Blasphemy (50 page)

And so Bob took two deep breaths, shuddered, and died.

In that silence, Deuce could hear only his father’s quiet weeping. The son had no idea how long he listened to his father. But eventually, he crawled out of the trailer and walked over to his father, lying facedown in the dirt. Deuce rolled his wailing father over and saw that his face was covered with dirt turned to mud from tears.

“Dad, are you hurt? Do you feel anything broken inside you?”

“Where’s George Mikan?” Emery asked. “Go find George.”

“I will, I will, but are you going to be okay? Are you bleeding inside?”

“I’m okay, I’m okay. Just find George.”

But Deuce couldn’t leave his father looking that way. So he pulled off his shirt and wiped his father’s face clean and pulled off his T-shirt and wrapped that around his father’s bloody arm. Then Deuce pulled out his cell phone, but there was no signal.

“Dad, I’m going to have to walk to get us help.”

“No, find George.”

Deuce scanned the dark horizon. He could see lights out on the plains. Farmhouses, he supposed. Deuce thought he could easily walk close to one of those lights but that it probably wasn’t wise for a shirtless, bloody man to knock on a rural Montana door in the middle of the night. He had to walk into Cut Bank.

“Dad, we can find George in the daylight. I have to go get help for you now.”

“Goddamn you, goddamn you,” Emery said. He weakly punched and kicked at his son. “You do what I say. If it’s the last goddamn time, you do what I say. I’m your goddamn father and you’re going to obey me. Obey me, you little fucker. Obey me.”

Deuce again weathered his father’s blows. And then he handed the phone to Emery.

“Dad, keep trying to call for help. I’ll go look for George.”

Deuce was terrified to leave his father alone.

“Go get George,” Emery said. “I’ve got Bill Laimbeer. He’ll take care of me.”

Deuce couldn’t believe that Bill wasn’t as injured as the other donkeys, and that gave him hope that George Mikan was also okay.

“All right, Bill,” Deuce said to the donkey. “You watch Dad. I’m going for George.”

And so Deuce walked out into the dark. He tried to think like a donkey, like George Mikan, who always trotted for the rim, the goal. So Deuce picked the brightest light in the distance. He figured that George would be traveling toward that light. That light was the hoop and that wheat field was the court.

“Okay, George,” Deuce said. “Let’s win this game.”

He’d walked maybe ten yards when he realized that George might be terribly injured. Deuce understood that he might have to shoot their best donkey. He might have to end that beautiful animal’s misery. But he’d been unable to shoot Bob, so how could he shoot George?

And yet, he knew it was his duty. He knew he had to find the strength and grace. The violent kindness. So he walked back to the trailer, picked up the rifle, and then headed again toward the bright light.

Traveling through the dark with his rifle, Deuce realized that he was now some other kind of soldier. This damn donkey business had started at the end of one war and was now dying in the middle of another one.

After half an hour, Deuce had slowed considerably. The adrenaline had dissipated, so that he could feel his sprained ankles and knees, and the hundred different bruises, and the probably broken collarbone. He knew that George had to be injured, too. He understood that George must have been slowing down.

After another half hour, Deuce had to stop. His ribs felt like they were scraping against his lungs. Maybe a busted rib had pierced his lungs. Deuce wondered if he was dying. He wanted to lie down in the cool dirt and rest. Just close his eyes for a few minutes. And then he’d get up and resume the hunt.

Deuce wanted to surrender.

But then he saw George, illuminated by moonlight, standing atop a rise fifty feet away. Soaked with blood and sweat, trembling and ruined, George couldn’t possibly survive his injuries.

Deuce thought of his father, lying back there in the dark. Deuce knew that he’d mortally wounded his father’s soul.

Deuce knew he was a bad man. But he hoped that he could become a good soldier.

On the rise, George staggered and nearly fell. He brayed and brayed, and it sounded like a prayer, like a plea to be released. Deuce wanted to walk up the rise, stand next to his friend, and end his pain. But he didn’t have the strength. Even as he tried to remain standing, Deuce lost his balance and fell again on his knees. Jesus, he thought, give me some strength. But he didn’t think he’d ever have strength enough to crawl to George.

So Deuce raised the rifle to his shoulder and aimed at George’s head. In the daylight, with full strength, it would have been an easy shot. But on this night, in this dark, he might miss.

Deuce inhaled and exhaled deeply. Then, with shaking hands and with both eyes open, he pulled the trigger.

WHAT YOU PAWN I WILL REDEEM

Noon

One day you have a home and the next you don’t, but I’m not going to tell you my particular reasons for being homeless, because it’s my secret story, and Indians have to work hard to keep secrets from hungry white folks.

I’m a Spokane Indian boy, an Interior Salish, and my people have lived within a one-hundred-mile radius of Spokane, Washington, for at least ten thousand years. I grew up in Spokane, moved to Seattle twenty-three years ago for college, flunked out within two semesters, worked various blue- and bluer-collar jobs for many years, married two or three times, fathered two or three kids, and then went crazy. Of course, “crazy” is not the official definition of my mental problem, but I don’t think “asocial disorder” fits it, either, because that makes me sound like I’m a serial killer or something. I’ve never hurt another human being, or at least not physically. I’ve broken a few hearts in my time, but we’ve all done that, so I’m nothing special in that regard. I’m a boring heartbreaker, at that, because I’ve never abandoned one woman for another. I never dated or married more than one woman at a time. I didn’t break hearts into pieces overnight. I broke them slowly and carefully. I didn’t set any land-speed records running out the door. Piece by piece, I disappeared. And I’ve been disappearing ever since. But I’m not going to tell you any more about my brain or my soul.

I’ve been homeless for six years. If there’s such a thing as being an effective homeless man, I suppose I’m effective. Being homeless is probably the only thing I’ve ever been good at. I know where to get the best free food. I’ve made friends with restaurant and convenience-store managers who let me use their bathrooms. I don’t mean the public bathrooms, either. I mean the employees’ bathrooms, the clean ones hidden in the back of the kitchen or the pantry or the cooler. I know it sounds strange to be proud of, but it means a lot to me, being trustworthy enough to piss in somebody else’s clean bathroom. Maybe you don’t understand the value of a clean bathroom, but I do.

Probably none of this interests you. I probably don’t interest you much. Homeless Indians are everywhere in Seattle. We’re common and boring, and you walk right on by us, with maybe a look of anger or disgust or even sadness at the terrible fate of the noble savage. But we have dreams and families. I’m friends with a homeless Plains Indian man whose son is the editor of a big-time newspaper back east. That’s his story, but we Indians are great storytellers and liars and mythmakers, so maybe that Plains Indian hobo is a plain old everyday Indian. I’m kind of suspicious of him, because he describes himself only as Plains Indian, a generic term, and not by a specific tribe. When I asked him why he wouldn’t tell me exactly what he is, he said, “Do any of us know exactly what we are?” Yeah, great, a philosophizing Indian. “Hey,” I said, “you got to have a home to be that homely.” He laughed and flipped me the eagle and walked away. But you probably want to know more about the story I’m really trying to tell you.

I wander the streets with a regular crew, my teammates, my defenders, and my posse. It’s Rose of Sharon, Junior, and me. We matter to one another if we don’t matter to anybody else. Rose of Sharon is a big woman, about seven feet tall if you’re measuring overall effect, and about five feet tall if you’re talking about the physical. She’s a Yakama Indian of the Wishram variety. Junior is a Colville, but there are about 199 tribes that make up the Colville, so he could be anything. He’s good-looking, though, like he just stepped out of some “Don’t Litter the Earth” public-service advertisement. He’s got those great big cheekbones that are like planets, you know, with little moons orbiting around them. He gets me jealous, jealous, and jealous. If you put Junior and me next to each other, he’s the Before Columbus Arrived Indian, and I’m the After Columbus Arrived Indian. I am living proof of the horrible damage that colonialism has done to us Skins. But I’m not going to let you know how scared I sometimes get of history and its ways. I’m a strong man, and I know that silence is the best way of dealing with white folks.

This whole story started at lunchtime, when Rose of Sharon, Junior, and I were panning the handle down at Pike Place Market. After about two hours of negotiating, we earned five dollars, good enough for a bottle of fortified courage from the most beautiful 7–Eleven in the world. So we headed over that way, feeling like warrior drunks, and we walked past this pawnshop I’d never noticed before. And that was strange, because we Indians have built-in pawnshop radar. But the strangest thing was the old powwow-dance regalia I saw hanging in the window.

“That’s my grandmother’s regalia,” I said to Rose of Sharon and Junior.

“How do you know for sure?” Junior asked.

I didn’t know for sure, because I hadn’t seen that regalia in person ever. I’d seen only photographs of my grandmother dancing in it. And that was before somebody stole it from her fifty years ago. But it sure looked like my memory of it, and it had all the same colors of feathers and beads that my family always sewed into their powwow regalia.

“There’s only one way to know for sure,” I said.

So Rose of Sharon, Junior, and I walked into the pawnshop and greeted the old white man working behind the counter.

“How can I help you?” he asked.

“That’s my grandmother’s powwow regalia in your window,” I said. “Somebody stole it from her fifty years ago, and my family has been looking for it ever since.”

The pawnbroker looked at me like I was a liar. I understood. Pawnshops are filled with liars.

“I’m not lying,” I said. “Ask my friends here. They’ll tell you.”

“He’s the most honest Indian I know,” Rose of Sharon said.

“All right, honest Indian,” the pawnbroker said. “I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt. Can you prove it’s your grandmother’s regalia?”

Because they don’t want to be perfect, because only God is perfect, Indian people sew flaws into their powwow regalia. My family always sewed one yellow bead somewhere on their regalia. But we always hid it where you had to search hard to find it.

“If it really is my grandmother’s,” I said, “there will be one yellow bead hidden somewhere on it.”

“All right, then,” the pawnbroker said. “Let’s take a look.”

He pulled the regalia out of the window, laid it down on his glass counter, and we searched for that yellow bead and found it hidden beneath the armpit.

“There it is,” the pawnbroker said. He didn’t sound surprised. “You were right. This is your grandmother’s regalia.”

“It’s been missing for fifty years,” Junior said.

“Hey, Junior,” I said. “It’s my family’s story. Let me tell it.”

“All right,” he said. “I apologize. You go ahead.”

“It’s been missing for fifty years,” I said.

“That’s his family’s sad story,” Rose of Sharon said. “Are you going to give it back to him?”

“That would be the right thing to do,” the pawnbroker said. “But I can’t afford to do the right thing. I paid a thousand dollars for this. I can’t give away a thousand dollars.”

“We could go to the cops and tell them it was stolen,” Rose of Sharon said.

“Hey,” I said to her, “don’t go threatening people.”

The pawnbroker sighed. He was thinking hard about the possibilities.

“Well, I suppose you could go to the cops,” he said. “But I don’t think they’d believe a word you said.”

He sounded sad about that. Like he was sorry for taking advantage of our disadvantages.

“What’s your name?” the pawnbroker asked me.

“Jackson,” I said.

“Is that first or last?” he asked.

“Both.”

“Are you serious?”

“Yes, it’s true. My mother and father named me Jackson Jackson. My family nickname is Jackson Squared. My family is funny.”

“All right, Jackson Jackson,” the pawnbroker said. “You wouldn’t happen to have a thousand dollars, would you?”

“We’ve got five dollars total,” I said.

“That’s too bad,” he said and thought hard about the possibilities. “I’d sell it to you for a thousand dollars if you had it. Heck, to make it fair, I’d sell it to you for nine hundred and ninety-nine dollars. I’d lose a dollar. It would be the moral thing to do in this case. To lose a dollar would be the right thing.”