The Toughest Indian in the World (22 page)

“If I tell you, will you leave?”

“Yeah.”

“No, man, I got perfect scores on my CAT.”

“Really?”

“Truth.”

“I got in because of affirmative action.”

“What do you man? You? You’re white.”

“Well, not because of affirmative action, not exactly. I got in here because I’m a legacy. Do you know what that is?”

“Yes, I do.”

“My father went here. My father, my grandfather, and my great-grandfather. I’m a legacy.”

“So what?”

“So, they let me in because of my family’s money. Not because I deserve to be here. I don’t have the grades. My test scores were, like, lower than football players’.”

“Those tests don’t mean anything. They’re culturally biased.”

“But they’re biased for white guys, for me. And I flunked. I don’t deserve to be here, man. I cheated my way in. I cheated.”

Then he cried. Huge, sobbing, drunken tears.

She touched his face and then left him alone there with the rest of his tribe.

Outside his house on the Spokane Indian Reservation, Roman stared down at the orange leather ball embedded in the white snow. Then he stomped through the snow to his storage shed, and carried back a gallon of kerosene. He poured the kerosene onto the snow covering the basketball court.

After the can was empty, Roman took a step back, lit a match, and dropped it onto the kerosene-soaked snow. The fire flared up wonderfully and began to melt the snow down to the frozen ground.

Even as the snow was still burning, Roman was dribbling the ball around the court, throwing up lazy shots. He was not playing very hard, just enjoying the mechanics of the game, the physical meditation. He was out of shape and breathing hard, his breath making small clouds in the air. He was missing many more shots than he was making.

Some of the snow was still burning.

Then Grace Atwater stepped out of the house. She wore a huge red parka and big black boots. She walked onto the court, stepped around her husband, and stood directly beneath the basket. Roman stood at the free-throw line. He shot and missed. Grace rebounded the ball and threw it back to him.

“Nice shot,” she said.

“I used to be good,” said Roman. “Back when it meant something.”

“You’re still good. But I’m better.”

In the pocket of her coat, she carried a letter from a small press in Brooklyn, New York, that had agreed to publish a book of her poems. The press had consolidated all of the poems published under her various pseudonyms and would present them for the first time as her own, as her work, as her singular achievement.

Roman shot again, missed again. Grace rebounded the ball and threw it back to her spouse.

“Michael Jordan,” she said.

Roman smiled, threw up a wild hook shot that missed everything, the rim, the backboard, everything, and landed with a thud in the snow behind the court. In fact, the ball disappeared in the deep white.

Grace and Roman stared out into the snow where the ball had disappeared.

“Help,” said Roman.

“What?” asked Grace.

“Help me.”

“Always.”

Grace trotted out into the deep snow and searched for the basketball. Roman watched her with eyes stung red by the cold air. She had never been a skinny woman, not once, and was growing larger every year. She was beautiful, her long black hair dirty and uncombed. Roman patted his own prodigious belly and closed his eyes against the sudden tears welling there.

“Brilliant,” he whispered to himself. His love for his wife hit him like a strong wind and forced him to take a step or two back.

Grace found the basketball and carried it back onto the court. Holding the ball with both hands, she stood beneath the basket while Roman was now standing at least twenty feet away from the rim. In his youth, he had been a hungry and angry player, an exceptionally good shooter, as dependable as gravity, but age and weight and happiness had left him with slow hands and slower feet.

“Hey,” said Grace.

Roman opened his eyes.

“You know,” she said, “I’m not wearing anything under this coat.”

“I suspected.”

She threw the ball back to Roman, who caught it neatly.

“He’s beautiful,” she said.

“Who?”

“Michael Jordan.”

“Yes, he is,” said Roman.

Grace then opened her coat to flash her nudity at Roman. Flesh and folds of flesh. Brown skin and seventeen moles. He had counted them once when they were younger, and he hoped there were still seventeen moles now. New moles made Roman nervous, especially since the reservation skies still glowed down near the uranium mine.

Grace spun in a slow circle. Roman was shocked and pleased. Brown skin sharply contrasted with white snow. She was fat and gorgeous.

Still holding her coat open, Grace took a step toward her husband.

“You make the next shot and you can have all of this,” she said.

“What if I miss?” he asked.

She closed the coat tightly around her body.

“Then,” she said, “you’ll have to dream about me all day.”

He had dreamed about her often, had dreamed of lovemaking in rivers, in movie theaters, in sale beds in department stores, in powwow tents, but had never actually had the courage to make real love to her anywhere but a few hundred beds and the backseats of twelve different cars.

“Hey,” he said, his throat suddenly dry, his stomach suddenly nervous. “We’ve got to be to work in fifteen minutes.”

“Hey,” she said. “It’s never taken you that long before. I figure we can do it twice and you’ll still be early.”

Grace and Roman smiled.

“This is a good life,” she said.

He stared at her, at the basket, at the ball in his hands. Then he lifted the ball over his head, the leather softly brushing against his fingers, and pushed it toward the rim.

The ball floated through the air, then, magically, it caught fire. The ball burned as it floated through the air.

Roman and Grace watched it burn and were not surprised.

Then the burning ball hit the backboard, rolled around the rim, and fell through. Grace stepped toward her husband. Still burning, the ball rolled to a stop on the frozen ground. Roman stepped toward his wife.

Ceremony.

T
HE FOLLOWING TRANSCRIPT IS
adapted from an interview that took place in the visitor’s lounge at the St. Tekawitha Retirement Community in Spokane, Washington, on February 28, 2052:

Q: Hello, I’m going to record this, that is, if that’s okay with you? Is that okay?

A: Yes.

Q: Good, good. So, would you, could we begin, could you please begin by stating your name, your birth date, your age, where you were born, and that’s it.

A: You first.

Q: Excuse me?

A: You should tell me who you are first. That’s the polite way.

Q: Oh, okay, I suppose you’re correct. I’m Spencer Cox, born July 7, 2007, in Old Los Angeles. I’m forty-five years old. Okay? Is that okay?

A: Yes, that’s good. It’s nice to meet you.

Q: Yes, it’s my pleasure.

(ten seconds of silence)

Q: And?

A: And?

Q: Would you like to introduce yourself?

A: Yes.

(fifteen seconds of silence)

Q: Well, possibly you could do it now? If you please?

A: My name is Etta Joseph. I was born in Wellpinit, Washington, on the Spokane Indian Reservation on Christmas Day, 1934. I am one hundred and eighteen years old and I am the Last of the Spokane Indians.

Q: Really? I had no idea you were the last.

A: Well, actually, I’m not. There are thousands of us. But it sounds more romantic, enit?

Q: Yes, very amusing. Irony, a hallmark of the contemporary indigenous American. Good, good. Yes. So, perhaps we could officially begin by…

A: Spencer, what exactly is it you do?

Q: I’m a cultural anthropologist. An anthropologist is…

A: I know what an anthropologist is.

Q: Yes, yes, of course you do. As I was saying, I am a cultural anthropologist and the Owens Lecturer in Applied Indigenous Studies at Harvard University. I’m also the author of seventeen books, texts, focusing on mid- to late-twentieth-century Native American culture, most specifically the Interior Salish tribes of Washington State.

(twenty seconds of silence)

Q: So, Miss Joseph, can I call you Etta?

A: No.

Q: Oh, I see, okay. Formality. Yes, quite another hallmark of the indigenous. Ceremony and all. I understand. I’m honored to be included. So, Miss Joseph, perhaps we could begin, I mean, could I ask an introductory question? Yes. Well, let’s see, you have been a traditional powwow dancer for the last eighty years. In that time, how has the powwow changed? Of course, the contemporary powwow is not a sacred ceremony, not as we have come to understand it, but rather a series of pan-Indian ceremonies whose influences include many tribal cultures and popular American culture as well, but I was wondering how you…

A: Why are you really here?

Q: Well, I was trying to get into that. I wanted to talk about dance and the Indian…

A: You’re here about John Wayne, enit?

Q: Excuse me?

A: You came here to talk about John Wayne.

Q: Well, no, but the John Wayne mythology certainly plays an important role in the shaping of twentieth-century American and Native American culture, but…

A: Have you ever seen a John Wayne movie?

Q: Yes, yes, I have. Most of them, in fact. I was quite the little cowboy when I was a child. Had two Red Ryder six-shooter pistols. They shot these little silver pellets. I recall that I killed a squirrel. I was quite shocked. I had no idea the pellets were dangerous, but I suppose that’s beside the point. Now, back to dance…

A: I used to be an actress.

Q: Really? Well, let’s see here, I don’t recall reading about that in your file.

A: What are you doing?

Q: Well, I’m reading through the file, your profile here, the pre-interview, some excellent books regarding your tribe, and a few texts transcribed directly from the Spokane Tribe oral tradition, which I must say, are quite…

A: Just put those papers away. And those books. What is it with you white people and your books?

Q: I’m afraid I don’t understand.

A: How come you love books so much?

Q: As my mother used to say, they’re the keys to the locked doors of the house of wisdom.

A: Did your mother really say that?

Q: Well, no.

A: So, then, it’s a lie? You just told me a lie?

Q: Yes, yes, I suppose I did.

A: It’s a good lie. Charming even. Attributing one of your faintly amusing and fairly poetic lines to your own mother. You must love her quite a bit.

Q: Oh. Well, I don’t know how to respond to that.

A: Are you a liar?

Q: What do you mean?

A: Do you tell lies?

Q: Everybody tells lies. I mean, occasionally.

A: That’s not what I asked you.

Q: Yes, I tell lies. But I hardly think of myself as a liar.

(twenty-seven seconds of silence)

Q: Okay, so perhaps I am a liar, but not all the time.

(thirty-two seconds of silence)

Q: Why exactly are you calling me a liar?

A: I haven’t called you anything.

Q: But you’ve accused me of lying.

A: No, I asked you if you were lying and you said yes. So I think that means you accused yourself of being a liar. Good observation, by the way.

Q: What’s the point of all this?

A: I’m having fun with you.

Q: Well, if you’re not going to take this seriously, I’m afraid I might have to move on. My time is valuable.

A: Having fun is very serious.

Q: I hardly think a few jokes are serious. I am currently working on a serious and profound study on the effect of classical European ballroom dancing on the indigenous powwow—a revolutionary text, by the way—so I don’t have time for a lonely woman’s jests and insults.

A: You have a lot to learn. You should listen more and talk less.

Q: Pardon me. I think I’ll leave now.

A: I’m not lonely. Have a good day.

(ten seconds of silence)

Q: Okay, wait, I think I understand. We were participating in a tribal dialogue, weren’t we? That sort of confrontational banter which solidifies familial and tribal ties, weren’t we? Oh, how fascinating, and I failed to recognize it.

A: What are you talking about?

Q: Well, confrontational banter has always been a cultural mainstay of indigenous cultures. In its African form, it becomes the tribal rite they call “doing the dozens.” You know, momma jokes? Like, your mother is so fat, when she broke her leg gravy poured out. It’s all part of the oral tradition. And here I was being insulted by you, and I didn’t recognize it as an integral and quite lovely component of the oral tradition. Of course you had to insult me. It’s your tradition.

A: Oh, stop it, just stop it. Don’t give me that oral tradition garbage. It’s so primitive. It makes it sound like Indians sit around naked and grunt stories at each other. Those books about Indians, those texts you love so much, where do you think they come from?

Q: Well, certainly, all written language has its roots in the oral tradition, but I fail…

A: No, no, no, those books started with somebody’s lie. Then some more lies were piled on top of that, until you had a whole book filled with lies, and then somebody slapped an Edward Curtis photograph on the cover, and called it good.

Q: These books of lies, as you call them, are the definitive texts on the Interior Salish.

A: No, there’s nothing definitive about them. They’re just your oral tradition. And they’re filled with the same lies, exaggerations, mistakes, and ignorance as our oral traditions.

Q: Have you even read these books?

A: I’ve read all of your books. You show me a book written by a white man about Indians and I’ve read it. You show me almost any book, any of your so-called Great Books, and I’ve read them. Hemingway, Faulkner, Conrad. Read them. Austen, Kakfa, James, read them. Whitman, Dickinson, Donne. Read them. We head over to this university or that college, to your Harvard, and grab their list of required reads, and I’ve read them. Hundreds of your books, your white-man books, thousands of them. I’ve read them all.