Flight: A Novel

by Sherman Alexie

  He smiles and breaks the window.

  I climb out and we escape together.

  We run to an abandoned warehouse in SoDo, an industrial section of Seattle down near the waterfront.

  We climb the dangerous stairs to the top floor where the white kid has made a home out of garbage and abandoned office furniture. We sit on chairs made out of newspapers. I laugh.

  “What’s so funny?” he asks.

  “I don’t even know your name,” I say.

  He smiles, walks over to the corner, pulls something out of a sack, and walks back to me.

  “This is my name,” he says, and hands me two pistols. One of them looks like a regular gun and the other one looks like a Star Wars laser.

  “That one is a thirty-eight special,” the pretty boy says, “and the other one is a paint gun.”

  I’ve seen paint-gun competitions on ESPN, those fake fights where fat white guys run around fake battlefields and shoot each other with balls of Day-Glo dye.

  They like to fight fake wars because there aren’t enough real ones.

  I’ve seen real people get shot by real guns. But I’ve never held a real gun. I’ve always heard and read that guns are cold metal. But not this one. It feels warm and comfortable, like a leather recliner sitting in front of a sixty-inch HDTV.

  I laugh again.

  “What’s funny this time?” he asks.

  “Your name is Guns,” I say. “That’s a really stupid name.”

  It’s his turn to laugh. “My name isn’t Guns,” he says. “My name is Justice.”

  We laugh together.

  “That is a corny-ass name,” I say. “Where’d you get it?”

  “I gave it to myself,” he says. “But I wish I’d been given my name by Indians. You guys used to give out names because people earned them. Because they did something amazing. And it was the old people who gave out those names: the elders, the wise ones. I wish the wise ones were still here.”

  I think of the great Oglala Sioux warrior Crazy Horse, who was given his name after he battled heroically against other Indians.

  Yes, Indians have always loved to kill other Indians. Isn’t that twisted?

  I think of how Crazy Horse was speared in the stomach by a U.S. Cavalry soldier while his best friend, Little Big Man, held his arms. I think of the millions of dead and dying Indians.

  “Do you know about the Ghost Dance?” I ask.

  “No,” Justice says. “Teach me.”

  “It was this ceremony created by the Paiute holy man Wovoka, back in the eighteen-seventies. He said, if the Indians danced this dance long enough, all the dead Indians would return and the white people would disappear.”

  “Sounds like my kind of dance,” Justice said.

  “Yeah, but it didn’t work. All the Ghost Dancers were slaughtered.”

  “Maybe they didn’t have the right kind of music.”

  “Yeah, they should have had Metallica.”

  Justice and I laugh. And then he stops laughing.

  “Did you ever try to Ghost-Dance?” he asks.

  “Nobody’s Ghost-Danced in over a hundred years,” I say. “And I don’t think one person can do it well enough to make it work. I think you need all Indians to do it.”

  “Well, I think you’re strong enough to Ghost-Dance all by yourself. I think you can bring back all the Indians and disappear all the white people.”

  I want to tell Justice that the only Indian I want to bring back is my father and the only white people I want to disappear are my evil foster families.

  I guess Justice doesn’t realize that a successful Ghost Dance would make him disappear, too. But maybe he doesn’t think he’s white. Or maybe he thinks he’s invincible.

  “The thing is,” Justice says, “what if this Ghost Dance is real? What if you can bring back your parents if you dance?”

  “I don’t have rhythm,” I say.

  “Be serious,” he says, and flashes the pistols at me. “What if you could resurrect your parents with these? Would you kill a white man if it would bring back your mother?”

  Jesus, what a question.

  Justice lets me think about my answer for two or three minutes, but I can’t say yes or no. I don’t know what I would do if I knew that killing someone would bring my mother back to life.

  Then Justice says he’s hungry, so he hides the pistols again and we go on a food quest, rummaging through supermarket Dumpsters and restaurant trash cans.

  For two weeks, we hunt for food during the night and talk during the day.

  When we talk, Justice lets me hold the real pistol. We take the bullets out of it, and I practice pulling the trigger.

  Click, click.

  Then we tape up newspaper and magazine photos of people we hate, like George W Bush and Dick Cheney and Michael Jackson and that British dude from American Idol, and I practice shooting at them with the empty gun.

  Click, click, click.

  Then we go up on the roof of the warehouse, and I practice shooting at cars driving by on the freeway. And at people walking the streets down below us.

  Click, click, click, click.

  Some nights, Justice and I go out with the paint gun, hide in dark places, and shoot people.

  The thing is, when two kids jump out of an alley and point a gun at you, it isn’t like you’re going to think, Oh, it’s just a paint gun.

  Nope, you’re going to think, Oh, shit, two kids are going to kill me!

  So, man, oh, man, do I hear some people scream. You know what’s really funny? When people think they’re going to die, they all scream like nine-year-old girls.

  One night, down on the waterfront, a big old white guy faints when I point the gun at him. I don’t even have to cover him with red dye. He just falls down on the sidewalk and twitches.

  Justice and I stand over the unconscious dude. He looks dead, and I feel powerful.

  There are moments when a boy can feel immortal.

  I practice killing people until it feels like I’m really killing them. I wonder how long it would take me to really shoot somebody. I wonder what would happen if I killed ten, twenty, or thirty people. If I killed enough people for real, would it begin to feel like practice?

  Every night, after hours of talking and practice-shooting with the real gun and fake-shooting with the paint gun, Justice asks, “What would you do if the Ghost Dance is real?”

  His question echoes in my head. It stays there and I want to give Justice the best answer. The only answer. The answer he wants.

  “What if the Ghost Dance is real?” Justice asks me again and again.

  The question crawls into my clothes and pushes its way through my skin and into my stomach. The question feeds me.

  “Do you think the Ghost Dance is real?” Justice asks.

  After hearing that question a thousand times, I finally have the answer.

  “Yes,” I say.

  Justice laughs and hugs me. I am so proud. I feel like I finally deserve his love.

  “Okay, okay,” he says. “Now you can dance. Now you understand. Now you have the knowledge. Now you have the power. So what are you going to do with that power?”

  I stare at the pistol in my hand.

  “I’m going to start a fire,” I say.

  “Yes,” Justice says, and keeps on hugging me. He loves me. And I love Justice.

  The next day, during lunch hour, I stand in the lobby of a bank in downtown Seattle. Fifty or sixty people are here with me: men, women, and children of many different colors. I hear four or five different languages being spoken. And I guess these people have many different religions. But none of that matters. I know these people must die so my mother and father can return.

  I breathe, try to relax, and pull the real and paint pistols out of my pocket. I say a little prayer and dance through the lobby. I aim my pistols at the faces of these strangers. They scream or fall to the floor or run or freeze or weep or curse or close their eyes.

  One man points
at me.

  “You’re not real,” he says.

  What a strange thing to say to a boy with a gun. But then I wonder if he’s right. Maybe I’m not real. And if I’m not real, none of these people are real. Maybe all of us are ghosts.

  Can a ghost kill another ghost?

  I push the real and paint pistols into the man’s face. And I pull the triggers.

  I spin in circles and shoot and shoot and shoot. I keep pulling the triggers until the bank guard shoots me in the back of the head. I am still alive when I start to fall, but I die before I hit the floor.

  Four

  “WAKE UP, KID; COME ON, it’s time to go.”

  I open my eyes. I’m lying in a hospital bed. No. I’m in a motel-room bed, a small and cheap and filthy motel room. A room where a million ugly people have done a million ugly things. There are stains on the walls, and you don’t even want to guess what caused them.

  Why am I in this horrible motel room? Well, I did one of the ugliest things a person can do, right? I just shot up a bank full of people. How could I have done that? I think about that man who didn’t think I was real. Maybe I wasn’t real. Maybe none of it happened. I pray to God that it didn’t happen.

  But I remember the bank so clearly. I can hear the screams and smell the gunpowder. No nightmare can feel that real, can it?

  I want to vomit.

  I once read that twenty or thirty people jump off Seattle’s Aurora Avenue Bridge every year. And I’m sure that all of them probably changed their minds about suicide the moment after they jumped. Let me tell you, I feel like one of those jumpers. I feel like I jumped off some kind of bridge and changed my mind too late to save any of us.

  But why am I alive? Did I really survive a bullet to the brain?

  “Damn it, kid,” a man says. “Get up, we only have a few minutes.”

  I don’t recognize the man’s voice. I sit up in bed and see him sitting on the other bed. He puts on his shoes. He’s a serious white guy, maybe forty years old, wearing a blue shirt and blue jeans. He’s fat but strong-looking at the same time, like a professional wrestler.

  He’s also got a pistol in the holster on his belt.

  A cop.

  I’m not dead, but I am under arrest. But how could I not be dead? I felt that bullet crash through my brain. I saw white light. And then it went dark. And I don’t mean asleep dark. I mean shot-in-the-brain-until-you’re-dead dark.

  But I guess they saved me. Some amazing doctors and nurses must have saved me. They saved the life of a killer. I wonder if it makes them mad or sad when they do that. I wonder if I deserve to live. What the hell was I thinking? What kind of bastard am I? I’m just another zit-faced freak with a gun. Man, I had no idea I was this evil. And then it makes me wonder. Do evil people know they’re evil? Or do they just think they’re doing the right thing?

  I think about Justice. I think he fooled me. I think he brainwashed me. If he was so righteous, why wasn’t he in the bank with me?

  He’s free and I’m trapped.

  That bullet must have done some major damage. I hope I still have a face and complete skull. I reach up to touch the bandages. But there are no bandages. And there’s no blood or scars or any other disgusting head-wound shit. I don’t feel any pain at all. In fact, I feel stronger than ever before.

  I don’t understand what has happened. I survived a bullet to the brain. And I’m in a motel room with a cop.

  “Where am I?” I ask the cop.

  “We’ll both be in a shit storm if we miss this meeting. We fell asleep. Come on. Get up, get your stuff, and let’s go.”

  “Where are we going?”

  “Jeez, Hank, shake the sleep out of your brain and get moving.”

  Hank? Did he just call me Hank?

  “My name isn’t Hank,” I say.

  “Quit fooling around, Hank, you’re getting me mad.”

  “Quit calling me Hank.”

  The cop stands and walks over to me. He leans over me and stares hard at me. His breath smells like beer and onions.

  Yes, I’ve had quite a few ugly smelly guys lean over my bed. I get the urge to punch this cop in the crotch.

  “Are you still asleep?” he asks.

  “No.”

  “You’re in one of them waking dreams, aren’t you?” he asks. “Like sleepwalking or something, right?”

  He slaps my cheek lightly. Then slaps me harder.

  “Did that help, Hank?” he asks.

  “You call me Hank one more time,” I say, “and I’m going to kick your ass.”

  He laughs, pulls me off the bed and to my feet, and shoves me across the room. I trip over a pair of shoes and bump the back of my head against a mirror.

  “That’s police brutality!” I shout.

  The cop just laughs. I’ve always been good at making cops laugh. But I’m not trying to be funny this time.

  “I just got shot in the brain,” I say. “Are you trying to kill me?”

  He laughs again, grabs a holstered pistol off the table, and hands it to me.

  “Okay, soldier up, funny guy,” he says. “We got real work to do.”

  I am stunned. I am the psycho teen who shot up a bank filled with people and a cop just handed me a gigantic freakin’ gun! A .357 Magnum! At least, I think it’s a Magnum. I don’t know guns much, but I’ve seen this one in the movies.

  I turn around to look at myself in the mirror. I expect to see me pretending to be Clint Eastwood. But instead I am looking at a face that is not my own.

  Huh. Isn’t that something?

  They must have done plastic surgery on me. That bullet must have taken off my face. And so they had to take my zitty teenage Indian mug and replace it with a handsome white guy’s face.

  Yes, I am looking at a very handsome white guy in the mirror. His hair is blond. His eyes are blue. His skin is clear. This guy hasn’t had a zit in his whole life. And this guy is me.

  Isn’t modern medicine amazing?

  “Wow,” I say to the cop. “I really like my new face.”

  He just stares at me.

  “It’s like that movie with John Travolta,” I say. “The one where he switches faces with Nicolas Cage. I didn’t know that stuff was real.”

  The cop’s face changes expression. All of a sudden he looks a little confused. And worried. “Did you have a stroke or something, Hank?” he asks. “You’re not talking or looking right.”

  I can’t figure out why he keeps calling me Hank. Well, maybe they changed my face and my name. And so I look down and realize I am shorter than I used to be. In fact, I realize I’m about six or seven inches shorter than I used to be. I’m a short guy now, but I have a lot more muscles. My arms are huge. I have the face and body of a bodybuilder white guy. I am beautiful.

  Jeez, I should get shot in the brain every day.

  I suddenly get an idea. I reach down and check the size of my groinal region, and I realize that I’m different down there, too. I am a big guy in all sorts of ways.

  “Are you sure you’re okay?” the cop asks me. “I’m calling this off if you’re not okay. It’s too dangerous if you’re not okay.”

  “No, no, no,” I say. “Everything is good.”

  Of course, I’m lying. I don’t know that everything is good. I am very confused.

  “Tell me you’re okay,” the cop says. “We’re not leaving this room unless you say you’re okay.”

  “I’m okay,” I say.

  He believes me.

  “Good. Good, partner, let’s go kick some butt,” the cop says, and tosses me a wallet. My wallet. I open it up and see a gold badge. My badge. And then I pull an ID card out of the wallet and look at the photo. It’s me.

  Well, it’s a picture of a guy with my new white face. But that ID says that this face belongs to a guy named Hank Storm, and that he’s thirty-five years old, and that he’s an FBI agent. Yep, a federal agent. A supercop.

  “I’m Hank Storm?” I ask the other cop, who must be an FBI guy,
too.

  “Yes,” he says. “You’re finally awake. Jeez, Hank, you really had me worried there. All right, let’s go save the world.”

  I put on my shoes and follow him out the door.

  Five

  THE OTHER FBI DUDE and I step out of our motel room. It’s dark and clear and I can see stars in the sky. More stars than I’ve ever seen. I also see a sign that says this is the Red River Motor Inn.

  Red River, Red River, Red River; that name is so familiar. I think I read about it somewhere. And then I remember. Red River is on the Nannapush Indian Reservation.

  “Red River, Idaho,” I say.

  “Yep,” the other FBI says. “The asshole of America.”

  “Lot of Indians here.”

  “Yeah. I wish Custer would have killed a few more of these damn tepee creepers.”

  “Wow,” I say. “You really hate Indians, don’t you?”

  “I didn’t know any Indians until they sent me to work here. And then I met Indians. And trust me, none of them is worth much. Well, maybe some of the kids. Some of the kids are still okay. But they’re going to go bad, too. Just you watch. There’s something bad inside these Indians. They can’t help themselves.”

  I wonder what this racist FBI man would do if he knew his partner was really a half-breed Indian. I want to tell him, but I don’t want to get punched. Or shot in the head. Again.

  So I keep quiet. As quiet as this reservation.

  I look at the map inside my memory and realize I’m six hundred miles from the nearest real city. And there are so many stars. I know city lights but I don’t know stars.

  “The sky is beautiful,” I say. “Like a starry blanket.”

  The other FBI laughs and laughs. “Jeez,” he says. “You go to sleep a killer and you wake up like some kind of poet.”

  “I’m a killer poet,” I say.

  The other FBI loves that. He slaps me hard on the back, but it doesn’t hurt at all because I am very muscular.

  “What time is it anyway?” I ask.

  “Three in the morn,” the other FBI says. “We have to hurry.”

  So we get into the government sedan and the other FBI drives us through a maze of dirt roads to an old shack sitting out the middle of a dark nowhere. It’s so dark I can’t see more than four or five feet away. It’s like being in the belly of a whale.