Blasphemy: New and Selected Stories

INDIAN COUNTRY

Low Man Smith stepped off the airplane in Missoula, Montana, walked up the humid jetway, and entered the air-conditioned terminal. He was excited that he was about to see her, Carlotta, the Navajo woman who lived on the Flathead Indian Reservation. All during the flight from Seattle, he’d been wondering what he would first say to her, this poet who taught English at the Flathead Indian College, and had carried on a fierce and exhausting internal debate on the matter. He’d finally decided, just as the plane touched down, to begin his new life with a simple declaration: “Thank you for inviting me.”

He practiced those five words in his head—thank you for inviting me—and chastised himself for not learning to say them in her language, in Navajo, in Dine.

He was a Coeur d’Alene Indian, even though his mother was white. He’d been born and raised in Seattle, didn’t speak his own tribal language, and had visited his home reservation only six times in his life. His mother had often tried to push Low Man toward the reservation, toward his cousins, aunts, and uncles — all of those who had survived one war or another — but Low Man just wasn’t interested, especially after his Coeur d’Alene father died of a heart attack while welding together one of the last great ships in Elliott Bay. More accurately, Low Man’s father had drowned after his heart attack had knocked him unconscious and then off the boat into the water.

Low Man believed the Coeur d’Alene Reservation to be a monotonous place — a wet kind of monotony that white tourists saw as spiritual and magic. Tourists snapped off dozens of photographs and tried to capture it — the wet, spiritual monotony — before they climbed back into their rental cars and drove away to the next reservation on their itineraries.

The tourists didn’t know, and never would have guessed, that the reservation’s monotony might last for months, sometimes years, before one man would eventually pull a pistol from a secret place and shoot another man in the face, or before a group of women would drag another woman out of her house and beat her left eye clean out of her skull. After that first act of violence, rival families would issue calls for revenge and organize the retaliatory beatings. Afterward, three or four people would wash the blood from their hands and hide in the hills, causing white men to write editorials, all of this news immediately followed by capture, trial, verdict, and bus ride to prison. And then, only then, would the long silence, the monotony, resume.

Walking through the Missoula airport, Low Man wondered if the Flathead Reservation was a dangerous place, if it was a small country where the king established a new set of laws with every sunrise.

Carrying a suitcase and computer bag, Low Man searched for Carlotta’s face, her round, purple-dark face, in the crowd of people — most of them white men in cowboy hats — who waited at the gate. Instead, he saw an old Indian man holding a hardcover novel above his head.

“I wrote that book,” Low Man said proudly to the old man, who stood with most of his weight balanced on his left hip.

“You’re him, then,” said the old man. “The mystery writer.”

“I am, then,” said Low Man.

“I’m Carlotta’s boss, Raymond. She sent me.”

“It’s good to meet you, Ray. Where is she?”

“My name is Raymond. And she’s gone.”

“Gone?”

“Yeah, gone.”

Low Man wondered if gone carried a whole different meaning in the state of Montana. Perhaps, under the Big Sky, being gone meant that you were having lunch, or that your car had run out of gas, or that you’d broken your leg in a fly-fishing accident and were stranded in a hospital bed, doped up on painkillers, eagerly awaiting the arrival of the man you loved more than anything else in the world.

“Where, exactly, is gone?” asked Low Man.

The old man’s left eye was cloudy with glaucoma. Low Man wondered about the quality of Raymond’s depth perception.

“She got married yesterday,” said the old man. “She and Chuck woke up before sunrise and drove for Flagstaff.”

“Flagstaff?” asked Low Man, desperately trying to remember when he had last talked to Carlotta. When? Three days ago, for just a minute, to confirm the details of his imminent arrival.

“Arizona?” Low Man asked.

“Yeah, that’s where she and Chuck grew up.”

“Who is Chuck?”

“That’s her husband,” said Raymond.

“Obviously.”

Low Man needed a drink. He’d been sober for ten years, but he still needed a drink. Not of alcohol, no, but of something. He never worried about falling off the wagon, not anymore. He had spent many nights in hotel rooms where the mini-bars were filled with booze, but had given in only to the temptations of the three-dollar candy bars.

“Ray,” said Low Man. “Can we, please, just put a hold on this conversation while I go find me a pop?”

“Carlotta’s been sober for six years,” said the old man.

“Yes, I know. That’s one of the reasons I came here.”

“She told me you drank a lot of soda pop. Said it was your substitute addiction.”

Shaking his head, Low Man found a snack bar, ordered a large soda, finished it with three swallows, and then ordered another.

When he was working on a book, when he was writing, Low Man would drink a six-pack of soda every hour or so, and then, hopped up on the caffeine, he’d pound the keyboard, chapter after chapter, until carpal tunnel syndrome fossilized the bones in his wrists. There it was, the central dilemma of his warrior life: repetitive stress. In his day, Crazy Horse had to worry about Custer and the patriotic sociopaths of the Seventh Cavalry.

“Okay,” said Low Man. “Now, tell me, please, Raymond, how long has Carlotta been planning on getting married?”

“Oh, jeez,” said Raymond. “She wasn’t planning it at all. But Chuck showed up a couple days back, they were honeyhearts way back when, and just swept her off her feet. He’s been sober for eleven years.”

“One more than me.”

“Oh, yeah, but I don’t think that was the reason she married him.”

“No, I imagine not.”

“Well, I better get going. I got to pick up my grandchildren from school.”

“Ray?”

“It’s Raymond.”

Low Man wondered what had happened to the Indian men who loved their nicknames, who earned their nicknames? His father had run around with indigenous legends named Bug, Mouse, Stubby, and Stink-Head.

“You’re an elder, right?” Low Man asked Raymond.

“Elder than some, not as elder as others.”

“Elders know things, right?”

“I know one or two things.”

“Then perhaps, just perhaps, you could tell me what, what, what thing I’m supposed to do now?”

Raymond scratched his head and pursed his lips.

“Maybe,” said the elder. “You could sign my book for me?”

Distracted, Low Man signed the book, but with his true signature and not with the stylized flourish he’d practiced for years. He signed it: Peace.

“You’re a pretty good writer,” Raymond said. “You should keep doing it.”

“I’ll try,” said Low Man as he watched the old Indian shuffle away.

Low Man began to laugh, softly at first, but then with a full-throated roar that echoed off the walls. He laughed until tears ran down his face, until his stomach cramped, until he retched and threw up in a water fountain. He could not stop laughing, not even after three security officers arrived to escort him out of the airport, and not even after he’d walked three miles into town and found himself standing in a phone booth outside a 7-Eleven.

“Shit,” he said and suddenly grew serious. “Who am I supposed to call?”

Then he laughed a little more and wondered how he was going to tell this story in the future. He’d change the names of those involved, of course, and invent new personalities and characters — and brand-new desires as well — and then he would be forced to invert and subvert the chronology of events, and the tone of the story would certainly be tailored to fit the audience. Whites and Indians laughed at most of the same jokes, but they laughed for different reasons. Maybe Low Man would turn himself into a blue-collar Indian, a welder who’d quit a good job, who’d quit a loyal wife, to fly to Missoula in pursuit of a crazy white woman.

And because he was a mystery writer, Low Man would have to throw a dead body into the mix.

Whose body? Which weapon?

Pistol, knife, poison, Low Man thought, as he stood in the phone booth outside the Missoula 7-Eleven.

“Chuck?” he asked the telephone. “Who the fuck is Chuck?”

The telephone didn’t answer.

Low Man’s last book, Red Rain, had shipped 125,000 copies in hardcover, good enough to flirt with the New York Times best-seller list, before falling into the Kingdom of Remainders. He belonged to seven frequent-flier clubs, diligently tossed money into his SEP-IRA, and tried to ignore the ulcer just beginning to open a hole in his stomach.

“Okay,” said Low Man as he stood in the telephone booth. “Crazy Horse didn’t need Tums. Okay? Think.”

He took a deep breath. He wondered if the world was a cruel place. He checked the contents of his wallet. He carried two hundred dollars in cash, three credit cards, and a valid driver’s license, all the ingredients necessary for renting a car and driving back to Seattle.

He doubted they were going to let him back into the airport, a thought that made him break into more uncontrolled laughter.

Jesus, he’d always wanted to be the kind of Indian who didn’t get kicked out of public places. He played golf, for God’s sake, with a single-digit handicap.

Opening the phone book, Low Man looked for the local bookstores. He figured a small town like Missoula might have a Waldenbooks or a B. Dalton’s, but he needed something more intimate and eccentric, even sacred. Low Man prayed for a used bookstore, a good one, a musty church filled with bibles written by thousands of disciples. There, in that kind of place, he knew that he could buy somebody’s novel or book of poems, then sit down in a comfortable chair to read, and maybe drink a cup of good coffee or a tall glass of the local water.

He found the listing for a bookstore called Bread and Books. Beautiful. He tore the page out of the directory and walked into the 7-Eleven.

“Hey,” said Low Man as he slapped the yellow page on the counter. “Where is this place?”

The cashier, a skinny white kid, smiled.

“You tore that out of the phone book, didn’t you?”asked the kid.

“Yes, I did,” said Low Man.

“You’re going to have to pay for that.”

Low Man knew the telephone directory was free because merchants paid to advertise in the damn things.

“Fine,” said Low Man and set his suitcase on the counter. “I’ll trade you this yellow page for everything inside this suitcase. Hell, you can have the suitcase, too, if you tell me where to find this place.”

“Breads?”

A good sign. It was a place popular enough to have a diminutive.

“Yeah, do you read?” asked Low Man.

“Of course.”

“What do you read?”

“Comic books.”

“What kind of comics?”

“Not comics,” said the kid. “Comic books.”

“Okay,” said Low Man. “What kind of comic books?”

“Good ones. Daredevil, Preacher, Love and Rockets, Astro City.”

“Do you read mysteries?”

“You mean, like, murder mysteries?”

“That’s exactly what I mean.”

“No, not really.”

“Well, I got a mystery for you anyway,” said Low Man as he pushed the suitcase a few inches across the counter, closer to the cashier.

“This is a suitcase,” said Low Man.

“I know it’s a suitcase.”

“I just want you to know,” said Low Man as he patted the suitcase, as he tapped a slight rhythm against the lock. “I just need you to understand, understand this, understand that there are only two kinds of suitcase.”

“Really?” asked the cashier. He was making only six bucks an hour, not enough to be speaking metaphysically with a total stranger, and an Indian stranger at that.

“There is the empty suitcase,” said Low Man. “And there is the full suitcase. And what I have here is a full suitcase. And I want to give it to you.”

“Mister,” said the kid. “You don’t have to give me your suitcase. I’ll tell you where Breads is. Hell, Missoula is a small town. You could find it by accident.”

“But the thing is, I need you to take me there.”

“I’m working.”

“I know you’re working,” said Low Man. “But I figure that car, that shit-bag Camaro out there is yours. So I figure you can close this place down for a few minutes and give me a ride. You give me a ride and I’ll give you this suitcase and all of its contents.”

There was a pistol, a revolver, sitting in a dark place beneath the cash register.

“I can’t close,” said the cashier. He believed in rules, in order. “This is 7-Eleven. We’re supposed to be open, like, all the time. Look outside, the sign says twenty-four hours. I mean, I had to work last Christmas.”

“Sweetheart,” said Low Man. “I’m older than you, so I remember when 7-Eleven used to be open from seven in the morning until eleven at night. That’s why they called it 7-Eleven. Get it? Open from seven to eleven? So, why don’t you and I get nostalgic, and pretend it’s 1973, and close the store long enough for you to drive me to the bookstore?”

“Mister,” said the kid. “Even if this was 1973, and even if this store was only open from seven to eleven, it would still be three in the afternoon, like it is right now, and I would still not close down.”

“Son, son, son,” said Low Man, losing his patience. “What if I told you there was a dead body inside this suitcase?”

The cashier blinked, but remained calm. He had once shot a deer in the heart at two hundred yards, and bragged about it, though he’d been aiming for the head, the trophy hunter’s greatest sin.

“That suitcase is too small. You couldn’t fit a body in there,” said the kid.

“Fair enough,” said Low Man. “What if there’s just a head?”

The cashier ran through the 7-Eleven employee’s handbook in his memory, searching for the proper way to deal with a crazy customer, a man who may or may not have a dead man — or pieces of a dead man — in his suitcase, but who most definitely had a thing for bookstores. The cashier had always been a good employee; his work ethic was quite advanced for somebody so young. But there was no official company policy, no corporate ethic, when it came to dealing with a man — an Indian man — who had so much pain illuminating both of his eyes.

“Mister,” said the cashier, forced to improvise. “This is Montana. Everybody’s got a gun. Including me. And since you aren’t from Montana, and I can tell that by looking at you, then you most likely don’t have a gun.”

“Your point being?”

“I’m going to shoot you in the ass if you don’t exit the store immediately.”

“Fine,” said Low Man. “You can keep the damn bag anyway.”

Leaving his suitcase behind, Low Man walked out of the store. He still carried his computer case and the yellow page with Bread and Books’ address.

In the 7-Eleven, the cashier waited until the Indian was out of sight before he carefully opened the suitcase to find two pairs of shoes, a suit jacket, four shirts, two pairs of pants, and assorted socks and underwear. He also found a copy of Red Rain and discovered Low Man’s photograph on the back of the book.

Away from that black-and-white image taken fifty pounds earlier, Low Man walked until he stumbled across the Barnes & Noble superstore filling up one corner of an ugly strip mall.

Fucking colonial clipper ships are everywhere, thought Low Man, even in Missoula, Montana. But he secretly loved the big green boats, mostly because they sold tons of his books.

Low Man stepped into the store, found the mystery section, gathered all the copies of his books, soft and hard, and carried them to the information desk.

“I want to sign these,” he said to the woman working there.

“Why?”

“Because I wrote them.”

“Oh,” said the woman, immediately dropping into some highly trained and utterly pleasant demeanor. Perhaps everybody in Missoula, Montana, loved their jobs. “Please, let me get the manager. She’ll be glad to help you.”

“Hold on,” said Low Man as he handed her the yellow page. “Do you know where this place is?”

“Breads?”

There it was again, the place with the nickname. Everybody must go there. At that moment, there could be dozens of people in Breads. Low Man wondered if there was a woman, a lovely woman in the bookstore, a lonely woman who would drag him back to her house and make love to him without removing any of her clothes.

“Is it a good store?” asked Low Man.

“I used to work there,” she said. “It closed down a month ago.”

Low Man wondered if her eyes changed color when she mourned.

“The kid at 7-Eleven didn’t tell me that.”

“Oh,” said the woman, completely confused. She was young, just months out of some small Montana town like Wolf Point or Harlem or Ronan, soon to return. “Well, let me get the manager.”

“Wait,” said Low Man, handing her his computer case. “I found this over in the mystery section.”

He’d purchased the computer case through a catalogue, and had regretted it ever since. The bag was bulky, heavy, poorly designed.

“Thank you. I’ll put it in Lost and Found.”

Low Man’s computer was an outdated Apple, its hard drive stuffed to the brim with three unpublished mystery novels and hundreds of programs and applications that he’d never used after downloading them.

Free of his possessions, Low Man waited. He watched the men and women move through the bookstore.

He wondered what Missoula meant, if there’d been some cavalry soldier named Missoula who’d made this part of the world safe for white people. He wondered if he could kill somebody, an Indian or a white soldier, and what it would feel like. He wondered if he would cry when he had to wash blood from his hands.

He studied the faces of the white people in the store. He decided to choose the one that he would kill if he were forced to kill. Not the woman with the child, and certainly not the child, but maybe the man reading movie magazines, and, most likely, the old man asleep in the poetry-section chair.

Low Man stared at the gold band on the dead man’s left hand. Low Man was still staring when the dead man woke up and walked out of the store.

Low Man had been married twice, to a Lummi woman and a Yakama woman, and had fathered three kids, one each with his ex-wives, the third the result of a one-night stand with a white woman in Santa Fe. He sent money and books to his Indian children, but he hadn’t seen his white kid in ten years.

“Mr. Smith, Low Man Smith?” asked the Barnes & Noble manager upon her arrival in Low Man’s world. She was blonde, blue-eyed, plain.

“Please,” he said. “Call me Chuck.”

“My name is Eryn.”

Low Man wondered if he was going to sleep with her, this Eryn. He’d spent many nights in hotel rooms with various bookstore employees and literary groupies. That was one of the unpublicized perks of the job. He always wondered what the women saw in him, why they wanted to have sex with a stranger simply based on his ability to create compelling metaphors, or even when he failed to create compelling metaphors. The women were interested in him no matter what The New York Times Book Review had to say about his latest novel. Low Man was bored with his own writing, with his books, and to be honest, he’d grown bored with his literary life and the sexual promiscuity that seemed to go with it. Last year, after meeting Carlotta at the Native American Children of Alcoholics convention in Albuquerque, after sharing a bed with her for five nights, he’d vowed to remain faithful to her — and had been faithful to her and the idea of her — even though they’d made no promises to each other, even though she’d talked openly of the three men who were actively pursuing her, of the one man that she still loved, who had never been named Chuck.

“Mr. Smith, Chuck?” asked Eryn, the Barnes & Noble manager. “Are you okay?”

“Yes, sorry,” said Low Man. “I’m very tired.”

“I wish we’d known you were going to be in town,” she said. “We would have ordered more copies of your books.”

She smiled. Low Man decided that she was the kind of woman who lost sleep so that she could finish reading a good novel. He wondered if he was going to wake up before her the next morning and pass the time by scanning the titles of the books stacked on her nightstand.

“I didn’t know I was going to be in Missoula,” he said. “I was supposed to be spending a week up on the Flathead Reservation.”

“Oh, I thought you might be here to see Tracy.”

“Who?”

“Tracy,” said the manager, and when that elicited no response from Low Man, she added, “Tracy Johnson. You went to college together, right?”

“She lives here?”

“Actually, she works here at the bookstore.”

“Really?”

“Well, she’s here part-time while she’s getting her MFA at the university.”

“She’s a writer?”

“Yes. Didn’t you know that?”

“I haven’t seen Tracy in ten years,” said Low Man.

He closed his eyes and when he opened them again two uniformed police officers were standing in front of him. One of the officers, the tall one with blue eyes, carried Low Man’s suitcase.

“Mr. Smith,” said the tall cop. “Are you Mr. Smith?”

“No, no,” said Low Man. “You must be mistaken. My name is Crazy Horse.”

Later, in the police station, Low Man paged through another telephone directory. He hoped that Tracy Johnson’s number was listed.

He found her.

“This better be you,” she said when she answered the phone, clearly expecting somebody else.

“Hi, Tracy, it’s Low Man.”

Low Man remembered, when it came to poetry, that a strategic pause was called a caesura.

“Bah,” she said.

“No bah.”

“Damn, Low, it’s been forever. Are you still an Indian?”

“Yes, I am. Are you still a lesbian?”

They both remembered their secret language, their shared ceremonies.

“Definitely,” she said. “In fact, I thought you were my partner. I’m supposed to pick her up after work. We’ve got a big date tonight.”

“Well, you think maybe you could pick me up, too?”

“Are you in town?” she asked, her voice cracking with excitement. Low Man hoped it was excitement, though he feared it was something else. His chest ached with the memory of her. During college, when he was still drinking, he had once crawled through her apartment window and slept on her living room floor, though he’d made sure to wake up before dawn and leave before she’d ever known he was there. During the long walk home, he’d veered off the road into a shallow swamp, not because he was too drunk to properly navigate but because he wanted to do something self-flagellating and noble, or at least something that approximated nobility — a drunk twenty-year-old’s idea of nobility. He’d wanted to be a drunk monk in love.

“Damn, Low,” she said. “Why didn’t you call me before? I would have gone out and bought a dress. I know how much you like me in dresses.”

She remembered him so well. He liked that.

“I didn’t know I was going to be here,” he said. “And I didn’t know you lived here.”

“So, how’d you get my number?”

“Well, your manager at the bookstore told me you were getting an MFA.”

“Eryn,” she said. “I bet you were wondering if she was going to hop on you, right?”

Low Man couldn’t answer.

“Damn, Low,” she said, laughing loudly. Her laughter had always been too loud, impolite, and wonderful. “Eryn is a lesbian. You always fall for the lesbians.”

Low Man had once kissed Tracy, though they each remembered it differently. She’d thought the kiss was a desperate attempt to change her mind about him in particular, and about men in general, but he believed that he’d kissed her only because he wanted to know how it felt, how she smelled and tasted, before he put his feelings into a strongbox and locked them away forever.

“Yeah, that’s me,” said Low. “The Dyke Mike. Now, can you pick me up?”

“Low, I can’t, really,” she said. “I mean, my partner’s parents are coming over for dinner. They drove over here from Spokane Rez and, like, it’s the first time I’ve met them, and they’re not exactly happy their daughter has come roaring out of the closet on the motorcycle called Me.”

“I really need you to pick me up.”

“Low, I want to see you, I really do, but the time is so bad. How about tomorrow? Can’t we do this tomorrow? Hell, we’ll talk for three days straight, but I really need tonight, okay?”

“I’m in jail.”

Low wondered if there was a word in Navajo that meant caesura.

“What did you do?”

“I broke my heart.”

“I didn’t realize that was illegal.”

“Well,” he said. “In Missoula, it seems to be a misdemeanor.”

“Are you arrested?”

“No,” said Low. “Not really. The police said they just don’t want me to be alone tonight.”

“Low, what happened?”

“I came here to see a woman. I was going to ask her to marry me.”

“And she said no.”

“Not exactly.”

“What then?”

“She married Chuck yesterday and moved to Flagstaff.”

“I hate Arizona.”

She’d always known exactly what to say.

“Low, honey,” she added. “I’ll be right there.”

Tracy Johnson drove a 1972 half-ton Chevrolet pickup. Red with long streaks of gray primer paint. Four good tires and one bad alternator. Hay-bale molding in the bed.

“This truck,” said Low as he climbed in. “What stereotype are you trying to maintain?

“There are no stereotypes in Missoula, Montana,” she said, appraising his face and body. “You’ve gained weight. A lot of weight.”

“So have you,” he said. “I love all of your chins.”

Forty pounds overweight, she was beautiful, wearing a loose T-shirt and tight blue jeans. Her translucent skin bled light into her dark hair.

On the radio, Hank Williams sang white man blues.

“You’re lovely,” said Low. “Just lovely.”

“Yes, I know,” she said. “But don’t get your hopes up.”

“My hopes have never been up,” he said, though he knew he was lying. “Your partner, what’s her name?”

“Sara Polatkin,” said Tracy. “She’s Indian.”

“Indian dot-in-the-head or Indian arrow-in-the-heart?”

“She’s Spokane. From the rez. Unlike your lame urban Indian ass.”

“Yes,” said Low Man. “And you can say that, given you’ve spent so much time on reservations.”

Tracy dropped the truck into gear and drove down a narrow street.

“Yeah,” she said. “I’m freaking out her parents. Completely. Not only am I a lesbian but I’m also white.”

“The double whammy.”

“She’s in law school,” said Tracy. “She’s smart. Even smarter than you.”

“Good for you.”

“We’re getting married.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, that’s why Sara’s parents are coming over. They’re going to try to talk her out of it.”

“Jesus,” said Low Man, wondering why he had bothered to get on the flight from Seattle.

“Jesus has nothing to do with it,” said Tracy as she stared ahead and smiled.

Ahead, on the right side of the street, Sara Polatkin was waiting outside the coffee joint. She was short, thin, very pretty, even with her bad teeth and eccentric clothes — a black dress with red stockings, and Chuck Taylor basketball shoes with Cat in the Hat socks.

Low Man couldn’t look Sara in the eye when she climbed into the truck. He remembered how Crazy Horse — that great Indian warrior, that savior, that Christ-figure — was shot in the face by his lover’s husband.

Low Man sat on the bench seat between Tracy and Sara. He watched as the women leaned over him to kiss each other. He could smell their perfumes.

“So, you’re Low,” said Sara, her voice inflected with a heavy singsong reservation accent. She probably had to work hard to keep that accent. Her black hair hung down past her waist.

“It’s Low Man, both words, Low Man,” he said. Only three people had ever been allowed to call him Low: his mother, his late father, and Tracy.

“Okay, Low Man, both words, Low Man,” said Sara. “So, you’re the one who is madly in love with my wife.”

“Yes, I was,” he said, careful with the tense. “And she’s not your wife, yet.”

“Details. Do you still love her?”

Low Man hesitated—caesura—and Tracy rushed to fill the silence.

“He just got his heart broken by an Indian woman,” she said. “I don’t think you want to be the second one today, huh, Sara?”

Sara’s face went dark, darker.

“Did you ever fuck her?” Sara asked him, and Low Man heard the Spokane River in her voice, and heard the great Columbia as well, and felt the crash of their confluence.

“Sara, let it go,” said Tracy, with some traces of laughter still in her voice.

“Do they talk like that in law school?” Low Man asked Sara.

“Yeah,” she said. “Except it’s in Latin.”

Low Man could feel the Indian woman’s eyes on him, but he didn’t return the stare. He watched the road moving ahead of them.

“Sara, let it go,” said Tracy, and there was something else in her voice then. “Remember, you’re the one who used to sleep with guys.”

Tracy put her hand on Low’s knee.

“Sorry, Low,” she said. “But these born-again dykes can be so righteous.”

“Yeah, yeah, I’m sorry, Low Man,” said Sara. “I’m just nervous about my ma and pa.”

“So, you’re a new lesbian, huh?” asked Low Man.

“I’m still in the wrapper,” said Sara.

“She’s still got that new-car smell,” said Tracy.

“What made you change teams?” asked Low.

“I’m running away from the things of man,” she said.

At dinner, Low Man sat at the small table between Tracy and Sara. Directly across from him, Sid Polatkin, longtime husband, held the hand of Estelle Polatkin, longtime wife. All five of them had ordered the salmon special because it had just seemed easier.

“Do you think the salmon will be good?” asked Estelle, her voice thick with a reservation accent, much thicker than her daughter’s.

“It’s the Holiday Inn,” said her husband. He was president of the Spokane Indian Reservation VFW. “The Holiday Inn is dependable.”

Sid’s hair was pulled back in a gray ponytail. So was Estelle’s. Both of their faces told stories. Sid’s: the recovering alcoholic; the wronged son of a wronged son; the Hamlet of his reservation. Estelle’s: the tragic beauty; the woman who stopped drinking because her husband did; the woman who woke in the middle of the night to wash her hands ten times in a row.

Now they were Mormons.

“Do you believe in God?” Sid had asked Low Man before they sat down.

“Sure,” said Low Man, and he meant it.

“Do you believe in Jesus?” asked Sid as he unrolled his napkin and set it on his substantial lap.

“How do you mean?” asked Low Man.

“Do you believe that Jesus was crucified and rose from the dead?”

“Come on, Daddy, leave him alone,” said Sara. She knew how her father’s theological conversations usually began and how they often ended. He’d always been a preacher.

“No, Sara,” said Low Man. “It’s okay.”

“I think Mr. Smith can speak for himself,” said Sid. He leaned across the table and jabbed the air with a sharp index finger, a twenty-first century Indian’s idea of a bow and arrow.

“Low speaks too much,” said Tracy. Sure, it was a lame joke, but she was trying to change the tone of the conversation. Hey, she thought, everybody should laugh. Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha! Let’s all clap hands and sing!

“Hey, Mr. Smith, Low Man,” continued Sid. “Why don’t you and I pretend we’re alone here. Let’s pretend this is a country of men.”

Low Man smiled and looked at the three women: Estelle, Sara, and Tracy; two strangers and his unrequited love; two Indians and one white. If asked, as a man, to rush to their defense, what would Low Man do? How far would he go? If asked, as an Indian, to defend Jesus, what could he say?

“Please, Low, tell me what you think about Jesus,” said Sid, moving from question to command somewhere in the middle of that sentence.

“I don’t think it matters what I think,” said Low Man. “I’m not a Christian. Let them have their Jesus.”

“How vague,” said Sid. “Tell me, then, what do you think their Jesus would say about lesbian marriage?”

Tracy and Sara sighed and leaned back in their chairs. How often had men sat around dinner tables and discussed women’s lives, their choices, and the reasons why one woman reached across the bed to touch another woman?

“Mr. Polatkin,” said Tracy. “If you want to talk about our relationship, then you should talk to Sara and me. Otherwise, it’s just cowardly.”

“You think I’m a coward?” asked Sid.

“Daddy, let’s just order dinner,” said Sara. “Mom, tell him to order dinner.”

Estelle closed her eyes.

“Hey,” said Sid. “Maybe I should order chicken, huh? But that would be cannibalism, right? Am I right, Tracy, tell me, am I right?”

“Mr. Polatkin,” said Tracy. “I don’t know you. But I love your daughter, and she tells me you’re a good man, so I’m willing to give you a chance. I’m hoping you’ll extend the same courtesy to me.”

“I don’t have to give you anything,” said Sid as he tossed his napkin onto his plate.

“No,” said Estelle, her voice barely rising above a whisper.

“What?” asked Sid. “What did you say?”

“We came here with love,” said Estelle. “We came here to forgive.”

“Forgive?” asked Tracy. “Forgive what? We don’t need your forgiveness.”

Low Man recognized the anger in Tracy’s eyes and in her voice. Low, she’d said to him in anger all those years ago, I’m never going to love you that way. Never. Can you please understand that? I can’t change who I am. I don’t want to change who I am. And if you ever touch me again, I swear I will hate you forever.

“Hey, hey, Sid, sit down,” said Low. “You want to talk Jesus, I’ll talk Jesus.”

Sid hesitated a moment — asserting his independence — and then nodded his head.

“That’s good,” said Low. “Now, let me tell you. Jesus was a fag.”

Everybody was surprised, except Tracy, who snorted loudly and laughed.

“No, no, no,” continued Low. “Just think about it. I mean, there Jesus was, sticking up for the poor, the disadvantaged, the disabled. Who else but a fag would be that liberal, huh? And damn, Jesus hung out with twelve guys wearing great robes and great hair and never, ever talked about women. Tell me, Sidney, what kind of guys never talk about women?”

“Fags!” shouted Tracy.

“This isn’t funny,” said Sid.

“No, it’s not,” said Sara. “Tracy, let’s just go home. Let’s just go. And Low Man, you just shut up, you shut up.”

“No, Sara,” said Tracy. “Let them talk. Let them be men. And God said, let them be men.”

“I don’t like you this way,” Sara said to Tracy. “You’ve been different ever since Low showed up. You’re different with him.”

Low Man wondered if that was true; he wondered what it meant; he knew what he wanted it to mean.

“Please,” said Sara. “Let’s just go, Tracy, let’s go.”

“Nobody’s going anywhere,” said Sid. “Not until this is over.”

Estelle’s eyes glowed with tears.

“I’m being dead serious here, Sid,” said Low. “I mean, Jesus was an incredibly decent human being and they crucified him for it. He sounds like a fag to me.”

“Jesus was a human being,” said Sid. “At least, you’ve got that much right. He didn’t rise from the dead. He wasn’t the Son of God. He was just a man.”

“No, Sid, you and me, we’re just men. Simple, stupid men.”

“Yes, yes, I’m simple,” said Sid. “I’m a man who is simply afraid of God. And next to God, we’re all stupid. That much we can agree on.”

“Fine, fine, Sid, we agree.”

Sid stared at Low Man. The question: How does any father prove how much he loves his child? One answer: the father must hate his child’s enemies. Another answer: the father must protect his child from all harm.

“Listen to me,” said Sid. “I’m being terrible. I’m not being good. Not good at all. We’re all hungry and angry and tired. Why don’t we eat and then figure out whether we’re going to stay or go? How does that sound?”

Because they all loved one another, in one form or another, in one direction or another, they agreed.

All five of them ordered soda pop, except for Tracy, the white woman, who ordered red wine. Low Man wondered what would happen when every drunk Indian quit drinking — and he truly believed it would someday happen — when Indians quit giving white people something to worry about besides which wine went with fish and which wine went with Indians.

“So, you’re a writer?” Sid asked Low Man.

“Yes.”

“You make a living at it?”

“Sid,” said Low Man, leaning close to the table. “I make shitloads of money. I make so much money that white people think I’m white.”

Nobody laughed.

“You’re one of the funny Indians, enit?” Sid asked Low Man. “Always making the jokes, never taking it seriously.”

“What is this it you’re talking about?” asked Low Man.

“Everything. You think everything is funny.”

Low knew for a fact that everything was funny. Homophobia? Funny! Genocide? Hilarious! Political assassination? Side-splitting! Love? Ha, Ha, Ha!

“Low, honey,” said Tracy. “Maybe you should get some coffee. Maybe you should shut up, huh?”

Low Man looked at Tracy, at Sara. He wanted to separate them.

Sara looked at Low and wondered yet again why Indian men insisted on being warriors. Put down your bows and arrows, she wanted to scream at Low, at her father, at every hypermasculine Injun in the world. Put down your fucking guns and pick up your kids.

“Sid,” said Low Man. “How many women have you had in your life?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, counting lovely Estelle here, how many women have you slept with, bedded down, screwed, humped, did the nasty with?”

Estelle gasped and slapped her hand over her mouth — a strangely mannered gesture for a reservation Indian woman.

“I think we made a mistake here,” said Sid, rising with his wife. “I think we should just go home. Whatever treaties we signed here are broken now.”

“No, no, no,” said Sara. “Please, Mom, Dad, sit down.”

Sid and Estelle might have left then, might never have returned to their daughter’s life, but the salmon arrived at that moment.

“Eat, eat,” said Sara, with tears in her eyes. She turned her attention to Low Man.

“I think you should leave,” she said, understanding that Indian men wanted to own the world just as much as white men did. They just wanted it for different reasons.

Low Man looked to Tracy. He wanted her to choose.

“I think she’s right, Low,” said Tracy. “Why don’t you take the truck and drive back to our place?”

Low Man stared into her eyes. He stepped through her pupils and searched for some sign, some indication, some clue of what he was supposed to do.

“Low, go, just go,” said Tracy.

“Mom,” said Sara, as she held her mother’s hand. “Please, stay.”

Tracy said, “Go, Low, just go for a ride. Sid and Estelle can give us a ride back to our place, right?”

Sid nodded his head. He sliced into his salmon and shoved a huge piece into his mouth.

“Please, Low,” said Tracy. “Go.”

“Sid,” said Low Man. “I was wondering why you came here. I mean, if you don’t approve of this, of them, then why the hell are you here?”

Sid chewed on his salmon. The great fish was gone from the Spokane River. Disappeared.

“I love my daughter,” said Sid. “And I don’t want her to go to hell.”

Estelle started weeping. She stared down at the salmon on her plate.

“Mom,” said Sara. “Please.”

Sid finished his salmon with two huge bites. He washed it down with water and leaned back in his chair. He stared at Low Man.

“Come on, boys,” said Tracy. “No need for the testicle show, okay?”

“You have a filthy mouth,” Sid said.

“Yeah, I guess I fucking do,” she said.

“Whore.”

“Dad, stop it,” said Sara. Her mother lowered her chin onto her chest and wept like she was thirty years older.

“I raised my daughter to be better than this,” said Sid.

“Better than what?” asked Low.

“My daughter wasn’t, wasn’t a gay until she met this, this white woman.”

“Maybe I should go,” said Tracy.

“No,” said Sara. “Nobody’s going anywhere.”

In Sara’s voice, the others heard something new: an adulthood ceremony taking place between syllables.

“What’s wrong with you?” Low asked Sid. “She’s your daughter. You should love her no matter what.”

Low Man wanted this father to take his daughter away.

“I don’t think this is any of your business,” said Sid. “You’re not even supposed to be here.”

“I’m not supposed to be anywhere,” said Low. “But here I am.”

Low Man smiled at himself. He sounded like a character out of film noir, like Lee Marvin or Robert Mitchum. Or maybe like Peter Lorre.

“What are you smiling at?” asked Sid.

“I’m going to the room,” said Estelle as she stood up. Sara rose with her.

“Mom, Mom, I love you,” said Sara as she hugged her.

Low Man wondered what would have happened if he had a pistol. He wondered if he would have shot Sid Polatkin in the face. No, of course not. Low Man probably would have raced out into the dark and tried to bring down one of the airplanes that kept passing over the motel.

“Do you know what I want?” Low asked Sid.

“No. Tell me.”

“I want to take Tracy out of here. I want to take her back home with me. I want her to fall in love with me.”

“Go ahead,” said Sid. “And I’ll take my daughter back home where she belongs.”

“Sid,” said Low. “These women don’t belong to us. They live in whole separate worlds, man, don’t you know that?”

Sid couldn’t answer. His jaw worked furiously. When he was a young man, he used to fight Golden Gloves. Even at his advanced age, he could have beaten the crap out of Low Man. Both men knew this to be a fact.

Tracy stood up from the table. She took two steps away, then turned back.

“I’m leaving, Sara,” she said. “Finally, I’m leaving.”

Sara looked to her father and mother. Together, the three of them had buried dozens of loved ones. The three of them knew all of the same mourning songs. Two of them had loved each other enough to conceive the third. They’d invented her! She was their Monster; she was surely going to murder them. That’s what children were supposed to do!

“Mom, Dad,” she said. “I love you.”

Sara stepped away from her mother, her father. She stepped away from the table, away from the salmon, and toward Tracy.

“If you leave now,” said Sid. “Don’t you ever call us. Don’t you ever talk to us again.”

Sara closed her eyes. She remembered the winter when her father fell from the roof of their house and disappeared into a snowbank. She remembered the dreadful silence after the impact, and then the wondrous noise, the joyful cacophony of his laughter.

Tracy took Sara’s hand. They stood there in the silence.

“Sid,” said Low Man. “These women don’t need us. They never did.”

“We’re leaving,” said Tracy and Sara together. Hand in hand, they walked away.

With surprising speed, Sid rose from the table and chased after them. He caught them just before they got to the restaurant exit. He pushed Tracy into a wall — pushed her into the plasterboard — and took his daughter by the elbow.

“You’re coming with us,” he said.

“No,” said Sara.

Estelle couldn’t move. “Help them,” she said to Low Man. “Help them.”

Low didn’t know which “them” she was talking about. He rushed across the room just as Sid slapped his daughter once, then again. One Indian man raised his hand to slap an Indian woman, but a third Indian stepped between them.

“She’s my daughter, she’s mine,” shouted Sid. He pushed against Low, as Sara fell back against a glass door, as she turned to hide her face.

Sid and Low grappled with each other. The old man was very strong.

At the table, Estelle covered her face with her hands.

“She’s my daughter, she’s my daughter,” shouted Sid as he punched Low in the chest. Low staggered back and fell to one knee.

“She’s my daughter,” shouted Sid as he turned to attack Tracy. But she slapped him hard. Surprised, defeated, Sid dropped to the floor beside Low.

The two Indian men sat on the ground as the white woman stood above them.

Tracy turned away from the men and ran after Sara.

Sid climbed to his feet. He pointed an accusing finger at Low, who rose slowly to his feet. Sid turned and walked back toward his wife, back toward Estelle, who held her husband close and cried in his arms.

“What are you going to do?” Low called after him. “What are you going to do when she’s gone?”