The Speed Chronicles Read online

  The next thing you’ll know, you and your brother will be on Han’s island, trapped in a steel chamber—being there with him, being there together, in that impossible cage, makes you root for him, makes you understand that you could lose him at any moment, so you love him.

  When you were ten, your brother took you to the pow-wow down the street. He held your hand as you walked up to the open tailgates of the pickup-truck vendors and bought you and him each a pair of black wooden nunchucks with gold and green dragons up the sides. Bruce Lee was his hero. Back then, your brother was Fists of Fury. He was Enter the Dragon. He was Game of Death I and II. But back then was a long time ago. Now is now, and now you are here with a brother faster than Bruce Lee. Bruce Lee is dead. In a way, so is your brother. But you cannot forget how hard he practiced that summer. How he took his shirt off and acted out each scene in front of the bathroom mirror—touching his imaginary bloody lip with his fingertips, then tasting that imaginary blood, and making that “Wahhhh” Bruce Lee face as he swung his nunchucks over and under his shoulders. Remember the welts across his lower back and ribs? Remember how he cried when he hit himself in the chin?

  Admit it—that was another brother. This brother is not Bruce Lee. This brother is Han. He is Han’s steel chamber. Keep an eye on him—be prepared if he unscrews a metal hand at the wrist and replaces it with a metal bear claw. It would not shock you. He has done worse things. Face it. You are not here with him. You are here because of him. Do not be ashamed when it crosses your mind that you could end him quickly with a one-inch punch.

  Your brother’s lips are ruined. There is a sore in the right corner of his mouth. His teeth hurt, he says, his “dead mountain of carious teeth that cannot spit.”

  At the stop light, he will force you to look into his mouth. You hate his mouth. It is Švankmajer’s rabbit hole—a bucket you’ve tripped over and fallen into for the last ten years. One of his teeth is cracked. He will want to go to the IHS dentist. “My teeth are falling out,” he’ll say, handing you a pointy incisor, telling you to put it under your pillow with your truck keys. When he says, “Make a wish,” you will.

  When you open your eyes, the light will be green, and he will still be there in front of you. His tooth will end up in the ashtray.

  On the way there, he will wave to all the disheveled people walking along and across the roads—an itchy parade of twisting arms and legs pushing ratty strollers with big-headed, alien-eyed babies dangling rotten milk bottles over the stroller sides, a marching band of cheap cigarettes and dirty men and women disguised as an Exodus of rough-skinned Joshua trees, whose grinning mouths erupt in clouds of brown yucca moths that tick and splatter against your windshield.

  Take a deep breath. You will be there soon.

  Pull into the restaurant parking lot. Your brother will not want to wear his shoes inside. “Judas was barefoot,” he will tell you.

  “Judas wore sandals,” you answer.

  “No, Jesus wore sandals,” he’ll argue.

  Not in that moment, but later, you will manage to laugh at the idea of arguing with a meth-head dressed like a Judas effigy about Jesus wearing sandals.

  Night will be full-blown by the time you enter the restaurant—stars showing through like shotgun spread. Search your torso for a wound, a brother-shaped bullet hole pulsing like a Jesus side wound beneath your shirt. Even if you don’t find it, remember that there are larger injuries than your own—your optimistic siblings, all white-haired and doubled over their beds, lost in great waves of prayer, sloshing in the belly of a dark whale named Monstruo, for this man who is half–wooden boy half-jackass.

  Your brother will still itch when you are seated at your table. He will rake his fork against his skin. If you look closely, you will see that his skin is a desert—half a red racer is writhing in the middle of the long road of his forearm, a migration of tarantulas moves like a shadow across his sunken cheek.

  Slide your fork and knife from the table. Hold them in your lap.

  He will set his hands on the table—two mutts sleeping near the salsa, twitching with dreams of undressing cats.

  He will lick his shattered lips at the waitress every time she walks by. He will tell you, then her, that he can taste her. If you are lucky, she will ignore him.

  Pretend not to hear what he says. Also, ignore the cock crowing inside him, but if he notices that you notice, “Don’t worry,” he’ll assure you, “the dogs will get it.”

  “Which dogs?” you have to ask.

  Your brother will point out the window at two dogs humping in an empty lot across the way—slick pink tongues rolling and unrolling, hips jerking and trembling. Go ahead. Look closer, then clarify to your brother, “Those are not dogs. Those are chupacabras.”

  “Chupacabras are not real,” he’ll tell you, “brothers are.”

  The reflection in your empty plate will speak: “Your brother is on drugs. You are at a dinner that neither of you can eat.”

  Consider your brother. He is dressed as a Judas effigy admiring a pair of fuck-sick chupacabras—one dragging the other across the parking lot.

  The waitress will come to take your order. Your brother will ask for a beer. You will pour your thirty pieces of silver onto the table and ask, “What can I get for this?”

  NATALIE DIAZ was born and raised in the Fort Mojave Indian Village in Needles, California. She is Mojave and Pima. After playing professional basketball in Europe and Asia, she completed her MFA degree at Old Dominion University. She lives in Mohave Valley, Arizona, and directs a language revitalization program, working to document the few remaining Elder Mojave speakers. Her poetry and fiction has been published in the Iowa Review, Bellingham Review, Prairie Schooner, Crab Orchard Review, Narrative, North American Review, Nimrod, and others. Her first poetry book is forthcoming from Copper Canyon Press.

  war cry

  by sherman alexie

  Forget crack, my cousin said, meth is the new war dancer.

  World champion, he said.

  Grand Entry, he said.

  Five bucks, he said, give me five bucks and I’ll give you enough meth to put you on a Vision Quest.

  For a half-assed Indian, he sure talked full-on spiritual. He was a born-again Indian. At the age of twenty-five, he war danced for the first time. Around the same day he started dealing drugs.

  I’m traditional, he said.

  Rule is: whenever an Indian says he’s traditional, you know that Indian is full of shit.

  But not long after my cousin started dancing, the powwow committee chose him as Head Man Dancer. Meaning: he was charming and popular. Powwow is like high school, except with more feathers and beads.

  He took drugs too, so he was doomed. But what Indian isn’t doomed? Anyway, the speed made him dance for hours. Little fucker did somersaults. I’ve seen maybe three somersaulting war dancers in my own life.

  You war dance that good, you become a rock star. You get groupies. The Indian women will line up to braid your hair.

  No, I don’t wear rubbers, he said, I want to be God and repopulate the world in my image. I wondered, since every Indian boy either looks like a girl or like a chicken with a big belly and skinny legs, how he could tell which kids were his.

  Anyway, he was all sexed-up from the cradle.

  He used to go to Assembly of God, but when he was fifteen, he made a pass at the preacher’s wife. Grabbed her tit and said, I’ll save you.

  Preacher man beat the shit out of him, then packed up, and left the rez forever. I felt sorry for the wife, but was happy the preacher man was gone.

  I didn’t like him teaching us how to speak in tongues.

  Anyway, after speed came the crack and it took hold of my cousin and made him jitter and shake the dust. Earthquake—his Indian name should have been changed to Earthquake. Saddest thing: powwow regalia looks great on a too-skinny Indian man.

  Then came the meth.

  Indian Health Service had already taken his top row of teeth and the m
eth took the bottom row.

  Use your drug money to buy some false teeth, I said.

  I was teasing him, but he went out and bought some new choppers. Even put a gold tooth in front like some kind of gangster rapper wannabe. He led a gang full of reservation-Indians-who-listened-to-hard-core-rap-so-much-they-pretended-to-be-inner-city-black. Shit, we got fake Bloods fake-fighting fake Crips. But they aren’t brave or crazy enough to shoot at one another with real guns. No, they mostly yell out car windows. Fuckers are drive-by cursing.

  I heard some fake gangsters have taken to throwing government commodity food at one another.

  Yeah, my cousin, deadly with a can of cling peaches.

  And this might have gone on forever if he’d only dealt drugs on the rez and only to Indians. But he crossed the border and found customers in the white farm towns that circled us.

  Started hooking up the Future Farmers of America.

  And then he started fucking the farmers’ daughters.

  So they busted him for possession, intent to sell, and statutory rape. Deserved whatever punishment was coming his way.

  Hey, cousin, he said to me when I visited him in jail, they’re trying to frame me.

  You’re guilty, I said, you did all of it, and if the cops ever ask me, I’ll tell them everything I know about your badness.

  He was mad at first. Talked about betrayal. But then he softened and cried.

  You’re the only one, he said, who loves me enough to tell the truth.

  But I knew he was just manipulating me. Putting the Jedi shaman mind tricks on me. I wouldn’t fall for that shit.

  I do love you, I said, but I don’t love you enough to save you.

  As the trial was cooking, some tribal members showed up at the courthouse to demonstrate. Screaming and chanting about racism. They weren’t exactly wrong. Plenty of Indians have gone to jail for no good reason. But plenty more have gone to jail for the exact right reasons.

  It didn’t help that I knew half of those protesters were my cousin’s best customers.

  But I felt sorry for the protesters who believed in what they were doing. Who were good-hearted people looking to change the system. Thing is: you start fighting for every Indian, you end up having to defend the terrible ones too.

  That’s what being tribal can do to you. It traps you in the teepee with murderers and rapists and drug dealers. It seems everywhere you turn, some felon-in-buckskin elbows you in the rib cage.

  Anyway, after a few days of trial and testimony, when things were looking way bad for my cousin, he plea-bargained his way to a ten-year prison sentence.

  Maybe out in six with good behavior. Yeah, like my cousin was capable of good behavior.

  Something crazy: my cousin’s name is Junior Polatkin, Jr. Yes, he was named for his late father, who was Junior Polatkin, Sr. Yeah, Junior is not their nicknames; Junior is their real names. So anyway, my cousin Junior Junior was heading to Walla Walla State Penitentiary.

  Junior Junior at Walla Walla.

  Even he thought that was funny.

  But he was terrified too.

  You’re right to be scared, I said, so just find all the Indians and they’ll keep you safe.

  But what did I know? The only thing I knew about prison was what I saw on HBO, A&E, and MSNBC documentaries.

  Halfway through his first day in the big house, my cousin got into a fight with the big boss Indian.

  Why’d Junior fight him?

  Because he was a white man, Junior said, as fucking pale as snow.

  And he had blue eyes, Junior said.

  My cousin wasn’t smart enough to know about recessive genes and all, but he was still speaking some truth.

  Anyway, it had to be shocking to get into prison, looking for group protection, and you find out your leader is a mostly white Indian boy.

  I tried to explain, my cousin said, that I was just punching the white guy in him.

  Like an exorcism, I said when he called me collect from the prison pay phone. I think jail is the only place where you can find pay phones anymore.

  Yeah, Junior Junior said, I was trying to get the white out of him.

  But here’s the saddest thing: my cousin’s late mother was white. A blond and blue-eyed Caucasian beauty. Yeah, my cousin is half-white. He just won the genetic lottery when he got the black hair and brown eyes. His late brother had the light skin and pale eyes. We used to call them Sunrise and Sundown.

  Anyway, my cousin lost his tribal protection pretty damn quick, and halfway through his second day in prison, he was gang-raped by black guys. And halfway through his third day, those black dudes sold Junior Junior to an Aryan dude for a carton of cigarettes.

  Two hundred cigarettes for the purchase of my cousin’s body and soul.

  It’s cruel to say, but that doesn’t seem near enough. If it’s going to happen to you, it should cost a lot more, right?

  But what do I know about prison economics? Maybe that was a good price. Well, I guess I was hoping it was a good price. Meaning: I was mourning the shit out of my cousin’s spiritual death.

  Here’s the thing: my cousin was pretty. He had the long black hair and the skinny legs and ass. It didn’t take much to make him look womanly. Just some mascara, lipstick, and prison pants cut into ragged cutoffs.

  Suddenly, I’m Miss Indian U.S.A., he said.

  I’m not gay, he said.

  It’s not about being gay, I said, it’s about crazy guys trying to hurt you as much as possible.

  Jesus, he said, all these years since Columbus landed and now he’s finally decided to fuck me in the ass.

  Yeah, we could laugh about it. What else were we going to do? If you sing the first note of a death song while you’re in prison, you’ll soon be singing the whole damn song every damn day.

  For the next three years, I drove down to Walla Walla to visit Junior once or twice a month. Then it became every few months. Then I stopped driving at all. I accepted his collect calls for the first five years or so, then either he stopped calling or I stopped taking his calls. Then he disappeared from my life.

  Some things just happen. Some things don’t.

  My cousin served his full ten-year sentence, was released on a Monday, and had to hitchhike all the way back to our reservation.

  He just showed up at the tribal café as I was eating an overcooked hamburger and greasy fries. Sat right down in the chair opposite me and smiled his bright white smile. New false teeth. Looks like he got one good thing out of prison.

  Hey cousin, he said, all casual, like he’d been having dinner with me every day for the last decade.

  So I said, trying to sound as casual, are you really free or did you break out?

  I decided to bring my talents back to the rez, he said.

  It was a hot summer day, but Junior Junior was wearing long sleeves to cover his track marks. Meaning: survival is an addiction too.

  So pretty quickly we started back up our friendship. You could call us cousin-brothers or cousin–best friends. Either works. Both work. He never mentioned my absence from his prison life and I wasn’t about to bring it up.

  He got a job working forestry. Was pretty easy. There was nobody on the rez interested in punishing the already punished.

  It’s a good job, he said, I drive all the deep woods on the rez and mark trees that I think should be cut down.

  Thing is, he said, we never cut down any trees, so my job is really just driving through the most beautiful place in the world while carrying a box full of spray paint.

  He fell in love too, with Jeri, a white woman who worked as a nurse at the Indian Health Service Clinic. She was round and red-faced, but funny and cute and all tender in the heart, and everybody on the rez liked her. So it felt like a slice of redemption pie.

  She listens to me, Junior Junior said, you know how hard that is to find?

  Yeah, I said, but do you listen to her?

  Junior shrugged his shoulders. Meaning: Of course I don’t listen to he
r. I’ve had to keep my mouth shut for ten years. It’s my turn to talk.

  And talk he did.

  He told me everything about how he sexed her up. Half of me wanted to hear the stories and half of me wanted to close my ears. But I didn’t feel like I could stop him, either. I felt so guilty that I’d abandoned him in prison. I felt like I owed him a little bit of patience and grace.

  But it was so awful sometimes. He was already sex-drunk when he went into prison, and being treated as a fuck-slave for ten years turned him into something worse. I don’t have a name for it, but he talked about sex like he talked about speed and meth and crack and heroin.

  She’s my pusher, he said about Jeri, and her drug is her love.

  Except he didn’t say “love.” He used another word that I can’t say aloud. He reduced Jeri all the way down to the sacred parts of her anatomy. And those parts stop being sacred when you talk such blasphemy about them.

  Maybe he didn’t fall in love, I thought. Maybe he’s time-traveling her back to prison with him.

  But I also wondered what Jeri was doing with him. From the outside, she looked solid and real, like a soft dam on the river, but I guess she was a flood of shit inside. Meaning: if enough men hurt you when you’re a child, you’ll seek out hurtful men when you become an adult.

  Talk about a Vision Quest. Jeri’s spirit animal was a cannibal coyote.

  Things went on like this for a couple years. He started punching her in the stomach; she hid those bruises and punched him into black eyes that he carried around like war paint.

  Fucking Romeo and Juliet, my cousin said.

  Yeah, like he’d ever read the book or watched any of those movies for more than ten minutes.

  Then, one day, Jeri disappeared.

  Rumor had it she went into one of those battered women programs. Rumor also had it she was hiding in Spokane. Which, if true, was pretty stupid. How can you hide in the City of Spokane from a Spokane Indian?

  He found her in a 7-Eleven in the Indian part of town.