The Toughest Indian in the World (11 page)

“Help us,” I said to Sam.

Sam did not understand.

“Jonah,” he said. “Is this real?”

“It’s real,” I said.

“Quiet,” said the white soldier standing between us.

Sam the Indian looked from me to the soldier and back to me.

“Why is it real?” asked Sam the Indian.

“Quiet,” said the white soldier again without looking at us. I was happy I didn’t have to answer Sam’s question. I’m not sure what I would have said. And if I had told the truth, if I had given Sam an answer that was close to the truth, I might have lost all hope and faith. I might have closed my eyes and never opened them again.

“Why is it real?” asked Sam again.

“Shut up,” said the white soldier. He swallowed hard. I wondered if he hated us. I couldn’t see any obvious hate in his blue eyes. I studied the eyes of all of the soldiers. Five of the white soldiers had blue eyes, one had green, one had hazel, and the other had brown. One of the black soldiers had light brown eyes but I couldn’t see the eyes of the other black soldier, who was driving the bus.

I studied the face of the soldier-who-looked-like-me. He was the tallest soldier. He had a cross tattooed on the back of his right hand. He couldn’t have been older than eighteen or nineteen. He had brown eyes and skin. His hair was blacker than mine. He had a thin purple scar that arced from the corner of his left eye back toward his ear. His eyes passed over me as he scanned the faces of his prisoners. It was not enough. I wanted him to study my face as carefully as I was studying his face. I wanted him to tell me why he was a soldier holding a rifle instead of a fellow prisoner sitting in the seat beside me. I wanted to know the story of his scar.

“Where are you taking us?” I asked as I stood in my seat.

“Quiet,” said that white soldier for the third time as he pushed me back down.

I rose again.

“Where are you taking us?” I asked.

That white soldier wrapped his left hand around my throat and squeezed.

“You get to breathe,” said the soldier. “Or you get to ask questions. You make the choice.”

“Release that boy,” said another white soldier.

That white soldier gave my throat one last squeeze and dropped me to the floor. I coughed and gagged.

The bus was quiet. I lay on the floor and heard the
hum-hum-hum
of the bus wheels. I closed my eyes and pressed my hands flat against the floor. As the bus traveled, I could feel every pebble and irregularity in the road.

We traveled for twenty-two miles. I lay on the floor and counted each mile, counted each and every part of a mile, until the bus pulled into the small town of Wright. From my place on the floor, I could hear the loud murmurs of a gathered crowd. I climbed into my seat and looked out the window. Other soldiers were marching in neat rows beside the bus. The citizens of Wright were lined up on both sides of the road. I could see the smiles on some of their white faces. Others were clapping and singing. A few waved as the bus passed them by. One or two were laughing. Fathers lifted sons onto shoulders for a better view. Mothers kneeled next to daughters and made justifications. White teenagers stood on the hoods of cars. Some silently pumped their fists into the sky in celebration, while others screamed unintelligibly and threw obscene gestures at us.

A blood parade.

I could also see the pain and terror in other white faces. Pale hands pressed to open mouths. Mothers dragged their daughters away. Young white women wept and screamed. Strong men broke through the crowds and stood in front of the bus, trying to stop it, but the soldiers beat them and dragged them away. A Jesuit priest stood on the roof of the bank and shouted prayers for everybody on the bus. The Presbyterian minister attempted to stop the bus by ramming it with her ancient automobile. The bus barely slowed as it crushed her. Parishioners pulled her body from the wreck and wept. Neighbor scuffled with neighbor. One son fainted in the street after he saw the hate in his father’s eyes.

The crowd, friendly and not, surged toward the bus.

Outside the bus, the soldiers panicked and fired indiscriminately, while inside the bus, the soldiers pushed us down into our seats and covered us with their bodies.

Outside, a burning tire rolled past a little girl in a yellow dress.

Inside, the high-pitched screams of Indian children could have been the high-pitched wails of Indian singers.

Outside, the hands that pounded on the bus could have been the same hands that pounded drums.

That music sounded exactly the same as all of the music I had ever heard before.

One singing bullet passed through the front window of a blue house, through the living room and narrow kitchen, and out the back window where it lodged in the thick bark of an oak tree.

The clouds of smoke were shaped like horses.

Inside, I struggled against the white soldier who covered me. I punched and kicked at him, but he did not respond. At first, I thought he was immune to pain, but then I looked up at his face and saw the dark bullet hole between his eyes. With all of my strength, I pushed his body to the floor. He was a young man, barely older than me, and I mourned his death as I had been taught to mourn, briefly and powerfully.

“I’m sorry,” I said to him. I kneeled beside him, touched his face, and closed his blue eyes.

I prayed for him, the enemy, and wondered if he had prayed for me the night before, or the week before, when he had first been told, when he had first been given the orders, the battle plan, when he first discovered that he would be coming to my reservation to steal me away from my mother and father. I wondered if he had mourned for me.

Looking at him, his slight body and small hands, purple and yellow with bruises, I knew he had prayed for me. I knew he had wrapped those pale hands so tightly into prayer fists that he’d bruised his skin.

Prayer is painful.

Using a vocabulary I did not understand, the other soldiers were screaming orders at one another.

War and the idea of war.

I stood as the bus rolled past the last few protesters standing at the edge of the town and gained speed. Still standing, I looked back and saw one small white boy sitting in his wheelchair in the middle of the road. He was as bald and translucent as a newborn. As the town rioted behind him, that white boy weakly raised his arm. He grew smaller and smaller as the bus accelerated. Soon that pale boy was a shadow rising just above the horizon, then he was a part of the horizon, and then he was nothing at all.

On the bus, the soldiers cursed and wept angry tears. One green-eyed white soldier touched the face of the white soldier who had been shot in the head.

“He’s dead,” that green-eyed white soldier whispered to me.

“I know,” I said. “He covered me.”

I had been saved.

“Okay, okay, grunts,” shouted the soldier-who-looked-like-me. “Let’s get it together. Let’s get our shit together.”

The soldiers stood and straightened as one body. I was made instantly jealous by their obvious tribal bond. The soldiers pushed all of us back into our seats. Most of us sat with our backs straight, as we had been taught to do by seven generations of tribal school teachers.

“Get in your damn seats,” the soldiers shouted at us, the Indian children, though we were all sitting in our original seats.

“Let’s get it together!” shouted the soldier-who-looked-like-me. His face was brightly lit by his anger. The long scar on his face was swollen and purple, as if he’d been injured just a few moments earlier rather than years before.

The bus rolled past isolated farmhouses where whole families stood on front lawns and watched us pass. One large white woman held a glass of lemonade in one hand and used her other to shade her eyes. She wore a white sundress and white pumps. She was beautiful. I wanted to climb out of the bus and call her mother. I wanted to lay my head down in her fleshy lap and listen to her stories.

“Talk to me,” I whispered to her image and then to the memory of her image. I wanted to hear a story told by a woman who knew thousands of stories. Stories had always kept me safe before. I had always trusted stories. Frightened and tired, I wrapped my arms around myself and tried to tell myself a story. But I could think of nothing but the blood on that dead soldier’s face. I could hear nothing but the monotonous hum of the bus. And I was still thinking of that blood when the bus rolled through the front gates of Steptoe Air Force Base.

At the gates, a few hundred protesters were being beaten by a few hundred soldiers with clubs. Smoke and tear gas. One large soldier raised his rifle into the air and fired at something only he could see. Another soldier walked up to an old-man protester, pressed a pistol against the old man’s temple, and pulled the trigger. Blood fountained from the old man’s head as he toppled to the ground. A third soldier, screaming something I could not hear, ran up to the murderous soldier. With their hands swinging wildly in obscene and obscure gestures, the two soldiers argued with each other. They argued until the murderous soldier pressed his pistol against the other soldier’s chest and pulled the trigger again. And then both soldiers were swallowed up by the surging crowd.

Contamination.

As the bus pulled through the heavily fortified gates and drove deeper into the base, I saw plane after plane lifting off from runways. I didn’t know then that those planes were carnivorous. I didn’t know then that the bellies of those planes were filled with Indians.

I saw soldiers herding Indians into large buildings made of cold metal, steel and aluminum. I tasted steel and aluminum. The darkest Indians, the ones with black hair and brown skin, were herded into a red building. The Indians with brown hair and lighter eyes were herded into an orange building. The Indians with light hair and eyes, the Indians with white skin, were herded into a pale building.

I suddenly wondered if we were going to be slaughtered. I wondered if we were going to be eaten. I wondered if rich white men were going to turn the pages of books that were made with our skins.

On our bus, the soldiers pulled the Indian children to their feet.

“Move, move, move!” shouted the soldier-who-looked-like-me.

Once we were off the bus, the soldiers divided us into three groups, each destined for a different building.

I was in the darkest group with two Juniors, a John, Kim and Arlene Cox, Billy the Retard, and the third Kateri. There were another dozen Indian kids I didn’t recognize, but we had the same purple-black hair and brown skin. Randy Peone, the green-eyed Spokane, was in the second group with two Juniors, one James, two Kateris, Tyrone, the half-black kid who had dark skin, and many other half-breed kids. Sam the Indian, who was really white, was in the third group with two of the boys named James, two Johns, the girl named Junior, Teddy, the half-white kid with blond hair and gray eyes, and a hundred others. They were the largest group. When they were separated from each other, Tyrone and Teddy, the half-breed half brothers, wailed and beat their heads against the ground. The blood on their foreheads was impossibly bright.

“Pick them up! Pick them up!” shouted a tall white soldier with a crooked nose.

“No blood! No blood!” shouted another white soldier with large hands.

Strange aircraft hovered above us. I looked up and swore I could see tears on the face of one pilot. I wondered if he was Jesus.

There was so much gunfire in the distance that I thought it was birds singing. At that moment, the third Kateri rose up with the coiled metal spring she had pulled from her seat on the bus. She was beautiful. I could see in her face and form the woman she would have become. Screaming with rage, the third Kateri shoved that spring into the brown eye of a black soldier. She broke free and ran. Sam the Indian ran after her. Escape, and the thought of escape. I wanted to run with them, but my knees gave out, dropping me to the ground, and saved me. I watched Kateri and Sam the Indian run. I wanted to know how it felt to run.

“Stop them!” shouted the soldier-who-looked-like-me.

A white soldier, young and wide-eyed, raised his rifle and pulled the trigger twice. A chorus of screams. Sam and Kateri fell. They were now just two bags of blood.

“Goddamn it, who fired their weapon?” shouted a white officer. “Who fired their weapon?”

The wide-eyed white soldier raised his hand and the white officer stormed over to him. The officer snatched the soldier’s rifle from his hands.

“Who gave you the order to fire?” shouted the officer.

“Nobody, sir!”

“I said, who gave you the order to fire?”

“Nobody, sir!”

“Then why in the hell did you fire?”

“They were escaping, sir!”

“We’re in the middle of a goddamn Air Force base,” shouted the officer. “Did you honestly believe those kids were going to escape?”

The wide-eyed soldier hesitated.

“I, I, I didn’t think, sir,” he said.

Furious, the officer smashed the barrel of the rifle down on the soldier’s nose. The wide-eyed soldier crumpled to the pavement.

“Somebody get his dumb ass out of here!” shouted the officer.

Two other soldiers ran in and dragged the unconscious soldier away.

“Goddamn it!” shouted the officer. “This is a military operation and I want some discipline! I want some goddamn organization!”

The officer waded into the crowd of dark Indian children, scooped up a little brown girl, and marched toward the red building.

“Let’s go, honey,” the officer said to the little brown girl in his arms. “We’ve got work to do.”

Silently and obediently, the rest of us in the red group followed the officer. I didn’t know what happened to the other groups and would never know.

We walked into a bright light.

I walked into the bright light.

Inside the red building, beyond the bright light, I saw many more Indians than I had ever seen in one place in my entire life. There were so many Indians that I had to close my eyes against the magnitude of it. I wondered if every Indian in the world was inside that building.

We were forced into cattle chutes and led from station to station.