Blasphemy

by Sherman Alexie

  “He said he wouldn’t tell anybody. Didn’t want me to get in trouble. But he said I had to watch out for you as part of the deal.”

  “Really?”

  “Really. Your father said you would need the help. He was right.”

  “That’s why you came down here with me, isn’t it?” Victor asked.

  “I came because of your father.”

  Victor and Thomas climbed into the pickup, drove over to the bank, and claimed the three hundred dollars in the savings account.

  Thomas Builds-the-Fire could fly.

  Once, he jumped off the roof of the tribal school and flapped his arms like a crazy eagle. And he flew. For a second, he hovered, suspended above all the other Indian boys who were too smart or too scared to jump.

  “He’s flying,” Junior yelled, and Seymour was busy looking for the trick wires or mirrors. But it was real. As real as the dirt when Thomas lost altitude and crashed to the ground.

  He broke his arm in two places.

  “He broke his wing,” Victor chanted, and the other Indian boys joined in, made it a tribal song.

  “He broke his wing, he broke his wing, he broke his wing,” all the Indian boys chanted as they ran off, flapping their wings, wishing they could fly, too. They hated Thomas for his courage, his brief moment as a bird. Everybody has dreams about flying. Thomas flew.

  One of his dreams came true for just a second, just enough to make it real.

  Victor’s father, his ashes, fit in one wooden box with enough left over to fill a cardboard box.

  “He always was a big man,” Thomas said.

  Victor carried part of his father and Thomas carried the rest out to the pickup. They set him down carefully behind the seats, put a cowboy hat on the wooden box and a Dodgers cap on the cardboard box. That’s the way it was supposed to be.

  “Ready to head back home?” Victor asked.

  “It’s going to be a long drive.”

  “Yeah, take a couple days, maybe.”

  “We can take turns,” Thomas said.

  “Okay,” Victor said, but they didn’t take turns. Victor drove for sixteen hours straight north, made it halfway up Nevada toward home before he finally pulled over.

  “Hey, Thomas,” Victor said. “You got to drive for a while.”

  “Okay.”

  Thomas Builds-the-Fire slid behind the wheel and started off down the road. All through Nevada, Thomas and Victor had been amazed at the lack of animal life, at the absence of water, of movement.

  “Where is everything?” Victor had asked more than once.

  Now when Thomas was finally driving they saw the first animal, maybe the only animal in Nevada. It was a long-eared jackrabbit.

  “Look,” Victor yelled. “It’s alive.”

  Thomas and Victor were busy congratulating themselves on their discovery when the jackrabbit darted out into the road and under the wheels of the pickup.

  “Stop the goddamn car,” Victor yelled, and Thomas did stop, backed the pickup to the dead jackrabbit.

  “Oh, man, he’s dead,” Victor said as he looked at the squashed animal.

  “Really dead.”

  “The only thing alive in this whole state and we just killed it.”

  “I don’t know,” Thomas said. “I think it was suicide.”

  Victor looked around the desert, sniffed the air, felt the emptiness and loneliness, and nodded his head.

  “Yeah,” Victor said. “It had to be suicide.”

  “I can’t believe this,” Thomas said. “You drive for a thousand miles and there ain’t even any bugs smashed on the windshield. I drive for ten seconds and kill the only living thing in Nevada.”

  “Yeah,” Victor said. “Maybe I should drive.”

  “Maybe you should.”

  Thomas Builds-the-Fire walked through the corridors of the tribal school by himself. Nobody wanted to be anywhere near him because of all those stories. Story after story.

  Thomas closed his eyes and this story came to him: “We are all given one thing by which our lives are measured, one determination. Mine are the stories which can change or not change the world. It doesn’t matter which as long as I continue to tell the stories. My father, he died on Okinawa in World War II, died fighting for this country, which had tried to kill him for years. My mother, she died giving birth to me, died while I was still inside her. She pushed me out into the world with her last breath. I have no brothers or sisters. I have only my stories which came to me before I even had the words to speak. I learned a thousand stories before I took my first thousand steps. They are all I have. It’s all I can do.”

  Thomas Builds-the-Fire told his stories to all those who would stop and listen. He kept telling them long after people had stopped listening.

  Victor and Thomas made it back to the reservation just as the sun was rising. It was the beginning of a new day on earth, but the same old shit on the reservation.

  “Good morning,” Thomas said.

  “Good morning.”

  The tribe was waking up, ready for work, eating breakfast, reading the newspaper, just like everybody else does. Willene LeBret was out in her garden wearing a bathrobe. She waved when Thomas and Victor drove by.

  “Crazy Indians made it,” she said to herself and went back to her roses.

  Victor stopped the pickup in front of Thomas Builds-the-Fire’s HUD house. They both yawned, stretched a little, shook dust from their bodies.

  “I’m tired,” Victor said.

  “Of everything,” Thomas added.

  They both searched for words to end the journey. Victor needed to thank Thomas for his help, for the money, and make the promise to pay it all back.

  “Don’t worry about the money,” Thomas said. “It don’t make any difference anyhow.”

  “Probably not, enit?”

  “Nope.”

  Victor knew that Thomas would remain the crazy storyteller who talked to dogs and cars, who listened to the wind and pine trees. Victor knew that he couldn’t really be friends with Thomas, even after all that had happened. It was cruel but it was real. As real as the ashes, as Victor’s father, sitting behind the seats.

  “I know how it is,” Thomas said. “I know you ain’t going to treat me any better than you did before. I know your friends would give you too much shit about it.”

  Victor was ashamed of himself. Whatever happened to the tribal ties, the sense of community? The only real thing he shared with anybody was a bottle and broken dreams. He owed Thomas something, anything.

  “Listen,” Victor said and handed Thomas the cardboard box which contained half of his father. “I want you to have this.”

  Thomas took the ashes and smiled, closed his eyes, and told this story: “I’m going to travel to Spokane Falls one last time and toss these ashes into the water. And your father will rise like a salmon, leap over the bridge, over me, and find his way home. It will be beautiful. His teeth will shine like silver, like a rainbow. He will rise, Victor, he will rise.”

  Victor smiled.

  “I was planning on doing the same thing with my half,” Victor said. “But I didn’t imagine my father looking anything like a salmon. I thought it’d be like cleaning the attic or something. Like letting things go after they’ve stopped having any use.”

  “Nothing stops, cousin,” Thomas said. “Nothing stops.”

  Thomas Builds-the-Fire got out of the pickup and walked up his driveway. Victor started the pickup and began the drive home.

  “Wait,” Thomas yelled suddenly from his porch. “I just got to ask one favor.”

  Victor stopped the pickup, leaned out the window, and shouted back. “What do you want?”

  “Just one time when I’m telling a story somewhere, why don’t you stop and listen?” Thomas asked.

  “Just once?”

  “Just once.”

  Victor waved his arms to let Thomas know that the deal was good. It was a fair trade, and that was all Victor had ever wanted from his whol
e life. So Victor drove his father’s pickup toward home while Thomas went into his house, closed the door behind him, and heard a new story come to him in the silence afterwards.

  MIDNIGHT BASKETBALL

  During a regular pickup game at St. Jerome University’s outdoor court, Big Ed head-faked once, twice, three times—despite the fact that nobody was guarding him—and wildly missed a three-pointer.

  “Come on, Ed,” Joey said. “Stop shooting that crap. You’re O-for-ten tonight.”

  “I had a good look,” Big Ed said. That was always his excuse. If he’d driven over a bicycle but missed the bicyclist, Big Ed would have said, “I had a good look.”

  “Just move the ball,” Joey said. “And set a damn pick.”

  On the next possession, Big Ed intercepted a pass meant for Joey and took a three-on-one fast-break running jump shot that completely missed the rim and backboard. Hell, it missed the earth.

  “My bad,” Big Ed said.

  Joey howled and spun circles.

  Two weeks earlier, at their favorite pub, Ed had confided to Joey that he’d been working on his jump shot.

  “How’s that?” Joey asked.

  “No big changes,” Ed said. “I don’t need big changes. My shot—my form—is pretty good as it is. I just need to make some minor adjustments.”

  “Yeah, that’s exactly what you need. Minor adjustments.”

  “I’ve been studying Obama—”

  “No, not that shit again. Obama can’t play ball—”

  “Yes he can, he’s got a first quick step—”

  “No he doesn’t. That’s all public relations bullshit.”

  “Well, he’s got hops—”

  “No, no, no, don’t bring up that damn photo again.”

  Ed loved the New York Times front-page photograph of President Obama shooting a running jump over some short and skinny white dude who was probably a Vermont congressman and former ninth man on his high school basketball team.

  “It’s photographic evidence,” Ed said. “It could be used in a courtroom—”

  “Those aren’t hops. He’s got his legs tucked up and splayed out behind him, like a frog, so it looks like he’s high in the air. But it’s an optical illusion. He’s actually only three inches off the ground.”

  “No, man, you can tell. Obama’s got style. He’s got so much style, I’m just going to call him the Big O—”

  “You can’t call him O. Oscar Robertson is the Big O.”

  “Oh, I forgot.”

  “You can’t forget Oscar Robertson. He should be on the NBA logo instead of Jerry West.”

  “I just know I want to play ball like Obama.”

  “Come on, Ed. I like Obama. I voted for him. I’m a damn commie bastard. But you don’t want to play basketball like him.”

  “Have you seen the videos? That one where he dribble-drives through a bunch of guys?”

  “Those are Secret Service dudes he’s running with. They’d take a bullet for him. They’re not supposed to stop him; they’re trained to stop other people from getting to him.”

  “You see him hit that scoop shot over that North Carolina dude—”

  “God, it’s North Carolina, Ed. It’s Division I basketball. Do you have any idea how great those guys are? Shit, in a real game against real players like that, Obama wouldn’t score in ten thousand years.”

  “Well, he’s scoring in that video.”

  “That guy wasn’t guarding him. Obama is POTUS. He is mother-effing POTUS. And even if he wasn’t POTUS, Obama still had that ball hanging out so far that anybody could have blocked it. You could have blocked it, Ed. That shit was as weak as the public option in health care. If Obama pulled that on me, I’d block it like some racist-ass redneck senator from Alabama.”

  Ed didn’t laugh. He was incapable of finding any humor in basketball—not in the game in general and certainly not in his game in particular. The thing is: Ed thought he was good. No, it was worse than that. Ed believed he was underrated.

  “You know,” Ed often said. “I’m not great at any one thing, but I feel like I’m a positive force on the court. My teammates are better because of me, you know? I can feel it.”

  Joey had always marveled at Ed’s basketball delusions. The guy might have been blind and deaf on the court but he still believed in his talent. No matter how poorly he played—and he always played poorly—he thought he’d been the all-star of the evening.

  “No!” Joey screamed as Ed shot and missed another jumper.

  “I’ll get the next one,” Ed said.

  “No, you won’t get the next one,” Joey said. “You’ll never get the next one. There has never once been a next one for you.”

  Ed smiled. Joey was furious. He wanted to punch Big Ed, but they’d been friends for twenty-seven years. They’d met on their first day of college. Big Ed had almost married Joey’s sister and had eventually married and divorced one of Joey’s cousins. Joey was godfather to Big Ed’s middle son. Joey and Big Ed loved each other with the kind of straight-boy-devotion that started wars, terror attacks, and video game companies.

  “Why do you shoot that shit?” Joey asked. “You haven’t made a three-pointer in, like—wait, no, you’ve never made a three-pointer. Not ever.”

  “I had a good look,” Big Ed said again. He smiled. He was always so damn handsome and genial, even though he was a basketball sociopath. Yep, Big Ed was the Ted Bundy of the Saturday afternoon basketball crowd and murdered the hopes and dreams of his teammates forty-seven times a day.

  Of course, one might wonder why people kept throwing the ball to Big Ed. Well, Joey and his fellow hoopsters were good players, so they always threw the correct pass. The open man always got the ball. And since Big Ed’s true shooting percentage was in the single digits, he was always left open by his defender and thus, due to the immutable laws of teamwork, always got the ball. Big Ed didn’t need a cut or pick to get open. He didn’t need to move. He could stand in place—and often did stand in one place for entire possessions—and would still get touches. And after Big Ed missed some horrific bukakke jumper, the man who’d thrown him the ball would think, I had to give it to him because the basketball gods demand that I play with honor and trust.

  “Come on, Ed!” Joey screamed at his friend—his best friend. “Move the ball!”

  Moments later, Big Ed drove into the key and missed a finger roll—no, it wasn’t a roll; it was a week-old croissant.

  Joey didn’t howl. He didn’t make a sound. He just shook his head, walked off the court, grabbed his bag, and began his twelve-block walk home. As he walked, he removed his shirt, shorts, and boxers and tossed them aside. He also removed his knee braces, magnetic back warmer, and mouth guard and threw them into the street. He was forty-five years old and he was walking mostly naked—he was still wearing his socks and shoes—through his Seattle neighborhood. Strangers gawked and giggled; two of his neighbors smiled and waved. Joey ignored all of them. He wasn’t sure why he was doing this. He knew somebody had done the same thing during a hockey movie, and soccer players were always tearing off their clothes. Joey only knew he was engaged in some kind of political protest—perhaps the most minor political protest in human history—but it felt important to him.

  At his doorstep, Joey sat on his welcome mat—it was surprisingly comfortable on his bare ass—and removed his shoes and socks. Then, completely naked, Joey walked into his living room, slumped into his recliner, stared at his blank television, and pretended he was watching Stockton-and-Malone run the pick-and-roll on an endless highlight reel.

  Twenty minutes later, his wife, Sharon, pulled into the driveway. She walked up to the front porch and stared at her husband’s socks and shoes. She cradled them in her arms, opened the door, and discovered her naked husband still daydreaming about high-percentage basketball.

  She regarded him. She certainly knew all of the curves and angles, and the parallel and perpendicular lines, of his body, and she’d memorized his half-damned sou
l.

  “Big Ed again?” she asked.

  “He tried a finger roll,” Joey said. “Can you believe that? A finger roll.”

  “Oh,” she said. “That’s tragic.”

  “The thing is, I don’t know how much more of this I can take. I’m old. Truly. How many years of hoops do I have left? And I want it to be good ball, you know? I don’t want to tear my damn ACL or Achilles because I’m trying to chase down some shitty Big Ed jump shot.”

  “Why do you keep playing with him?”

  “I don’t know, honey. It’s so demoralizing. And I feel trapped. It’s a terrible, destructive, and endless circle.”

  “Just like poverty,” she said.

  “It’s oppression and slavery,” he said. “Ed is, like, England, circa 1363.”

  “Well, Braveheart,” she said. “If there’s a revolution, if you kill him, I’ll help you hide the body.”

  They laughed.

  “Hey,” she said, and checked her watch. “The boys won’t get home for forty-three minutes.”

  Nineteen minutes later, after they’d made love, after he’d kissed her belly and thighs and moved his tongue and hips in the same way he’d moved them for nineteen years, and after she’d chewed on his collarbone and pulled his hair and sucked on his lips in the same way she had for those same nineteen years, and after they’d had the most recent orgasms of a one-thousand-orgasm marriage, they laughed again.

  “Damn,” she said. “That was efficient.”

  “Teamwork,” Joey said.

  Later that night, unable to sleep, Joey tried to sneak out of bed.

  “Hey,” she said. “Are you okay?”

  “No,” Joey said.

  “What’s wrong?” she asked.

  “I keep thinking about Ed. I was pretty hard on him today. I want to apologize.”

  “It’s three in the morning. You can’t call him this late.”

  “I’m not going to call him. I’m going over to see him.”

  “You’re crazy,” she said. “He’s crazy. Basketball just makes you guys crazy.”

  “Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Joey said. But she was right. Ed’s ex-wife, Joey’s cousin, had actually claimed that Ed’s hoops habit—he played at least three times a week—was an irreconcilable difference. And the judge had mockingly agreed.