Indian Killer (11 page)

She was still fuming when she stepped into the QuickMart convenience store on the Ave. A penniless student, Marie usually had cereal for breakfast and dinner every day, and also for lunch on weekends. She was out of milk and QuickMart had the cheapest quart of nonfat in the University District. She was standing in the cashier’s line when David and Aaron Rogers walked into the store.

“Hey, Marie,” said David, obviously happy to see her. “How you doing?”

Marie was in no mood to talk to David, nor the big hulk with him. Aaron Rogers was a foot taller and a hundred pounds heavier than Marie. Aaron was more conventionally handsome than his younger brother, but Aaron’s features seemed temporary, as if his blue eyes, aquiline nose, and strong jawline were simply borrowed from his parents’ faces.

“Hey. What’s your name again?” Marie asked David. She knew his name but wanted to offend him by pretending to forget it.

“It’s David, David Rogers. And this is my brother Aaron.”

With open disdain, Aaron stared down at Marie. She could smell the beer on his breath. She never drank, and absolutely hated its effect on people.

“So,” Aaron said to Marie. “I hear you’ve been a pain in the ass.”

Marie looked to David for an explanation.

“Hey, I never said that,” David said to Marie. “I just said you were tough on the professor.”

“Politically correct bullshit,” said Aaron. “That’s what I think.”

Without a word, Marie turned away from the brothers, paid for her milk, and walked out of the store. She was halfway down the block when David caught up to her.

“Hey, hey,” he said. “I’m sorry about that. Ignore him. He’s kind of a jerk.”

“He’s your brother,” said Marie. “Blood runs thick, enit?”

“Yeah, maybe. Listen, it’s just Aaron, you know? He doesn’t mean it. He just talks tough. He’s really a nice guy. I mean, he’s really good to me. He’s kind of been taking care of me since our mother died.”

“I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay. It was a long time ago. But Aaron just had to be tougher. He’s not very good at showing his feelings and stuff.”

“David,” asked Marie. “Why are you trying so hard?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, why are you trying so hard to impress me? I’m really sorry your mother died, but it doesn’t mean much to me. And I couldn’t care less about your brother, you know? So, why are you telling me all of this?”

“I don’t know. I guess, well, it’s because I’m really sorry for what happened to Indians. It was a really bad deal.”

“Yeah, you could say that.”

“I just never got the chance to talk to a real Indian before. And you’re real, so I wanted to tell you how I felt.”

Marie looked at David. She knew he was hiding something.

“Listen,” he said. “I heard about this casino up on the Tulalip Indian Reservation. I was wondering if you’d come with me. Kind of be my tour guide. Maybe Mather would give us extra credit. We could work on a paper together. Get the white boy’s and Indian girl’s take on it, you know?”

“David,” Marie said. “I don’t know what you’re up to, but I’m not falling for it. Just leave me alone, okay?”

Marie left him standing there. David wanted to tell her about the camas fields back home. She was from the reservation. She must know about camas. He wanted to tell her about the Indian family that had come in the middle of the night to dig roots. Mother, father, four children, the old woman. Maybe Marie knew those Indians. Maybe Marie was one of those Indians. Maybe little Marie was running as David and Buck fired shots above her head. As Aaron shot at the Indian father. David wanted to tell Marie how he’d found one of those Indian root-digging sticks the morning after the shooting, and had buried it where his brother and father would never find it.

A
FTER SHE’D LEFT DAVID
Rogers standing in the street outside the convenience store, Marie walked home to her small apartment. As she walked, her anger began to fade. She’d always had a quick temper, was the first to shout obscenities or throw fists, but she was also the first to laugh nervously and apologize. By the time she opened the door of her apartment and saw Reggie Polatkin sitting at the shabby kitchen table, Marie was calm. She’d neither seen nor heard from Reggie in over a year, but she was not surprised to find him waiting for her. Indian relatives had a way of just showing up at the doorstep.

“Hey, cousin,” Reggie said to Marie.

“How’d you get in?” Marie asked as she placed her milk in the refrigerator. Her apartment had one microscopic bedroom, a bathroom with just enough room for toilet, sink, and small shower stall, and a third room that functioned as living room, kitchen, dining room, and study. Dozens of books were piled onto every free space. Books served as furniture by propping up the black-and-white television, by supporting shelves that held yet other books, and by serving as impromptu coffee and end tables. Overpriced, depressingly cold, and battered by generations of student renters, the apartment felt like some tiny box of a reservation in the middle of a city. Marie had tried to brighten the place with flowers and colorful prints, but she still felt miserable whenever she came home.

“I got in by magic,” said Reggie. “And I told the landlord I was your long lost brother.”

“Long lost is right.”

Reggie smiled. He was a very handsome man, with a strong nose, clear brown skin, and startling blue eyes that instantly revealed his half-breed status. In an attempt to look more traditionally Indian, he braided his long black hair into two thick ropes. He was just a few inches over five feet, which was pretty short even for a small people like the Spokanes. Like many short men, Indian and not, Reggie tried to compensate for his stature by growing a mustache. But he had an Indian mustache, meaning that ten or twelve thick black whiskers poked out from the corners of his mouth.

Reggie had grown up in Seattle with his white father, Bird, and his Spokane Indian mother, Martha. Though he’d visited the reservation a few times during his youth, Reggie had always been a stranger to Marie. Reggie was the mysterious urban Indian, the college student, the ambitious half-breed, the star basketball player, the Indian who would make a difference. On the reservation, among Marie’s family, that was how Reggie had always been described, as the one who would make a difference. Reggie carried with him the collective dreams of the family. Marie had always been jealous of that, and when Reggie got himself kicked out of college because of an altercation with Dr. Clarence Mather, she’d felt a strange combination of relief and sadness. She’d felt sadness because she’d come to the University of Washington precisely because Reggie was enrolled there. She’d thought she would feel safer if she was near a relative, no matter how distant and aloof he was. And she’d felt relief because she’d hoped that Reggie’s failure somehow made the possibility of her failure less likely, as if Reggie’s expulsion from college had somehow paid in full her family’s psychic debt.

Now, as Reggie Polatkin sat at her kitchen table, smiling and acting as if he were a regular visitor, Marie wondered how such an intelligent man could have sabotaged himself in such a profound way.

Reggie Polatkin, ten years old and little, had stared up at his white father, Bird Lawrence, a small man, barely taller than his son, but with huge arms and a coarsely featured face that made him appear larger than he was.

“Come on, you little shit,” Bird had whispered. “You want to be a dirty Indian your whole life? What’s the answer?”

“Dad, I don’t know.”

“What?”

“I don’t know, I’m sorry.”

Bird had slapped Reggie across the face.

“Okay, now for the second question. What year did the Pilgrims arrive in Massachusetts, and what was the name of the Indian who helped them survive?”

“Sixteen twenty,” Reggie had whispered. “And his name was Squanto.”

“And what happened to him?”

“He was sold into slavery in Europe. But he escaped and made his way back to his village. But everybody was dead from smallpox.”

“And was the smallpox good or bad?”

“Bad.”

“Wrong,” Bird had said and slapped Reggie again. “The smallpox was God’s revenge. It killed all the hostile Indians. You want to be a hostile Indian?”

“No,” Reggie had said.

At that time, in the early seventies, Bird had been the area director for the Bureau of Indian Affairs, which was under siege by the American Indian Movement. All over the country, hostile AIM members had been attacking peaceful BIA Indians and non-Indians. Bird had known that the murder rate in Pine Ridge, South Dakota, was the highest in the country. All because of the hostiles. And those hostiles had been making it tough to help the good Indians. It had been happening since Europeans had first arrived in the United States. In the nineteenth century, while a peaceful and intelligent chief like Red Cloud had been trying to help his people, a hostile Indian like Crazy Horse had been making it worse for everybody. But Bird had always believed that Crazy Horse got what he deserved, a bayonet in his belly, while Red Cloud had lived a long life.

Martha Polatkin had married Bird because she was searching for a way off the reservation. She’d wanted to have a big house, a nice car, green grass, and, no matter how cruel Bird was, she’d known he could provide her with all of that. And because he had, in fact, provided her with all of that, she’d tried to ignore Bird’s hatred of “hostile” Indians, even after he’d impregnated her and she’d given birth to Reggie. As for Bird Lawrence, he’d hated hostile Indians so much that he insisted Reggie use Polatkin, his Indian surname, until he’d earned the right to be a Lawrence, until he’d become the appropriate kind of Indian.

“Do you want to be a hostile?” Bird had asked Reggie again.

“No,” Reggie had said.

“Good, good. What was the name of the Indian who led the Pueblo Revolt of 1680 through 1692, and why did he begin the revolt?”

“His name was Pope. He was from San Juan Pueblo, and he said a spirit had told him to rid his homeland of the Spanish.”

“What was the name of the Spanish commander who ended the revolt?”

“Uh, Diego. Diego.”

“Diego what?”

“Diego…I don’t remember.”

Bird had punched Reggie in the stomach, knocking the wind out of him. When Reggie could speak again, Bird had continued the surprise quiz.

“You remember that crazy Indian’s name, but not the name of the white man who saved thousands of lives? Why is that?”

“I don’t know.”

“You’re hopeless. Can you explain why the Iroquois Confederacy fell apart from the years 1777 to 1783?”

“Because of the Revolutionary War.”

“And?”

“Well, some Iroquois, like the Mohawks, wanted to fight with the British. But the Oneidas and the Tuscaroras wanted to fight with the United States. And the Seneca and the Onondaga didn’t want to fight at all. Nobody could get along, so they broke apart from the Confederacy.”

“And which Indians were right?”

“The Oneidas and Tuscaroras.”

“Correct. Name the four Indian cowards who were indicted for the murder of two FBI agents on July twenty-sixth near Pine Ridge, South Dakota.”

“Leonard Peltier, Bob Robideau, an Eagle, and, and…”

“I’ll give you that one. Now, for the last question. What was the name of the Indian who helped raise the flag on Iwo Jima during World War Two?”

“Ira Hayes.”

“And what happened to him?”

“He was a hero.”

“No, you idiot. What really happened to him?”

“He died of exposure in the winter of 1955. Passed out in the snow.”

“Why did he do that?”

“Because he was a dirty Indian.”

“Exactly, and what tribe was he?”

“I don’t remember.”

Bird had slapped Reggie again and bloodied his nose.

“I want you to know I’m doing this for your own good,” Bird had said. “I don’t want you to end up like all the other Indians. I want you to be special. I don’t want you to be running around with a gun. I want you to love your country. I want you to know your history.” The white father gave his Indian son a handkerchief. “Here, clean your face.”

Trying to avoid his father’s beatings, Reggie had always studied hard and brought home excellent report cards. Bird would beam with pride and tape the reports to the refrigerator, that place of familial honor. On those rare occasions when Reggie had brought home a failed test or a flawed term paper, Bird would beat him.

“You stupid, dirty Indian,” Bird would say, never above a whisper. “You’ll never get into college this way. You want to be a drunk? You want to be one of those Indians staggering around downtown? What do you want to be, Reggie? What do you want to be?”

Over the years, Reggie had come to believe that he was successful because of his father’s white blood, and that his Indian mother’s blood was to blame for his failures. Throughout high school, he’d spent all of his time with white kids. He’d ignored his mother, Martha. He hadn’t gone to local powwows. He hadn’t danced or sang. He’d pretended to be white, and had thought his white friends accepted him as such. He’d buried his Indian identity so successfully that he’d become invisible.

Reggie had graduated from high school with honors and enrolled as a history major at the University of Washington. There he had met Dr. Clarence Mather.

“Hey,” Marie said to Reggie as she sat at the table across from him. “I’m taking a class with your favorite teacher.”

Reggie’s eyes narrowed.

“Yeah,” said Marie. “Dr. Clarence Mather.”

“He’s a fucking liar.”

“Yes, he is.”

Reggie was fuming. He’d never told Marie what had happened with Mather. She’d heard all kinds of stories from other Indian students. She’d heard Mather and Reggie had been lovers and that Reggie had threatened to kill Mather if he ever revealed it. She’d also heard that Reggie and Mather had fought because they’d fallen in love with the same Indian woman. She’d heard that Mather had stolen some of Reggie’s academic research and claimed it as his own. So many stories, so many half-truths and outright lies. But since Indians used gossip as a form of literature, Marie knew she’d never heard the true story about Reggie and Mather. She knew the real story was probably something very pedestrian.