But the Flathead kid would not go down, even though his face swelled up so bad that he looked like the Elephant Man. There were no referees, no judge, no bells to signal the end of the round. The winner was the Indian still standing. Punch after punch, man, and the kid would not go down.
“I was so tired after a while,” said the fighter, “that I just took a step back and watched the kid. He stood there with his arms down, swaying from side to side like some toy, you know? Head bobbing on his neck like there was no bone at all. You couldn’t even see his eyes no more. He was all messed up.”
“What’d you do?” I asked.
“Ah, hell, I couldn’t fight him no more. That kid was planning to die before he ever went down. So I just sat on the ground while they counted me out. Dumb Flathead kid didn’t even know what was happening. I just sat on the ground while they raised his hand. While all the winners collected their money and all the losers cussed me out. I just sat there, man.”
“Jeez,” I said. “What happened next?”
“Not much. I sat there until everybody was gone. Then I stood up and decided to head for home. I’m tired of this shit. I just want to go home for a while. I got enough money to last me a long time. I’m a rich Indian, you hear? I’m a rich Indian.”
The fighter finished his Pepsi, rolled down his window, and pitched the can out. I almost protested, but decided against it. I kept my empty can wedged between my legs.
“That’s a hell of a story,” I said.
“Ain’t no story,” he said. “It’s what happened.”
“Jeez,” I said. “You would’ve been a warrior in the old days, enit? You would’ve been a killer. You would have stolen everybody’s goddamn horses. That would’ve been you. You would’ve been it.”
I was excited. I wanted the fighter to know how much I thought of him. He didn’t even look at me.
“A killer,” he said. “Sure.”
We didn’t talk much after that. I pulled into Wenatchee just before sundown, and the fighter seemed happy to be leaving me.
“Thanks for the ride, cousin,” he said as he climbed out. Indians always call each other cousin, especially if they’re strangers.
“Wait,” I said.
He looked at me, waiting impatiently.
I wanted to know if he had a place to sleep that night. It was supposed to get cold. There was a mountain range between Wenatchee and his reservation. Big mountains that were dormant volcanoes, but that could all blow up at any time. We wrote about it once in the newspaper. Things can change so quickly. So many emergencies and disasters that we can barely keep track. I wanted to tell him how much I cared about my job, even if I had to write about small-town firemen. I wanted to tell the fighter that I pick up all Indian hitchhikers, young and old, men and women, and get them a little closer to home, even if I can’t get them all the way. I wanted to tell him that the night sky was a graveyard. I wanted to know if he was the toughest Indian in the world.
“It’s late,” I finally said. “You can crash with me, if you want.”
He studied my face and then looked down the long road toward his reservation.
“Okay,” he said. “That sounds good.”
We got a room at the Pony Soldier Motel, and both of us laughed at the irony of it all. Inside the room, in a generic watercolor hanging above the bed, the U.S. Cavalry was kicking the crap out of a band of renegade Indians.
“What tribe you think they are?” I asked the fighter.
“All of them,” he said.
The fighter crashed on the floor while I curled up in the uncomfortable bed. I couldn’t sleep for the longest time. I listened to the fighter talk in his sleep. I stared up at the water-stained ceiling. I don’t know what time it was when I finally drifted off, and I don’t know what time it was when the fighter got into bed with me. He was naked and his penis was hard. I felt it press against my back as he snuggled up close to me, reached inside my underwear, and took my penis in his hand. Neither of us said a word. He continued to stroke me as he rubbed himself against my back. That went on for a long time. I had never been that close to another man, but the fighter’s callused fingers felt better than I would have imagined if I had ever allowed myself to imagine such things.
“This isn’t working,” he whispered. “I can’t come.”
Without thinking, I reached around and took the fighter’s penis in my hand. He was surprisingly small.
“No,” he said. “I want to be inside you.”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I’ve never done this before.”
“It’s okay,” he said. “I’ll be careful. I have rubbers.”
Without waiting for my answer, he released me and got up from the bed. I turned to look at him. He was beautiful and scarred. So much brown skin marked with bruises, badly healed wounds, and tattoos. His long black hair was unbraided and hung down to his thin waist. My slacks and dress shirt were folded and draped over the chair near the window. My shoes were sitting on the table. Blue light filled the room. The fighter bent down to his pack and searched for his condoms. For reasons I could not explain then and cannot explain now, I kicked off my underwear and rolled over on my stomach. I could not see him, but I could hear him breathing heavily as he found the condoms, tore open a package, and rolled one over his penis. He crawled onto the bed, between my legs, and slid a pillow beneath my belly.
“Are you ready?” he asked.
“I’m not gay,” I said.
“Sure,” he said as he pushed himself into me. He was small but it hurt more than I expected, and I knew that I would be sore for days afterward. But I wanted him to save me. He didn’t say anything. He just pumped into me for a few minutes, came with a loud sigh, and then pulled out. I quickly rolled off the bed and went into the bathroom. I locked the door behind me and stood there in the dark. I smelled like salmon.
“Hey,” the fighter said through the door. “Are you okay?”
“Yes,” I said. “I’m fine.”
A long silence.
“Hey,” he said. “Would you mind if I slept in the bed with you?”
I had no answer to that.
“Listen,” I said. “That Flathead boy you fought? You know, the one you really beat up? The one who wouldn’t fall down?”
In my mind, I could see the fighter pummeling that boy. Punch after punch. The boy too beaten to fight back, but too strong to fall down.
“Yeah, what about him?” asked the fighter.
“What was his name?”
“His name?”
“Yeah, his name.”
“Elmer something or other.”
“Did he have an Indian name?”
“I have no idea. How the hell would I know that?”
I stood there in the dark for a long time. I was chilled. I wanted to get into bed and fall asleep.
“Hey,” I said. “I think, I think maybe—well, I think you should leave now.”
“Yeah,” said the fighter, not surprised. I heard him softly singing as he dressed and stuffed all of his belongings into his pack. I wanted to know what he was singing, so I opened the bathroom door just as he was opening the door to leave. He stopped, looked at me, and smiled.
“Hey, tough guy,” he said. “You were good.”
The fighter walked out the door, left it open, and walked away. I stood in the doorway and watched him continue his walk down the highway, past the city limits. I watched him rise from earth to sky and become a new constellation. I closed the door and wondered what was going to happen next. Feeling uncomfortable and cold, I went back into the bathroom. I ran the shower with the hottest water possible. I stared at myself in the mirror. Steam quickly filled the room. I threw a few shadow punches. Feeling stronger, I stepped into the shower and searched my body for changes. A middle-aged man needs to look for tumors. I dried myself with a towel too small for the job. Then I crawled naked into bed. I wondered if I was a warrior in this life and if I had been a warrior in a previous life. Lonely and
laughing, I fell asleep. I didn’t dream at all, not one bit. Or perhaps I dreamed but remembered none of it. Instead, I woke early the next morning, before sunrise, and went out into the world. I walked past my car. I stepped onto the pavement, still warm from the previous day’s sun. I started walking. In bare feet, I traveled upriver toward the place where I was born and will someday die. At that moment, if you had broken open my heart you could have looked inside and seen the thin white skeletons of one thousand salmon.
WAR DANCES
1. My Kafka Baggage
A few years ago, after I returned from a trip to Los Angeles, I unpacked my bag and found a dead cockroach, shrouded by a dirty sock, in a bottom corner. “Shit,” I thought. “We’re being invaded.” And so I threw the unpacked clothes, books, shoes, and toiletries back into the suitcase, carried it out onto the driveway, and dumped the contents onto the pavement, ready to stomp on any other cockroach stowaways. But there was only the one cockroach, stiff and dead. As he lay on the pavement, I leaned closer to him. His legs were curled under his body. His head was tilted at a sad angle. Sad? Yes, sad. For who is lonelier than the cockroach without his tribe? I laughed at myself. I was feeling empathy for a dead cockroach. I wondered about its story. How had it got into my bag? And where? At the hotel in Los Angeles? In an airport baggage system? It didn’t originate in our house. We’ve kept those tiny bastards away from our place for fifteen years. So what had happened to this little vermin? Did he smell something delicious in my bag—my musky deodorant or some crumb of chocolate Power Bar—and climb inside, only to be crushed by the shifts of fate and garment bags? As he died, did he feel fear? Isolation? Existential dread?
2. Symptoms
Last summer, in reaction to various allergies I was suffering from, defensive mucous flooded my inner right ear and confused, frightened, untied, and unmoored me. Simply stated, I could not fucking hear a thing from that side, so I had to turn my head to understand what my two sons, ages eight and ten, were saying.
“We’re hungry,” they said. “We keep telling you.”
They wanted to be fed. And I had not heard them.
“Mom would have fed us by now,” they said.
Their mother had left for Italy with her mother two days ago. My sons and I were going to enjoy a boys’ week, filled with unwashed socks, REI rock wall climbing, and ridiculous heaps of pasta.
“What are you going to cook?” my sons asked. “Why haven’t you cooked yet?”
I’d been lying on the couch reading a book while they played and I had not realized that I’d gone partially deaf. So I, for just a moment, could only weakly blame the silence—no, the contradictory roar that only I could hear.
Then I recalled the man who went to the emergency room because he’d woken having lost most, if not all, of his hearing. The doctor peered into one ear, saw an obstruction, reached in with small tweezers, and pulled out a cockroach, then reached into the other ear, and extracted a much larger cockroach. Did you know that ear wax is a delicacy for roaches?
I cooked dinner for my sons—overfed them out of guilt—and cleaned the hell out of our home. Then I walked into the bathroom and stood close to my mirror. I turned my head and body at weird angles, and tried to see deeply into my congested ear. I sang hymns and prayed that I’d see a small angel trapped in the canal. I would free the poor thing, and she’d unfurl and pat dry her tiny wings, then fly to my lips and give me a sweet kiss for sheltering her metamorphosis.
3. The Symptoms Worsen
When I woke at three a.m., completely unable to hear out of my clogged right ear, and positive that a damn swarm of locusts was wedged inside, I left a message for my doctor, and told him that I would be sitting outside his office when he reported to work.
This would be the first time I had been inside a health-care facility since my father’s last surgery.
4. Blankets
After the surgeon cut off my father’s right foot—no, half of my father’s right foot—and three toes from the left, I sat with him in the recovery room. It was more like a recovery hallway. There was no privacy, not even a thin curtain. I guessed it made it easier for the nurses to monitor the postsurgical patients, but still, my father was exposed—his decades of poor health and worse decisions were illuminated—on white sheets in a white hallway under white lights.
“Are you okay?” I asked. It was a stupid question. Who could be okay after such a thing? Yesterday, my father had walked into the hospital. Okay, he’d shuffled while balanced on two canes, but that was still called walking. A few hours ago, my father still had both of his feet. Yes, his feet and toes had been black with rot and disease but they’d still been, technically speaking, feet and toes. And, most important, those feet and toes had belonged to my father. But now they were gone, sliced off. Where were they? What did they do with the right foot and the toes from the left foot? Did they throw them in the incinerator? Were their ashes floating over the city?
“Doctor, I’m cold,” my father said.
“Dad, it’s me,” I said.
“I know who are you. You’re my son.” But considering the blankness in my father’s eyes, I assumed he was just guessing at my identity.
“Dad, you’re in the hospital. You just had surgery.”
“I know where I am. I’m cold.”
“Do you want another blanket?” Another stupid question. Of course, he wanted another blanket. He probably wanted me to build a fucking campfire or drag in one of those giant propane heaters that NFL football teams used on the sidelines.
I walked down the hallway—the recovery hallway—to the nurses’ station. There were three women nurses, two white and one black. Being Native American-Spokane and Coeur d’Alene Indian, I hoped my darker pigment would give me an edge with the black nurse, so I addressed her directly.
“My father is cold,” I said. “Can I get another blanket?”
The black nurse glanced up from her paperwork and regarded me. Her expression was neither compassionate nor callous.
“How can I help you, sir?” she asked.
“I’d like another blanket for my father. He’s cold.”
“I’ll be with you in a moment, sir.”
She looked back down at her paperwork. She made a few notes. Not knowing what else to do, I stood there and waited.
“Sir,” the black nurse said. “I’ll be with you in a moment.”
She was irritated. I understood. After all, how many thousands of times had she been asked for an extra blanket? She was a nurse, an educated woman, not a damn housekeeper. And it was never really about an extra blanket, was it? No, when people asked for an extra blanket, they were asking for a time machine. And, yes, she knew she was a health care provider, and she knew she was supposed to be compassionate, but my father, an alcoholic, diabetic Indian with terminally damaged kidneys, had just endured an incredibly expensive surgery for what? So he could ride his motorized wheelchair to the bar and win bets by showing off his disfigured foot? I know she didn’t want to be cruel, but she believed there was a point when doctors should stop rescuing people from their own self-destructive impulses. And I couldn’t disagree with her but I could ask for the most basic of comforts, couldn’t I?
“My father,” I said. “An extra blanket, please.”
“Fine,” she said, then stood and walked back to a linen closet, grabbed a white blanket, and handed it to me. “If you need anything else—”
I didn’t wait around for the end of her sentence. With the blanket in hand, I walked back to my father. It was a thin blanket, laundered and sterilized a hundred times. In fact, it was too thin. It wasn’t really a blanket. It was more like a large beach towel. Hell, it wasn’t even good enough for that. It was more like the world’s largest coffee filter. Jesus, had health care finally come to this? Everybody was uninsured and unblanketed.
“Dad, I’m back.”
He looked so small and pale lying in that hospital bed. How had that change happened? For the first sixty-seve
n years of his life, my father had been a large and dark man. And now, he was just another pale and sick drone in a hallway of pale and sick drones. A hive, I thought, this place looks like a beehive with colony collapse disorder.
“Dad, it’s me.”
“I’m cold.”
“I have a blanket.”
As I draped it over my father and tucked it around his body, I felt the first sting of grief. I’d read the hospital literature about this moment. There would come a time when roles would reverse and the adult child would become the caretaker of the ill parent. The circle of life. Such poetic bullshit.
“I can’t get warm,” my father said. “I’m freezing.”
“I brought you a blanket, Dad, I put it on you.”
“Get me another one. Please. I’m so cold. I need another blanket.”
I knew that ten more of these cheap blankets wouldn’t be enough. My father needed a real blanket, a good blanket.
I walked out of the recovery hallway and made my way through various doorways and other hallways, peering into the rooms, looking at the patients and their families, looking for a particular kind of patient and family.
I walked through the ER, cancer, heart and vascular, neurology, orthopedic, women’s health, pediatrics, and surgical services. Nobody stopped me. My expression and posture were that of a man with a sick father and so I belonged.
And then I saw him, another Native man, leaning against a wall near the gift shop. Well, maybe he was Asian; lots of those in Seattle. He was a small man, pale brown, with muscular arms and a soft belly. Maybe he was Mexican, which is really a kind of Indian, too, but not the kind that I needed. It was hard to tell sometimes what people were. Even brown people guessed at the identity of other brown people.
“Hey,” I said.
“Hey,” the other man said.
“You Indian?” I asked.
“Yeah.”
“What tribe?”
“Lummi.”
“I’m Spokane.”
“My first wife was Spokane. I hated her.”
“My first wife was Lummi. She hated me.”
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