The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven by Sherman Alexie Read Free Book Online Page B

were hundreds but my father thought he was the only one. He told me that a million times when he was drunk and a couple hundred times when he was sober.
    “I was there,” he said. “You got to remember this was near the end and there weren’t as many people as before. Not nearly as many. But I waited it out. I waited for Jimi.”
    A few years back, my father packed up the family and the three of us drove to Seattle to visit Jimi Hendrix’s grave. We had our photograph taken lying down next to the grave. There isn’t a gravestone there. Just one of those flat markers.
    Jimi was twenty-eight when he died. That’s younger than Jesus Christ when he died. Younger than my father as we stood over the grave.
    “Only the good die young,” my father said.
    “No,” my mother said. “Only the crazy people choke to death on their own vomit.”
    “Why you talking about my hero that way?” my father asked.
    “Shit,” my mother said. “Old Jesse WildShoe choked to death on his own vomit and he ain’t anybody’s hero.”
    I stood back and watched my parents argue. I was used to these battles. When an Indian marriage starts to fall apart, it’s even more destructive and painful than usual. A hundred years ago, an Indian marriage was broken easily. The woman or man just packed up all their possessions and left the tipi. There were no arguments, no discussions. Now, Indians fight their way to the end, holding onto the last good thing, because our whole lives have to do with survival.
    After a while, after too much fighting and too many angry words had been exchanged, my father went out and bought a motorcycle. A big bike. He left the house often to ride that thing for hours, sometimes for days. He even strapped an old cassette player to the gas tank so he could listen to music. With that bike, he learned something new about running away. He stopped talking as much, stopped drinking as much. He didn’t do much of anything except ride that bike and listen to music.
    Then one night my father wrecked his bike on Devil’s Gap Road and ended up in the hospital for two months. He broke both his legs, cracked his ribs, and punctured a lung. He also lacerated his kidney. The doctors said he could have died easily. In fact, they were surprised he made it through surgery, let alone survived those first few hours when he lay on the road, bleeding. But I wasn’t surprised. That’s how my father was.
    And even though my mother didn’t want to be married to him anymore and his wreck didn’t change her mind about that, she still came to see him every day. She sang Indian tunes under her breath, in time with the hum of the machines hooked into my father. Although my father could barely move, he tapped his finger in rhythm.
    When he had the strength to finally sit up and talk, hold conversations, and tell stories, he called for me.
    “Victor,” he said. “Stick with four wheels.”
    After he began to recover, my mother stopped visiting as often. She helped him through the worst, though. When he didn’t need her anymore, she went back to the life she had created. She traveled to powwows, started to dance again. She was a champion traditional dancer when she was younger.
    “I remember your mother when she was the best traditional dancer in the world,” my father said. “Everyone wanted to call her sweetheart. But she only danced for me. That’s how it was. She told me that every other step was just for me.”
    “But that’s only half of the dance,” I said.
    “Yeah,” my father said. “She was keeping the rest for herself. Nobody can give everything away. It ain’t healthy.”
    “You know,” I said, “sometimes you sound like you ain’t even real.”
    “What’s real? I ain’t interested in what’s real. I’m interested in how things should be.”
    My father’s mind always worked that way. If you don’t like the things you remember, then all you have to do is change the memories. Instead of remembering the bad