The Toughest Indian in the World

by Sherman Alexie

  I’m back.

  After his sit-down piss, Roman stood and pulled up his underwear, climbed into a pair of sweatpants hanging from the shower rod, slipped his feet into Chuck Taylor basketball shoes, and stepped into the bedroom.

  Grace pretended to be asleep in their big bed. She loved this game. Still holding the basketball, Roman laid down next to her and pressed his body against hers.

  “There’s a strange woman in my bed,” said Roman.

  “I know,” said Grace, without opening her eyes.

  “What should I do about her?”

  “Let her sleep.”

  Roman touched the basketball to Grace’s cheek. He wondered if she wanted to make love. She usually did, and had approached him as often as he’d approached her, but he’d always liked to delay, to think about her—the taste, smell, and sound of her—for hours, or even days, before he’d make a pass.

  “Michael Jordan is coming back again,” he said.

  “You can’t fool me,” said Grace. “I heard it. That was just a replay.”

  “Yeah, but I wish he was coming back again. He should always come back.”

  “Don’t let it give you any crazy ideas.”

  Roman pulled the basketball away and leaned even closer to Grace. He loved her, of course, but better than that, he chose her, day after day. Choice: that was the thing. Other people claimed that you can’t choose who you love—it just happens!—but Grace and Roman knew that was a bunch of happy horseshit. Of course you chose who you loved. If you didn’t choose, you ended up with what was left—the drunks and abusers, the debtors and vacuums, the ones who ate their food too fast or had never read a novel. Damn, marriage was hard work, was manual labor, and unpaid manual labor at that. Yet, year after year, Grace and Roman had pressed their shoulders against the stone and rolled it up the hill together.

  In their marriage bed, Roman chose Grace once more and brushed his lips against her ear.

  “It snowed last night,” he whispered.

  “I can smell it,” said Grace, choosing him.

  “What do you want for breakfast?”

  “Make me some of your grandma’s salmon mush.”

  Grandmother Fury had died of cancer the previous winter. On her deathbed, she’d pulled Roman close to her. She’d kissed him full on the lips and cried in his arms.

  “I don’t want to go,” she’d said in Spokane.

  “I know,” he’d said and felt the heat leave her body.

  “I’m cold.”

  “I love you.”

  “Listen,” she’d said. “You better keep making that salmon mush. You’re the only one now. You have to keep it alive.”

  “I’ll teach Grace.”

  “She’s a good woman, that one, a good person. You better hang on to her. She could live without you easily, but you’d be lost without her.”

  “She loves you as much as I do.”

  “I am happy to hear that. But listen, the important thing is the salmon mush. You have to remember one thing, the big secret.”

  “I know, I know, pour the milk in just before serving.”

  “No, no, that’s the most obvious secret. You don’t know the biggest secret. You don’t know it. Let me tell you.”

  Roman had leaned close to her ear and heard that secret. He’d listened to his grandmother’s last words and then she’d died.

  On his first day at St. Jerome the Second University, Roman walked alone into the freshman dormitory. Everybody else carried new luggage, stereos, bicycles, books, but Roman carried all of his possessions in a Hefty garbage bag slung over his shoulder. He found his room, walked inside, and met his roommate.

  “Hey,” said the kid with blue eyes and blond hair. “You must be my roomie. I’m Alex Weber.”

  “Roman.”

  “I thought you were Indian.”

  “I am Indian. Roman is my name.”

  “First or last?”

  “The first name is Roman, the middle name is Gabriel, the last name is Fury.”

  “A spectacular moniker.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Is that your luggage?”

  Roman tossed his Hefty bag onto his bed. He was ashamed of it, his poverty, but pretended to be proud.

  “Yeah,” said Roman. “I got ninety-nine of them back home. The whole matching set.”

  “Scholarship student, huh?”

  “Yeah. Do you have a problem with that?”

  “No, not at all. I’m a legacy.”

  “A what?”

  “My great-grandfather went to school here, as did my grandfather, my father, and now, I’m here. As long as there’s been a St. Junior, there’s been a Weber.”

  “Family tradition.”

  “My family is all about tradition. So, where you from? What’s your major?”

  Before Roman could answer, Alex pulled out a silver flask of whiskey.

  “You want a drink?” asked the legacy.

  “I’m undeclared,” said Roman.

  “About the drink or your major?”

  “I don’t drink.”

  “More for me.”

  Roman looked at Alex’s side of the room. All of the white boy’s possessions still carried price tags.

  “Well,” said Alex. “Get your stuff unpacked, that shouldn’t take too long, and let’s head upstairs where the lovely young women make their abodes.”

  “I’m not much for parties,” said Roman. “I think I’m just going to hang around the room.”

  “Suit yourself. But I’ve got to get a little tonight, you know what I mean?”

  “I assume you’re referring to sexual intercourse.”

  “You make it sound so romantic. Listen. My great-grandfather had sexual intercourse on his first night at St. Junior. As did my grandfather, my father, and now, me.”

  “You’re a legacy.”

  “Exactly. See you later, Chief.”

  With a nod of his head and a click of his tongue, Alex left the room. A little stunned and bewildered by his roommate—how had the personal-tastes questionnaire put them together?—Roman sat down on his bed. Then he noticed a box sitting on the desk. It was a “WELCOME TO ST. JUNIOR” care package.

  He opened the box and discovered its contents.

  “Donuts,” said Roman.

  Six months into their freshman year at St. Junior, Roman and Grace made love for the first time. Afterward, squeezed together in his narrow dorm room bed, they’d nervously tried to fill the silence.

  “So,” he’d asked. “You must be the only Indian in New York City, enit?”

  “There are lots of Indians in New York City. Lots of Mohawks.”

  “Are you full-blood?”

  “No, I’m Mohawk and Chinese.”

  “Chinese? You’re kidding.”

  “What? You have something against Chinese?”

  “No, no. I just never heard of no Chinese Indians. I mean, I know black Indians and white Indians and Mexican Indians and a whole bunch of Indian Indians, but you’re the first Chinese Indian I’ve ever met. Was it some kind of Bering Strait land bridge thing?”

  “No. My mom was Chinese. She was playing piano in this bar in Brooklyn. That’s where my mom and dad met.”

  “Where are they now?”

  “Gone, all gone.”

  Over the next four years of college, they’d slept together maybe twenty more times without formal attachment, and each of them had run through quick romances with a few other people, and each had also experienced the requisite homoerotic one-night stand—both with Hawaiians, coincidentally—before he’d run up to her after his last college game, still in uniform and drenched in sweat, and hugged her close.

  “You’re the best Indian I’m ever going to find,” he’d said. “Marry me.”

  Not the most romantic proposal in the world, to be sure, but a true and good moment, demographically speaking.

  “Okay,” she'd said.

  In bed, on the Spokane Indian Reservation, eighteen yea
rs after their graduation from St. Jerome the Second, Grace ate her salmon mush, drank her coffee, and read the newspaper aloud. Roman laid back on his pillow and listened to her. This was one of their ceremonies: she’d read aloud every word of the newspaper, even the want ads, and then quiz him about the details.

  “Hey,” she said. “What’s the phone number of the guy who is selling the Ping-Pong table that has only been used once?”

  “Harry.”

  “Uh, good remembering. That earns you a kiss, with tongue.”

  “A hand job would be better.”

  “God, you’re so charming.”

  She smacked him with a pillow. He kissed her cheek, then walked from the bedroom into the kitchen. Still holding the basketball, he opened the refrigerator, pulled out another big bottle of Diet Pepsi, and swallowed deeply. He breathed the sweet fluid in, as if it were oxygen. He set the Pepsi back on the shelf, among a dozen other bottles, and then pulled out a donut. A maple bar. He sniffed at it, took a bite, spit it back out, and threw the donut back into the fridge.

  Roman slammed the fridge shut and walked outside into the backyard. Two feet of the first snow had covered the basketball half-court. Roman looked at the snow, at the hoop and backboard rising ten feet above the snow.

  Smiling, Roman gave a head fake, took a step left, and dribbled the basketball, expecting it to bounce back up into his hand.

  When the ball didn’t return to his hand, Roman stared down to see the orange Rawlings embedded in the white snow. The contrast was gorgeous, like the difference between Heaven and Hell.

  He had always been a religious man, had participated in all of the specific Spokane Indian ceremonies, most involving salmon, and in many of the general American Indian ceremonies like powwows and basketball tournaments. He’d also spent time in all three of the Spokane Reservation’s Christian churches, singing Assembly of God hymns, praying Presbyterian prayers, and eating Catholic Communion wafers. Roman had always known that God was elusive. All his life, Roman had been chasing God and had never once caught sight of him, or her.

  During her first night at St. Junior, Grace was standing in the middle of a room full of drunken white kids when Alex Weber, the drunkest white kid, stepped up to her.

  “Hey, sweetheart,” he slurred.

  “Hey,” she said, a little nauseated by the whiskey smell of his breath. She’d never even sipped a glass of wine at dinner.

  “Okay,” he said. “Tell me. Have you enjoyed your St. Junior experience so far?”

  “Yeah, I guess.”

  He kissed her then, a wet kiss that was meant for her lips but landed on her chin. She pushed him away.

  “Hey, listen,” she said, strangely polite. “You’re drunk, man, and you’re making a big mistake. Why don’t you just leave before you do something really stupid? How does that sound?”

  She didn’t understand why she was negotiating. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.

  “Can I ask you a personal question?” he asked.

  “Yeah, you ask one question. I answer once. Then you leave. Deal?”

  “Did you get in here because of affirmative action?”

  “What?”

  “Really. I want to know, did you get in here on account of some quota or something? Because you’re Indian, right, excuse me, I mean, Native American?”

  “I belong here. Just as much as you or anybody else.”

  “No, no, no, I’m not questioning your intelligence. Believe me, I’m not. Honestly. I just want to know if you got admitted because of affirmative action.”

  “If I tell you, will you leave?”

  “Yeah.”

  “No, man, I got perfect scores on my CAT.”

  “Really?”

  “Truth.”

  “I got in because of affirmative action.”

  “What do you man? You? You’re white.”

  “Well, not because of affirmative action, not exactly. I got in here because I’m a legacy. Do you know what that is?”

  “Yes, I do.”

  “My father went here. My father, my grandfather, and my great-grandfather. I’m a legacy.”

  “So what?”

  “So, they let me in because of my family’s money. Not because I deserve to be here. I don’t have the grades. My test scores were, like, lower than football players’.”

  “Those tests don’t mean anything. They’re culturally biased.”

  “But they’re biased for white guys, for me. And I flunked. I don’t deserve to be here, man. I cheated my way in. I cheated.”

  Then he cried. Huge, sobbing, drunken tears.

  She touched his face and then left him alone there with the rest of his tribe.

  Outside his house on the Spokane Indian Reservation, Roman stared down at the orange leather ball embedded in the white snow. Then he stomped through the snow to his storage shed, and carried back a gallon of kerosene. He poured the kerosene onto the snow covering the basketball court.

  After the can was empty, Roman took a step back, lit a match, and dropped it onto the kerosene-soaked snow. The fire flared up wonderfully and began to melt the snow down to the frozen ground.

  Even as the snow was still burning, Roman was dribbling the ball around the court, throwing up lazy shots. He was not playing very hard, just enjoying the mechanics of the game, the physical meditation. He was out of shape and breathing hard, his breath making small clouds in the air. He was missing many more shots than he was making.

  Some of the snow was still burning.

  Then Grace Atwater stepped out of the house. She wore a huge red parka and big black boots. She walked onto the court, stepped around her husband, and stood directly beneath the basket. Roman stood at the free-throw line. He shot and missed. Grace rebounded the ball and threw it back to him.

  “Nice shot,” she said.

  “I used to be good,” said Roman. “Back when it meant something.”

  “You’re still good. But I’m better.”

  In the pocket of her coat, she carried a letter from a small press in Brooklyn, New York, that had agreed to publish a book of her poems. The press had consolidated all of the poems published under her various pseudonyms and would present them for the first time as her own, as her work, as her singular achievement.

  Roman shot again, missed again. Grace rebounded the ball and threw it back to her spouse.

  “Michael Jordan,” she said.

  Roman smiled, threw up a wild hook shot that missed everything, the rim, the backboard, everything, and landed with a thud in the snow behind the court. In fact, the ball disappeared in the deep white.

  Grace and Roman stared out into the snow where the ball had disappeared.

  “Help,” said Roman.

  “What?” asked Grace.

  “Help me.”

  “Always.”

  Grace trotted out into the deep snow and searched for the basketball. Roman watched her with eyes stung red by the cold air. She had never been a skinny woman, not once, and was growing larger every year. She was beautiful, her long black hair dirty and uncombed. Roman patted his own prodigious belly and closed his eyes against the sudden tears welling there.

  “Brilliant,” he whispered to himself. His love for his wife hit him like a strong wind and forced him to take a step or two back.

  Grace found the basketball and carried it back onto the court. Holding the ball with both hands, she stood beneath the basket while Roman was now standing at least twenty feet away from the rim. In his youth, he had been a hungry and angry player, an exceptionally good shooter, as dependable as gravity, but age and weight and happiness had left him with slow hands and slower feet.

  “Hey,” said Grace.

  Roman opened his eyes.

  “You know,” she said, “I’m not wearing anything under this coat.”

  “I suspected.”

  She threw the ball back to Roman, who caught it neatly.

  “He’s beautiful,” she said.

 
“Who?”

  “Michael Jordan.”

  “Yes, he is,” said Roman.

  Grace then opened her coat to flash her nudity at Roman. Flesh and folds of flesh. Brown skin and seventeen moles. He had counted them once when they were younger, and he hoped there were still seventeen moles now. New moles made Roman nervous, especially since the reservation skies still glowed down near the uranium mine.

  Grace spun in a slow circle. Roman was shocked and pleased. Brown skin sharply contrasted with white snow. She was fat and gorgeous.

  Still holding her coat open, Grace took a step toward her husband.

  “You make the next shot and you can have all of this,” she said.

  “What if I miss?” he asked.

  She closed the coat tightly around her body.

  “Then,” she said, “you’ll have to dream about me all day.”

  He had dreamed about her often, had dreamed of lovemaking in rivers, in movie theaters, in sale beds in department stores, in powwow tents, but had never actually had the courage to make real love to her anywhere but a few hundred beds and the backseats of twelve different cars.

  “Hey,” he said, his throat suddenly dry, his stomach suddenly nervous. “We’ve got to be to work in fifteen minutes.”

  “Hey,” she said. “It’s never taken you that long before. I figure we can do it twice and you’ll still be early.”

  Grace and Roman smiled.

  “This is a good life,” she said.

  He stared at her, at the basket, at the ball in his hands. Then he lifted the ball over his head, the leather softly brushing against his fingers, and pushed it toward the rim.

  The ball floated through the air, then, magically, it caught fire. The ball burned as it floated through the air.

  Roman and Grace watched it burn and were not surprised.

  Then the burning ball hit the backboard, rolled around the rim, and fell through. Grace stepped toward her husband. Still burning, the ball rolled to a stop on the frozen ground. Roman stepped toward his wife.

  Ceremony.

  DEAR JOHN WAYNE

  THE FOLLOWING TRANSCRIPT IS adapted from an interview that took place in the visitor’s lounge at the St. Tekawitha Retirement Community in Spokane, Washington, on February 28, 2052:

  Q: Hello, I’m going to record this, that is, if that’s okay with you? Is that okay?