The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight
in Heaven is a 1993 collection of interconnected short stories by Sherman
Alexie. The characters and stories in the book, particularly "This Is What
It Means to Say Phoenix, Arizona", provided the basis of Alexie's
screenplay for the film Smoke Signals.
Composed of twenty-two
interconnected stories with recurring characters, the work is often described
by critics as a short-story collection, though some argue that it has
novel-like features similar to Louise Erdrich's Love Medicine.
The book’s central characters,
Victor Joseph and Thomas Builds-the-Fire are two young Native-American men
living on the Spokane Indian Reservation, and the stories describe their
relationships, desires, and histories with family members and others who live
on the reservation. Alexie fuses surreal imagery, flashbacks, dream sequences,
diary entries, and extended poetic passages with his storytelling to create
tales that resemble prose poems more than conventional narratives.
In The Lone Ranger and Tonto
Fistfight in Heaven, the character Victor, caught up in his daily frustration, remembers
the part of his life when he was living with a white woman and living a life
outside the reservation and his Indian self.
THE LONE RANGER AND TONTO
FISTFIGHT IN HEAVEN
by Sherman Alexie.
TOO HOT TO SLEEP so I walked down
to the Third Avenue 7-11 for a Creamsicle and the company of a graveyard-shift
cashier. I know that game. I worked graveyard for a Seattle 7-11 and got robbed
once too often. The last time the bastard locked me in the cooler. He even took
my money and basketball shoes.
The graveyard-shift worker in the
Third Avenue 7-11 looked like they all do. Acne scars and a bad haircut, work
pants that showed off his white socks, and those cheap black shoes that have no
support. My arches still ache from my year at the Seattle 7-11.
“Hello,” he asked when I walked
into his store. “How you doing?”
I gave him a half-wave as I
headed back to the freezer. He looked me over so he could describe me to the
police later. I knew the look. One of my old girlfriends said I started to look
at her that way, too. She left me not long after that. No, I left her and don’t
blame her for anything. That’s how it happened. When one person starts to look
at another like a criminal, then the love is over. It’s logical.
“I don’t trust you,” she said to
me. “You get too angry.”
She was white and I lived with
her in Seattle. Some nights we fought so bad that I would just get in my car
and drive all night, only stop to fill up on gas. In fact, I worked the
graveyard shift to spend as much time away from her as possible. But I learned
all about Seattle that way, driving its back ways and dirty alleys.
Sometimes, though, I would forget
where I was and get lost.
I’d drive for hours, searching
for something familiar. Seems like I’d spent my whole life that way, looking
for anything I recognized. Once, I ended up in a nice residential neighborhood and
somebody must have been worried because the police showed up and pulled me
over.
“What are you doing out here?”
the police officer asked me as he looked over my license and registration.
“I’m lost.”
“Well, where are you supposed to
be?” he asked me, and I knew there were plenty of places I wanted to be, but
none where I was supposed to be.
“I got in a fight with my
girlfriend, ” I said. “I was just driving around, blowing off steam, you know?”
“Well, you should be more careful
where you drive,” the officer said. “You’re making people nervous. You don’t
fit the profile of the neighborhood.”
I wanted to tell him that I
didn’t really fit the profile of the country but I knew it would just get me
into trouble.
“Can I help you?” the 7-11 clerk
asked me loudly, searching for some response that would reassure him that I
wasn’t an armed robber. He knew this dark skin and long, black hair of mine was
dangerous. I had potential.
“Just getting a Creamsicle, ” I
said after a long interval. It was a sick twist to pull on the guy, but it was
late and I was bored. I grabbed my Creamsicle and walked back to the counter slowly,
scanned the aisles for effect. I wanted to whistle low and menacingly but I
never learned to whistle.
“Pretty hot out tonight?” he
asked, that old rhetorical weather bullshit question designed to put us both at
ease.
“Hot enough to make you go crazy,
” I said and smiled. He swallowed hard like a white man does in those
situations. I looked him over. Same old green, red, and white 7-11 jacket and thick
glasses. But he wasn’t ugly, just misplaced and marked by loneliness. If he
wasn’t working there that night, he’d be at home alone, flipping through
channels and wishing he could afford HBO or Showtime.
“Will this be all?” he asked me,
in that company effort to make me do some impulse shopping. Like adding a
clause onto a treaty. We’ll take Washington and Oregon and you get six pine trees
and a brand-new Chrysler Cordoba. I knew how to make and break promises.
“No, ” I said and paused. “Give
me a Cherry Slushie, too.”
“What size?” he asked, relieved.
“Large,” I said, and he turned
his back to me to make the drink. He realized his mistake but it was too late.
He stiffened, ready for the gunshot or the blow behind the ear. When it didn’t come,
he turned back to me.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “What size
did you say?”
“Small, ” I said and changed the
story.
“But I thought you said large.”
“If you knew I wanted a large,
then why did you ask me again?” I asked him and laughed. He looked at me,
couldn’t decide if I was giving him serious shit or just goofing. There was something
about him I liked, even if it was three in the morning and he was white.
“Hey, ” I said. “Forget the
Slushie. What I want to know is if you know all the words to the theme from
‘The Brady Bunch’?”
He looked at me, confused at
first, then laughed.
“Shit,” he said. “I was hoping
you weren’t crazy. You were scaring me.”
“Well, I’m going to get crazy if
you don’t know the words.”
He laughed loudly then, told me
to take the Creamsicle for free. He was the graveyard-shift manager and those
little demonstrations of power tickled him. All seventy-five cents of it. I
knew how much everything cost.
“Thanks,
” I said to him and walked out
the door. I took my time walking home, let the heat of the night melt the
Creamsicle all over my hand. At three in the morning I could act just as young
as I wanted to act. There was no one around to ask me to grow up.
In Seattle, I broke lamps. She
and I would argue and I’d break a lamp, just pick it up and throw it down. At
first she’d buy replacement lamps, expensive and beautiful. But after a while she’d
buy lamps from Goodwill or garage sales. Then she just gave up the idea
entirely and we’d argue in the dark.
“You’re just like your brother, ”
she’d yell. “Drunk all the time and stupid.”
“My brother don’t drink that
much.”
She and I never tried to hurt
each other physically. I did love her, after all, and she loved me. But those
arguments were just as damaging as a fist. Words can be like that, you know?
Whenever I get into arguments
now, I remember her and I also remember Muhammad Ali. He knew the power of his
fists but, more importantly, he knew the power of his words, too. Even though
he only had an IQ of 80 or so, Ali was a genius. And she was a genius, too. She
knew exactly what to say to cause me the most pain.
But don’t get me wrong. I walked
through that relationship with an
executioner’s hood. Or more appropriately, with war paint and sharp arrows. She
was a kindergarten teacher and I continually insulted her for that.
“Hey, schoolmarm,” I asked. “Did
your kids teach you anything new today?”
And I always had crazy dreams. I
always have had them, but it seemed they became nightmares more often in
Seattle. In one dream, she was a missionary’s wife and I was a minor war chief.
We fell in love and tried to keep it secret. But the missionary caught us
fucking in the barn and shot me. As I lay dying, my tribe learned of the
shooting and attacked the whites all across the reservation. I died and my soul
drifted above the reservation.
Disembodied, I could see
everything that was happening. Whites killing Indians and Indians killing
whites. At first it was small, just my tribe and the few whites who lived
there. But my dream grew, intensified. Other tribes arrived on horseback to continue
the slaughter of whites, and the United States Cavalry rode into battle.
The most vivid image of that
dream stays with me. Three mounted soldiers played polo with a dead Indian
woman’s head. When I first dreamed it, I thought it was just a product of my anger
and imagination. But since then, I’ve read similar accounts of that kind of
evil in the old West. Even more terrifying, though, is the fact that those
kinds of brutal things are happening today in places like El Salvador.
All I know for sure, though, is
that I woke from that dream in terror, packed up all my possessions, and left
Seattle in the middle of the night.
“I love you, ” she said as I left
her. “And don’t ever come back.”
I drove through the night, over
the Cascades, down into the plains of central Washington, and back home to the
Spokane Indian Reservation.
When I finished the Creamsicle
that the 7-11 clerk gave me, I held the wooden stick up into the air and
shouted out very loudly. A couple lights flashed on in windows and a police car
cruised by me a few minutes later. I waved to the men in blue and they waved
back accidentally. When I got home it was still too hot to sleep so I picked up
a week-old newspaper from the floor and read.
There was another civil war,
another terrorist bomb exploded, and one more plane crashed and all aboard were
presumed dead. The crime rate was rising in every city with populations larger
than 100,000, and a farmer in Iowa shot his banker after foreclosure on his 1,000 acres.
A kid from Spokane won the local
spelling bee by spelling the word rhinoceros.
When I got back to the reservation,
my family wasn’t surprised to see me. They’d been expecting me back since the
day I left for Seattle. There’s an old Indian poet who said that Indians can reside
in the city, but they can never live there. That’s as close to truth as any of
us can get.
Mostly I watched television. For
weeks I flipped through channels, searched for answers in the game shows and
soap operas. My mother would circle the want ads in red and hand the paper to
me.
“What are you going to do with
the rest of your life?” she asked.
“Don’t know, ” I said, and
normally, for almost any other Indian in the country, that would have been a
perfectly fine answer. But I was special, a former college student, a smart
kid. I was one of those Indians who was supposed to make it, to rise above the
rest of the reservation like a fucking eagle or something. I was the new kind
of warrior.
For a few months I didn’t even
look at the want ads my mother circled, just left the newspaper where she had
set it down. After a while, though, I got tired of television and started to
play basketball again. I’d been a good player in high school, nearly great, and
almost played at the college I attended for a couple years. But I’d been too
out of shape from drinking and sadness to ever be good again. Still, I liked
the way the ball felt in my hands and the way my feet felt inside my shoes.
At first I just shot baskets by
myself. It was selfish, and I also wanted to learn the game again before I
played against anybody else. Since I had been good before and embarrassed fellow
tribal members, I knew they would want to take revenge on me. Forget about the cowboys versus Indians
business. The most intense competition
on any reservation is Indians versus Indians.
But on the night I was ready to
play for real, there was this white guy at the gym, playing with all the
Indians.
“Who is that?” I asked Jimmy
Seyler.
“He’s the new BIA chief’s kid.”
“Can he play?”
“Oh, yeah.”
And he could play. He played
Indian ball, fast and loose, better than all the Indians there.
“How long’s he been playing
here?” I asked.
“Long enough.”
I stretched my muscles, and
everybody watched me. All these Indians watched one of their old and dusty
heroes. Even though I had played most of my ball at the white high school I went
to, I was still all Indian, you know? I was Indian when it counted, and this
BIA kid needed to be beaten by an Indian, any Indian.
I jumped into the game and played
well for a little while. It felt good. I hit a few shots, grabbed a rebound or
two, played enough defense to keep the other team honest. Then that white kid
took over the game. He was too good. Later, he’d play college ball back East
and would nearly make the Knicks team a couple years on. But we didn’t know any
of that would happen.
We just knew he was better that
day and every other day.
The next morning I woke up tired
and hungry, so I grabbed the want ads, found a job I wanted, and drove to
Spokane to get it. I’ve been working at the high school exchange program ever since,
typing and answering phones. Sometimes I wonder if the people on the other end
of the line know that I’m Indian and if their voices would change if they did
know.
One day I picked up the phone and
it was her, calling from Seattle.
“I got your number from your mom,
” she said. “I’m glad you’re working.”
“Yeah, nothing like a regular
paycheck.”
“Are you drinking?”
“No, I’ve been on the wagon for
almost a year.”
“Good.”
The connection was good. I could
hear her breathing in the spaces between our words. How do you talk to the real
person whose ghost has haunted you? How do you tell the difference between the
two?
“Listen,
” I said. “I’m sorry for
everything.”
“Me, too.”
“What’s going to happen to us?” I
asked her and wished I had the answer for myself.
“I don’t know, ” she said. “I
want to change the world.”
These days, living alone in
Spokane, I wish I lived closer to the river, to the falls where ghosts of
salmon jump. I wish I could sleep. I put down my paper or book and turn off all
the lights, lie quietly in the dark. It may take hours, even years, for me to
sleep again. There’s nothing surprising or disappointing in that.
I know how all my dreams end
anyway.
