by Tommy Orange
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The day is bright, and as he comes over the top of the coliseum, he hears his mom coming down the stairs. This doesn’t make any sense as she hadn’t come down those stairs since Manny died.
“Not right now, Mom,” he says. Then feels bad and adds, “Hold on a second.” Daniel lands the drone in the upper deck, which is empty if seagulls don’t count. He doesn’t want her to see the goggles because he knows she’ll think they look expensive.
“You okay?” Daniel says to her from the bottom of the stairs. She’s halfway down.
“What are you doing down there?”
“Same thing I’m always doing, Mom, nothing,” Daniel says.
“Come up here and eat with me. I’ll make you something.”
“Can you wait?” Daniel says, and knows he says it impatiently. He wants to get back to the drone, which is sitting by itself on the third deck of the coliseum wasting its battery.
“Okay, Daniel,” his mom says. And it’s almost sad enough, the sound in her voice, to make him want to leave the drone up there, leave it all alone and just go eat with her.
“I’ll be up pretty soon, Mom. Okay?”
She doesn’t respond.
Blue
BLUE DIDN’T KNOW WHY she became so aware of the safe. Or she did know why, but she didn’t want to know why she began to think of the safe. The money. All morning it hadn’t come up. And leading up to the powwow it hadn’t been a thing either. There were gift cards, and a heavy safe, and who would rob a powwow? There were other things to think about. She’d just seen her mom. Maybe. There are a few thuggish-looking guys standing nearby. Blue is bothered that she is bothered by their presence.
Edwin is next to her chewing and swallowing sunflower seeds. This almost bothers her more than anything else because you’re supposed to do the work of splitting the shells and reaping the seed benefit, and he’s just shoving handfuls in his mouth and chewing them up until he can swallow them shell and all.
These guys keep getting closer to the table. Kind of creeping up. She asks herself again: Who would rob a powwow? Who would even know to rob a powwow? Blue lets go of the whole idea but looks under the table to make sure the safe is still covered with the little red, yellow, and turquoise Pendleton blanket. Edwin looks over at her and smiles a rare proud-toothed smile. His teeth are covered in sunflower-seed shells. She hates and loves him for it.
Dene Oxendene
DENE IS IN his booth when he hears the first shots. A bullet whizzes through the booth. He moves to the corner and puts his back to the wooden pole there. He feels something hit his back, then the black curtain walls of the booth collapse around him.
The whole shoddily built booth is on top of him. He doesn’t move. Can he? He doesn’t try. He knows or thinks he knows he won’t die from whatever hit him. He reaches back and feels the piece of wood, one of four thicker poles that held the thing up. As he pushes the piece of wood away, he feels something hot lodged in it. A bullet. It’d gone all the way through and almost all the way out, almost into him. But it stopped. The pole saved him. The booth he built is all that came between him and that bullet. The shots keep coming. He crawls out through the black curtains. For a second the brightness of the day blinds him. He rubs his eyes and sees across from him something that doesn’t make any sense for more than one reason. Calvin Johnson, from the powwow committee, is firing a white gun at a guy on the ground, and two other guys are shooting on his left and right. One of them is in regalia. Dene gets on his stomach. He should have stayed under his collapsed booth.
Orvil Red Feather
ORVIL IS WALKING BACK out onto the field when he hears the shots. He thinks of his brothers. His grandma would kill him if he survived and they didn’t. Orvil breaks out into a run when he hears a boom that fills his body with a sound so low it pulls him to the ground. He smells the grass inches from his nose and he knows. He doesn’t want to know what he knows but he knows. He feels the blood-warm wetness with his fingers when they reach for his stomach. He can’t move. He coughs and isn’t sure if what comes out of his mouth is blood or spit. He wants to hear the drum one more time. He wants to stand up, to fly away in all his bloodied feathers. He wants to take back everything he’s ever done. He wants to believe he knows how to dance a prayer and pray for a new world. He wants to keep breathing. He needs to keep breathing. He needs to remember that he needs to keep breathing.
Calvin Johnson
CALVIN IS STANDING, head bent to his phone, but his eyes keep looking up from it. His hat is pulled low, and he’s standing behind where Blue and Edwin are sitting so they won’t see him. He looks over to Tony, who’s bouncing a little—he’s light on his feet like he’s ready to dance. Tony’s supposed to do the actual robbing. The rest of them are there in case anything goes wrong. Octavio never explained why he wants Tony in regalia, and why he should be the one to take the money. Calvin assumes it’s because someone in regalia would be harder to identify, and ultimately harder to investigate.
Octavio, Charles, and Carlos are near the table looking antsy. Calvin gets a group text from Octavio that just says We all good Tony? Calvin can’t help but start walking toward the table when he sees Tony doing it too. But Tony stops. Octavio, Charles, and Carlos watch him stop, watch him stand there, bouncing a little. Calvin’s gut spins. Tony backs off, still facing them, then he turns around and walks the other way.
It doesn’t take Octavio long to make the next move. Calvin’s never held a gun before this. There’s a gravity to it. A weight pulling him closer to Octavio, who’s now pointing his gun at Edwin and Blue. He’s pointing at the safe with the gun. He’s calm about it. Calvin has his hand on his gun through his shirt. Edwin crouches down to open the safe.
Octavio looks to his right then left, bag of gift cards in his hand, when stupid-ass Carlos turns his gun on Octavio. Calvin sees it before Octavio does. Charles points his gun at Octavio too. Charles is yelling for Octavio to put down his gun and give him the bag. Carlos is yelling the same thing behind him. Fucking Charlos.
Octavio throws the bag of gift cards at Charles, and as he does he fires a few shots at him. Charles stumbles back and starts firing. Octavio gets hit and fires a few more back at Charles. Calvin sees a kid in regalia go down ten or so feet behind Charles. This is fucked up, but Calvin doesn’t have time to think of it that way because Carlos puts three or four into Octavio’s back. He might’ve fired more, but Daniel’s drone plane comes crashing down on his head and Carlos goes down. Calvin has his gun pointed at no one, finger on the trigger, ready, when he feels the first bullet hit him in his hip, the bone. Down on one knee, Calvin gets another one in the gut, and he feels a sick weight there like he’d swallowed too much water at once. How could a hole make him feel more full? As he goes down, Calvin sees Carlos get hit with bullets coming from Tony’s direction.
From the ground Calvin sees his brother firing bullets at Tony. He feels each tiny blade point of grass pushing into his face. It’s all he can feel, those blades of grass. And then he doesn’t hear any more firing. He doesn’t hear anything.
Thomas Frank
HE DOESN’T THINK of the shots being fired as shots being fired. He waits for it to be anything else. But then he sees people run and stumble and drop and scream and generally lose their shit because soon, very soon, after what he at first thought must have been something else and not gunfire became in his mind and before his eyes definite gunfire. Thomas ducks incomprehensibly. Squats down and watches dumbly. He can’t find the shooter, or shooters. So stupid is he that he stands up to see better what’s happening. He hears a sharp whiz nearby, and as soon as he realizes that it’s the sound of bullets missing him, one hits him in the throat. He should have been keeping as low as possible, he should have dropped to the ground, played dead, but he didn’t and now he’s on the ground anyway, holding his neck where the bullet went in. He can’t figure out where the bull
et came from, and it doesn’t matter because he’s bleeding badly into the hand that holds his burst neck.
All he knows is that the bullets are still flying and people are screaming and someone is behind him, his head is in their lap but he can’t open his eyes and it burns like hell where he knows or feels he knows the bullet exited. The person whose lap he is in is maybe wrapping something around his neck and tightening it, maybe it’s a shirt or a shawl, they are trying to stop the bleeding. He doesn’t know if his eyes are closed or if all of this has suddenly blinded him. He knows he can’t see anything and that sleep feels like the best idea he’s ever had, like no matter what that sleep could mean, even if it means only sleep, dreamless sleep from here on out. But a hand is slapping his face and his eyes open and he’s never believed in God until this moment, he feels God is in the feeling of his face being slapped. Someone or something is trying to make him stay. Thomas tries to lift his whole body up, but he can’t. Sleep floats beneath him somewhere, seeps into his skin, and he’s losing the rhythm in his breath, breathing fewer breaths, his heart, it’d been beating for him all this time, his whole life, without even trying, but now he can’t, he just can’t do anything but wait for the next breath to come—hope that it will. He’s never in his life felt as heavy as he feels now, and it burns, the back of his neck, like no burn he’s ever felt. Thomas’s childhood fear of eternity in hell comes back to him and it’s right there in the burn and the cool of the hole in his neck. But just as that fear comes it goes, and he arrives. In the State. It doesn’t matter how he got here. Or why he’s here. And it doesn’t matter how long he stays. The State is perfect and is all he could ever ask for, for a second or a minute or a moment, to belong like this is to die and live forever. So he’s not reaching up, and he’s not sinking down, and he’s not worried about what’s coming. He’s here, and he’s dying, and it’s okay.
Bill Davis
BILL HEARS MUTED SHOTS fire behind the thick concrete walls that separate everyone else from the coliseum employees. He thinks of Edwin before he can even register what the muted booms might mean. What happens to him right away, though, is that he stands up and moves toward the sounds. He runs through the door that leads out to the concession stands. He smells gunpowder and grass and soil. A mix of dread and long-dormant courage in the face of danger moves over the top of his skin like a nervous sweat. Bill sets off at a run. His heartbeat is in his temples. He’s skipping stairs to get down to the field. As he approaches the infield wall, his phone vibrates in his pocket. He slows. It could be Karen. Maybe Edwin called her. Maybe Edwin is calling him. Bill drops to his knees, crawls between the second and first rows. He looks at his phone. It’s Karen.
“Karen.”
“I’m on my way there now, sweetie,” Karen says.
“No. Karen. Stop. Turn around,” Bill says.
“Why? What’s—”
“There’s a shooting. Call the police. Pull over. Call them,” Bill says.
Bill puts the phone against his stomach and lifts his head up to look. Right away he feels a sting-burn explode on the right side of his head. He puts his hand to his ear. It’s flat. Wet. Hot. Not thinking to put it to his other ear, Bill puts the phone to the place where his ear had been.
“Kare—” Bill starts but can’t finish. Another bullet. This one hits above his right eye—makes a clean hole through. The world tips over.
Bill’s head slams against the concrete. His phone is on the ground in front of him. He watches the numbers count up—the time of their call. Bill’s head throbs, not with pain, just a big throbbing that turns into a full-on swelling. His head is an expanding balloon. The word puncture occurs to him. Everything is ringing. There’s a deep whooshing sound coming from somewhere beneath him, waves or a white noise coming on—a buzz he can feel in his teeth. He watches his blood seep out from under his head in a half circle. He can’t move. He wonders what they’ll use to clean it. Sodium peroxide powder is best for concrete stains. Bill thinks: Please not this. Karen is still there; the seconds are still counting up. He closes his eyes. He sees green, all he can see is a green blur, and he thinks he’s looking out onto the field again. But his eyes are closed. He remembers another time he saw a green blur like this. A grenade had landed nearby. Someone yelled for him to take cover, but he froze. He wound up on the ground then too. Same ringing in his head. Same buzz in his teeth. He wonders if he ever made it out of there. It doesn’t matter. He’s dimming. He’s leaving. Bill is going.
Opal Viola Victoria Bear Shield
GUNFIRE BOOMS THROUGHOUT the stadium. Screams fill the air. Opal is already going as fast as she can down the steps to the first level. She’s getting pushed from behind. She shuffles along with everyone else. Opal doesn’t know how she didn’t think to do it, but as soon as she does she gets her phone out. She calls Orvil first but his phone just rings and rings. Next she calls Loother. She gets through but the call breaks up. She can only hear parts of words. A broken sound. She hears him say, Grandma. She puts her hand over her mouth and nose, sobs into her hand. She keeps listening to see if it will clear up. She wonders, she has the thought, Did someone really come to get us here? Now? She doesn’t know what she means.
As soon as she gets outside the front entrance, Opal sees the boys. But it’s just Loother and Lony. She runs to them. Loother’s still holding his phone. He’s pointing to it. She can’t hear him but she sees him mouthing, We been trying to call him.
Jacquie Red Feather
HARVEY’S HAND IS on Jacquie’s shoulder, pushing down. He’s trying to get Jacquie to go down with him. Jacquie looks at him. His eyebrows are furrowed intensely to indicate how serious he is about this push down. Jacquie walks toward the sound and his hand slips off of her.
“Jacquie,” she hears him whisper-scream behind her. She can hear the bullets, the boom and the whizzing. It’s close. She hunches a little but keeps walking. There’s a whole bunch of people on the ground. They look dead. She’s thinking about Orvil. She’d just watched him go by for the Grand Entry.
For a second Jacquie thinks it might be some kind of performance-art piece. All these people in regalia on the ground like it’s a massacre. She remembers what her mom told her and Opal about Alcatraz, how a small group of Indians first took over Alcatraz, just five or six of them, took it over as a piece of performance art five years before it really happened. It had always fascinated her. That it started that way.
She sees the shooters, then scans the field of bodies to find the colors of Orvil’s regalia on the ground. His colors stand out because there’s a bright orange in it, a particular almost pink orange you don’t normally see in regalia. She doesn’t like the color, which makes it easier for her to spot.
Before she acknowledges to herself that it’s him, before she can feel or think or decide anything, she’s already moving toward her grandson. She knows the risk of walking out there. She’s walking toward the gunfire. It doesn’t matter. She keeps an even pace. She keeps her eyes locked on Orvil.
His eyes are closed when she gets to him. She puts two fingers to his neck. There’s a pulse. She screams out for help. The sound she makes is not a word. The sound she makes comes from below her feet, from the ground, and with the sound Jacquie lifts Orvil’s body. She can hear the shots behind her as she carries her grandson’s body through the crowd toward the exit. “Excuse me,” she says as she moves through the crowd. “Please,” she says.
“Someone!” she hears herself cry out as she comes out through the entrance. Then she sees them there. Just outside the entrance. Loother and Lony.
“Where’s Opal?” she says to them. Lony is crying. He points out toward the parking lot. Jacquie looks down at Orvil. Her arms are shaking. Loother comes over and puts an arm around Jacquie, looks down at his brother.
“He’s white,” Loother says.
When Opal pulls up, Jacquie sees Harvey come running out toward them. She doesn’t kno
w why he should come, or why she calls out his name, waves him over. They all get into the back of Opal’s Ford Bronco and Opal puts her foot on the gas.
Blue
BLUE AND EDWIN MANAGE to get out to Blue’s car without having to stop. Edwin is out of breath and starting to look pretty pale. Blue puts Edwin’s seat belt on, starts the car, and heads for the hospital. She leaves because she hasn’t even heard sirens yet. She leaves because Edwin is officially slumped in his seat, his eyelids half-closed. She leaves because she knows the way and can get there sooner than someone not even here yet.
After the shooting stopped, Blue could barely make out what Edwin was yelling at her from the ground.
“We gotta go,” Edwin said. He was talking about the hospital. He wanted her to take him. He was right. They wouldn’t get enough ambulances there in time. Who knows how many people had been shot. For Edwin, it was just one shot—in the stomach.
“Okay,” Blue said. She tried to help him up, wrapped his arm over her shoulder and pulled. He winced a little but for the most part was pretty unfazed.
“Hold it with pressure so it doesn’t bleed too much,” Blue said. He was holding three or four Big Oakland Powwow T-shirts against his stomach. He reached behind his back and the color went out of his face.
“It went through,” Edwin said. “Out the back.”
“Fuck,” Blue said. “Or good? Shit. I don’t know.” Blue put an arm around him and let his arm hold on to her. They hobbled out of the coliseum like that, all the way out to Blue’s car.