It was a goofy thing to say, but Jimmy took it seriously. Almost overnight, Jimmy got political. It happens all the time in the Indian world, especially among the pale warriors. I think their radicalism becomes inversely proportional to their skin color. But Jimmy’s transformation was sadder than most. He became a community college rebel and started showing up to auto repair class shirtless and barefoot.
“Shoes were invented by the white man,” he said.
“Come on, Ego,” I said. “I like shoes. Everybody likes shoes.”
But he stopped listening to my advice. He got all weird and fundamental. He became so Indian that he jaywalked constantly. He refused to obey traffic signals and would not defer to moving vehicles.
“My tribal sovereignty isn’t only about the land,” he said. “As an Indian man, it’s also about the sovereignty of my body. And the space around my body. Because I am indigenous, I always get the right of way.”
He also started challenging any white man in a uniform — security guards, cops, and firemen. He gave shit to postal workers.
“Fuck them,” he said. “And their Nazi fucking shorts.”
While running along the Spokane River, he spotted a sheriff’s cruiser in a parking lot and flipped off the two cops inside. The cops recognized the shirtless, barefoot guy slogging along the jogging path.
One cop leaned out and shouted, “Run, Forrest, run.”
The other cop yelled, “Go, Dog, go.”
Jimmy wanted to be taken seriously — he wanted to be feared — so he ran up to the cop car and kicked the driver’s door. Then kicked it again.
The cops scrambled out of their seats, chased and tackled Jimmy.
“You racist bastards,” Jimmy yelled at the confused cops. They couldn’t figure out why a white man was calling two white cops racists. Yeah, Jimmy was feeling oppressed but the cops didn’t even realize he was Indian. They thought he was just another white-trash Hillyard redneck.
A few hours later, Jimmy called me from jail.
“I resisted,” he said. “I’ve started a resistance movement.”
“Come on, Ego,” I said. “And I am not bailing you out.”
“Don’t want bail,” he said. “I’m a political prisoner.”
“You’re an asshole is what you are.”
Then, a day after that, the television told me that a cop had shot and killed a homeless Indian named Harold in downtown Spokane.
“He had a knife,” the cop said.
A carving knife, we learned, about three inches long. The murdered Indian, Harold, trying to reconnect with his culture, had been taking carving lessons at the Indian Center. He came from a tribe that made totem poles. They made canoes. Most of the tribe drank; some drank themselves to death.
“He had a threatening look on his face,” the cop said.
I knew Harold a little bit. Every Indian pretty much knows every other Indian. Harold wasn’t an angry man. That was his face.
I phoned Jimmy to talk about the shooting. But I got his voice mail.
“Damn it,” I said. “Indians are still prey animals, enit? When are they going to stop shooting at us?”
I was so mad at the world that I had to make a joke. I wanted to make Jimmy laugh.
“You see, Ego,” I said, “looking as white as you can be is a good thing. Ain’t no cop going to shoot you because he thinks you’re an angry redskin.”
Later, I realized it had been a terrible thing to say, so I called him back and apologized to his machine. A few days after that, I called and apologized to his machine again. After a few months of silence, I called him but his phone was disconnected. I asked around town about him, but nobody knew where he was. I never heard from him or of him again.
Jimmy’s last act was to disappear, and that was probably the most Indian thing he had ever done.
WHAT EVER HAPPENED TO FRANK SNAKE CHURCH?
Frank’s heart fibrillated as he walked along a tree-line trail on the northern slope of Mount Rainier. He staggered, leaned against a small pine tree for balance, but tumbled over it instead, rolled for twenty or thirty yards down the slope, and fell over a small cliff onto the scree below. A moment later, Frank’s arrhythmic heart corrected itself and resumed beating normally, but he wondered if he was going to die on the mountain. He was only thirty-nine years old and weighed only eleven more pounds than he had when he graduated from high school, but he’d been smoking too many unfiltered Camels, and his cholesterol level was a dangerous 344, exactly the same as Ted Williams’s career batting average. But damn it, Frank thought, he was a Spokane Indian, and Indians are supposed to die young. Thirty-nine years is old for a Spokane. Old enough to join the American Association of Retired Indians. Frank laughed. Bloody and hurt on this mountain, his heart maybe scarred and twisted beyond repair, and he was still making jokes. How indigenous, Frank thought, how wonderfully aboriginal, applause, applause, applause, applause for me and my people. Still laughing, Frank pushed himself to his hands and knees and sat on a flat rock. His heart beat slow and steady. He breathed easily. He felt no tingling pain in his chest, arms, or legs. He wasn’t lightheaded or nauseated. He seemed to be fine. Maybe his heart was okay; maybe it had missed only one dance step in a lifetime of otherwise lovely coronary waltzes. He was cut and scraped, a nasty gash on his arm would probably need stitches, but none of his wounds seemed to be too serious. He didn’t have any broken bones or sprains. So there was the diagnosis: His heart had played a practical joke on him — how terribly amusing, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha — and he was bruised and battered and had one hell of a headache, but he’d live.
Carefully, painfully, Frank crawled back up the slope to the trail. Once there, while still on his hands and knees, he took a few deep breaths and promised himself that he’d visit a superhero cardiologist as soon as he got off the mountain. He’d promise to see an organic nutritionist, aromatherapist, deep-tissue masseuse, feng shui consultant, yoga master, and Mormon stand-up comedian if those promises would help him get off this mountain. Frank stood, tested his balance, and found it to be true enough, so he resumed his rough trek along the trail. He felt stronger with each step. He was now convinced he was going to be okay. Yes, he was going to be fine. But after a few more steps, an electrical charge jolted him. Damn, Frank thought, I have a heart attack, fall down a damn mountain, and then I crawl back only to get struck by lightning. Frank imagined the newspaper headline: HEART-DISEASED FOREST RANGER STRUCK BY LIGHTNING. Frank was imagining the idiot readers laughing at the idiot park ranger when another electrical bolt knocked him back ten feet and dropped him to the ground, where a third lightning strike shocked him again. Damn, Frank thought, this lightning has a personal vendetta against me. He felt a fourth electrical charge shoot up his spine and into his brain. He convulsed and vomited. He kicked and punched at the air, and then he couldn’t move at all. As he lay paralyzed on the trail, Frank thought: This is it, now I’m really dead, and I have crapped my pants; I’m going to die with half-digested pieces of mushroom and sausage pizza stuck to my ass; humiliation, degradation, sin, and mortal shame. But Frank didn’t die. Instead, as the electricity fired inside his brain, Frank saw an image of his father, Harrison Snake Church, as the old man lay faceup on the floor of his kitchen in Seattle. Harrison’s eyes were open, but there was no light behind them; blood dripped from his nose and ears. In great pain, Frank understood that he hadn’t suffered a heart attack or been struck by lightning. No, he’d been gifted and cursed with the first real vision of his life, and though Frank was one of the very few Indian agnostics in the world, he accepted this vision as a simple and secular truth: His father was dead.