The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian (3 page)

I don't know which one said that. I couldn't tell them apart. I decided to run again, but one of them grabbed me, and shoved me toward another brother. All three of them shoved me to and fro. They were playing catch with me.

"Hydromatic."

"Hydrocarbon."

"Hydrocrack."

"Hydrodynamic."

"Hydroelectric."

"Hydro-and-Low."

"Hydro-and-Seek."

I fell down. One of the brothers picked me up, dusted me off, and then kneed me in the

balls.

I fell down again, holding my tender crotch, and tried not scream.

The Andruss brothers laughed and walked away.

Oh, by the way, did I mention that the Andruss triplets are thirty years old?

What kind of men beat up a fourteen-year-old boy?

Major-league assholes.

I was lying on the ground, holding my nuts as tenderly as a squirrel holds his nuts, when Rowdy walked up.

"Who did this to you?" he asked.

"The Andruss brothers," I said.

"Did they hit you in the head?" Rowdy asked. He knows that my brain is fragile. If those Andruss brothers had punched a hole in the aquarium of my skull, I might have flooded out the entire powwow.

"My brain is fine," I said. "But my balls are dying."

"I'm going to kill those bastards," Rowdy said.

Of course, Rowdy didn't kill them, but we hid near the Andruss brothers' camp until three in the morning. They staggered back and passed out in their tent. Then Rowdy snuck in, shaved off their eyebrows, and cut off their braids.

That's about the worst thing you can do to an Indian guy. It had taken them years to grow their hair. And Rowdy cut that away in five seconds.

I loved Rowdy for doing that. I felt guilty for loving him for that. But revenge also feels pretty good.

The Andruss brothers never did figure out who cut their eyebrows and hair. Rowdy

started a rumor that it was a bunch of Makah Indians from the coast who did it.

"You can't trust them whale hunters," Rowdy said. "They'll do anything."

But before you think Rowdy is only good for revenge, and kicking the shit out of

minivans, raindrops, and people, let me tell you something sweet about him: he loves comic books.

But not the cool superhero ones like
Daredevil
or
X-Men
. No, he reads the goofy old ones, like
Richie Rich
and
Archie
and
Casper the Friendly Ghost
. Kid stuff. He keeps them hidden in a hole in the wall of his bedroom closet. Almost every day, I'll head over to his house and we'll read those comics together.

Rowdy isn't a fast reader, but he's persistent. And he'll just laugh and laugh at the dumb jokes, no matter how many times he's read the same comic.

I like the sound of Rowdy's laughter. I don't hear it very often, but it's always sort of this avalanche of ha-ha and ho-ho and hee-hee.

I like to make him laugh. He loves my cartoons.

He's a big, goofy dreamer, too, just like me. He likes to pretend he lives inside the comic books. I guess a fake life inside a cartoon is a lot better than his real life.

So I draw cartoons to make him happy, to give him other worlds to live inside.

I draw his dreams.

And he only talks about his dreams with me. And I only talk about my dreams with him.

I tell him about my fears.

I think Rowdy might be the most important person in my life. Maybe more important

than my family. Can your best friend be more important than your family?

I think so.

I mean, after all, I spend a lot more time with Rowdy than I do with anyone else.

Let's do the math.

I figure Rowdy and I have spent an average of eight hours a day together for the last

fourteen years.

That's eight hours times 365 days times fourteen years.

So that means Rowdy and I have spent 40,880 hours in each other's company.

Nobody else comes anywhere close to that.

Trust me.

Rowdy and I are inseparable.

Because Geometry Is Not a Country Somewhere Near France

I was fourteen and it was my first day of high school. I was happy about that. And I was most especially excited about my first geometry class.

Yep, I have to admit that isosceles triangles make me feel
hormonal
.

Most guys, no matter what age, get excited about curves and circles, but not me. Don't

get me wrong. I like girls and their curves. And I really like women and their curvier curves.

I spend
hours
in the bathroom with a magazine that has one thousand pictures of naked movie stars:

Naked woman + right hand = happy happy joy joy

Yep, that's right, I admit that I masturbate.

I'm proud of it.

I'm good at it.

I'm ambidextrous.

If there were a Professional Masturbators League, I'd get drafted number one and make

millions of dollars.

And maybe you're thinking, "Well, you really shouldn't be talking about masturbation in public."

Well, tough, I'm going to talk about it because EVERYBODY does it. And

EVERYBODY likes it.

And if God hadn't wanted us to masturbate, then God wouldn't have given us thumbs.

So I thank God for my thumbs.

But, the thing is, no matter how much time my thumbs and I spend with the curves of

imaginary women, I am much more in love with the right angles of buildings.

When I was a baby, I'd crawl under my bed and snuggle into a corner to sleep. I just felt warm and safe leaning into two walls at the same time.

When I was eight, nine, and ten, I slept in my bedroom closet with the door closed. I only stopped doing that because my big sister, Mary, told me that I was just trying to find my way back into my mother's womb.

That ruined the whole closet thing.

Don't get me wrong. I don't have anything against my mother's womb. I was built in there, after all. So I have to say that I am pro-womb. But I have zero interest in moving back home, so to speak.

My sister is good at ruining things.

After high school, my sister just froze. Didn't go to college, didn't get a job. Didn't do anything. Kind of sad, I guess.

But she is also beautiful and strong and funny. She is the prettiest and strongest and

funniest person who ever spent twenty-three hours a day alone in a basement.

She is so crazy and random that we call her Mary Runs Away. I'm not like her at all. I am steady. I'm excited about life.

I'm excited about school.

Rowdy and I are planning on playing high school basketball.

Last year, Rowdy and I were the best players on the eighth-grade team. But I don't think I'll be a very good high school player.

Rowdy is probably going to start varsity as a freshman, but I figure the bigger and better kids will crush me. It's one thing to hit jumpers over other eighth graders; it's a whole other thing to score on high school monsters.

I'll probably be a benchwarmer on the C squad while Rowdy goes on to all-state glory

and fame.

I am a little worried that Rowdy will start to hang around with the older guys and leave me behind.

I'm also worried that hell start to pick on me, too.

I'm scared he might start hating me as much as all of the others do.

But I am more happy than scared.

And I know that the other kids are going to give me crap for being so excited about

school. But I don't care.

I was sitting in a freshman classroom at Wellpinit High School when Mr. P strolled in

with a box full of geometry textbooks.

And let me tell you, Mr. P is a weird-looking dude.

But no matter how weird he looks, the absolutely weirdest thing about Mr. P is that

sometimes he
forgets
to come to school.

Let me repeat that: MR. P SOMETIMES FORGETS TO COME TO SCHOOL!

Yep, we have to send a kid down to the teachers' housing compound behind the school to

wake Mr. P, who is always conking out in front of his TV.

That's right. Mr. P sometimes teaches class in his
pajamas
.

He is a weird old coot, but most of the kids dig him because he doesn't ask too much of us. I mean, how can you expect your students to work hard if you show up in your pajamas
and
slippers
?

And yeah, I know it's weird, but the tribe actually houses all of the teachers in one-

bedroom cottages and musty, old trailer houses behind the school. You can't teach at our school if you don't live in the compound. It was like some kind of prison-work farm for our liberal, white, vegetarian do-gooders and conservative, white missionary saviors.

Some of our teachers make us eat birdseed so we'll feel closer to the earth, and other

teachers hate birds because they are supposedly minions of the Devil. It is like being taught by Jekyll and Hyde.

But Mr. P isn't a Democratic-, Republican-, Christian-, or Devil-worshipping freak. He is just
sleepy
.

But some folks are absolutely convinced he is, like, this Sicilian accountant who testified against the Mafia, and had to be hidden by that secret Witness Relocation Program.

It makes some goofy sort of sense, I suppose.

If the government wants to hide somebody, there's probably no place more isolated than

my reservation, which is located approximately one million miles north of Important and two billion miles west of Happy. But jeez, I think people pay way too much attention to
The
Sopranos
.

Mostly, I just think Mr. P is a lonely old man who used to be a lonely young man. And

for some reason I don't understand, lonely white people love to hang around lonelier Indians.

"All right, kids, let's get cracking," Mr. P said as he passed out the geometry books. "How about we do something strange and start on page one?"

I grabbed my book and opened it up.

I wanted to smell it.

Heck, I wanted to kiss it.

Yes, kiss it.

That's right, I am a book kisser.

Maybe that's kind of perverted or maybe it's just romantic and highly
intelligent
.