No, I thought. No, no, of course not.
“I tell you what I’d do,” I said. “I’d give up one of my feet.”
“Wouldn’t you be the matching pair?” asked Wonder Horse and ducked his head into the engine of my van. I saw us: two Indian men holding each other up, trying to maintain their collective balance.
“No,” I said. “We’d be opposites.”
Beginning in Wellpinit, Washington, my father and I traveled through Little Falls, Reardan, Davenport, Harrington, Downs, Ritzville, Lind, Connell, Pasco, Burbank, Attalia, Wallula, then across the border into Cold Springs, Oregon, and on through Hermiston, Stanfield, Pendleton, Pilot Rock, Nye, Battle Mountain, Dale, Long Creek, Fox, Beech Creek, Mt. Vernon, Canyon City, Seneca, Silvies, Burns, Riley, Wagonfire, Valley Falls, Lakeview, New Pine Creek, then across another border into Willow Ranch, California, and on through Davis Creek, Alturas, Likely, Madeline, Termo, Ravendale, Litchfield, Standish, Butingville, Milford, Doyle, Constantina, Hallelujah Junction, and then into Reno, Nevada.
From Reno, my father and I traveled to Carson City, Glenbrook, Zephyr Cove, Stateline, and then into Echo Summit, California, followed by Twin Bridges, Kyburz, Riverton, Pacific House, Diamond Springs, Plymouth, Drytown, 10 City, Jackson, San Andreas, Angels Camp, Tuttletown, Jamestown, Chinese Camp, Coulterville, Bear Valley, Mt. Bullion, Mariposa, Catheys Valley, Planada, Tuttle, Merced, El Nido, Red Top, Chowchill, Fairmead, Berenda, Madera, Herndon, Fresno, Easton, Hub, Armona, Stratford, Kettleman City, Devils Den, Blackwells Corner, McKittrick, Derby Acres, Fellows, Taft, Maricopa, Venucopa, Frazier Park, Forman, Pear Blossom, Littlerock, San Bernardino, Redlands, Beaumont, San Jacinto, Aquanga, Warner Springs, Santa Ysabel, Julian, Guatay, Boulevard, Campo, Potrero, and finally, just after sunrise, we arrived in Tecate, California.
Of course this was just the itinerary I had planned before our departure. Did we truly follow it? Do you think we had enough time?
Last Christmas, I woke up in my ex-wife’s house (God! She might have screwed her husband while I was sleeping just a dozen feet away!) and wondered if my son understood his own life, if he realized how privileged he was. But Paul wasn’t privileged because there were dozens of presents beneath the tree. (that was just evidence of his parents’ materialism, and not of what Wonder Horse would call deep-down agape love!) No, my son was privileged because his stepfather was a good man. It pained me to know that; it pained me to wake up on the floor of that good man’s house while he woke up with the woman who was the best part of my past tense.
I didn’t love her anymore, not like I did (another lie), but I wondered what would happen if you let the archaeologists dig into my buried temples. What artifacts would they bring to the surface? What would those recovered cups and tools mean to me then? What would be redeemed, remembered, reborn?
That last Christmas, I walked into the kitchen and made coffee, a simple ceremony that white people perform just as well and as often as Indians. I poured three cups and carried them upstairs. What is an Indian? Is it a man with waiting experience, a man who can carry ten cups at the same time, one looped in the hook of each finger and both thumbs? I knocked on their door (the ex-wife and her new husband) and waited for them to open it. Of course, I was stepping across boundaries. What if they had been making love at that precise moment? What if my ex-wife had been forced to push her husband (and his penis!) away from her and rush to the door? What if she’d appeared to me with flushed cheeks, racing heart, and wild hair? What if she had smelled like sex?
Instead, he opened the door, saw the coffee in my hands, and smiled.
“Oh, how nice,” he said and meant it. He took their coffees inside (I could hear the surprised murmur of her voice!) and then came back to me.
“We’ll be down in a few minutes,” he said. “I’m sure Paul is waiting for us.”
“Oh, no, he’s still asleep,” I said. Since birth, Paul had been able to sleep twelve or thirteen hours at a stretch, refusing to wake early even at Christmas. In this way, I felt I knew my son better than anybody else.
“Paul will be asleep when Jesus comes back,” said the stepfather. We both knew my son (our son?) and kept his secrets; we both loved him. What is an Indian? Is it a man who can share his son and his wife? I asked myself this: Would I take them back, would I break this good man’s heart, destroy his life, if I could be married again to this woman, if I could wake up every morning in the same house with this child?
Of course, of course I would break this white man’s heart. I would leave him alone in a cold house with an empty bank account and a one-bullet pistol in his hand.
“Merry Christmas,” said the stepfather.
“Yes,” I said and turned to leave, but the stepfather stopped me with a hand on my shoulder. Then he hugged me (Tightly! Chest to chest! Belly to belly!) and I hugged him back.
“Thank you for being kind to me,” he said. “I know it could be otherwise.”
I didn’t know what to say.
The stepfather held me at arm’s length. His eyes were blue.
“You’re a good man,” he said to me.
South of Tecate, California, the van broke down. Then, five minutes later, north of Tecate, Mexico, my father’s wheelchair broke down.
We stood (I was the only one standing!) on the hot pavement in the bright sun.
“We almost made it,” said my father.
“Somebody will pick us up,” I said.
“Would you pick us up?”
“Two brown guys, one in a wheelchair? I think the immigration cops might be picking us up.”
“Well, then, maybe they’ll think we’re illegal aliens and deport us.”
“That would be one hell of an ironic way to get into Mexico.”
I wanted to ask my father about his regrets. I wanted to ask him what was the worst thing he’d ever done. His greatest sin. I wanted to ask him if there was any reason why the Catholic Church would consider him for sainthood. I wanted to open up his dictionary and find the definitions for faith, hope, goodness, sadness, tomato, son, mother, husband, virginity, Jesus, wood, sacrifice, pain, foot, wife, thumb, hand, bread, and sex.
“Do you believe in God?” I asked my father.
“God has lots of potential,” he said.
“When you pray,” I asked him. “What do you pray about?”
“That’s none of your business,” he said.
We laughed. We waited for hours for somebody to help us. What is an Indian? I lifted my father and carried him across every border.
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
The story “The Toughest Indian in the World” originally appeared, in slightly different form, in The New Yorker.
Copyright © 2000 by Sherman Alexie
Cover design by Connie Gabbert
978-1-4804-5718-8
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The Toughest Indian in the World: Stories Page 22