The Toughest Indian in the World

by Sherman Alexie

  She was also a white woman wearing a black wig over her short blond hair.

  “You’re not Indian,” I said when I opened the door.

  She looked me up and down.

  “No, I’m not,” she said. “But you are.”

  “Mostly.”

  “Well,” she said as she stepped into the room and kissed my neck. “Then you can mostly pretend I’m Indian.”

  She stayed all night, which cost me another five hundred dollars, and ordered eggs and toast for breakfast, which cost me another twenty.

  “You’re the last one,” I said as she prepared to leave.

  “The last what?”

  “My last prostitute.”

  “The last one today?” she asked. “Or the last one this month? What kind of time period are we talking about here?”

  She swore she was an English major.

  “The last one forever,” I said.

  She smiled, convinced that I was lying and/or fooling myself, having heard these same words from any number of customers. She knew that she and her coworkers were drugs for men like me.

  “Sure I am,” she said.

  “No, really,” I said. “I promise.”

  She laughed.

  “Son,” she said, though she was ten years younger than me. “You don’t have to make me any damn promises.”

  She took off her black wig and handed it to me.

  “You keep it,” she said and gave me a free good-bye kiss.

  Exactly three years after our wedding, Susan gave birth to our first child, a boy. He weighed eight pounds, seven ounces, and was twenty-two inches long. A big baby. His hair was black and his eyes were a strange gray. He died ten minutes after leaving Susan’s body.

  After our child died, Susan and I quit having sex. Or rather, she stopped wanting to have sex. I just want to tell the whole story. For months I pressured, coerced, seduced, and emotionally blackmailed her into sleeping with me. At first, I assumed she’d been engaged in another affair with another architect named Harry, but my private detective found only evidence of her grief: crying jags in public rest rooms, aimless wandering in the children’s departments of Nordstrom’s and the Bon Marche, and visits to a therapist I’d never heard about.

  She wasn’t touching anybody else but me. Our lives moved on.

  After a year of reluctant sex, I believed her orgasms were mostly due to my refusal to quit touching her until she did come, the arduous culmination of my physical endeavors rather than the result of any emotional investment she might have had in fulfillment. And then, one night, while I was still inside her, moving my hips in rhythm with hers, I looked into her eyes, her blue eyes, and saw that her good eye held no more light in it than her dead eye. She wasn’t literally blind, of course. She’d just stopped seeing me. I was startled by the sudden epiphany that she’d been faking her orgasms all along, certainly since our child had died, and probably since the first time we’d made love.

  “What?” she asked, a huge question to ask and answer at any time in our lives. Her hands never left their usual place at the small of my back.

  “I’m sorry,” I told her, and I was sorry, and left her naked and alone in bed while I quickly dressed and went out for a drink.

  I don’t drink alcohol, never have, mostly because I don’t want to maintain and confirm any of my ethnic stereotypes, let alone the most prevalent one, but also because my long-lost father, a half-breed, is still missing somewhere in the bottom of a tequila bottle. I had always wondered if he was a drunk because he was Indian or because he was white or because he was both.

  Personally, I like bottled water, with gas, as the Europeans like to say. If I drink enough of that bubbly water in the right environment, I can get drunk. After a long night of Perrier or Pellegrino, I can still wake up with a vicious hangover. Obviously, I place entirely too much faith in the power of metaphor.

  When I went out carousing with my fellow lawyers, I ended up in fancy hotel lounges, private clubs, and golf course cigar rooms, the places where the alcoholics adhere to a rigid dress code, but after leaving my marriage bed I wanted to drink in a place free from lawyers and their dress codes, from emotional obligations and beautiful white women, even the kind of white woman who might be the tenth most attractive in any room in the world.

  I chose Chuck’s, a dive near the corner of Virginia and First.

  I’d driven by the place any number of times, had seen the Indians who loitered outside. I assumed it was an Indian bar, one of those establishments where the clientele, through chance and design, is mostly indigenous. I’d heard about these kinds of places. They are supposed to exist in every city.

  “What can I get you?” asked the bartender when I sat on the stool closest to the door. She was an Indian woman with scars on her face and knuckles. A fighter. She was a woman who had once been pretty but had grown up in a place where pretty was punished. Now, twenty pounds overweight, on her way to forty pounds more, she was most likely saving money for a complete move to a city yet to be determined.

  “Hey, handsome,” she asked again as I stared blankly at her oft-broken nose. I decided that her face resembled most of the furniture in the bar: dark, stained by unknown insults, and in a continual state of repair. “What the fuck would you like to drink?”

  “Water,” I said, surprised that the word “fuck” could sound so friendly.

  “Water?”

  “Yeah, water.”

  She filled a glass from the tap behind her and plunked it down in front of me.

  “A dollar,” she said.

  “For tap water?”

  “For space rental.”

  I handed her a five-dollar bill.

  “Keep the change,” I said and took a big drink.

  “Cool. Next time, you get a clean glass,” she said and waited for my reaction.

  I swallowed hard, kept my dinner down, and smiled.

  “I don’t need to know what’s coming next,” I said. “I like mysteries.”

  “What kind of mysteries?”

  “Hard-boiled. The kind where the dog gets run over, the hero gets punched in the head, and the bad guy gets eaten by sharks.”

  “Not me,” she said. “I got too much blood in my life already. I like romances.”

  I wondered if she wanted to sleep with me.

  “You want something else,” she said, “just shout it out. I’ll hear you.”

  She moved to the other end of the bar where an old Indian man sipped at a cup of coffee. They talked and laughed. Surprisingly jealous of their camaraderie, I turned away and looked around the bar. It was a small place, maybe fifty feet long by twenty feet wide, with one pinball machine, one pool table, and two bathrooms. I supposed the place would be packed on a weekend.

  As it was, on a cold Thursday, there were only five Indians in the bar, other than the bartender, her old friend, and me.

  Two obese Indian women shared a table in the back, an Indian couple danced in front of a broken jukebox, and one large and muscular Indian guy played pool by himself. In his white T-shirt, blue-jean jacket, tight jeans, and cowboy boots, he looked like Chief Broom from One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. I decided he could have killed me with a flick of one finger.

  He looked up from his pool cue when he felt my eyes on him.

  “What the fuck are you looking at?” he asked. His eyes were darker than the eight ball. I had no idea that “fuck” could be such a dangerous word.

  “Nothing,” I said.

  Still holding his cue stick, he walked a few paces closer to me. I was afraid, very afraid.

  “Nothing?” he asked. “Do I look like nothing to you?”

  “No, no, that’s not what I meant. I mean, I was just watching you play pool. That’s all.”

  He stared at me, studied me like an owl might study a field mouse.

  “You just keep your eyes to yourself,” he said and turned back to his game.

  I thought I was safe. I looked down to the bartender, wh
o was shaking her head at me.

  “Because I just, I just want to know,” sputtered the big Indian. “I just want to know who the hell you think you are.”

  Furious, he shouted, a primal sort of noise, as he threw the cue stick against the wall. He rushed at me and lifted me by the collar.

  “Who are you?” he shouted. “Who the fuck are you?”

  “I’m nobody,” I said, wet with fear. “Nobody. Nobody.”

  “Put him down, Junior,” said the bartender.

  Junior and I both turned to look at her. She held a pistol down by her hip, not as a threat, but more like a promise. Junior studied the bartender’s face, estimated the level of her commitment, and dropped me back onto the stool.

  He took a few steps back, pointed at me.

  “I’m sick of little shits like you,” he said. “Fucking urban Indians in your fancy fucking clothes. Fuck you. Fuck you.”

  I looked down and saw my denim jacket and polo shirt, the khakis and brown leather loafers. I looked like a Gap ad.

  “I ever see you again,” Junior said. “I’m going to dislocate your hips.”

  I flinched. Junior obviously had some working knowledge of human anatomy and the most effective means of creating pain therein. He saw my fear, examined its corners and edges, and decided it was large enough.

  “Jesus,” he said. “I don’t know why I’m even talking to you. What are you going to do? You fucking wimp. You’re not worth my time. Why don’t you get the fuck out of here? Why don’t you just get in your BMW, that’s what you drive, enit? Why don’t you get in your fucking BMW and get out of here before I change my mind, before I pop out one of your eyes with a fucking spoon, all right?”

  I didn’t drive a BMW; I drove a Saab.

  “Yeah, fuck you,” Junior said, thoroughly enjoying himself now. “Just drive back to your fucking mansion on Mercer Island or Edmonds or whatever white fucking neighborhood you live in. Drive back to your white wife. She’s white, enit? Yeah, blond and blue-eyed, I bet. White, white. I bet her pussy hair is blond, too. Isn’t it? Isn’t it?”

  I wanted to hate him.

  “Go back to your mansion and read some fucking Teletubbies to your white fucking kids.”

  “What?” I asked.

  “I said, go home to your white fucking kids.”

  “Fuck you,” I said and completely surprised Junior. Good thing. He hesitated for a brief moment before he rushed at me again. His hesitation gave the bartender enough time to vault the bar and step in between Junior and me. I couldn’t believe how fast she was.

  She pressed the pistol tightly against Junior’s forehead.

  “Let it go, Junior,” said the bartender.

  “Why are you protecting him?” Junior asked.

  “I don’t give a shit about him,” she said. “But I do care about you. You get into trouble again and you’re going to jail forever. You know that.”

  Junior smiled.

  “Sissy,” he said to the bartender. “In another world, you and I are Romeo and Juliet.”

  “But we live in this world, Junior.”

  “Okay,” said Sissy. “This is what’s going to happen, Junior. You’re going to walk over behind the bar, get yourself another Diet Pepsi, and mellow out. And Mr. Tap Water here is going to walk out the front door and never return. How does that sound to the both of you?”

  “Make it two Pepsis,” said Junior.

  “Deal,” said Sissy. “How about you, Polo?”

  “Fuck him,” I said.

  Junior didn’t move anything except his mouth.

  “Sissy,” he said. “How can you expect me to remain calm, how can you expect me to stay reasonable, when this guy so obviously wants to die?”

  “I’ll fight you,” I said.

  “What?” asked Sissy and Junior, both amazed.

  “I’ll fight you,” I said again.

  “All right, that’s what I want to hear,” said Junior. “Maybe you do have some balls. There’s an alley out back.”

  “You don’t want to do this,” Sissy said to me.

  “I’ll meet you out there, Junior,” I said.

  Junior laughed and shook his head.

  “Listen up, Tommy Hilfiger,” he said. “I’m not stupid. I go out the back door and you’re going to run out the front door. You don’t have to make things so complicated. You want to leave, I’ll let you leave. Just do it now, man.”

  “He’s giving you a chance,” Sissy said to me. “You better take it.”

  “No,” I said. “I want to fight. I’ll meet you out there. I promise.”

  Junior studied my eyes.

  “You don’t lie, do you?”

  “I lie all the time,” I said. “Most of the time. But I’m not lying now. I want to fight.”

  “All right, then, bring your best,” he said and walked out the back door.

  “Are you out of your mind?” Sissy asked. “Have you ever been in a fight?”

  “I boxed a little in college.”

  “You boxed a little in college? You boxed a little in college? I can’t believe this. Do you have any idea who Junior is?”

  “No, why should I?”

  “He’s a pro.”

  “What? You mean, like a professional boxer?”

  “No, man. A professional street fighter. No judges, no ring, no rules. The loser is the guy who don’t get up.”

  “Isn’t that illegal?”

  “Illegal? Illegal? What, you think you’re a lawyer now?”

  “Actually, I am a lawyer.”

  Sissy laughed until tears ran down her face.

  “Sweetheart,” she said after she’d finally calmed down. “You need to leave. Please. Junior’s got a wicked temper but he’ll calm down soon enough. Hell, you come in a week from now and he’ll probably buy you some water.”

  “Really?”

  “No, not at all. I’m lying. You come in a week from now and Junior will break your thumbs.”

  She laughed again, laughed until she had to lean against the bar for support.

  “Stop it,” I said.

  She kept laughing.

  “Stop it,” I shouted.

  She kept laughing.

  “Sweetheart,” she said, trying to catch her breath. “I could kick your ass.”

  I shrugged off my denim jacket and marched for the back door. Sissy tried to stop me, but I pulled away from her and stepped into the alley.

  Junior was surprised to see me. I felt a strange sense of pride. Without another word, I rushed at Junior, swinging at him with a wide right hook, with dreams of connecting with his jaw and knocking him out with one punch.

  Deep in the heart of the heart of every Indian man’s heart, he believes he is Crazy Horse.

  My half-closed right hand whizzed over Junior’s head as he expertly ducked under my wild punch and then rose, surely and accurately, with a left uppercut that carried with it the moon and half of every star in the universe.

  I woke up with my head in Sissy’s lap. She was washing my face with a cold towel.

  “Where are we?” I asked.

  “In the storeroom,” she said.

  “Where is he?”

  “Gone.”

  My face hurt.

  “Am I missing any teeth?”

  “No,” said Sissy. “But your nose is broken.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Trust me.”

  I looked up at her. I decided she was still pretty and pretty was good enough. I grabbed her breast.

  “Shit,” she said and shoved me away.

  I sprawled on the floor while she scrambled to her feet.

  “What’s wrong with you?” she asked. “What is wrong with you?”

  “What do you mean? What?”

  “Did you think, did you somehow get it into your crazy head that I was going to fuck you back here? On the goddamn floor in the goddamn dirt?”

  I didn’t know what to say.

  “Jesus Christ, you really thought
I was going to fuck you, didn’t you?”

  “Well, I mean, I just…”

  “You just thought because I’m an ugly woman that I’d be easy.”

  “You’re not ugly,” I said.

  “Do you think I’m impressed by this fighting bullshit? Do you think it makes you some kind of warrior or something?”

  She could read minds.

  “You did, didn’t you? All of you Indian guys think you’re Crazy Horse.”

  I struggled to my feet and walked over to the sink. I looked in the mirror and saw a bloody mess. I also noticed that one of my braids was missing.

  “Junior cut it off,” said Sissy. “And took it with him. You’re lucky he liked you. Otherwise, he would have taken a toe. He’s done that before.”

  I couldn’t imagine what that would have meant to my life.

  “Look at you,” she said. “Do you think that’s attractive? Is that who you want to be?”

  I carefully washed my face. My nose was most certainly broken.

  “I just want to know, man. What are you doing here? Why’d you come here?”

  My left eye was swelling shut. I wouldn’t be able to see out of it in the morning.

  “I wanted to be with my people,” I said.

  “Your people?” asked Sissy. “Your people? We’re not your people.”

  “We’re Indians.”

  “Yeah, we’re Indians. You, me, Junior. But we live in this world and you live in your world.”

  “I don’t like my world.”

  “You pathetic bastard,” she said, her eyes swelling with tears that had nothing to do with laughter. “You sorry, sorry piece of shit. Do you know how much I want to live in your world? Do you know how much Junior wants to live in your world?”

  Of course I knew. For most of my life, I’d dreamed about the world where I currently resided.

  “Junior and me,” she said. “We have to worry about having enough to eat. What do you have to worry about? That you’re lonely? That you have a mortgage? That your wife doesn’t love you? Fuck you, fuck you. I have to worry about having enough to eat.”

  She stormed out of the room, leaving me alone.