Indian Killer (28 page)

“You hungry?” asked Marie. “There might be a few sandwiches in the back. Help yourself.”

John looked behind him and saw the metal racks that held the sandwiches. Other than the racks, the van was bare. John spotted a sandwich on the floor and picked it up. He worried that it might be poisoned.

“Did you make this?” John asked Marie.

“Yes.”

John knew then that it could not be dangerous. He was hungry and wanted to eat it, but felt guilty because he had nothing to offer Marie in return.

“Go ahead,” she said.

The sandwich tasted like smoke.

“Man,” Marie said. “I hate this guy.”

“Who?” asked John with a mouth full of bread and bologna.

“Wilson. He’s a cannibal. No, he’s not even eating his own kind. He’s a scavenger. He’s a maggot.”

The sandwich suddenly tasted like anger.

“And there’s this other guy, Dr. Clarence Mather. He’s teaching my Native lit class, you know? He’s one of those kind who thinks he knows everything about Indians. An Indian expert. Arrogant asshole.”

John nodded. He remembered the night he had followed Marie as she had been following Mather.

“You were following your teacher,” John said.

Marie stared at the taxi ahead of them.

“How do you know that?” she asked.

“I was following you.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know.”

Marie seemed to accept that answer as being honest and decided she’d have to be more careful in the future.

“If you ask me,” said Marie. “The wrong white guys are dying.”

The sandwich soured. John quickly finished it and licked his fingers. He thought about Jack Wilson and Clarence Mather, and wondered how their fear would taste.

The taxi pulled up in front of Wilson’s, and Marie pulled up right behind the taxi, her headlights filling the cab.

“Hey!” shouted Eric as he noticed the van. “I think we’ve got company!”

Wilson turned around in his seat. He could not see who was in the van because of its headlights. Eric reached under his seat and pulled out a sawed-off golf club, a one-iron. Wilson and Eric stepped out of the taxi at the same time. When Marie turned off her headlights, Wilson recognized her as the leader of the protest, Marla or Maria or something like that, but he couldn’t quite see who was with her.

“What do you want?” screamed Eric, waving his golf club.

“It’s those protesters,” said Wilson.

“Come on out of there!” shouted Eric, “I’ll give you something to protest!”

Marie smiled at the cab driver’s bravado. He did not look like much of a fighter, or a golfer. John saw the club and closed his hands into fists. Just two white men. John knew he could hurt them.

“Come on!” shouted Eric.

John stepped out of the truck.

“No,” said Marie, but John was already marching toward Wilson and Eric. The cab driver quickly backpedaled, but John saw that Wilson held his ground with a surprising lack of fear. Actually, Wilson was too shocked by John’s obvious resemblance to his own hero, Aristotle Little Hawk, to be afraid. Wilson felt as if he’d brought Little Hawk to life through some kind of magic. Wilson had always felt magical, but he’d had no idea how much power he really possessed.

“Aristotle,” said Wilson.

John knew about Aristotle. The philosopher was required knowledge for Catholic schoolboys. But he had no idea why this white man was talking about an ancient Greek while a crazy cab driver was swinging a tiny golf club. It was very confusing. John wondered if these white men were real.

So John reached out to touch Wilson, to test his reality. Eric suddenly found his courage and, screaming like a television Indian, charged John. Wilson heard the screams and reflexively fell to the ground. Eric swung his one-iron blindly at John, who snatched the club out of the air and took it away. Disarmed and terrified, Eric fell to the ground beside Wilson. John raised the club above his head and stepped toward the men. Wilson reached inside his jacket and John wondered if the white man had a weapon. Then Wilson relaxed and showed John both hands.

“John!” shouted Marie. For a brief moment, she thought that John was going to smash the men’s brains with the golf club, but John just screamed and threw the strange weapon toward the apartment building. Glass shattered. Windows lit up. Marie dropped the van into drive and pulled up beside John. Wilson and Eric scrambled out of the way.

“Get in! Get in!” shouted Marie. John looked at her. He wondered if she was real. He turned away from her, ran away, disappeared. Marie watched him running, then she quickly drove away.

“I’m glad you saw them,” said Eric. “You can tell the cops who it was! Those damn protesters!”

“No,” said Wilson, firm in his belief that the big Indian would have valuable answers. “We don’t need the cops. I was mistaken. I don’t know who they were.”

“But you said you recognized them?”

“No, I was mistaken.”

“Jeez, it’s a good thing that wasn’t the Indian Killer, huh? We’d both be dead!”

“Maybe. Maybe not.”

Eric shrugged his shoulders. He was sure Wilson was lying, but not sure why. It didn’t much matter since no one had been hurt. Wilson was already unaware of Eric, of Marie, of everything but John. Wilson was enchanted with John. Wilson thought that a man who looked like that could be Little Hawk. Wilson wanted John all to himself.

“M
R. HARRIS, CAN I
have a few words with you?”

“Hey, dude, are you, like, a cop?”

“Homicide detective, actually.”

“Well, I haven’t been homicided. At least, not yet. No thanks to those Indians, though. They blinded me, man.”

“The doctors think you’ll be able to regain some of your vision. Maybe all of it.”

“That’s what they tell me. But I don’t know, man. I’m scared. I can’t believe what those Indians did.”

“Yes, well, that’s what I’d like to talk to you about. Are you sure they were Indian?”

“Positive. Braids and all. Just like the movies.”

“Do you think you could identify them? Perhaps work with one of our sketch artists to come up with a composite? I know it will be hard without your eyes. But we’ve got to try.”

“Just like the movies, huh?”

“Just like the movies.”

“Yeah, man, I’ll do my best. Like I said, they were some righteously angry dudes.”

“Can you tell me exactly what happened that night?”

“Yeah. You see, man, I’ve been hitching across the country, trying to find myself, you know? Out there in the open spaces, man, you can see some powerful shit, I mean, some powerful stuff. But anyway, I was on my way to Canada. I, like, met these Canadian dudes down in Arizona a few weeks back and they said I could visit them anytime I was in Canada.”

“And that’s why you were camped on the Indian Heritage High School football field.”

“Yeah, but I didn’t know it was an Indian school. It was some righteous grass to me. I mean, I knew it was a football field, but I don’t believe in football, you know? I was rolled up in my sleeping bag, sleeping, when these three guys pulled me out and started beating me up.”

“And you’re sure there were three of them?”

“Uno, dos, tres.”

“And did they say anything? Mention any names or places?”

“Hey, man, they were recording me.”

“Recording?”

“Yeah, with a tape recorder, you know, like it was an interview or something, like they wanted to keep a sound track or something. And they kept calling me weird names.”

“Can you remember what they called you?”

“No chance, man. I was out of it by then. I was all dizzy and everything was moving in circles. Everything spinning, and then one dude shoved his fingers into my eyes and here I am in the hospital.”

“Is there anything else you can remember?”

“I think one of them was deaf.”

“Deaf?”

“Yeah, all three were talking with their fingers, you know? Sign language. And one of them had blue eyes. A blue-eyed Indian.”

“You’re positive about that?”

“Yeah, yeah. You know, I was listening to the boob tube and heard something about this Indian Killer. You think these guys have something to do with that?”

“We’re looking into that possibility.”

“It’s so strange. It’s, like, those Indians guys hurt me just because I’m white. But I haven’t done anything bad to Indians. I like Indians, man. I even visited a couple of reservations. The Navajo, the Hopi. Beautiful. And this Indian Killer is killing white guys just because they’re white, right? And he kidnapped that little boy because he was white?”

“That seems to be the motive.”

“And that little dude, what’s his name, Mark?”

“Yes, Mark Jones.”

“Yeah, well, he certainly didn’t do anything bad to Indians. I mean, not every white guy is an evil dude, you know?”

I
F A WHITE STRANGER,
completely unaware of the year, happened to stumble into Big Heart’s Soda and Juice Bar and heard the music blasting from the jukebox, he might assume that he was living in 1966. Or 1972. Perhaps as late as 1978. The white stranger would see over two hundred Indians dancing. A white stranger might have assumed the Indians were celebrating something special, and they were. Mick had opened the bar, despite the Indian Killer scare, and was pulling in the dough. The Indians were dancing to Hank Williams, Patsy Cline, Roy Orbison, Johnny Cash, Chuck Berry, early Stones, earlier Beatles. Disco had been outlawed by the patrons of Big Heart’s. Black music was rare. World music never made it through the door. Lou Reed and Kiss were favorites, though. Blood, Sweat, and Tears, Three Dog Night, and Creedence Clearwater Revival were revered. But there were no white strangers in Big Heart’s that night, though a few dozen Indians were new in town, just visiting, playing in a basketball tournament, looking for love, lost. All thinking about the Indian Killer. John was there too, neither stranger nor tourist. He had no definition for what he was. Drinking his Pepsi, he sat at the bar.

He felt guilty for having left Marie alone with Wilson and the cab driver, but John had been frightened by his anger. He stood over those two white men and wanted to kill them both. He wanted to smash their faces, break their bones, and crush their blue eyes. The only thing that stopped him was the thought of Marie, who would have witnessed it. She should not be subjected to such things. She was special and deserved something better. John had wanted to trust her, the woman who gave sandwiches away, but her thick glasses were frightening. Her crooked front teeth were absolutely terrifying. John could feel the heat spreading in his belly when he thought of her, the Indian woman with small breasts and thick hips. He wanted to tell of his plan, his need to kill the white man who was responsible for everything that had gone wrong. But she might misunderstand. John could not risk that. He had not meant to leave her behind, but he had to protect himself. He could have crushed the writer and cab driver, but that would ruin everything. There were too many eyes watching. John had to sacrifice his time with Marie so that he could live. He had to have priorities, make schedules, budget his time and energy. He had found his way to Big Heart’s because he knew he would be safe there. So many Indians. Though he knew he wasn’t a real Indian, John knew he looked like one. His face was his mask. John knew all of this to be true.

If John had happened to look at the Big Heart’s dance floor right then, he would have seen two Indian women, tired of waiting to be asked, dancing all by themselves. He would have seen dozens of other dancing couples, and large groups of single Indian men. Too shy to dance, they sat in large groups, whispering about their romantic intentions.

“Hey, you see that one?”

“Yeah.”

“I’m going to ask her to dance.”

“When?”

“Pretty soon. I’m taking my time.”

Those discussions went on for hours while the women waited, or danced with each other, or left the bar. When an Indian man finally found the courage to dance, he usually stood in place, shuffled his feet back and forth, snapped his fingers in time with the music. The only Indian men who danced with abandon were the same ones who danced traditionally during the powwows. Whenever a fancydancer or a grassdancer took the floor at Big Heart’s, he was the object of much curiosity.

John never danced. He barely talked. Indian women often approached him because he was a big, handsome buck with long, black hair. The women sat in dark corners and watched John.

“You see that big one over there? He looks like he just got off a horse.”

“Oh, yeah, enit? I think he’s Navajo. You know I’d comb his hair every night.”

The Indian women would laugh. They were always laughing. John wanted to laugh. He knew his laughter would make him feel more like a real Indian. He listened closely to the laughter, tried to memorize it. A booming belly laugh from a fat Lummi Indian. A low chuckle from Jim the Colville. A poke-to-the-rib-cage giggle from Lillian, a Makah. All kinds of laughter. All kinds of Indians. John would practice at home, stretch his mouth into those strange shapes called smiles, and laugh loudly enough to make his neighbors nervous.

John sat at the bar and laughed. Nobody paid much attention. It was not unusual for an Indian to sit alone at a bar and laugh.

“Hey.” A woman’s voice. John ignored it.

“Hey.” The woman again. John closed his eyes.

“Hey,” said the woman as she touched John’s shoulder. Frightened, he whirled in his seat. The Indian woman stepped back. John studied her for any signs of danger. She was tall and dark, her black hair cut into a stylish bob. Beautiful and confident. She wore a red shirt and blue jeans.

“You want to dance?” she asked.

John shook his head, turned back to his soda.

“Come on,” she said. “Shock me.”

She took John’s hand and led him onto the dance floor. He did not recognize the song, but it was too fast.

“My name is Fawn. I’m Crow,” she said, dancing a circle around John. She spun, shook her hips and hair. She put her hands around John’s waist and danced in closer.