The Toughest Indian in the World (8 page)

I’m not sure I want to kiss you again, said Seymour. He said, But I will kiss you if you want it, because I don’t want to hurt your feelings.

My feelings are my feelings, said Salmon Boy, they belong to me, and you don’t have to worry about them at all.

All right then, we won’t kiss no more. At least, not until we’re sure about it.

Salmon Boy said, I believe in love.

Seymour and Salmon Boy climbed back into the car and drove down the plowed road toward the farmhouse. On both sides of them, the snowbanks rose high into the blue sky until it felt like they were driving down a tunnel.

Salmon Boy remembered the time his father won a free trip to Disneyland. They got half of the prize money and the whole family jumped into their blue van and headed for California. They were supposed to get the other half once they got to Disneyland, but something went wrong. There was nobody there to greet them and nobody answered the telephone back home. Salmon Boy and his whole family walked up to the gates of the Magic Kingdom and peered through the bars.

Inside, white people were having more fun than any Indians had ever had.

Salmon Boy remembered how all his family members counted up all the money in their pockets and discovered they carried enough coins for one loaf of bread and a package of cheese, and maybe, just maybe, enough gas to get them back home.

For twenty-six straight hours, Salmon Boy’s father drove through the night and day, drove through a tunnel of sun, drove through a tunnel of stars, and laughed like crazy when he drove over that bridge that marked the entrance to the reservation.

My father loved me, Salmon Boy said to Seymour.

Well, then, said Seymour, that’s a good thing to tell the police when they finally catch us. It will explain everything.

You think they’re still after us? asked Salmon Boy.

The police are always, always minutes behind us.

They knocked on the front door of the farmhouse. Seymour held his unloaded pistol in his front pocket. He felt like somebody might know how to save him.

An old white woman soon stood on the other side of the open door.

Who are you? she asked.

We are two desperate men on a nonviolent killing spree, said Seymour.

And we’re doing our best to fall in love, said Salmon Boy.

With who? asked the old woman.

With each other, said Seymour.

Well, then, she said, you better come in and get yourself something to eat and drink. You’re talking about some hard, hard work.

Seymour and Salmon Boy sat at her table while she made them lemonade and ham sandwiches. Her husband had been dead for ten long years, years that hung like lace in the attic, like an old quilt on the bedroom wall, like a coyote nailed to a fence post.

My husband, she said, he’s buried out there, back behind the barn. You can’t see his grave right now, but it’s there, right there beneath the snow.

The lemonade was sweet and the ham was salty and everything was near-right with the world.

We only had one child, she said, a son, and he stood up one day, walked out that door right there, and has never returned.

The old woman’s eyes filled with tears. She asked, Didn’t you go to high school with my son John?

Which one of us are you speaking to? asked Seymour.

I’m talking to both of you, she said.

Well, then, I have to say, said Seymour, that I don’t remember anybody named John. I didn’t even go to high school.

How about the Indian? asked the old woman.

His name is Salmon Boy.

Surely, you didn’t go to school with my son, she said, because I would have remembered a crazy name like that.

She walked around on old legs and set an old coffeepot down over a blue flame.

My real name ain’t Salmon Boy.

Real or not, my son didn’t go to school with any Indians, she said. She stirred her coffee. All three of them stared down into its blackness.

Anyway, she said, I think I recognize everybody who visits me. I spend whole days with my visitors, thinking I know them, thinking I have to be a good hostess. They show up in the mornings mostly, and I feed them breakfast. I feed them lunch and dinner. Sometimes, at night, I get a bed ready for them, pillows and sheets and blankets, before I realize they aren’t real.

She looked at the men.

Are you real? she asked.

Seymour and Salmon Boy looked at each other. They weren’t sure.

But listen to me, she said, an old woman telling old stories. How about you boys? And this killing spree of yours, where are you heading to?

It’s a nonviolent killing spree, said Seymour, and we’re heading to Arizona.

So, she said, it’s a north-south killing spree. That’s a lot different than an east-west killing spree.

What’s the difference?

More killing when you’re moving west. More policemen when you’re moving south. East-west takes a lot more discipline, more preparation. North-south, you just got to have enough passion. Passion is all you need. Do you boys have passion?

Seymour remembered his second wife, how she had fallen in love with her gynecologist and run away to Ames, Iowa, taking all of their children with her, so Seymour had dialed up 411, found his first wife’s phone number, called her up at three in the morning, and had asked her to remarry him now, right now.

You’re crazy, she said, that’s why I never stopped loving you.

Then you’ll marry me? he asked. Again? he asked.

Oh, I love you, she said, her voice breaking apart like glass. Then she said, I shouldn’t have married you the first time, and then she hung up the phone.

It was five after three in the morning, so Seymour ran down the hallway with a twenty-dollar bill in his hand, and slid it beneath the door of the red-headed prostitute who lived in Apartment 7. He didn’t want sex—he wanted redemption—so he ran back to his room, climbed into bed, and cried until the sun rose and slapped him across the eyes.

Do you boys have passion? asked the farmhouse old woman. She placed her wrinkled hand on Seymour’s hand.

Salmon Boy was jealous.

The Indian remembered when he told his cousin she was more beautiful than any white girl he had ever seen. She’d taken off her shirt and bra to show him what she’d been hiding beneath. Small breasts, like birds with opened wings, sat down on her brown chest. He loved her. He thought she was beautiful and young and would grow up to be beautiful and old.

Salmon Boy looked at the old white woman, saw her blue, blue eyes, and wondered if she’d been beautiful when she was a girl. He wondered if she had any Indian blood.

My husband was a soldier, said the old woman. She said, He was a reluctant soldier. He shot a dozen men, a dozen of those Japs, on some island in 1943. He shot twelve of them, shot six of them in the head, four of them in the heart, and two of them in the belly. He shot twelve of them without thinking, didn’t stop to wonder what it meant, but then number thirteen came running over the hill, over the grassy hill.

What color was the grass? asked Seymour.

What do you mean? asked the old woman. She asked, What do you mean what color was the grass? The grass is always green. Don’t you know that? Don’t you know the grass is always green.

But it was a different part of the world, said Seymour, I thought maybe the grass is a different color in a different part of the world.

The grass is green in every part of the world, said the old woman. She said, On Mars, the grass is green.

The grass is green on my reservation, said Salmon Boy. He was telling the truth.

There you go, said the old woman, there you go. Even the Indian knows the grass is green. What’s wrong with you? Didn’t you learn anything when you went to high school? My son went to that same high school and he learned a few things before he disappeared forever. You bet he learned a few things.

But what about your husband? asked Seymour. He was trying to change the subject.

What about my husband? Did you know my husband? He was a hero during the Good War. He was a hero, even though he was a reluctant soldier. He shot twelve Japs, shot them all dead, but there was thirteen of them running, and that last one came over the hill, running through the green grass, and my husband tried to shoot him, but he couldn’t pull the trigger, and that Jap ran a bayonet through my husband’s heart, right through the middle of his heart. And they buried him right there on the beach, right there in the sand.

But I thought, said Seymour. He said, I thought your husband was buried behind the barn.

You’re damn right, said the old woman. He’s buried. He’s buried in the snow out there, he’s buried in the sand over there, there are pieces of my husband buried everywhere.

Salmon Boy stared down into his coffee. In that darkness, he saw a white man with a rifle.

He was a hero, said the old woman. My husband shot twelve Japs on the island. Twelve of them! Can you imagine that? All by himself. My husband, he always said he would whisper in my ear in the middle of the night, he always said most men can kill eleven people, but only a few can kill twelve, and only the best, the very best, can kill thirteen.

She put her head down on the cold table.

My husband, she said, he was never the best. He was a good man, but he was never a great man.

With her head down, she breathed deep. With her head down, she fell asleep like somebody had flipped a switch.

Seymour placed his left hand on her gray hair. He held it there.

Salmon Boy was jealous. He closed his eyes and sipped at his coffee. It was bitter and instant and when the Indian opened his eyes, he was sitting in the car right at the edge of the Grand Canyon.

Through the windshield, Salmon Boy watched as Seymour pointed the gun at a tourist family. Mother, father, son, daughter.

Here, here, said the father, you can have all my money.

I don’t want your money, said Seymour, I want to know how you met, I want to know how you fell in love.

But that’s our story, said the father, you can’t steal it.

Tell me, tell me, shouted Seymour as he grabbed one of the children, the son, and held the empty pistol against his temple.

Please, please, said the mother, my husband was somebody else’s husband when we met. But I waited for him. I didn’t want to break up his marriage. I never told him I loved him. I just loved him and hoped that was enough. And it was and it was. They divorced and he called me three days later and asked me to marry him. We’d never been on a date, but he asked me to marry him. We’d never done anything but talk in the copy room, but he asked me to marry him. And I knew it was crazy but I married him and we’ve been married for fifteen years.

How does that happen? Seymour asked. He pushed the son back toward his parents, back toward his sister.

It happens all the time, said the father, you just never hear about it.

No, no, no, said Seymour, people don’t love each other anymore. Not anymore like that. Not anymore.

Seymour turned toward the Grand Canyon, ran toward the void.

In the car, Salmon Boy held his breath because he was positive that Seymour was going to jump. Salmon Boy’s blood climbed the ladder over his heart. But Seymour stopped just short of the chasm and threw the pistol down, down, down.

The pistol fell then and is still falling now.

Oh, said Salmon Boy as Seymour turned to face him.

How do you love a man? Seymour asked the sky, but the sky didn’t answer.

Salmon Boy closed his eyes and when he opened them again he was lying in a motel room in Flagstaff, Arizona.

Seymour quietly slept on the other side of the bed, or perhaps he wasn’t asleep at all.

Salmon Boy watched the television, watched a black-and-white movie where the people didn’t make any sense.

Salmon Boy remembered another time, when he was a child, when his father was driving the family back from some powwow or another, when Salmon Boy had picked up the newspaper to discover that the Batman movie was playing on local television. The old-time Batman, the Adam-West-as-Batman Batman.

Can you drive faster? Salmon Boy asked his father. He wanted to watch the movie.

We’ll never make it in time, said his father. But he loved his son and so he drove as fast as he could, through the tunnel of his son’s dreams, through a tunnel crowded with all of his son’s dreams.

They drove by a coyote nailed to a speed-limit sign.

They drove by a coyote howling from an overpass.

They drove by a coyote drinking a cup of coffee in a truck-stop diner.

When they reached the motel, Salmon Boy rushed into the room and switched on the television, expecting to see
Batman,
but saw only the last few moments of some other movie.

In that movie, a pretty white boy stares out a window into the falling snow, into a dark courtyard where the snow falls on a man riding a bicycle in circles, into the courtyard where a handsome man rides a bicycle around a statue of a broken heart, or perhaps it wasn’t a broken heart at all, but Salmon Boy remembers it that way.

He remembers it now as he stares at the black-and-white movie where the characters don’t make any sense, as Seymour sleeps on the other side of the bed, or pretends to be asleep.

Seymour, said Salmon Boy.

Yes, said Seymour.

I am the most lonely I have ever been.

I know.

Will you hold me close?

Yes, yes, I will.

Salmon Boy pushed himself into Seymour’s arms. They both wore only their boxer shorts. Seymour’s blue shorts contrasted with his pale skin while Salmon Boy’s white boxers glowed in the dark.

I don’t want to have sex, said Salmon Boy.

I don’t either.

But how will we fall in love if we don’t have sex?

I don’t know.

They held each other tighter and tighter. They were afraid.

I am happy in your arms, said Seymour.

And I am happy in yours.

Is this what it feels like?

What?

To be loved, to be held, to be intimate without the fear of penetration?

I think so.

Yes, I think so, too. I think this is what women have wanted from men for all of our lives. I think they want to be held in our arms and fall asleep in the absence of body fluids.