The Toughest Indian in the World

by Sherman Alexie

  Because they all loved one another, in one form or another, in one direction or another, they agreed.

  All five of them ordered soda pop, except for Tracy, the white woman, who ordered red wine. Low Man wondered what would happen when every drunk Indian quit drinking—and he truly believed it would someday happen—when Indians quit giving white people something to worry about besides which wine went with fish and which wine went with Indians.

  “So, you’re a writer?” Sid asked Low Man.

  “Yes.”

  “You make a living at it?”

  “Sid,” said Low Man, leaning close to the table. “I make shitloads of money. I make so much money that white people think I’m white.”

  Nobody laughed.

  “You’re one of the funny Indians, enit?” Sid asked Low Man. “Always making the jokes, never taking it seriously.”

  “What is this it you’re talking about?” asked Low Man.

  “Everything. You think everything is funny.”

  Low knew for a fact that everything was funny. Homophobia? Funny! Genocide? Hilarious! Political assassination? Side-splitting! Love? Ha, Ha, Ha!

  “Low, honey,” said Tracy. “Maybe you should get some coffee. Maybe you should shut up, huh?”

  Low Man looked at Tracy, at Sara. He wanted to separate them.

  Sara looked at Low and wondered yet again why Indian men insisted on being warriors. Put down your bows and arrows, she wanted to scream at Low, at her father, at every hypermasculine Injun in the world. Put down your fucking guns and pick up your kids.

  “Sid,” said Low Man. “How many women have you had in your life?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, counting lovely Estelle here, how many women have you slept with, bedded down, screwed, humped, did the nasty with?”

  Estelle gasped and slapped her hand over her mouth—a strangely mannered gesture for a reservation Indian woman.

  “I think we made a mistake here,” said Sid, rising with his wife. “I think we should just go home. Whatever treaties we signed here are broken now.”

  “No, no, no,” said Sara. “Please, Mom, Dad, sit down.”

  Sid and Estelle might have left then, might never have returned to their daughter’s life, but the salmon arrived at that moment.

  “Eat, eat,” said Sara, with tears in her eyes. She turned her attention to Low Man.

  “I think you should leave,” she said, understanding that Indian men wanted to own the world just as much as white men did. They just wanted it for different reasons.

  Low Man looked to Tracy. He wanted her to choose.

  “I think she’s right, Low,” said Tracy. “Why don’t you take the truck and drive back to our place?”

  Low Man stared into her eyes. He stepped through her pupils and searched for some sign, some indication, some clue of what he was supposed to do.

  “Low, go, just go,” said Tracy.

  “Mom,” said Sara, as she held her mother’s hand. “Please, stay.”

  Tracy said, “Go, Low, just go for a ride. Sid and Estelle can give us a ride back to our place, right?”

  Sid nodded his head. He sliced into his salmon and shoved a huge piece into his mouth.

  “Please, Low,” said Tracy. “Go.”

  “Sid,” said Low Man. “I was wondering why you came here. I mean, if you don’t approve of this, of them, then why the hell are you here?”

  Sid chewed on his salmon. The great fish was gone from the Spokane River. Disappeared.

  “I love my daughter,” said Sid. “And I don’t want her to go to hell.”

  Estelle started weeping. She stared down at the salmon on her plate.

  “Mom,” said Sara. “Please.”

  Sid finished his salmon with two huge bites. He washed it down with water and leaned back in his chair. He stared at Low Man.

  “Come on, boys,” said Tracy. “No need for the testicle show, okay?”

  “You have a filthy mouth,” Sid said.

  “Yeah, I guess I fucking do,” she said.

  “Whore.”

  “Dad, stop it,” said Sara. Her mother lowered her chin onto her chest and wept like she was thirty years older.

  “I raised my daughter to be better than this,” said Sid.

  “Better than what?” asked Low.

  “My daughter wasn’t, wasn’t a gay until she met this, this white woman.”

  “Maybe I should go,” said Tracy.

  “No,” said Sara. “Nobody’s going anywhere.”

  In Sara’s voice, the others heard something new: an adulthood ceremony taking place between syllables.

  “What’s wrong with you?” Low asked Sid. “She’s your daughter. You should love her no matter what.”

  Low Man wanted this father to take his daughter away.

  “I don’t think this is any of your business,” said Sid. “You’re not even supposed to be here.”

  “I’m not supposed to be anywhere,” said Low. “But here I am.”

  Low Man smiled at himself. He sounded like a character out of film noir, like Lee Marvin or Robert Mitchum. Or maybe like Peter Lorre.

  “What are you smiling at?” asked Sid.

  “I’m going to the room,” said Estelle as she stood up. Sara rose with her.

  “Mom, Mom, I love you,” said Sara as she hugged her.

  Low Man wondered what would have happened if he had a pistol. He wondered if he would have shot Sid Polatkin in the face. No, of course not. Low Man probably would have raced out into the dark and tried to bring down one of the airplanes that kept passing over the motel.

  “Do you know what I want?” Low asked Sid.

  “No. Tell me.”

  “I want to take Tracy out of here. I want to take her back home with me. I want her to fall in love with me.”

  “Go ahead,” said Sid. “And I’ll take my daughter back home where she belongs.”

  “Sid,” said Low. “These women don’t belong to us. They live in whole separate worlds, man, don’t you know that?”

  Sid couldn’t answer. His jaw worked furiously. When he was a young man, he used to fight Golden Gloves. Even at his advanced age, he could have beaten the crap out of Low Man. Both men knew this to be a fact.

  Tracy stood up from the table. She took two steps away, then turned back.

  “I’m leaving, Sara,” she said. “Finally, I’m leaving.”

  Sara looked to her father and mother. Together, the three of them had buried dozens of loved ones. The three of them knew all of the same mourning songs. Two of them had loved each other enough to conceive the third. They’d invented her! She was their Monster; she was surely going to murder them. That’s what children were supposed to do!

  “Mom, Dad,” she said. “I love you.”

  Sara stepped away from her mother, her father. She stepped away from the table, away from the salmon, and toward Tracy.

  “If you leave now,” said Sid. “Don’t you ever call us. Don’t you ever talk to us again.”

  Sara closed her eyes. She remembered the winter when her father fell from the roof of their house and disappeared into a snowbank. She remembered the dreadful silence after the impact, and then the wondrous noise, the joyful cacophony of his laughter.

  Tracy took Sara’s hand. They stood there in the silence.

  “Sid,” said Low Man. “These women don’t need us. They never did.”

  “We’re leaving,” said Tracy and Sara together. Hand in hand, they walked away.

  With surprising speed, Sid rose from the table and chased after them. He caught them just before they got to the restaurant exit. He pushed Tracy into a wall—pushed her into the plasterboard—and took his daughter by the elbow.

  “You’re coming with us,” he said.

  “No,” said Sara.

  Estelle couldn’t move. “Help them,” she said to Low Man. “Help them.”

  Low didn’t know which “them” she was talking about. He rushed across the r
oom just as Sid slapped his daughter once, then again. One Indian man raised his hand to slap an Indian woman, but a third Indian stepped between them.

  “She’s my daughter, she’s mine,” shouted Sid. He pushed against Low, as Sara fell back against a glass door, as she turned to hide her face.

  Sid and Low grappled with each other. The old man was very strong.

  At the table, Estelle covered her face with her hands.

  “She’s my daughter, she’s my daughter,” shouted Sid as he punched Low in the chest. Low staggered back and fell to one knee.

  “She’s my daughter,” shouted Sid as he turned to attack Tracy. But she slapped him hard. Surprised, defeated, Sid dropped to the floor beside Low.

  The two Indian men sat on the ground as the white woman stood above them.

  Tracy turned away from the men and ran after Sara.

  Sid climbed to his feet. He pointed an accusing finger at Low, who rose slowly to his feet. Sid turned and walked back toward his wife, back toward Estelle, who held her husband close and cried in his arms.

  “What are you going to do?” Low called after him. “What are you going to do when she’s gone?”

  SAINT JUNIOR

  THAT WINTER, ON A full-moon Monday on the Spokane Indian Reservation, the first snow fell sometime between midnight and dawn, when most of the reservation residents—Indian and white alike—were asleep, except for the Cold Springs Singers, those six Spokane Indian men who sat at a drum on top of Lookout Mountain and sang the indigenous blues:

  Way, ya, hey, yi, hey, yo.

  On the road and on the street,

  They’re just trying to keep the beat.

  Way, ya, hey, ya, ya.

  On the road and on the moon,

  They’re just trying to keep the tune.

  Way, ya, hey, yi, hey, yo.

  Way, ya, hey, yi, hey, yo.

  On the road and on the run,

  Two little lovebirds having fun.

  Will their love survive the test?

  Romeo and Juliet.

  Way, ya, hey, yi, hey, yo.

  Wearing only T-shirts, blue jeans, and baseball caps, the Cold Springs Singers ignored howling winds and the impossibly white snow piling up on their shoulders. Three of the men wore their long black hair in careful braids, two wore crew cuts, and the last was chemotherapy bald. They’d all known one another since birth, since they’d spent their nine months in the wombs of six Indian mothers who’d sat together at their own drum—Big Mom’s Daughters—and sung their own songs. Those mothers had taught their sons public and private songs and the most secret difference between the two. To show their devotion and love, those sons had kept their mothers’ secrets safely hidden from the rest of the world.

  From the age of three, those Indian boys sang and drummed together. Over the course of a twenty-year career, the Cold Springs Singers had traveled to one hundred different reservations and had fallen in love with three hundred and nineteen Indian women and sixteen Indian men. They’d fathered seven daughters and three sons. Three of them had married and two had divorced. They’d learned how to sing seven hundred and nine different songs:

  Ha, ya, ha, ya, ha, ya.

  Don’t tell me you love me

  Unless you mean it.

  Ha, ya, ha, ya, ha, ya.

  Don’t tell me you love me

  Unless you mean it.

  Ha, ya, ha, ya, ha, ya.

  I love you, I love you,

  I want to marry you.

  Ha, ya, ha, ya, ha, ya.

  Marry me once, marry me twice

  Marry me three times.

  Ha, ya, ha, ya, ha, ya.

  But now, as they sang on top of Lookout Mountain, the Cold Springs Singers were in love with the drum and only the drum. They’d forgotten what it meant to love anything other than the feel of stick in hand and song in throat. Of course, the Cold Springs Singers were ghosts, having all been killed when their blue van collided with a logging truck on the S-curves of Little Falls Road, just a few feet away from the natural spring that provided the namesake for the group, but those Indian boys still sang and pounded the sticks better than any other drum alive or dead:

  Hey, ya, hey, ya, ho, ya, ho.

  I don’t have any money, honey.

  I don’t have a nice car.

  Hey, ya, hey, ya, ho, ya, ho.

  I don’t have a big house, mouse.

  I don’t have a fast car.

  Hey, ya, hey, ya, ho, ya, ho.

  I don’t have fancy shoes, Lou.

  I don’t have a new car.

  Hey, ya, hey, ya, ho, ya, ho.

  Will you still love me?

  Will you still love me?

  Will you still love me

  When I’m old and broke?

  Hey, ya, hey, ya, ho, ya, ho.

  All night, they sang indigenous songs called “49s,” though there’s not an Indian alive who remembers exactly why they’re called 49s. Some say those songs were invented after fifty Indian warriors went out to battle and only one came back alive. Distraught, the lone survivor mourned his friends by singing forty-nine songs, one for each of the dead. Others believe the 49s were invented when fifty warriors went out to battle and forty-nine came back alive. Distraught, they remembered the lost one by singing forty-nine songs, one by each of the living. Still others believe the 49s were invented by a woman who fell in love with forty-nine men and had her heart broken by each and every one of them. And still more believe the 49s were invented by forty-nine men who mourned the loss of one good woman. However they were invented, those songs have always been heavy with sadness and magic. However they were invented, the Cold Springs Singers knew all of the words and vocables, all the 4/4 signatures and atonal cries in the night.

  On the Spokane Indian Reservation, with the coming of that first snow, the Cold Springs Singers sang 49s until every Indian was startled awake and sang along. They all sang because they understood what it meant to be Indian and dead and alive and still bright with faith and hope:

  Basketball, basketball.

  Way, ya, hi, yo, way, ya, hi, yo.

  Give me the ball, give me the ball.

  Way, ya, hi, yo, way, ya, hi, yo.

  And let me shoot, and let me shoot.

  Way, ya, hi, yo, way, ya, hi, yo.

  And win the game, and win the game.

  Way, ya, hi, yo, way, ya, hi, yo.

  And then she’ll love me, then she’ll love me.

  Way, ya, hi, yo, way, ya, hi, yo.

  Forever and ever, forever and ever.

  First snow was a good time for most Indians, even the ghosts, and especially the Indians and ghosts of Indians who possessed a good sense of rhythm and irony. After all, it took a special kind of courage for an Indian to look out a window into the deep snow and see anything special in that vast whiteness.

  On that night, in that reservation whiteness, the falsetto voices of the Cold Springs Singers drifted down from their mountain onto an outdoor basketball court covered with two feet of new snow. On that court, a Spokane Indian named Roman Gabriel Fury ran fast breaks with the ghosts of his mother and father, seven cousins, nine dead dogs, and his maternal and paternal grandparents. He was the best basketball player his reservation had ever known, though he was older now and no longer a magician. He was the only Fury left alive in the world, but he was not alone. He had his basketball, his ghosts, and an Indian woman named Grace Atwater asleep at home.

  Roman Gabriel Fury lived with Grace Atwater in a shotgun shack set down like a lighthouse in a small field about five miles north of Wellpinit, the only town on the Spokane Indian Reservation. Outside the shack, a mammoth satellite dish rose from the snow like the gray sail of a landlocked ship. Of course, unlike most others, that metal sail was covered with reservation bumper stickers and tribal graffiti:

  Custer had it coming!

  Proud to be a Spokane Indian

  E = MC2

  Fry bread power!

  American Indians for Nixon<
br />
  Roman had no idea who’d plastered the Nixon sticker on his dish—Indians were capable of the most self-destructive behavior—but Roman had never removed it because he believed wholeheartedly in free expression. Roman’s entire political philosophy revolved around the basic tenet that a person, any person, had only enough energy at any given time to believe in three things.

  “Choose your three,” Roman was often fond of pontificating. “And stick with them.”

  Roman himself believed in free expression, Grace Atwater, and basketball. Neither a Republican nor a Democrat, Roman had always voted for the candidate who looked like he or she could hit a twenty-foot jump shot with three seconds left on the clock and the home team down by one. Therefore, he was very excited that Bill Bradley, former Princeton All-American and New York Knick, was running for President of the United States.

  “Finally, a worthy candidate,” Roman had said during Bradley’s first press conference.

  “Come on,” Grace had said. “You can’t vote for a guy with a jump shot that ugly. And besides, you grew up in a matriarchy. You should vote for a woman.”

  “If there’s a woman out there with a jump shot,” Roman had replied, “who believes in the socialization of medicine and education, then I will not only vote for her, but I will also devote my life to her administration.”

  “Well, then, I guess that means I’m running for president,” she’d said.

  “Now, wouldn’t that surprise the hell out of them? I expect to see your announcement on television soon.”

  “I will begin my press conference by announcing that yes, I have smoked pot, and yes, I have had sex, lots of sex. In fact, I will introduce the seven men and one woman I have slept with and let them answer all the questions regarding my campaign and political philosophies.”

  “You will be a hero to all women and men.”

  “That’s the power of television.”

  Roman had bought the satellite dish, spending most of the money he’d won by hitting a trifecta at Playfair Race Track in Spokane, because he’d wanted to enrich his life by partaking in the free expression of sitcom writers and shopping-channel salespeople, and because he wanted to provide Grace with a source of entertainment, education, and dozens of episodes of Bonanza, featuring the talents of her favorite actor, Dan “Hoss” Blocker, and because he wanted to watch every single college and professional basketball game ever played.