Blasphemy: New and Selected Stories

WAR DANCES

1. My Kafka Baggage

A few years ago, after I returned from a trip to Los Angeles, I unpacked my bag and found a dead cockroach, shrouded by a dirty sock, in a bottom corner. “Shit,” I thought. “We’re being invaded.” And so I threw the unpacked clothes, books, shoes, and toiletries back into the suitcase, carried it out onto the driveway, and dumped the contents onto the pavement, ready to stomp on any other cockroach stowaways. But there was only the one cockroach, stiff and dead. As he lay on the pavement, I leaned closer to him. His legs were curled under his body. His head was tilted at a sad angle. Sad? Yes, sad. For who is lonelier than the cockroach without his tribe? I laughed at myself. I was feeling empathy for a dead cockroach. I wondered about its story. How had it got into my bag? And where? At the hotel in Los Angeles? In an airport baggage system? It didn’t originate in our house. We’ve kept those tiny bastards away from our place for fifteen years. So what had happened to this little vermin? Did he smell something delicious in my bag — my musky deodorant or some crumb of chocolate Power Bar — and climb inside, only to be crushed by the shifts of fate and garment bags? As he died, did he feel fear? Isolation? Existential dread?

2. Symptoms

Last summer, in reaction to various allergies I was suffering from, defensive mucous flooded my inner right ear and confused, frightened, untied, and unmoored me. Simply stated, I could not fucking hear a thing from that side, so I had to turn my head to understand what my two sons, ages eight and ten, were saying.

“We’re hungry,” they said. “We keep telling you.”

They wanted to be fed. And I had not heard them.

“Mom would have fed us by now,” they said.

Their mother had left for Italy with her mother two days ago. My sons and I were going to enjoy a boys’ week, filled with unwashed socks, REI rock wall climbing, and ridiculous heaps of pasta.

“What are you going to cook?” my sons asked. “Why haven’t you cooked yet?”

I’d been lying on the couch reading a book while they played and I had not realized that I’d gone partially deaf. So I, for just a moment, could only weakly blame the silence — no, the contradictory roar that only I could hear.

Then I recalled the man who went to the emergency room because he’d woken having lost most, if not all, of his hearing. The doctor peered into one ear, saw an obstruction, reached in with small tweezers, and pulled out a cockroach, then reached into the other ear, and extracted a much larger cockroach. Did you know that ear wax is a delicacy for roaches?

I cooked dinner for my sons — overfed them out of guilt — and cleaned the hell out of our home. Then I walked into the bathroom and stood close to my mirror. I turned my head and body at weird angles, and tried to see deeply into my congested ear. I sang hymns and prayed that I’d see a small angel trapped in the canal. I would free the poor thing, and she’d unfurl and pat dry her tiny wings, then fly to my lips and give me a sweet kiss for sheltering her metamorphosis.

3. The Symptoms Worsen

When I woke at three a.m., completely unable to hear out of my clogged right ear, and positive that a damn swarm of locusts was wedged inside, I left a message for my doctor, and told him that I would be sitting outside his office when he reported to work.

This would be the first time I had been inside a health-care facility since my father’s last surgery.

4. Blankets

After the surgeon cut off my father’s right foot — no, half of my father’s right foot — and three toes from the left, I sat with him in the recovery room. It was more like a recovery hallway. There was no privacy, not even a thin curtain. I guessed it made it easier for the nurses to monitor the postsurgical patients, but still, my father was exposed — his decades of poor health and worse decisions were illuminated — on white sheets in a white hallway under white lights.

“Are you okay?” I asked. It was a stupid question. Who could be okay after such a thing? Yesterday, my father had walked into the hospital. Okay, he’d shuffled while balanced on two canes, but that was still called walking. A few hours ago, my father still had both of his feet. Yes, his feet and toes had been black with rot and disease but they’d still been, technically speaking, feet and toes. And, most important, those feet and toes had belonged to my father. But now they were gone, sliced off. Where were they? What did they do with the right foot and the toes from the left foot? Did they throw them in the incinerator? Were their ashes floating over the city?

“Doctor, I’m cold,” my father said.

“Dad, it’s me,” I said.

“I know who are you. You’re my son.” But considering the blankness in my father’s eyes, I assumed he was just guessing at my identity.

“Dad, you’re in the hospital. You just had surgery.”

“I know where I am. I’m cold.”

“Do you want another blanket?” Another stupid question. Of course, he wanted another blanket. He probably wanted me to build a fucking campfire or drag in one of those giant propane heaters that NFL football teams used on the sidelines.

I walked down the hallway — the recovery hallway — to the nurses’ station. There were three women nurses, two white and one black. Being Native American-Spokane and Coeur d’Alene Indian, I hoped my darker pigment would give me an edge with the black nurse, so I addressed her directly.

“My father is cold,” I said. “Can I get another blanket?”

The black nurse glanced up from her paperwork and regarded me. Her expression was neither compassionate nor callous.

“How can I help you, sir?” she asked.

“I’d like another blanket for my father. He’s cold.”

“I’ll be with you in a moment, sir.”

She looked back down at her paperwork. She made a few notes. Not knowing what else to do, I stood there and waited.

“Sir,” the black nurse said. “I’ll be with you in a moment.”

She was irritated. I understood. After all, how many thousands of times had she been asked for an extra blanket? She was a nurse, an educated woman, not a damn housekeeper. And it was never really about an extra blanket, was it? No, when people asked for an extra blanket, they were asking for a time machine. And, yes, she knew she was a health care provider, and she knew she was supposed to be compassionate, but my father, an alcoholic, diabetic Indian with terminally damaged kidneys, had just endured an incredibly expensive surgery for what? So he could ride his motorized wheelchair to the bar and win bets by showing off his disfigured foot? I know she didn’t want to be cruel, but she believed there was a point when doctors should stop rescuing people from their own self-destructive impulses. And I couldn’t disagree with her but I could ask for the most basic of comforts, couldn’t I?

“My father,” I said. “An extra blanket, please.”

“Fine,” she said, then stood and walked back to a linen closet, grabbed a white blanket, and handed it to me. “If you need anything else—”

I didn’t wait around for the end of her sentence. With the blanket in hand, I walked back to my father. It was a thin blanket, laundered and sterilized a hundred times. In fact, it was too thin. It wasn’t really a blanket. It was more like a large beach towel. Hell, it wasn’t even good enough for that. It was more like the world’s largest coffee filter. Jesus, had health care finally come to this? Everybody was uninsured and unblanketed.

“Dad, I’m back.”

He looked so small and pale lying in that hospital bed. How had that change happened? For the first sixty-seven years of his life, my father had been a large and dark man. And now, he was just another pale and sick drone in a hallway of pale and sick drones. A hive, I thought, this place looks like a beehive with colony collapse disorder.

“Dad, it’s me.”

“I’m cold.”

“I have a blanket.”

As I draped it over my father and tucked it around his body, I felt the first sting of grief. I’d read the hospital literature about this moment. There would come a time when roles would reverse and the adult child would become the caretaker of the ill parent. The circle of life. Such poetic bullshit.

“I can’t get warm,” my father said. “I’m freezing.”

“I brought you a blanket, Dad, I put it on you.”

“Get me another one. Please. I’m so cold. I need another blanket.”

I knew that ten more of these cheap blankets wouldn’t be enough. My father needed a real blanket, a good blanket.

I walked out of the recovery hallway and made my way through various doorways and other hallways, peering into the rooms, looking at the patients and their families, looking for a particular kind of patient and family.

I walked through the ER, cancer, heart and vascular, neurology, orthopedic, women’s health, pediatrics, and surgical services. Nobody stopped me. My expression and posture were that of a man with a sick father and so I belonged.

And then I saw him, another Native man, leaning against a wall near the gift shop. Well, maybe he was Asian; lots of those in Seattle. He was a small man, pale brown, with muscular arms and a soft belly. Maybe he was Mexican, which is really a kind of Indian, too, but not the kind that I needed. It was hard to tell sometimes what people were. Even brown people guessed at the identity of other brown people.

“Hey,” I said.

“Hey,” the other man said.

“You Indian?” I asked.

“Yeah.”

“What tribe?”

“Lummi.”

“I’m Spokane.”

“My first wife was Spokane. I hated her.”

“My first wife was Lummi. She hated me.”

We laughed at the new jokes that instantly sounded old.

“Why are you in here?” I asked.

“My sister is having a baby,” he said. “But don’t worry, it’s not mine.”

“Ayyyyyy,” I said — another Indian idiom — and laughed.

“I don’t even want to be here,” the other Indian said. “But my dad started, like, this new Indian tradition. He says it’s a thousand years old. But that’s bullshit. He just made it up to impress himself. And the whole family just goes along, even when we know it’s bullshit. He’s in the delivery room waving eagle feathers around. Jesus.”

“What’s the tradition?”

“Oh, he does a naming ceremony right in the hospital. Like, it’s supposed to protect the baby from all the technology and shit. Like hospitals are the big problem. You know how many babies died before we had good hospitals?”

“I don’t know.”

“Most of them. Well, shit, a lot of them, at least.”

This guy was talking out of his ass. I liked him immediately.

“I mean,” the guy said. “You should see my dad right now. He’s pretending to go into this, like, fucking trance and is dancing around my sister’s bed, and he says he’s trying to, you know, see into her womb, to see who the baby is, to see its true nature, so he can give it a name — a protective name — before it’s born.”

The guy laughed and threw his head back and banged it on the wall.

“I mean, come on, I’m a loser,” he said and rubbed his sore skull. “My whole family is filled with losers.”

The Indian world is filled with charlatans, men and women who pretended — hell, who might have come to believe — that they were holy. Last year, I had gone to a lecture at the University of Washington. An elderly Indian woman, a Sioux writer and scholar and charlatan, had come to orate on Indian sovereignty and literature. She kept arguing for some kind of separate indigenous literary identity, which was ironic considering that she was speaking English to a room full of white professors. But I wasn’t angry with the woman, or even bored. No, I felt sorry for her. I realized that she was dying of nostalgia. She had taken nostalgia as her false idol — her thin blanket — and it was murdering her.

“Nostalgia,” I said to the other Indian man in the hospital.

“What?”

“Your dad, he sounds like he’s got a bad case of nostalgia.”

“Yeah, I hear you catch that from fucking old high school girlfriends,” the man said. “What the hell you doing here anyway?”

“My dad just got his feet cut off,” I said.

“Diabetes?”

“And vodka.”

“Vodka straight up or with a nostalgia chaser?”

“Both.”

“Natural causes for an Indian.”

“Yep.”

There wasn’t much to say after that.

“Well, I better get back,” the man said. “Otherwise, my dad might wave an eagle feather and change my name.”

“Hey, wait,” I said.

“Yeah?”

“Can I ask you a favor?”

“What?”

“My dad, he’s in the recovery room,” I said. “Well, it’s more like a hallway, and he’s freezing, and they’ve only got these shitty little blankets, and I came looking for Indians in the hospital because I figured — well, I guessed if I found any Indians, they might have some good blankets.”

“So you want to borrow a blanket from us?” the man asked.

“Yeah.”

“Because you thought some Indians would just happen to have some extra blankets lying around?”

“Yeah.”

“That’s fucking ridiculous.”

“I know.”

“And it’s racist.”

“I know.”

“You’re stereotyping your own damn people.”

“I know.”

“But damn if we don’t have a room full of Pendleton blankets. New ones. Jesus, you’d think my sister was having, like, a dozen babies.”

Five minutes later, carrying a Pendleton Star Blanket, the Indian man walked out of his sister’s hospital room, accompanied by his father, who wore Levi’s, a black T-shirt, and eagle feathers in his gray braids.

“We want to give your father this blanket,” the old man said. “It was meant for my grandson, but I think it will be good for your father, too.”

“Thank you.”

“Let me bless it. I will sing a healing song for the blanket. And for your father.”

I flinched. This guy wanted to sing a song? That was dangerous. This song could take two minutes or two hours. It was impossible to know. Hell, considering how desperate this old man was to be seen as holy, he might sing for a week. I couldn’t let this guy begin his song without issuing a caveat.

“My dad,” I said. “I really need to get back to him. He’s really sick.”

“Don’t worry,” the old man said and winked. “I’ll sing one of my short ones.”

Jesus, who’d ever heard of a self-aware fundamentalist? The son, perhaps not the unbeliever he’d pretended to be, sang backup as his father launched into his radio-friendly honor song, just three-and-a-half minutes, like the length of any Top 40 rock song of the last fifty years. But here’s the funny thing: the old man couldn’t sing very well. If you were going to have the balls to sing healing songs in hospital hallways, then you should logically have a great voice, right? But, no, this guy couldn’t keep the tune. And his voice cracked and wavered. Does a holy song lose its power if its singer is untalented?

“That is your father’s song,” the old man said when he was finished. “I give it to him. I will never sing it again. It belongs to your father now.”

Behind his back, the old man’s son rolled his eyes and walked back into his sister’s room.

“Okay, thank you,” I said. I felt like an ass, accepting the blanket and the old man’s good wishes, but silently mocking them at the same time. But maybe the old man did have some power, some real medicine, because he peeked into my brain.

“It doesn’t matter if you believe in the healing song,” the old man said. “It only matters that the blanket heard.”

“Where have you been?” my father asked when I returned. “I’m cold.”

“I know, I know,” I said. “I found you a blanket. A good one. It will keep you warm.”

I draped the Star Blanket over my father. He pulled the thick wool up to his chin. And then he began to sing. It was a healing song, not the same song that I had just heard, but a healing song nonetheless. My father could sing beautifully. I wondered if it was proper for a man to sing a healing song for himself. I wondered if my father needed help with the song. I hadn’t sung for many years, not like that, but I joined him. I knew this song would not bring back my father’s feet. This song would not repair my father’s bladder, kidneys, lungs, and heart. This song would not prevent my father from drinking a bottle of vodka as soon as he could sit up in bed. This song would not defeat death. No, I thought, this song is temporary, but right now, temporary is good enough. And it was a good song. Our voices filled the recovery hallway. The sick and healthy stopped to listen. The nurses, even the remote black one, unconsciously took a few steps toward us. The black nurse sighed and smiled. I smiled back. I knew what she was thinking. Sometimes, even after all of these years, she could still be surprised by her work. She still marveled at the infinite and ridiculous faith of other people.

5. Doctor’s Office

I took my kids with me to my doctor, a handsome man — a reservist — who’d served in both Iraq wars. I told him I could not hear. He said his nurse would likely have to clear wax and fluid, but when he scoped inside, he discovered nothing.

“Nope, it’s all dry in there,” he said.

He led my sons and me to the audiologist in the other half of the building. I was scared, but I wanted my children to remain calm, so I tried to stay measured. More than anything, I wanted my wife to materialize.

During the hearing test, I heard only 30 percent of the clicks, bells, and words — I apparently had nerve and bone conductive deafness. My inner ear thumped and thumped.

How many cockroaches were in my head?

My doctor said, “We need an MRI of your ear and brain, and maybe we’ll find out what’s going on.”

Maybe? That word terrified me.

What the fuck was wrong with my fucking head? Had my hydrocephalus come back for blood? Had my levees burst? Was I going to flood?

6. Hydrocephalus

Merriam-Webster’s dictionary defines hydrocephalus as “an abnormal increase in the amount of cerebrospinal fluid within the cranial cavity that is accompanied by expansion of the cerebral ventricles, enlargement of the skull and especially the forehead, and atrophy of the brain.” I define hydrocephalus as “the obese, imperialistic water demon that nearly killed me when I was six months old.”

In order to save my life, and stop the water demon, I had brain surgery in 1967 when I was six months old. I was supposed to die. Obviously, I didn’t. I was supposed to be severely mentally disabled. I have only minor to moderate brain damage. I was supposed to have epileptic seizures. Those I did have, until I was seven years old. I was on phenobarbital, a major league antiseizure medication, for six years.

Some of the side effects of phenobarbital — all of which I suffered to some degree or another as a child — include sleepwalking, agitation, confusion, depression, nightmares, hallucinations, insomnia, apnea, vomiting, constipation, dermatitis, fever, liver and bladder dysfunction, and psychiatric disturbance.

How do you like them cockroaches?

And now, as an adult, thirty-three years removed from phenobarbital, I still suffer — to one degree or another — from sleepwalking, agitation, confusion, depression, nightmares, hallucinations, insomnia, bladder dysfunction, apnea, and dermatitis.

Is there such a disease as post-phenobarbital traumatic stress syndrome?

Most hydrocephalics are shunted. A shunt is essentially brain plumbing that drains away excess cerebrospinal fluid. Those shunts often fuck up and stop working. I know hydrocephalics who’ve had a hundred or more shunt revisions and repairs. That’s over a hundred brain surgeries. There are ten fingers on any surgeon’s hand. There are two or three surgeons working on any particular brain. That means certain hydrocephalics have had their brains fondled by three thousand fingers.

I’m lucky. I was only temporarily shunted. And I hadn’t suffered any hydrocephalic symptoms since I was seven years old.

And then, in July 2008, at the age of forty-one, I went deaf in my right ear.

7. Conversation

Sitting in my car in the hospital parking garage, I called my brother-in-law, who was babysitting my sons.

“Hey, it’s me. I just got done with the MRI on my head.”

My brother-in-law said something unintelligible. I realized I was holding my cell to my bad ear. And switched it to the good ear.

“The MRI dude didn’t look happy,” I said.

“That’s not good,” my brother-in-law said.

“No, it’s not. But he’s just a tech guy, right? He’s not an expert on brains or anything. He’s just the photographer, really. And he doesn’t know anything about ears or deafness or anything, I don’t think. Ah, hell, I don’t know what he knows. I just didn’t like the look on his face when I was done.”

“Maybe he just didn’t like you.”

“Well, I got worried when I told him I had hydrocephalus when I was a baby and he didn’t seem to know what that was.”

“Nobody knows what that is.”

“That’s the truth. Have you fed the boys dinner?”

“Yeah, but I was scrounging. There’s not much here.”

“I better go shopping.”

“Are you sure? I can do it if you need me to. I can shop the shit out of Trader Joe’s.”

“No, it’ll be good for me. I feel good. I fell asleep during the MRI. And I kept twitching. So we had to do it twice. Otherwise, I would’ve been done earlier.”

“That’s okay; I’m okay; the boys are okay.”

“You know, before you go in that MRI tube, they ask you what kind of music you want to listen to — jazz, classical, rock, or country — and I remembered how my dad spent a lot of time in MRI tubes near the end of his life. So I was wondering what kind of music he always chose. I mean, he couldn’t hear shit anyway by that time, but he still must have chosen something. And I wanted to choose the same thing he chose. So I picked country.”

“Was it good country?”

“It was fucking Shania Twain and Faith Hill shit. I was hoping for George Jones or Loretta Lynn, or even some George Strait. Hell, I would’ve cried if they’d played Charley Pride or Freddy Fender.”

“You wanted to hear the alcoholic Indian father jukebox.”

“Hey, that’s my line. You can’t quote me to me.”

“Why not? You’re always quoting you to you.”

“Kiss my ass. So, hey, I’m okay, I think. And I’m going to the store. But I think I already said that. Anyway, I’ll see you in a bit. You want anything?”

“Ah, man, I love Trader Joe’s. But you know what’s bad about them? You fall in love with something they have — they stock it for a year — and then it just disappears. They had those wontons I loved and now they don’t. I was willing to shop for you and the boys, but I don’t want anything for me. I’m on a one-man hunger strike against them.”

8. World Phone Conversation, 3

A.M

.

After I got home with yogurt and turkey dogs and Cinnamon Toast Crunch and my brother-in-law had left, I watched George Romero’s Diary of the Dead, and laughed at myself for choosing a movie that featured dozens of zombies getting shot in the head.

When the movie was over, I called my wife, nine hours ahead in Italy.

“I should come home,” she said.

“No, I’m okay,” I said. “Come on, you’re in Rome. What are you seeing today?”

“The Vatican.”

“You can’t leave now. You have to go and steal something. It will be revenge for every Indian. Or maybe you can plant an eagle feather and claim that you just discovered Catholicism.”

“I’m worried.”

“Yeah, Catholicism has always worried me.”

“Stop being funny. I should see if I can get Mom and me on a flight tonight.”

“No, no, listen, your mom is old. This might be her last adventure. It might be your last adventure with her. Stay there. Say Hi to the Pope for me. Tell him I like his shoes.”

That night, my sons climbed into bed with me. We all slept curled around one another like sled dogs in a snowstorm. I woke, hour by hour, and touched my head and neck to check if they had changed shape — to feel if antennae were growing. Some insects “hear” with their antennae. Maybe that’s what was happening to me.

9. Valediction

My father, a part-time blue collar construction worker, died in March 2003, from full-time alcoholism. On his deathbed, he asked me to “Turn down that light, please.”

“Which light?” I asked.

“The light on the ceiling.”

“Dad, there’s no light.”

“It burns my skin, son. It’s too bright. It hurts my eyes.”

“Dad, I promise you there’s no light.”

“Don’t lie to me, son, it’s God passing judgment on Earth.”

“Dad, you’ve been an atheist since ‘79. Come on, you’re just remembering your birth. On your last day, you’re going back to your first.”

“No, son, it’s God telling me I’m doomed. He’s using the brightest lights in the universe to show me the way to my flame-filled tomb.”

“No, Dad, those lights were in your delivery room.”

“If that’s true, son, then turn down my mother’s womb.”

We buried my father in the tiny Catholic cemetery on our reservation. Since I am named after him, I had to stare at a tombstone with my name on it.

10. Battle Fatigue

Two months after my father’s death, I began research on a book about our family’s history with war. I had a cousin who had served as a cook in the first Iraq war in 1991; I had another cousin who served in the Vietnam War in 1964–65, also as a cook; and my father’s father, Adolph, served in WWII and was killed in action on Okinawa Island, on April 5, 1946.

During my research, I interviewed thirteen men who’d served with my cousin in Vietnam but could find only one surviving man who’d served with my grandfather. This is a partial transcript of that taped interview, recorded with a microphone and an iPod on January 14, 2008:

Me: Ah, yes, hello, I’m here in Livonia, Michigan, to interview — well, perhaps you should introduce yourself, please?

Leonard Elmore: What?

Me: Um, oh, I’m sorry, I was asking if you could perhaps introduce yourself.

LE: You’re going to have to speak up. I think my hearing aid is going low on power or something.

Me: That is a fancy thing in your ear.

LE: Yeah, let me mess with it a bit. I got a remote control for it. I can listen to the TV, the stereo, and the telephone with this thing. It’s fancy. It’s one of them Bluetooth hearing aids. My grandson bought it for me. Wait, okay, there we go. I can hear now. So what were you asking?

Me: I was hoping you could introduce yourself into my recorder here.

LE: Sure, my name is Leonard Elmore.

Me: How old are you?

LE: I’m eighty-five-and-a-half years old (laughter). My great-grandkids are always saying they’re seven-and-a-half or nine-and-a-half or whatever. It just cracks me up to say the same thing at my age.

Me: So, that’s funny, um, but I’m here to ask you some questions about my grandfather—

LE: Adolph. It’s hard to forget a name like that. An Indian named Adolph and there was that Nazi bastard named Adolph. Your grandfather caught plenty of grief over that. But we mostly called him “Chief,” did you know that?

Me: I could have guessed.

LE: Yeah, nowadays, I suppose it isn’t a good thing to call an Indian “Chief,” but back then, it was what we did. I served with a few Indians. They didn’t segregate them Indians, you know, not like the black boys. I know you aren’t supposed to call them boys anymore, but they were boys. All of us were boys, I guess. But the thing is, those Indian boys lived and slept and ate with us white boys. They were right there with us. But, anyway, we called all them Indians “Chief.” I bet you’ve been called “Chief” a few times yourself.

Me: Just once.

LE: Were you all right with it?

Me: I threw a basketball in the guy’s face.

LE: (laughter)

Me: We live in different times.

LE: Yes, we do. Yes, we do.

Me: So, perhaps you could, uh, tell me something about my grandfather.

LE: I can tell you how he died.

Me: Really?

LE: Yeah, it was on Okinawa, and we hit the beach, and, well, it’s hard to talk about it — it was the worst thing — it was Hell — no, that’s not even a good way to describe it. I’m not a writer like you — I’m not a poet — so I don’t have the words — but just think of it this way — that beach, that island — was filled with sons and fathers — men who loved and were loved — American and Japanese and Okinawan — and all of us were dying — were being killed by other sons and fathers who also loved and were loved.

Me: That sounds like poetry — tragic poetry — to me.

LE: Well, anyway, it was like that. Fire everywhere. And two of our boys — Jonesy and O’Neal — went down — were wounded in the open on the sand. And your grandfather — who was just this little man — barely five feet tall and maybe one hundred and thirty pounds — he just ran out there and picked up those two guys — one on each shoulder — and carried them to cover. Hey, are you okay, son?

Me: Yes, I’m sorry. But, well, the thing is, I knew my grandfather was a war hero — he won twelve medals — but I could never find out what he did to win the medals.

LE: I didn’t know about any medals. I just know what I saw. Your grandfather saved those two boys, but he got shot in the back doing it. And he laid there in the sand — I was lying right beside him — and he died.

Me: Did he say anything before he died?

LE: Hold on. I need to—

Me: Are you okay?

LE: It’s just — I can’t—

Me: I’m sorry. Is there something wrong?

LE: No, it’s just — with your book and everything — I know you want something big here. I know you want something big from your grandfather. I knew you hoped he’d said something huge and poetic, like maybe something you could have written, and, honestly, I was thinking about lying to you. I was thinking about making up something as beautiful as I could. Something about love and forgiveness and courage and all that. But I couldn’t think of anything good enough. And I didn’t want to lie to you. So I have to be honest and say that your grandfather didn’t say anything. He just died there in the sand. In silence.

11. Orphans

I was worried that I had a brain tumor. Or that my hydrocephalus had returned. I was scared that I was going to die and orphan my sons. But, no, their mother was coming home from Italy. No matter what happened to me, their mother would rescue them.

“I’ll be home in sixteen hours,” my wife said over the phone.

“I’ll be here,” I said. “I’m just waiting on news from my doctor.”

12. Coffee Shop News

While I waited, I asked my brother-in-law to watch the boys again because I didn’t want to get bad news with them in the room.

Alone and haunted, I wandered the mall, tried on new clothes, and waited for my cell phone to ring.

Two hours later, I was uncomposed and wanted to murder everything, so I drove south to a coffee joint, a spotless place called Dirty Joe’s.

Yes, I was silly enough to think that I’d be calmer with a caffeinated drink.

As I sat outside on a wooden chair and sipped my coffee, I cursed the vague, rumbling, ringing noise in my ear. And yet, when my cell phone rang, I held it to my deaf ear.

“Hello, hello,” I said and wondered if it was a prank call, then remembered and switched the phone to my left ear.

“Hello,” my doctor said. “Are you there?”

“Yes,” I said. “So, what’s going on?”

“There are irregularities in your head.”

“My head’s always been wrong,”

“It’s good to have a sense of humor,” my doctor said. “You have a small tumor that is called a meningioma. They grow in the meninges membranes that lie between your brain and your skull.”

“Shit,” I said. “I have cancer.”

“Well,” my doctor said. “These kinds of tumors are usually noncancerous. And they grow very slowly, so in six months or so, we’ll do another MRI. Don’t worry. You’re going to be okay.”

“What about my hearing?” I asked.

“We don’t know what might be causing the hearing loss, but you should start a course of prednisone, the steroid, just to go with the odds. Your deafness might lessen if left alone, but we’ve had success with the steroids in bringing back hearing. There are side effects, like insomnia, weight gain, night sweats, and depression.”

“Oh, boy,” I said. “Those side effects might make up most of my personality already. Will the ’roids also make me quick to pass judgment? And I’ve always wished I had a dozen more skin tags and moles.”

The doctor chuckled. “You’re a funny man.”

I wanted to throw my phone into a wall but I said good-bye instead and glared at the tumorless people and their pretty tumorless heads.

13. Meningioma

Mayoclinic.com defines “meningioma” as “a tumor that arises from the meninges — the membranes that surround your brain and spinal cord. The majority of meningioma cases are noncancerous (benign), though rarely a meningioma can be cancerous (malignant).”

Okay, that was a scary and yet strangely positive definition. No one ever wants to read the word “malignant” unless one is reading a Charles Dickens novel about an evil landlord, but “benign” and “majority” are two things that go great together.

From the University of Washington Medical School Web site I learned that meningioma tumors “are usually benign, slow growing and do not spread into normal brain tissue. Typically, a meningioma grows inward, causing pressure on the brain or spinal cord. It may grow outward toward the skull, causing it to thicken.”

So, wait, what the fuck? A meningioma can cause pressure on the brain and spinal fluid? Oh, you mean, just like fucking hydrocephalus? Just like the water demon that once tried to crush my brain and kill me? Armed with this new information — with these new questions — I called my doctor.

“Hey, you’re okay,” he said. “We’re going to closely monitor you. And your meningioma is very small.”

“Okay, but I just read—”

“Did you go on the Internet?”

“Yes.”

“Which sites?”

“Mayo Clinic and the University of Washington.”

“Okay, so those are pretty good sites. Let me look at them.”

I listened to my doctor type.

“Okay, those are accurate,” he said.

“What do you mean by accurate?” I asked. “I mean, the whole pressure on the brain thing, that sounds like hydrocephalus.”

“Well, there were some irregularities in your MRI that were the burr holes from your surgery and there seems to be some scarring and perhaps you had an old concussion, but other than that, it all looks fine.”

“But what about me going deaf? Can’t these tumors make you lose hearing?”

“Yes, but only if they’re located near an auditory nerve. And your tumor is not.”

“Can this tumor cause pressure on my brain?”

“It could, but yours is too small for that.”

“So, I’m supposed to trust you on the tumor thing when you can’t figure out the hearing thing?”

“The MRI revealed the meningioma, but that’s just an image. There is no physical correlation between your deafness and the tumor. Do the twenty-day treatment of prednisone and the audiologist and I will examine your ear, and your hearing. Then, if there’s no improvement, we’ll figure out other ways of treating you.”

“But you won’t be treating the tumor?”

“Like I said, we’ll scan you again in six to nine months—”

“You said six before.”

“Okay, in six months we’ll take another MRI, and if it has grown significantly — or has changed shape or location or anything dramatic — then we’ll talk about treatment options. But if you look on the Internet, and I know you’re going to spend a lot of time obsessing on this — as you should — I’ll tell you what you’ll find. About 5 percent of the population has these things and they live their whole lives with these undetected meningiomas. And they can become quite large — without any side effects — and are only found at autopsies conducted for other causes of death. And even when these kinds of tumors become invasive or dangerous they are still rarely fatal. And your tumor, even if it grows fairly quickly, will not likely become an issue for many years, decades. So that’s what I can tell you right now. How are you feeling?”

“Freaked and fucked.”

I wanted to feel reassured, but I had a brain tumor. How does one feel any optimism about being diagnosed with a brain tumor? Even if that brain tumor is neither cancerous nor interested in crushing one’s brain?

14. Drugstore Indian

In Bartell’s Drugs, I gave the pharmacist my prescription for prednisone.

“Is this your first fill with us?” she asked.

“No,” I said. “And it won’t be the last.”

I felt like an ass, but she looked bored.

“It’ll take thirty minutes,” she said, “more or less. We’ll page you over the speakers.”

I don’t think I’d ever felt weaker, or more vulnerable, or more absurd. I was the weak antelope in the herd — yeah, the mangy fucker with the big limp and a sign that read, “Eat me! I’m a gimp!”

So, for thirty minutes, I walked through the store and found myself shoving more and more useful shit into my shopping basket, as if I were filling my casket with the things I’d need in the afterlife. I grabbed toothpaste, a Swiss Army knife, moisturizer, mouthwash, non-stick Band-Aids, antacid, protein bars, and extra razor blades. I grabbed pen and paper. And I also grabbed an ice scraper and sunscreen. Who can predict what weather awaits us in Heaven?

This random shopping made me feel better for a few minutes but then I stopped and walked to the toy aisle. My boys needed gifts: Lego cars or something, for a lift, a shot of capitalistic joy. But the selection of proper toys is art and science. I have been wrong as often as right and heard the sad song of a disappointed son.

Shit, if I died, I knew my sons would survive, even thrive, because of their graceful mother.

I thought of my father’s life: he was just six when his father was killed in World War II. Then his mother, ill with tuberculosis, died a few months later. Six years old, my father was cratered. In most ways, he never stopped being six. There was no religion, no magic tricks, and no song or dance that helped my father.

Jesus, I needed a drink of water, so I found the fountain and drank and drank until the pharmacist called my name.

“Have you taken these before?” she asked.

“No,” I said, “but they’re going to kick my ass, aren’t they?”

That made the pharmacist smile, so I felt sadly and briefly worthwhile. But another customer, some nosy hag, said, “You’ve got a lot of sleepless nights ahead of you.”

I was shocked. I stammered, glared at her, and said, “Miss, how is this any of your business? Please, just fuck all the way off, okay?”

She had no idea what to say, so she just turned and walked away and I pulled out my credit card and paid far too much for my goddamn steroids, and forgot to bring the toys home to my boys.

15. Exit Interview for My Father

• True or False?: when a reservation-raised Native American dies of alcoholism it should be considered death by natural causes.

• Do you understand the term

wanderlust,

and if you do, can you please tell us, in twenty-five words or less, what place gave you wanderlust the most?

• Did you, when drunk, ever get behind the tattered wheel of a ’76 Ford three-speed van and somehow drive your family one thousand miles on an empty tank of gas?

• Is it true that the only literary term that has any real meaning in the Native American world is

road movie

?

• During the last road movie you saw, how many times did the characters ask, “Are we there yet?”

• How many times, during any of your road trips, did your children ask, “Are we there yet?”

• In twenty-five words or less, please define

there

.

• Sir, in your thirty-nine years as a parent, you broke your children’s hearts, collectively and individually, 612 times and you did this without ever striking any human being in anger. Does this absence of physical violence make you a better man than you might otherwise have been?

• Without using the words

man

or

good,

can you please define what it means to be a good man?

• Do you think you will see angels before you die? Do you think angels will come to escort you to Heaven? As the angels are carrying you to Heaven, how many times will you ask, “Are we there yet?”

• Your son distinctly remembers stopping once or twice a month at that grocery store in Freeman, Washington, where you would buy him a red-white-and-blue Rocket Popsicle and purchase for yourself a pickled pig foot. Your son distinctly remembers the feet still had their toenails and little tufts of pig fur. Could this be true? Did you actually eat such horrendous food?

• Your son has often made the joke that you were the only Indian of your generation who went to Catholic school on purpose. This is, of course, a tasteless joke that makes light of the forced incarceration and subsequent physical, spiritual, cultural, and sexual abuse of tens of thousands of Native American children in Catholic and Protestant boarding schools. In consideration of your son’s questionable judgment in telling jokes, do you think there should be any moral limits placed on comedy?

• Your oldest son and your two daughters, all over thirty-six years of age, still live in your house. Do you think this is a lovely expression of tribal culture? Or is it a symptom of extreme familial codependence? Or is it both things at the same time?

• F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote that the sign of a superior mind “is the ability to hold two opposing ideas at the same time.” Do you believe this is true? And is it also true that you once said, “The only time white people tell the truth is when they keep their mouths shut”?

• A poet once wrote, “Pain is never added to pain. It multiplies.” Can you tell us, in twenty-five words or less, exactly how much we all hate mathematical blackmail?

• Your son, in defining you, wrote this poem to explain one of the most significant nights in his life:

Mutually Assured Destruction

When I was nine, my father sliced his knee

With a chain saw. But he let himself bleed

And finished cutting down one more tree

Before his boss drove him to EMERGENCY.

Late that night, stoned on morphine and beer,

My father needed my help to steer

His pickup into the woods. “Watch for deer,”

My father said. “Those things just appear

Like magic.” It was an Indian summer

And we drove through warm rain and thunder,

Until we found that chain saw, lying under

The fallen pine. Then I watched, with wonder,

As my father, shotgun-rich and impulse-poor,

Blasted that chain saw dead. “What was that for?”

I asked. “Son,” my father said, “here’s the score.

Once a thing tastes blood, it will come for more.”

• Well, first of all, as you know, you did cut your knee with a chain saw, but in direct contradiction to your son’s poem:

A) You immediately went to the emergency room after injuring yourself.

B) Your boss called your wife, who drove you to the emergency room.

C) You were given morphine but even you were not alcoholically stupid enough to drink alcohol while on serious narcotics.

D) You and your son did not get into the pickup that night.

E) And even if you had driven the pickup, you were not injured seriously enough to need your son’s help with the pedals and/or steering wheel.

F) You never in your life used the word,

appear,

and certainly never used the phrase,

like magic

.

G) You also think that Indian summer is a fairly questionable seasonal reference for an Indian poet to use.

H) What the fuck is “warm rain and thunder”? Well, everybody knows what warm rain is, but what the fuck is warm thunder?

I) You never went looking for that chain saw because it belonged to the Spokane tribe of Indians and what kind of freak would want to reclaim the chain saw that had just cut the shit out of his knee?

J) You also think that the entire third stanza of this poem sounds like a Bruce Springsteen song and not necessarily one of the great ones.

K) And yet, “shotgun-rich and impulse-poor” is one of the greatest descriptions your son has ever written and probably redeems the entire poem.

L) You never owned a shotgun. You did own a few rifles during your lifetime, but did not own even so much as a pellet gun during the last thirty years of your life.

M) You never said, in any context, “Once a thing tastes blood, it will come for more.”

N) But you, as you read it, know that it is absolutely true and does indeed sound suspiciously like your entire life philosophy.

O) Other summations of your life philosophy include: “I’ll be there before the next teardrop falls.”

P) And: “If God really loved Indians, he would have made us white people.”

Q) And: “Oscar Robertson should be the man on the NBA logo. They only put Jerry West on there because he’s a white guy.”

R) And: “A peanut butter sandwich with onions. Damn, that’s the way to go.”

S) And: “Why eat a pomegranate when you can eat a plain old apple. Or peach. Or orange. When it comes to fruit and vegetables, only eat the stuff you know how to grow.”

T) And: “If you really want a woman to love you, then you have to dance. And if you don’t want to dance, then you’re going to have to work extra hard to make a woman love you forever, and you will always run the risk that she will leave you at any second for a man who knows how to tango.”

U) And: “I really miss those cafeterias they use to have in Kmart. I don’t know why they stopped having those. If there is a Heaven then I firmly believe it’s a Kmart cafeteria.”

V) And: “A father always knows what his sons are doing. For instance, boys, I knew you were sneaking that

Hustler

magazine out of my bedroom. You remember that one? Where actors who looked like Captain Kirk and Lieutenant Uhura were screwing on the bridge of the

Enterprise

Yeah, that one. I know you kept borrowing it. I let you borrow it. Remember this: men and pornography are like plants and sunshine. To me, porn is photosynthesis.”

W) And: “Your mother is a better man than me. Mothers are almost always better men than men are.”

16. Reunion

After she returned from Italy, my wife climbed into bed with me. I felt like I had not slept comfortably in years.

I said, “There was a rumor that I’d grown a tumor but I killed it with humor.”

“How long have you been waiting to tell me that one?” she asked.

“Oh, probably since the first time some doctor put his fingers in my brain.”

We made love. We fell asleep. But I, agitated by the steroids, woke at two, three, four, and five a.m. The bed was killing my back so I lay flat on the floor. I wasn’t going to die anytime soon, at least not because of my little friend, Mr. Tumor, but that didn’t make me feel any more comfortable or comforted. I felt distant from the world — from my wife and sons, from my mother and siblings — from all of my friends. I felt closer to those who’ve always had fingers in their brains.

And I didn’t feel any closer to the world six months later when another MRI revealed that my meningioma had not grown in size or changed its shape.

“You’re looking good,” my doctor said. “How’s your hearing?”

“I think I’ve got about 90 percent of it back.”

“Well, then, the steroids worked. Good.”

And I didn’t feel any more intimate with God nine months later when one more MRI made my doctor hypothesize that my meningioma might only be more scar tissue from the hydrocephalus.

“Frankly,” my doctor said. “Your brain is beautiful.”

“Thank you,” I said, though it was the oddest compliment I’d ever received.

I wanted to call up my father and tell him that a white man thought my brain was beautiful. But I couldn’t tell him anything. He was dead. I told my wife and sons that I was okay. I told my mother and siblings. I told my friends. But none of them laughed as hard about my beautiful brain as I knew my father would have. I miss him, the drunk bastard. I would always feel closest to the man who had most disappointed me.