The Toughest Indian in the World (16 page)

“I want to sign these,” he said to the woman working there.

“Why?”

“Because I wrote them.”

“Oh,” said the woman, immediately dropping into some highly trained and utterly pleasant demeanor. Perhaps everybody in Missoula, Montana, loved their jobs. “Please, let me get the manager. She’ll be glad to help you.”

“Hold on,” said Low Man as he handed her the yellow page. “Do you know where this place is?”

“Breads?”

There it was again, the place with the nickname. Everybody must go there. At that moment, there could be dozens of people in Breads. Low Man wondered if there was a woman, a lovely woman in the bookstore, a lonely woman who would drag him back to her house and make love to him without removing any of her clothes.

“Is it a good store?” asked Low Man.

“I used to work there,” she said. “It closed down a month ago.”

Low Man wondered if her eyes changed color when she mourned.

“The kid at 7-Eleven didn’t tell me that.”

“Oh,” said the woman, completely confused. She was young, just months out of some small Montana town like Wolf Point or Harlem or Ronan, soon to return. “Well, let me get the manager.”

“Wait,” said Low Man, handing her his computer case. “I found this over in the mystery section.”

He’d purchased the computer case through a catalogue, and had regretted it ever since. The bag was bulky, heavy, poorly designed.

“Thank you. I’ll put it in Lost and Found.”

Low Man’s computer was an outdated Apple, its hard drive stuffed to the brim with three unpublished mystery novels and hundreds of programs and applications that he’d never used after downloading them.

Free of his possessions, Low Man waited. He watched the men and women move through the bookstore.

He wondered what
Missoula
meant, if there’d been some cavalry soldier named Missoula who’d made this part of the world safe for white people. He wondered if he could kill somebody, an Indian or a white soldier, and what it would feel like. He wondered if he would cry when he had to wash blood from his hands.

He studied the faces of the white people in the store. He decided to choose the one that he would kill if he were forced to kill. Not the woman with the child, and certainly not the child, but maybe the man reading movie magazines, and, most likely, the old man asleep in the poetry-section chair.

Low Man stared at the gold band on the dead man’s left hand. Low Man was still staring when the dead man woke up and walked out of the store.

Low Man had been married twice, to a Lummi woman and a Yakama woman, and had fathered three kids, one each with his ex-wives, the third the result of a one-night stand with a white woman in Santa Fe. He sent money and books to his Indian children, but he hadn’t seen his white kid in ten years.

“Mr. Smith, Low Man Smith?” asked the Barnes and Noble manager upon her arrival in Low Man’s world. She was blond, blue-eyed, plain.

“Please,” he said. “Call me Chuck.”

“My name is Eryn.”

Low Man wondered if he was going to sleep with her, this Eryn. He’d spent many nights in hotel rooms with various bookstore employees and literary groupies. That was one of the unpublicized perks of the job. He always wondered what the women saw in him, why they wanted to have sex with a stranger simply based on his ability to create compelling metaphors, or even when he failed to create compelling metaphors. The women were interested in him no matter what
The New York Times Book Review
had to say about his latest novel. Low Man was bored with his own writing, with his books, and to be honest, he’d grown bored with his literary life and the sexual promiscuity that seemed to go with it. Last year, after meeting Carlotta at the Native American Children of Alcoholics convention in Albuquerque, after sharing a bed with her for five nights, he’d vowed to remain faithful to her—and had been faithful to her and the idea of her—even though they’d made no promises to each other, even though she’d talked openly of the three men who were actively pursuing her, of the one man that she still loved, who had never been named Chuck.

“Mr. Smith, Chuck?” asked Eryn, the Barnes and Noble manager. “Are you okay?”

“Yes, sorry,” said Low Man. “I’m very tired.”

“I wish we’d known you were going to be in town,” she said. “We would have ordered more copies of your books.”

She smiled. Low Man decided that she was the kind of woman who lost sleep so that she could finish reading a good novel. He wondered if he was going to wake up before her the next morning and pass the time by scanning the titles of the books stacked on her nightstand.

“I didn’t know I was going to be in Missoula,” he said. “I was supposed to be spending a week up on the Flathead Reservation.”

“Oh, I thought you might be here to see Tracy.”

“Who?”

“Tracy,” said the manager, and when that elicited no response from Low Man, she added, “Tracy Johnson. You went to college together, right?”

“She lives here?”

“Actually, she works here at the bookstore.”

“Really?”

“Well, she’s here part-time while she’s getting her MFA at the university.”

“She’s a writer?”

“Yes. Didn’t you know that?”

“I haven’t seen Tracy in ten years,” said Low Man.

He closed his eyes and when he opened them again two uniformed police officers were standing in front of him. One of the officers, the tall one with blue eyes, carried Low Man’s suitcase.

“Mr. Smith,” said the tall cop. “Are you Mr. Smith?”

“No, no,” said Low Man. “You must be mistaken. My name is Crazy Horse.”

Later, in the police station, Low Man paged through another telephone directory. He hoped that Tracy Johnson’s number was listed.

He found her.

“This better be you,” she said when she answered the phone, clearly expecting somebody else.

“Hi, Tracy, it’s Low Man.”

Low Man remembered, when it came to poetry, that a strategic pause was called a caesura.

“Bah,” she said.

“No bah.”

“Damn, Low, it’s been forever. Are you still an Indian?”

“Yes, I am. Are you still a lesbian?”

They both remembered their secret language, their shared ceremonies.

“Definitely,” she said. “In fact, I thought you were my partner. I’m supposed to pick her up after work. We’ve got a big date tonight.”

“Well, you think maybe you could pick me up, too?”

“Are you in town?” she asked, her voice cracking with excitement. Low Man hoped it was excitement, though he feared it was something else. His chest ached with the memory of her. During college, when he was still drinking, he had once crawled through her apartment window and slept on her living room floor, though he’d made sure to wake up before dawn and leave before she’d ever known he was there. During the long walk home, he’d veered off the road into a shallow swamp, not because he was too drunk to properly navigate but because he wanted to do something self-flagellating and noble, or at least something that approximated nobility—a drunk twenty-year-old’s idea of nobility. He’d wanted to be a drunk monk in love.

“Damn, Low,” she said. “Why didn’t you call me before? I would have gone out and bought a dress. I know how much you like me in dresses.”

She remembered him so well. He liked that.

“I didn’t know I was going to be here,” he said. “And I didn’t know you lived here.”

“So, how’d you get my number?”

“Well, your manager at the bookstore told me you were getting an MFA.”

“Eryn,” she said. “I bet you were wondering if she was going to hop on you, right?”

Low Man couldn’t answer.

“Damn, Low,” she said, laughing loudly. Her laughter had always been too loud, impolite, and wonderful. “Eryn is a lesbian. You always fall for the lesbians.”

Low Man had once kissed Tracy, though they each remembered it differently. She’d thought the kiss was a desperate attempt to change her mind about him in particular, and about men in general, but he believed that he’d kissed her only because he wanted to know how it felt, how she smelled and tasted, before he put his feelings into a strongbox and locked them away forever.

“Yeah, that’s me,” said Low. “The Dyke Mike. Now, can you pick me up?”

“Low, I can’t, really,” she said. “I mean, my partner’s parents are coming over for dinner. They drove over here from Spokane Rez and, like, it’s the first time I’ve met them, and they’re not exactly happy their daughter has come roaring out of the closet on the motorcycle called Me.”

“I really need you to pick me up.”

“Low, I want to see you, I really do, but the time is so bad. How about tomorrow? Can’t we do this tomorrow? Hell, we’ll talk for three days straight, but I really need tonight, okay?”

“I’m in jail.”

Low wondered if there was a word in Navajo that meant caesura.

“What did you do?”

“I broke my heart.”

“I didn’t realize that was illegal.”

“Well,” he said. “In Missoula, it seems to be a misdemeanor.”

“Are you arrested?”

“No,” said Low. “Not really. The police said they just don’t want me to be alone tonight.”

“Low, what happened?”

“I came here to see a woman. I was going to ask her to marry me.”

“And she said no.”

“Not exactly.”

“What then?”

“She married Chuck yesterday and moved to Flagstaff.”

“I hate Arizona.”

She’d always known exactly what to say.

“Low, honey,” she added. “I’ll be right there.”

Tracy Johnson drove a 1972 half-ton Chevrolet pickup. Red with long streaks of gray primer paint. Four good tires and one bad alternator. Hay-bale molding in the bed.

“This truck,” said Low as he climbed in. “What stereotype are you trying to maintain?”

“There are no stereotypes in Missoula, Montana,” she said, appraising his face and body. “You’ve gained weight. A lot of weight.”

“So have you,” he said. “I love all of your chins.”

Forty pounds overweight, she was beautiful, wearing a loose T-shirt and tight blue jeans. Her translucent skin bled light into her dark hair.

On the radio, Hank Williams sang white man blues.

“You’re lovely,” said Low. “Just lovely.”

“Yes, I know,” she said. “But don’t get your hopes up.”

“My hopes have never been up,” he said, though he knew he was lying. “Your partner, what’s her name?”

“Sara Polatkin,” said Tracy. “She’s Indian.”

“Indian dot-in-the-head or Indian arrow-in-the-heart?”

“She’s Spokane. From the rez. Unlike your lame urban Indian ass.”

“Yes,” said Low Man. “And you can say that, given you’ve spent so much time on reservations.”

Tracy dropped the truck into gear and drove down a narrow street.

“Yeah,” she said. “I’m freaking out her parents. Completely. Not only am I a lesbian but I’m also white.”

“The double whammy.”

“She’s in law school,” said Tracy. “She’s smart. Even smarter than you.”

“Good for you.”

“We’re getting married.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, that’s why Sara’s parents are coming over. They’re going to try to talk her out of it.”

“Jesus,” said Low Man, wondering why he had bothered to get on the flight from Seattle.

“Jesus has nothing to do with it,” said Tracy as she stared ahead and smiled.

Ahead, on the right side of the street, Sara Polatkin was waiting outside the coffee joint. She was short, thin, very pretty, even with her bad teeth and eccentric clothes—a black dress with red stockings, and Chuck Taylor basketball shoes with Cat in the Hat socks.

Low Man couldn’t look Sara in the eye when she climbed into the truck. He remembered how Crazy Horse—that great Indian warrior, that savior, that Christ-figure—was shot in the face by his lover’s husband.

Low Man sat on the bench seat between Tracy and Sara. He watched as the women leaned over him to kiss each other. He could smell their perfumes.

“So, you’re Low,” said Sara, her voice inflected with a heavy singsong reservation accent. She probably had to work hard to keep that accent. Her black hair hung down past her waist.

“It’s Low Man, both words, Low Man,” he said. Only three people had ever been allowed to call him Low: his mother, his late father, and Tracy.

“Okay, Low Man, both words, Low Man,” said Sara. “So, you’re the one who is madly in love with my wife.”

“Yes, I was,” he said, careful with the tense. “And she’s not your wife, yet.”

“Details. Do you still love her?”

Low Man hesitated—
caesura
—and Tracy rushed to fill the silence.

“He just got his heart broken by an Indian woman,” she said. “I don’t think you want to be the second one today, huh, Sara?”

Sara’s face went dark, darker.

“Did you ever fuck her?” Sara asked him, and Low Man heard the Spokane River in her voice, and heard the great Columbia as well, and felt the crash of their confluence.

“Sara, let it go,” said Tracy, with some traces of laughter still in her voice.

“Do they talk like that in law school?” Low Man asked Sara.

“Yeah,” she said. “Except it’s in Latin.”

Low Man could feel the Indian woman’s eyes on him, but he didn’t return the stare. He watched the road moving ahead of them.

“Sara, let it go,” said Tracy, and there was something else in her voice then. “Remember, you’re the one who used to sleep with guys.”

Tracy put her hand on Low’s knee.

“Sorry, Low,” she said. “But these born-again dykes can be so righteous.”

“Yeah, yeah, I’m sorry, Low Man,” said Sara. “I’m just nervous about my ma and pa.”

“So, you’re a new lesbian, huh?” asked Low Man.

“I’m still in the wrapper,” said Sara.

“She’s still got that new-car smell,” said Tracy.

“What made you change teams?” asked Low.

“I’m running away from the things of man,” she said.

At dinner, Low Man sat at the small table between Tracy and Sara. Directly across from him, Sid Polatkin, longtime husband, held the hand of Estelle Polatkin, longtime wife. All five of them had ordered the salmon special because it had just seemed easier.

“Do you think the salmon will be good?” asked Estelle, her voice thick with a reservation accent, much thicker than her daughter’s.