The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian (2 page)

Honestly, Oscar was a better person than any human I had ever known.

"Mom," I said. "We have to take Oscar to the vet."

"He'll be all right," she said.

But she was
lying
. Her eyes always got darker in the middle when she lied. She was a Spokane Indian and a bad liar, which didn't make any sense. We Indians really should be better liars, considering how often we've been lied to.

"He's really sick, Mom," I said. "He's going to die if we don't take him to the doctor."

She looked hard at me. And her eyes weren't dark anymore, so I knew that she was going

to tell me the truth. And trust me, there are times when the
last thing
you want to hear is the truth.

"Junior, sweetheart," Mom said. "I'm sorry, but we don't have any money for Oscar."

"I'll pay you back," I said. "I promise."

"Honey, it'll cost hundreds of dollars, maybe a thousand."

"I'll pay back the doctor. I'll get a job."

Mom smiled all sad and hugged me hard.

Jeez, how stupid was I? What kind of job can a reservation Indian boy get? I was too

young to deal blackjack at the casino, there were only about fifteen green grass lawns on the reservation (and none of their owners outsourced the mowing jobs), and the only paper route was owned by a tribal elder named Wally. And he had to deliver only fifty papers, so his job was more like a hobby.

There was nothing I could do to save Oscar.

Nothing.

Nothing.

Nothing.

So I lay down on the floor beside him and patted his head and whispered his name
for
hours
.

Then Dad came home from
wherever
and had one of those long talks with Mom, and

they decided something
without me
.

And then Dad pulled down his rifle and bullets from the closet.

"Junior," he said. "Carry Oscar outside."

"No!" I screamed.

"He's suffering," Dad said. "We have to help him."

"You can't do it!" I shouted.

I wanted to punch my dad in the face. I wanted to punch lint in the nose and make him

bleed. I wanted to punch him in the eye and make him blind. I wanted to kick him in the balls and make him pass out.

I was hot mad. Volcano mad. Tsunami mad.

Dad just looked down at me with the saddest look in his yes. He was crying. He looked

weak
.

I wanted to hate him for his weakness.

I wanted to hate Dad and Mom for our poverty.

I wanted to blame them for my sick dog and for all the other sickness in the world.

But I can't blame my parents for our poverty because my mother and father are the twin

suns around which I orbit and my world would EXPLODE without them.

And it's not like my mother and father were born into wealth. It's not like they gambled away their family fortunes. My parents came from poor people who came from poor people who came from poor people, all the way back to the very first poor people.

Adam and Eve covered their privates with fig leaves; the first Indians covered their

privates
with their tiny hands
.

Seriously, I know my mother and father had their dreams when they were kids. They

dreamed about being something other than poor, but they never got the chance to be anything because nobody paid attention to their dreams.

Given the chance, my mother would have gone to college.

She still reads books like crazy. She buys them by the pound. And she remembers

everything she reads. She can

recite whole pages by memory. She's a human tape recorder. Really, my mom can read

the newspaper in fifteen minutes and tell me baseball scores, the location of every war, the latest guy to win the Lottery, and the high temperature in Des Moines, Iowa.

Given the chance, my father would have been a musician.

When he gets drunk, he sings old country songs. And blues, too. And he sounds good.

Like a pro. Like he should be on the radio. He plays the guitar and the piano a little bit. And he has this old saxophone from high school that he keeps all clean and shiny, like he's going to join a band at any moment.

But we reservation Indians don't get to realize our dreams. We don't get those chances. Or choices. We're just poor. That's all we are.

It sucks to be poor, and it sucks to feel that you somehow
deserve
to be poor. You start believing that you're poor because you're stupid and ugly. And then you start believing that you're stupid and ugly because you're Indian. And because you're Indian you start believing you're destined to be poor. It's an ugly circle and
there's nothing you can do about it
.

Poverty doesn't give you strength or teach you lessons about perseverance. No, poverty

only teaches you how to be poor.

So, poor and small and weak, I picked up Oscar. He licked my face because he loved and

trusted me. And I carried him out to the lawn, and I laid him down beneath our green apple tree.

"I love you, Oscar," I said.

He looked at me and I swear to you that he understood what was happening. He knew

what Dad was going to do. But Oscar wasn't scared. He was relieved.

But not me.

I ran away from there as fast as I could.

I wanted to run faster than the speed of sound, but nobody, no matter how much pain

they're in, can run that fast. So I heard the boom of my father's rifle when he shot my best friend.

A bullet only costs about two cents, and anybody can afford that.

After Oscar died, I was so depressed that I thought about crawling into a hole and

disappearing forever.

But Rowdy talked me out of it.

"It's not like anybody's going to notice if you go away," he said. "So you might as well gut it out."

Isn't that tough love?

Rowdy is the toughest kid on the rez. He is long and lean and strong like a snake.

His heart is as strong and mean as a snake, too.

But he is my best human friend and he cares about me, so he would always tell me the

truth.

And he is right. Nobody would miss me if I was gone.

Well, Rowdy would miss me, but he'd never admit that he'd miss me. He is way too

tough for that kind of emotion.

But aside from Rowdy, and my parents and sister and grandmother, nobody would miss

me.

I am a zero on the rez. And if you subtract zero from zero, you still have zero. So what's the point of subtracting when the answer is always the same?

So I gut it out.

I have to, I guess, especially since Rowdy is having one of the worst summers of his life.

His father is drinking hard and throwing hard punches, so Rowdy and his mother are

always walking around with bruised and bloody faces.

"It's war paint," Rowdy always says. "It just makes me look tougher."

And I suppose it does make him look tougher, because Rowdy never tries to hide his

wounds. He walks around the rez with a black eye and split lip.

This morning, he limped into our house, slumped in a chair, threw his sprained knee up

on the table, and smirked.

He had a bandage over his left ear.

"What happened to your head?" I asked.

"Dad said I wasn't listening," Rowdy said. "So he got all drunk and tried to make my ear a little bigger."

My mother and father are drunks, too, but they aren't mean like that. Not at all. They

sometimes ignore me. Sometimes they yell at me. But they never, ever, never, ever hit me. I've never even been spanked. Really. I think my mother sometimes wants to haul off and give me a slap, but my father won't let it happen.

He doesn't believe in physical punishment; he believes in staring so cold at me that I turn into a ice-covered ice cube with an icy filling.

My house is a safe place, so Rowdy spends most of his time with us. It's like he's a family member, an extra brother and son.

"You want to head down to the powwow?" Rowdy asked.

"Nah," I said.

The Spokane Tribe holds their annual powwow celebration over the Labor Day weekend.

This was the 127th annual one, and there would be singing, war dancing, gambling, storytelling, laughter, fry bread, hamburgers, hot dogs, arts and crafts, and plenty of alcoholic brawling.

I wanted no part of it.

Oh, the dancing and singing are great. Beautiful, in fact, but I'm afraid of all the Indians who aren't dancers and singers. Those rhythmless, talentless, tuneless Indians are most likely going to get drunk and beat the shit out of any available losers.

And I am always the most available loser.

"Come on," Rowdy said. "I'll protect you."

He knew that I was afraid of getting beat up. And he also knew that he'd probably have to fight for me.

Rowdy has protected me since we were born.

Both of us were pushed into the world on November 5, 1992, at Sacred Heart Hospital in

Spokane. I'm two hours older than Rowdy. I was born all broken and twisted, and he was born mad.

He was always crying and screaming and kicking and punching.

He bit his mother's breast when she tried to nurse him. He kept biting her, so she gave up and fed him formula.

He really hasn't changed much since then.

Well, at fourteen years old, it's not like he runs around biting women's breasts, but he does punch and kick and spit.

He got into his first fistfight in kindergarten. He took on three first graders during a snowball fight because one of them had thrown a piece of ice. Rowdy punched them out pretty quickly.

And then he punched the teacher who came to stop the fight.

He didn't hurt the teacher, not at all, but man, let me tell you, that teacher was angry.

"What's wrong with you?" he yelled.

"Everything!" Rowdy yelled back.

Rowdy fought everybody.

He fought boys and girls.

Men and women.

He fought stray dogs.

Hell, he fought the weather.

He'd throw wild punches at rain.

Honestly.

"Come on, you wuss," Rowdy said. "Let's go to powwow. You can't hide in your house forever. You'll turn into some kind of troll or something."

"What if somebody picks on me?" I asked.

"Then I'll pick on them."

"What if somebody picks my nose?" I asked.

"Then I'll pick your nose, too," Rowdy said.

"You're my hero," I said.

"Come to the powwow," Rowdy said. "Please."

It's a big deal when Rowdy is polite.

"Okay, okay," I said.

So Rowdy and I walked the three miles to the powwow grounds. It was dark, maybe eight

o'clock or so, and the drummers and singers were loud and wonderful.

I was excited. But I was getting hypothermic, too.

The Spokane Powwow is wicked hot during the day and freezing cold at night.

"I should have worn my coat," I said.

"Lighten up," Rowdy said.

"Let's go watch the chicken dancers," I said.

I think the chicken dancers are cool because, well, they dance like chickens. And you

already know how much I love chicken.

"This crap is boring," Rowdy said.

"We'll just watch for a little while," I said. "And then we'll go gamble or something."

"Okay," Rowdy said. He is the only person who listens to me.

We weaved our way through the parked cars, vans, SUVs, RVs, plastic tents, and deer-

hide tepees.

"Hey, let's go buy some bootleg whiskey," Rowdy said. "I got five bucks."

"Don't get drunk," I said. "You'll just get ugly."

"I'm already ugly," Rowdy said.

He laughed, tripped over a tent pole, and stumbled into a minivan. He bumped his face

against a window and jammed his shoulder against the rearview mirror.

It was pretty funny, so I laughed.

That was a mistake.

Rowdy got mad.

He shoved me to the ground and almost kicked me. He swung his leg at me, but pulled it

back at the last second. I could tell he wanted to hurt me for laughing. But I am his friend, his best friend, his only friend. He couldn't hurt me. So he grabbed a garbage sack filled with empty beer bottles and hucked it at the minivan.