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 kn
ew 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.
GREEN WORLD
In a little town on an Indian reservation, whose name I don’t want to mention, there lived a man, a Native American, who owned a shotgun. This was forty or so years ago, in the early part of the twenty-first century, just before the government hired thousands of hungry, desperate people to build the windmills. How many windmills did they build? I suppose there is a bureaucrat willing to apply for the grant that would pay her to do the extensive research that would yield a number, but one might as well try to count all of the grains of rice in the world. But, wait, before I continue, let me make something clear: I am not afraid of large numbers. Just write down a number, any number, and follow it with more numbers, and keep writing numbers for a week. You will find, in that strange exercise, more patterns than you’d ever imagine. And you’ll find mysteries, too. There is beauty and magic in numbers. Take, for instance, the windmills spinning off the Southern California coast. I’ve been there and I’ve seen them, with their huge white wings slowly rotating and their long legs buried deep in the ocean floor. On the most blustery of days, they look like an infinite flock of giant birds lifting into flight, forever caught in that moment of leaving the water for the sky.
But please, as I speak of infinity, don’t worry that I am trying to tell you an infinite tale. I cannot tell you about every windmill; I can only tell you about the twelve windmills that were built a few miles outside of the little town on that unnameable Indian reservation. I don’t know who built those windmills; I was hired to dispose of the dead birds.
As you know, windmills kill birds. Each windmill kills hundreds of birds a year. Perhaps thousands. It’s hard to say. Since the birds are chopped into pieces, it is impossible to count individuals. One can only weigh a shovel-, wheelbarrow-, or truckload of bird parts and estimate the death count. Of course, due to personal and political bias, environmentalists overestimate the carnage while energy companies underestimate. It was that way with the first windmills and it is that way with all of our current windmills. As with most things, the truth, or the most accurate possible measure of the truth, exists somewhere in the in-between.
It is still my job, even as an old man, to collect the dead birds, and I share this work with tens of thousands of men and women. But, I must repeat, this story is not about any of those windmills. Or any of those dead birds. No, this story is only about the twelve windmills—my first windmills—that churned on a bluff overlooking one of the world’s great rivers. No, this story is about that unnamed Indian man. And his shotgun. No. Let me be more honest. This story is about me.
I was lucky to get the job. The tribe had wanted to hire an Indian. I am not an Indian. But they hired me because nobody else wanted the job. Or rather, three or four Indians had been hired but had soon quit because of the terrible amounts of blood and gore. Frankly speaking, if one comes near enough dead birds, one begins to smell like dead birds. It is not an odor that can be easily washed away.
Of course, I did not know about the more difficult aspects of the job when I was hired. I only knew that I had found a job, and a well-paying job at that, in the midst of our country’s Second Great Depression. And while I was not happy with the work—who could be happy doing such a thing?—I labored with great discipline and, dare I say it, passion. It was not a job I wanted to lose.
Each day, just before sunrise, I arrived at the tribal garage, procured my official vehicle—a flatbed truck—and drove the short distance to the twelve windmills. Arranged in two rows of six, those windmills were rather simple and lovely but became glorious at sunrise, when the golden light struck those golden windmills rising like wooden giants in the wild and golden fields. Still, as physically beautiful as the windmills were, I found myself falling in love with their music, the rhythmic hum of wood meeting metal.
But then, each day, after admiring the windmills, I would have to back the truck up to the base of a windmill, step out, grab my shovel, and pick up pieces of bird. And, each day, as I bent my back and calloused my hands, I would think—or try not to think—Dead bird, dead bird, dead bird, dead bird.
I vomited, often, during my first few weeks of that work. One could not be a thinking, feeling person and not be made sick. One would not be human if one were not overcome with sadness and pity. But in order to continue working—in order to keep the job—I became immune to such emotions. And so, three months into the job, on an early October morning, I realized that I had acquired enough self-control to keep disposing of dead birds forever.
The first snow came early that year. It wasn’t a big storm. There was only an inch or two of snow on the ground. It didn’t prevent me from driving the truck the short distance from the garage to the windmills. And so it was that I came to see the windmills, those wooden giants, standing ankle-deep in twelve ponds of blood.
They weren’t ponds of blood, of course. I can be a fantasist; forgive me. Rather, the windmills had sliced dozens of birds and scattered the bloody pieces into twelve distinct circles around their foundations.
It was a particularly disturbing sight, and I might have driven away had I not seen that Indian man walking toward the windmills. The windmills and those bloody circles stood between the Indian man and me. He was singing a tribal song, and though I understood none of the words or rhythms, I can promise you that he was singing a death song.
And so, for reasons I still cannot explain, I stepped out of the truck and walked toward that Indian man. I walked between the windmill rows and through those bloody circles and that Indian man did the same from the opposite direction, until we stood just ten feet apart. It was only then that I noticed he was carrying a shotgun.
He kept singing his death song as he raised his weapon and pointed it at me. I remember thinking that he was singing my death song.
“Please,” I said.
The Indian man kept singing as he stepped closer to me and pressed the shotgun against my forehead.
“Please,” I said again.
He was singing so loudly that it hurt my ears. And as his song reached a crescendo, I closed my eyes, sure that I was about to become my own bloody circle in the snow.
But then he stopped singing.
I opened my eyes and watched him lower the shotgun and walk over to a circle and kneel in the bloody snow. He dropped the shotgun into the snow and picked up a carcass so ravaged and mutilated that I cannot even tell you what kind of bird he was holding. He hugged that corpse close to his chest, as if he were holding something of his own, and wept for some long moments.
I watched him.
He stopped weeping and held the dead bird toward me. “My tribe built these windmills,” he said.
“I know,” I said.
“We started this,” he said.
“I suppose,” I said.
“This is just the beginning,” he said.
“I don’t know,” I said.
“It’s never going to stop,” he said.
“I guess not,” I said. But I wanted to tell him that it was necessary and predictable. We humans have to kill in order to live. No, every living thing on earth kills in order to survive. But I didn’t say anything. I knew that my opinion might put my life in more danger.
The Indian studied my face for a while. Then he made some judgment about me. I could see him make his decision. He set down the dead bird,
picked up the shotgun, walked close to one of the windmills, and shot it.
He stepped forward and closely studied the shotgun blast in the windmill, as if he expected the machine to bleed. Then he stepped back and shot the windmill again. He reloaded, shot, reloaded, shot, reloaded, shot, and then stepped back and looked up at the windmill. It was still moving, working, and ready to kill birds. It was impervious.
After a while, he turned and walked away. I watched him go over the slight rise and disappear. Indians are good at walking away.
I stood in the cold for a while. I’m not a religious man. I’m not even sure that I believe in God, but I knelt in the snow and prayed.
SCARS
On Mike’s right forearm, a lightning-shaped scar.
“Hurrying for a job interview,” he said. “Trying to make my white shirt crisp. Reached across the ironing board for the starch bottle and dragged my arm over the tip of the hot iron.”
On Mike’s left forearm, a keloid scar that looks like Pac-Man.
“Got that job,” he said. “Waiting tables at that pancake house on Aurora. First shift. First ten minutes. First time I tried to pour coffee, I spilled some on my arm. At first, the burn was just a mess of red skin and blisters, but then, as it healed, it shrank up, got all thick and ugly, and turned into Pac-Man, if Pac-Man got his face all burned to shit in a pizza oven.”
On Mike’s forehead, a white scar running from temple to temple like the horizon.
“Only worked that job long enough to buy me a snowboard,” he said. “Hitchhiked to Stevens Pass. Hitchhiked up a mountain. How crazy is that? Anyway, my first run, I plow into this old dude. And we tumble and slide down the hill together and somehow his ski slices my forehead. Took seventy-five stitches to sew it up. Old dude broke his leg, but wasn’t too freaked about it. Said it was just the way skiing goes sometimes. Cool old dude.”
Mike’s right ear was cauliflowered like a boxer’s.