Blasphemy: New and Selected Stories

CRY CRY CRY

Forget crack, my cousin, Junior, said, meth is the new war dancer.

World Champion, he said.

Grand Entry, he said.

Five bucks, he said, give me five bucks and I’ll give you enough meth to put you on a Vision Quest.

For a half-assed Indian, Junior talked full-on spiritual. Yeah, he was a born-again Indian. At the age of twenty-five, he war-danced for the first time. Around the same day he started dealing drugs.

I’m traditional, Junior said.

Whenever an Indian says he’s traditional, you know that Indian is full of shit.

But, not long after my cousin started dancing, the powwow committee chose him as Head Man Dancer because he was charming and popular. Powwow is like high school, except with more feathers and beads.

Before he sold drugs, Junior used them. He started with speed and it made him dance for hours. Little fucker did somersaults. I’ve seen maybe three somersaulting war dancers.

You war-dance that good, Junior said, and the Indian women will line up to braid your hair.

No, I don’t wear rubbers, he said. I want to be God and repopulate the world.

I wondered, since every Indian boy either looks like a girl or like a chicken with a big belly and skinny legs, how he could tell which kids were his.

He was all sexed up from the cradle.

He used to go to the Assembly of God, but when he was fifteen, he made a pass at the preacher’s wife. Grabbed her tit and said, I’ll save you.

Preacher man punched my cousin in the face.

I thought you were supposed to forgive me, Junior said.

Preacher man packed up his clothes, books, and wife and left the rez forever. I felt sorry for the wife — who’d made good friends among the Indian women — but was happy the preacher man was gone.

I didn’t like him teaching us how to speak tongues.

Anyway, after the speed came the crack and it took hold of my cousin and made him jitter and shake the dust. Earthquake — his Indian name should have changed to Earthquake. Saddest thing: Powwow regalia looks great on a too-skinny Indian man.

Then came the meth.

Indian Health Service had already taken Junior’s top row of teeth and the meth took the bottom row.

Use your drug money to buy some false teeth, I said.

I was teasing him, but he went out and bought new choppers. Even put a gold tooth in front like some kind of gangster rapper wannabe. He led a gang full of reservation-Indians-who-listened-to-hardcore-rap-so-much-they-pretended-to-be-inner-city-black. Shit, we got fake Bloods fake-fighting fake Crips. But they aren’t brave or crazy enough to shoot at one another with real guns. No, they mostly yell out car windows. Fuckers are drive-by cursing.

I heard some fake gangsters had taken to throwing government commodity food at one another.

Yeah, my cousin was deadly as a can of cling peaches.

And this might have gone on forever if he’d only dealt drugs on the rez and only to Indians. But he crossed the border and found customers in the white farm towns that circled us.

Started hooking up the Future Farmers of America.

And then he started fucking the farmers’ daughters.

So they charged him for possession, intent to sell, and statutory rape. And I figured he deserved whatever punishment he’d get during the trial.

Hey, Cousin, he said to me when I visited him in jail, they’re going to frame me.

You’re guilty, I said, you did all of it, and if the cops ever ask me, I’ll tell them everything I know about your badness.

He was mad at first. Talked about betrayal. But then he softened and cried.

You’re the only one, he said, who loves me enough to tell the truth.

But I could tell he was manipulating me. Putting the Jedi shaman mind tricks on me. But I didn’t fall for his magic.

I do love you, I said, but I don’t love you enough to save you.

While the lawyers and judges and jury were deciding my cousin’s future, some tribal members showed up at the courthouse to protest. They screamed and chanted about racism. They weren’t exactly wrong. Plenty of Indians have gone to jail for no good reason. But plenty more have gone to jail for the exact right reasons.

Of course, it didn’t help that I knew half of those protestors were my cousin’s loyal customers.

So I felt sorry for the protestors who believed in what they were doing. They were good-hearted people looking to change the system. But when you start fighting for every Indian, you end up defending the terrible ones, too.

That’s what being tribal can do to you. It traps you in the tipi with the murderers and rapists and drug dealers. It seems everywhere you turn, some felon-in-buckskin elbows you in the rib cage.

After a few days of trial and testimony, when things were looking way bad for my cousin, Junior plea-bargained his way to a ten-year prison sentence in Walla Walla State Penitentiary.

Maybe out in six with good behavior. Yeah, like my cousin was capable of good behavior.

And, oh, man was he terrified.

You’re right to be scared, I said, but just find all the Indians and they’ll keep you safe.

But what did I know? The only thing I’d learned about prison was what I’d seen on HBO, A&E, and MSNBC documentaries.

Halfway through his first day in prison, my cousin got into a tussle with the big boss Indian.

Why did you fight him? I asked.

Because he was a white man, Junior said, as fucking pale as snow.

My cousin wasn’t too dark himself but I guess he was dark enough.

That fucker had blue eyes, Junior said, and you know Indians can’t be blue-eyed.

My cousin wasn’t smart enough to know about recessive genes, but he was speaking some truth.

But no matter how Junior felt about that white Indian, he should have kept the peace. He should have looked for the Indian hidden behind those blue eyes.

I tried to explain myself, Junior said. I told him I was just punching the white guy in him.

Like an exorcism, I said when Junior called me collect from the prison pay phone. I think jail is the only place where you can find pay phones anymore.

Yeah, Junior said, I’m a devil-killer.

But here’s the saddest thing: My cousin’s late mother was white. A blonde and blue-eyed Caucasian beauty. Yeah, my cousin is half white. He just won the genetic lottery when he got the black hair and brown eyes. His late brother had the light skin and pale eyes. We used to call them Sunrise and Sundown.

Anyway, my cousin lost his tribal protection damn quick, and halfway through his second day in prison, he was gang-raped by black guys. And halfway through his third day, those black guys sold Junior to an Aryan dude for five cartons of cigarettes.

One thousand cigarettes.

It’s cruel to say, but that doesn’t seem near enough to buy somebody. If it’s going to happen to you, it should cost a lot more, right?

But what do I know about prison economics? Maybe that was a good price. I hoped that it was a good price.

My cousin was pretty. He had the long, black hair and the skinny legs and ass. It didn’t take much to make him look womanly. Just some mascara, lipstick, and prison pants scissored into short shorts.

Suddenly, Junior said, I am Miss Indian USA.

But I’m not gay, he said.

It’s not about being gay, I said, it’s about crazy guys trying to fill you with their pain.

Jesus, Junior said, all these years since Columbus landed and now he’s finally decided to fuck me in the ass.

Yeah, we could laugh about it. What else were we going to do? If you sing the first note of a death song while you’re in prison, you’ll soon be singing the whole damn song every damn day.

For the next three years, I drove down to Walla Walla to visit Junior. At first, it was once or twice a month. Then it became every few months. Then I stopped driving there at all. I accepted his collect calls for the first five years, but then I stopped doing that. And he stopped calling. He disappeared from my life.

Some things happen. Some things don’t.

My cousin served his full ten-year sentence, was released on a Monday, and had to hitchhike back to the reservation.

He showed up at the tribal cafe as I was eating an overcooked hamburger and too-greasy fries. He sat in the chair across the table from me and smiled big and shiny. New false teeth. Looked like he got one good thing out of prison.

Hey, Cousin, he said.

He was way casual for a guy who’d been in prison for ten years and hadn’t heard from me in five.

So, I said, are you really free or did you break out?

It was a hot summer day, but Junior was wearing long sleeves to cover his track marks. He’d graduated from meth to heroin.

We restarted our friendship You could call us cousin-brothers or cousin — best friends. Either works. Both work. He never mentioned my absence from his prison life and I wasn’t about to bring it up.

He got a job working forestry. It was easy work for decent money. Nobody on the rez was interested in punishing the already-punished.

It’s a good job, he said, I drive through all the deep woods on the rez and mark trees that I think should be cut down.

Thing is, he said, we never cut down any trees, so my job is really just driving through the most beautiful place in the world while carrying a box full of spray paint.

He fell in love, too, with Jeri, a white woman who worked as a nurse at the Indian Health Service Clinic. She was round and red-faced, but funny and cute and all tender in the heart, and everybody on the rez liked her. So it felt like a slice of redemption pie.

She listens to me, Junior said. You know how hard that is to find?

Yeah, I said, but do you listen to her?

Junior shrugged his shoulders. Of course he didn’t listen to her. He’d been forced to keep his mouth shut for ten years in prison. It was his turn to talk. And talk he did.

He told me everything about how he sexed her up. Half of me wanted to hear the stories and half of me wanted to close my ears. But I couldn’t stop him. I felt guilty for abandoning him in prison. I owed him patience and grace.

But it was so awful sometimes. He was already sex-drunk and half-mean when he went into prison, but being treated as a fuck-slave for ten years turned him into something worse. I don’t have a name for it, but he talked about sex like he talked about speed and meth and crack and heroin.

She’s my pusher, he said about Jeri, and her pussy is my drug.

He reduced Jeri all the way down to the sacred parts of her anatomy. And those parts stop being sacred when you talk blasphemy about them.

Maybe he wasn’t in love with Jeri, I thought. Maybe he was time-traveling her back to prison with him.

But I also wondered what Jeri was doing with him. From the outside, she looked solid and real, but I think she was broken inside and, for some crazy reason, thought that broken men could fix her.

Things went on like that for a couple of years. He started punching her in the stomach. She hid those bruises beneath her clothes. And she punched him and gave him black eyes that Junior carried around like war paint.

We are Romeo and Juliet, he said.

Yeah, like he’d ever read the book or watched any of those movies more than ten minutes through.

Then, one day, Jeri disappeared.

Rumor had it she went into a battered women’s shelter. Rumor also had it she was hiding in Spokane. Which, if true, was stupid. How can you hide in the City of Spokane from a Spokane Indian?

Six months after she went missing, Junior found her in a 7-Eleven in the Indian part of town.

Yeah, scared as she was of one Indian, she was hiding among other Indians. Yeah, we Indians are addicting. You have to be careful around us because we’ll teach you how to cry epic tears and you’ll never want to stop.

Anyway, you might think he wanted to kill her. Or break some bones. But, no, he was crazy in a whole different way. In the aisle of that 7-Eleven, he dropped to his knees and asked for her hand in marriage.

So, yes, they got married and I was the best man.

In the parking lot after the ceremony, Junior and Jeri smoked meth with a bunch of toothless wonders.

Fucking zombies walking everywhere on the rez.

Monster movie all the time.

A thousand years from now, archaeologists are going to be mystified by all the toothless skulls they find buried in the ancient reservation mud.

Junior and Jeri couldn’t afford a honeymoon so they spent a night in the tribal casino hotel. That’s free for any Indian newlyweds. Mighty generous, I guess, letting tribal members sleep free in the casino they’re supposed to own.

They moved into a trailer house down near Tshimakain Creek and they got all happy and safe for maybe six months.

Then, one night, after she wouldn’t have sex with him, he punched her so hard that he knocked out her front teeth.

That was it for her.

She left him and lived on the rez in plain sight. All proud for leaving, she mocked him by carrying her freedom around like her own kind of war paint. And I loved her for it.

Stand up, woman, I thought, stand up and kick out your demons.

Junior seemed to accept it okay. I should’ve known better, but he talked a good line.

The world is an imperfect place, he said. I don’t know where he got that bit of philosophy but he seemed to believe it.

Then Jeri fell in love with Dr. Bob. He was the general practitioner who also worked at the Indian clinic and was counting the days until he paid off his scholarship and could flee the rez. In the meantime, he’d found a warm body to keep him company during the too-damn-many-Indians night.

Everybody deserves love. Well, almost everybody deserves love. And Jeri certainly needed some brightness, but Dr. Bob was all dark and bitter and accelerated. He punched her in the face on their eleventh date.

Ten minutes after we heard the news, Junior and I were speeding toward Dr. Bob’s house, located right next to the rez border down near the Spokane River. Yeah, he had to live on the rez, but he’d only live fifteen feet past the border.

I’m going to fuck him up, Junior said. You can’t be hitting my woman.

I knew Junior was going to do something very bad. And I should have stopped him. I probably could have stopped him. Instead, I held on to my silence hard. I was a mute man riding shotgun for a bad man looking to hurt another bad man.

All the while he was driving, Junior was snorting whatever he could find within arm’s reach. I think he snorted up spilled sugar and salt. Any powder was good. So he was all feedback and static when we arrived at Dr. Bob’s door.

Junior raced ahead of me and rhino-charged into the house. And, once inside, he pulled a pistol from somewhere and whipped Dr. Bob across the face.

A fucking.45. I’d seen tons of hunting rifles on the rez, but never a pistol like that.

Junior whipped Dr. Bob maybe five times across the face and then kicked him in the balls and threw him against the wall. And Dr. Bob, the so-called healer, slid all injured and bloody to the floor.

You do not fuck with my possessions, Junior said.

There it was. The real reason for all of it. It was hatred and revenge, not love. Maybe at that point, all Junior could see was the Aryan who’d raped him a thousand times. Maybe Junior could only see the white lightning of colonialism. I don’t mean to get so intellectual, but I’m trying to understand. I’m trying to explain what happened. I’m trying to explain myself to myself.

I watched Junior lean over and backhand Dr. Bob. Then again. And again.

He’s had enough, I said, let’s get out of here.

Junior laughed.

Yeah, he said, this fucker will never hit another woman again.

Junior and I walked toward the door together. I thought it was over. But Junior turned back, pressed that pistol against Dr. Bob’s forehead, and pulled the trigger.

I will never forget how that head exploded. It was like a comet smashing through a planet.

I couldn’t move. It was the worst thing I’d ever seen. But then Junior did something worse. He flipped over the doctor’s body, pulled down his pants and underwear, and shoved that pistol into Dr. Bob’s ass.

Even then, I knew there was some battered train track stretching between Junior’s torture in prison and that violation of Dr. Bob’s body.

No more, I said, no more.

Junior stared at me with such hatred, such pain, that I thought he might kill me, too. But then his eyes filled with something worse: logic.

We have to get rid of the body, he said.

I shook my head. At least, I think I shook my head.

You owe me, he said.

That was it. I couldn’t deny him. I helped him clean up the blood and bone and brain, and wrap Dr. Bob in a blanket, and throw him into the trunk of the car.

I know where to dump him, Junior said.

So we drove deep into the forest, to the end of a dirt road that had started, centuries ago, as a game trail. Then we carried Dr. Bob’s body through the deep woods toward a low canyon that Junior had discovered during his tree-painting job.

Nobody will ever find the body, Junior said.

As we trudged along, mosquitoes and flies, attracted by the blood, swarmed us. I must have gotten bit a hundred times or more. Soon enough, Junior and I were bleeding onto Dr. Bob’s body.

Blood for blood. Blood with blood.

After a few hours of dragging that body through the wilderness, we reached Junior’s canyon. It was maybe ten feet across and choked with brush and small trees.

He’s going to get caught up in the branches, I said.

Jesus, I thought, I’m terrified of my own logic.

Just throw him real hard, Junior said.

So we somehow found the strength to lift Dr. Bob over our heads and hurl him into the canyon. His body crashed through the green and came to rest, unseen, somewhere below us.

Maybe you want to say a few words, Junior said.

Don’t be so fucking mean, I said, we’ve done something awful here.

Junior laughed.

You should throw that gun down there, too, I said.

I paid five hundred bucks for this, Junior said. I’m keeping it.

He stuffed the gun down the back of his jeans. I didn’t like it but I didn’t want to piss him off.

As we slogged back toward the car, Junior started talking childhood memories. He and I, as babies, had slept in the same crib, and we’d lost our virginities at the same time in the same bedroom with a pair of sisters. And now we had killed together, so we were more than cousins, more than best friends, and more than brothers. We were the same person.

Of course, I kept reminding myself that I didn’t touch Dr. Bob. I didn’t pistol-whip him or punch him or slap him. And I certainly didn’t shoot him. But I’d helped Junior dispose of the body and that made me a criminal.

When we made it back to the car, Junior stopped and stared at the stars, newly arrived in the sky.

Then he pulled out the pistol and pointed it at the ground.

You’re going to keep quiet about this, he said.

I stared at the gun. He saw me staring at the gun. I knew he was deciding whether to kill me or not. And I guess his love for me, or whatever it was that he called love, won him over. He turned and threw the pistol as far as he could into the dark.

We silently drove back down that dirt road. As he dropped me at my house, he cried a little, and hugged me.

You owe me, he said.

After he drove away, I climbed onto the roof of my house. It seemed like the right thing to do. Folks would later me call me Snoopy, and I would love laughing with them, but at the time, it seemed like a serious act.

I wanted to be in a place where I’d never been before and think about the grotesquely new thing that I’d just done, and what I needed to do about it. But I was too exhausted for much thought or action, so I closed my eyes and fell asleep.

The next morning, I woke wet and cold, climbed off the roof, and went to the Tribal Police. A couple hours after I told them the story, the Feds showed up. And a few hours after that, I led them to Dr. Bob’s body.

Later that night, as the police laid siege to his trailer house, Junior shot himself in the head.

He’d chosen death over a return to prison.

I wasn’t charged with any crime. I could have been, I suppose, and maybe should have been. But I guess I’d done the right thing, or maybe something close enough to the right thing.

And Jeri? She left the rez. I hear she’s working on another rez in Arizona. I pray that she never falls in love again. I’m not blaming her for what happened. I just think she’s better off alone. Who isn’t better off alone?

I didn’t go to Junior’s funeral. I figured somebody might shoot me if I did. Most everybody thought I was evil for turning against Junior. Yeah, I was the bad guy because I betrayed another Indian.

And, yes, it’s true that I betrayed Junior. But if betrayal can be righteous, then I believe I was righteous. But who knows except God?

Anyway, in honor of Junior, I started war-dancing. I had to buy my regalia from a Sioux Indian who didn’t care about my troubles, but that was okay. I think the Sioux make the best outfits anyway.

So I danced.

I practiced dancing first in front of a mirror. I’d put a powwow CD in my computer and I’d stumble in circles around my living room. After a few months of that, I felt confident enough to make my public debut.

It was a minor powwow in the high school gym. Just another social event during a boring early December.

At first, nobody recognized me. I’d war-painted my whole face black. I wanted to look like a villain, I guess.

Anyway, as I danced, a few people recognized me and started talking to everybody around them. Soon enough, the whole powwow knew it was me swinging my feathers. A few folks jeered and threw curses my way. But most just watched me. I felt like crying. But then one of the elders, a great-grandmother named Agnes, trilled like a bird. She said my name quietly but everybody heard it anyway. Indians stand to honor people, so she stood for me. Then another elder woman trilled and said my name. And then a third. Soon enough, a dozen elder women were standing for me. I wept. I realized that I wasn’t dancing for Junior. No, I was dancing for the old women. I was dancing for all of the dead. And all of the living. But I wasn’t dancing for war. I was dancing for my soul and for the soul of my tribe. I was dancing for what we Indians used to be and who we might become again.