Indian Killer (16 page)

This had all continued until Mather found that box of recordings of traditional Indian stories. Mather had always enjoyed negotiating the narrow passageways, rummaging and foraging here and there. A few years earlier, he had found two boxes of reel-to-reel tapes filled with the voices of Pacific Northwest Indian elders. Recorded by a forgotten anthropologist during the summer of 1926, the tapes had just been collecting dust in a storage room when Dr. Mather stumbled upon them. Excited, but still protective of the discovery, Mather had decided to play the tapes for Reggie, one of the brightest Indians Mather had ever encountered.

The professor thought Reggie had a grasp of Indian history almost as strong as his own. And Reggie’s knowledge of Spokane Indian history was probably a little more complete than Mather’s. Mather thought the young Spokane might have been able to clarify some aspects of the story.

“Listen to this woman,” Mather had said to Reggie as they listened to an Indian elder telling a story. “She’s Spokane. Do you think you can identify her?”

Reggie didn’t speak Spokane well, but he’d recognized that Spokane Indian elder’s story.

“That’s a family story. It belongs to the family. Not on some tape. It’s not supposed to be told this way. You should erase that tape.”

Mather had been shocked by the suggestion. Up until that point, Reggie had been a dedicated student. In fact, Mather had seen himself as a father figure for Reggie, and the young Indian had become something of a son. Mather had trusted Reggie, maybe even loved him, and had always assumed that Reggie felt the same about him. But Mather had felt only disappointment when Reggie said he wanted to erase the tapes. The professor had wanted to make them public and publish an article about them, but Reggie had heard the recorded voice of that old Spokane woman and had been suddenly ashamed of himself. He’d heard that ancient voice and wanted to destroy it. He’d wanted to erase the tapes because he had not wanted anybody else, especially a white man like Mather, to have them. He’d wanted to erase them because they’d never be his stories.

“This is a very valuable anthropological find,” Mather had said. “I mean, nobody even tells these stories anymore. Not even Indians. We have to save them.”

“Stories die because they’re supposed to die,” Reggie had said.

“But these stories aren’t dead,” Mather had said. “The elders must have wanted them to be saved. They allowed the anthropologist to record them.”

“Look, I’m sure the elders definitely didn’t understand how these stories were going to be used. Dr. Mather, you have to let these stories go. Burn the tapes. Or I’ll burn them for you.”

Reggie had stared at Mather with such startling anger that the professor had stepped backward and, frightened, had promised to burn the tapes. Later, angry at himself for having played the tapes for Reggie, Mather had hidden them in a dark corner of the basement instead. When Reggie had asked him later if the tapes had been destroyed, Mather denied that the tapes had ever existed. Mather had told that first lie because he believed he was protecting the recordings. He’d come to see those stories as his possessions, as his stories, as if it had been his voice on those tapes. He’d lied to preserve his idea of order. But with each successive lie Mather had told, he’d begun to lose track of the original reasons for lying. Layer after layer of lies. As an anthropologist, Mather could have dug into himself for years and not discovered the truth.

For Reggie, Mather’s lie had become the breaking point after which he believed all white men were lying all the time. Reggie knew the history. Mather’s friendship had simply become another broken treaty. Another beautiful series of promises that had been, in fact, a worthless stack of paper.

“I’m sure I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Mather had lied to Reggie first, and then to Dr. Faulkner, the department chair, after Reggie had lodged a formal protest. All three men had been sitting in Faulkner’s office, along with Bernice Zamora, the department secretary, who’d been taking notes.

“Why do you think Mr. Polatkin would make these kinds of accusations against you?” Dr. Faulkner had asked Mather.

“Frankly, I think it’s because of Reggie’s distrust of authority figures. In particular, Reggie has had an extremely difficult relationship with his father, a white man. I don’t pretend to be a psychologist, but I believe Reggie is confusing his feelings about his father with his feelings for me.”

“You liar,” Reggie had said and left the office. He’d understood that Mather’s lies would go undetected and unpunished. Later that day, Reggie had cornered Mather in the Student Union Building.

“I trusted you,” Reggie had said.

“It’s you who violated my trust,” Mather had replied. “You certainly aren’t behaving like a true Spokane.”

Reggie had punched Mather then and wrestled him to the ground, but a few other students had broken it up quickly. Naturally, Reggie had been expelled from the University.

Now, as Mather sat in the Anthropology Building basement and listened to his beloved secret tapes, he was professionally disappointed that he could never reveal their existence. Still, he was personally in love with the Indian elders’ voices, men and women, Snohomish, Makah, Yakama, Spokane, and he’d memorized all of the stories. With those tapes, Mather owned twelve hours’ worth of magic. He listened to the magical recording of a Spokane Indian elder telling a traditional story. A true Spokane. She spoke fractured English, which Mather could barely understand, but her fluent Spokane was being translated by a Bureau of Indian Affairs agent. The story was about Coyote, the trickster, and it echoed through the cluttered basement. Boxes of various artifacts were stacked in tall piles. A maze of doors, small rooms, and hallways. Some rooms had not been opened since the early part of the century, and exploring the basement involved a contemporary sort of archaeology. The basement even had its own mythology. Chief Seattle’s bones were supposedly lost somewhere in the labyrinth. And the bones of dozens of other Indians were said to be stored in a hidden room.

As the Spokane Indian elder finished her trickster story, the basement went dark. Mather smiled and thought of Coyote, assuming it was just a temporary power outage. But as five minutes passed, then ten, Mather grew agitated. At least, he told himself he was agitated. Actually he was becoming very frightened. The building creaked and groaned. Other mysterious noises in the distance sounded like footsteps, whispers, a door slowly opening.

“Hello, this is Dr. Mather.” His voice echoed loudly. “I’m in the northwest corner. By the furnace.”

Dr. Mather listened for a response, heard nothing, and then realized he’d given away his exact position. If somebody was trying to hurt him, he’d know where Mather was. Nonsense, Mather thought, someone’s coming to help me. But then he realized that nobody knew he was in the basement. It was late. Very late. Probably nobody was in the entire Anthropology Building except Mather. Or, nobody should be.

“Hello?” Mather asked, a question now.

He continued to sit at the desk and listen carefully. He heard somebody breathing, though he soon realized he was hearing his own inhalation and exhalation. Holding his breath, he listened, and heard a strange rattling. There, off to his right, that rattling again. Not like a snake, but like beads shaking, or sand in a shell, or bones rubbing together. Mather sat up straight in his chair. He thought of the Indian remains in that basement. The forgotten bones and fragments of clothing, Chief Seattle’s bones. The rattling again. Mather was sweating, telling himself not to be such a child, a superstitious fool. Be analytical, he thought, decipher the sound. Wasn’t it there before? Hadn’t it been there all along? The total darkness had intensified other senses. You’re hearing things you simply didn’t notice before, Mather told himself. You hear better with your eyes closed. So what is it you’re hearing? He listened. Bone moving against bone, ancient and forgotten. Calm yourself, Mather thought, and then something brushed against his face, and he panicked. The instinct for flight took over and Mather was up and running, tripping over boxes, smashing into shelves and closed doors. He could feel that something was chasing him, was right behind him, reaching for his neck. Mather ran for his life. He was still running when the lights suddenly flickered and brightened. Nearly blinded, he caught a brief glimpse of the low overhang ahead of him just before he ran into it, knocking himself unconscious.

“Dr. Mather?” asked the janitor as he came around the corner and saw the professor lying on the floor. “Is that you?”

J
OHN SAT ON A
sidewalk in downtown Seattle beneath the Alaskan Way Viaduct. An ugly, gray monstrosity that would surely fall to pieces during a major earthquake, it served as a noisy barrier between downtown Seattle and the waters of Elliott Bay. However, as an unplanned benefit, the Viaduct also provided shelter for Seattle’s homeless. Beneath the Viaduct, one could find cover from Seattle’s rains, with the nearby waterfront and Pike Place Market attracting tourists who were sometimes willing to empty their pockets of loose change.

When he worked downtown, John visited the homeless Indians who congregated beneath the Viaduct and those in Occidental Park in Pioneer Square. But John was more often drawn to the Indians beneath the Viaduct. He’d walk down there during his lunch hours to spend time with them, though he never spoke more than a few words to anyone. Usually, he just walked by those real Indians, who sat in groups of three or four, nodding their heads when John walked past.

“Hey, cousin,” the homeless Indians always called out to John. “You got any coins?”

John had come to know a few by their names, King, Agnes, and Joseph, and he recognized a few dozen by sight. Before he’d met them, John had shared the common assumption that all homeless Indians were drunks. But he had soon discovered that many of them didn’t drink. John had been surprised by that discovery, and both relieved and saddened. He was relieved that many of the homeless Indians refused to surrender and drink themselves to death. He was saddened that so many Indians were homeless and had no simple reasons to offer for their condition.

On that evening, John sat by himself, apart from a group of Indians who were singing and telling jokes. More laughter. John watched those Indians, in dirty clothes and thirdhand shoes, miles and years from their reservations, estranged from their families and tribes, yet still able to laugh, to sing. John wondered where they found the strength to do such things. They were still joking and singing when Marie Polatkin drove up in a battered white delivery van. John recognized her from the powwow at the University. The Indian woman with crowded teeth. She haphazardly parked the truck and jumped out, talking fast and loud. The dozens of homeless women and men, Indian and otherwise, who lived beneath the Viaduct soon gathered around her.

“What is this?” John asked a white man in an old wheelchair. He wore an army surplus jacket and a dirty pair of blue jeans.

“It’s Marie, the Sandwich Lady,” said the wheelchair man.

“Sandwich Lady?”

“Yeah, man. You know? Sandwiches? Two pieces of bread with something between? When was the last time you ate?”

John thought about the lunch box he had left at work. Inside, a can of Pepsi, a convenience-store sub sandwich, an apple.

“Well,” said the wheelchair man. “You better get in line if you’re hungry. Her sandwiches go fast, man. I help her sometimes, you know? Making the sandwiches. Me and her are tight. Yeah, my name is Boo.”

Boo offered his hand, but John ignored it. Shrugging his shoulders, Boo took his place in line, behind a woman talking to herself.

“Here’s a ham and cheese, Bill,” Marie said to the first man in line. She knew their names! “How you doing, Esther? You look good, Charles. Lillian, how’s the tooth? Martha, where have you been? I’ve got a peanut butter and jelly for your son. Where is that boy?”

The wheelchair man and John stepped up next. John was embarrassed. He had nothing to give Marie, no gift, no blanket, no basket. He wanted to run, hoping to run away from everything, hoping he could run into a new skin, a new face, a new kind of music. He wanted to run into the desert. But he wanted to see Marie, wanted to hear her voice.

“Marie,” he said.

“Yes,” she said, not recognizing John for a brief moment, then visibly surprised when she did. John was homeless, she thought, an explanation for his strange behavior at the protest powwow.

“Marie,” John said again.

“John, right?”

John nodded.

“How are you?” she asked.

“I wanted to see you.”

“Well, it’s good to see you. Are you hungry? Do you want a sandwich?”

John looked down at the sandwich in Marie’s hand. He wondered if it was poisoned.

“No,” John said. He struggled to speak. He wanted to tell Marie everything. He wanted to tell her about Father Duncan. He opened his mouth, closed it again, and then turned to run. He ran until he could no longer recognize anything around him.

“Who was that?” the wheelchair man asked Marie as John raced away.

“I’m not sure. A guy named John. Navajo.”

“I think he likes you.”

“Yeah, maybe, Boo. How’ve you been? How’s the poetry coming along?”

“I wrote one for you,” said Boo. He reached into his shirt pocket, pulled out a tightly folded wad of paper, and handed it to Marie. She took it, unfolded it, and read the poem.

“Thank you, Boo,” she said. “That’s very nice. Here’s a turkey and Swiss.”

“Thank you,” he said and rolled himself away. Marie handed sandwiches out until her arms ached. For an hour, two. She talked to her friends, consoled, reprimanded, and touched them, her hand on their shoulders, her hand clasping their hands, fingers touching fingers, in greeting, in conversation, in departure. She ate a sandwich herself, washed it down with a Pepsi, and watched the night grow darker by degrees. She knew there were many men and women who waited for her to deliver those sandwiches. They waited for the food, for the company, for proof they were not invisible. For the mentally disturbed, Marie knew these sandwich visits might be the only dependable moment in their lives. She also knew she delivered the sandwiches for her own sanity. Something would crumble inside of her if she ever walked by a homeless person and pretended not to notice. Or simply didn’t care. In a way, she believed that homeless people were treated as Indians had always been treated. Badly. The homeless were like an Indian tribe, nomadic and powerless, just filled with more than any tribe’s share of crazy people and cripples. So, a homeless Indian belonged to two tribes, and was the lowest form of life in the city. The powerful white men of Seattle had created a law that made it illegal to sit on the sidewalk. That ordinance was crazier and much more evil than any homeless person. Sometimes Marie wondered if she worked so hard at everything only because she hated powerful white men. She wondered if she went to college and received good grades just because she was looking for revenge. She woke up at four in the morning to study before she went to class. She rushed from the University down to the shelter, to a protest, to the sandwich van. All to get back at white men? A police car rolled by. Officer Randy Peone. Marie knew him. She knew most of the cops who worked downtown. Patrols had been increased because the police knew something bad was happening. The officer waved to Marie. She waved back.