it on his substantial lap.

  “How do you mean?” asked Low Man.

  “Do you believe that Jesus was crucified and rose from the dead?”

  “Come on, Daddy, leave him alone,” said Sara. She knew how her father’s theological conversations usually began and how they often ended. He’d always been a preacher.

  “No, Sara,” said Low Man. “It’s okay.”

  “I think Mr. Smith can speak for himself,” said Sid. He leaned across the table and jabbed the air with a sharp index finger, a twenty-first century Indian’s idea of a bow and arrow.

  “Low speaks too much,” said Tracy. Sure, it was a lame joke, but she was trying to change the tone of the conversation. Hey, she thought, everybody should laugh. Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha! Let’s all clap hands and sing!

  “Hey, Mr. Smith, Low Man,” continued Sid. “Why don’t you and I pretend we’re alone here. Let’s pretend this is a country of men.”

  Low Man smiled and looked at the three women: Estelle, Sara, and Tracy; two strangers and his unrequited love; two Indians and one white. If asked, as a man, to rush to their defense, what would Low Man do? How far would he go? If asked, as an Indian, to defend Jesus, what could he say?

  “Please, Low, tell me what you think about Jesus,” said Sid, moving from question to command somewhere in the middle of that sentence.

  “I don’t think it matters what I think,” said Low Man. “I’m not a Christian. Let them have their Jesus.”

  “How vague,” said Sid. “Tell me, then, what do you think their Jesus would say about lesbian marriage?”

  Tracy and Sara sighed and leaned back in their chairs. How often had men sat around dinner tables and discussed women’s lives, their choices, and the reasons why one woman reached across the bed to touch another woman?

  “Mr. Polatkin,” said Tracy. “If you want to talk about our relationship, then you should talk to Sara and me. Otherwise, it’s just cowardly.”

  “You think I’m a coward?” asked Sid.

  “Daddy, let’s just order dinner,” said Sara. “Mom, tell him to order dinner.”

  Estelle closed her eyes.

  “Hey,” said Sid. “Maybe I should order chicken, huh? But that would be cannibalism, right? Am I right, Tracy, tell me, am I right?”

  “Mr. Polatkin,” said Tracy. “I don’t know you. But I love your daughter, and she tells me you’re a good man, so I’m willing to give you a chance. I’m hoping you’ll extend the same courtesy to me.”

  “I don’t have to give you anything,” said Sid as he tossed his napkin onto his plate.

  “No,” said Estelle, her voice barely rising above a whisper.

  “What?” asked Sid. “What did you say?”

  “We came here with love,” said Estelle. “We came here to forgive.”

  “Forgive?” asked Tracy. “Forgive what? We don’t need your forgiveness.”

  Low Man recognized the anger in Tracy’s eyes and in her voice. Low, she’d said to him in anger all those years ago, I’m never going to love you that way. Never. Can you please understand that? I can’t change who I am. I don’t want to change who I am. And if you ever touch me again, I swear I will hate you forever.

/>   “Hey, hey, Sid, sit down,” said Low. “You want to talk Jesus, I’ll talk Jesus.”

  Sid hesitated a moment—asserting his independence—and then nodded his head.

  “That’s good,” said Low. “Now, let me tell you. Jesus was a fag.”

  Everybody was surprised, except Tracy, who snorted loudly and laughed.

  “No, no, no,” continued Low. “Just think about it. I mean, there Jesus was, sticking up for the poor, the disadvantaged, the disabled. Who else but a fag would be that liberal, huh? And damn, Jesus hung out with twelve guys wearing great robes and great hair and never, ever talked about women. Tell me, Sidney, what kind of guys never talk about women?”

  “Fags!” shouted Tracy.

  “This isn’t funny,” said Sid.

  “No, it’s not,” said Sara. “Tracy, let’s just go home. Let’s just go. And Low Man, you just shut up, you shut up.”

  “No, Sara,” said Tracy. “Let them talk. Let them be men. And God said, let them be men.”

  “I don’t like you this way,” Sara said to Tracy. “You’ve been different ever since Low showed up. You’re different with him.”

  Low Man wondered if that was true; he wondered what it meant; he knew what he wanted it to mean.

  “Please,” said Sara. “Let’s just go, Tracy, let’s go.”

  “Nobody’s going anywhere,” said Sid. “Not until this is over.”

  Estelle’s eyes glowed with tears.

  “I’m being dead serious here, Sid,” said Low. “I mean, Jesus was an incredibly decent human being and they crucified him for it. He sounds like a fag to me.”

  “Jesus was a human being,” said Sid. “At least, you’ve got that much right. He didn’t rise from the dead. He wasn’t the Son of God. He was just a man.”

  “No, Sid, you and me, we’re just men. Simple, stupid men.”

  “Yes, yes, I’m simple,” said Sid. “I’m a man who is simply afraid of God. And next to God, we’re all stupid. That much we can agree on.”

  “Fine, fine, Sid, we agree.”

  Sid stared at Low Man. The question: How does any father prove how much he loves his child? One answer: the father must hate his child’s enemies. Another answer: the father must protect his child from all harm.

  “Listen to me,” said Sid. “I’m being terrible. I’m not being good. Not good at all. We’re all hungry and angry and tired. Why don’t we eat and then figure out whether we’re going to stay or go? How does that sound?”