“Well, I think you’re strong enough to Ghost-Dance all by yourself. I think you can bring back all the Indians and disappear all the white people.”
I want to tell Justice that the only Indian I want to bring back is my father and the only white people I want to disappear are my evil foster families.
I guess Justice doesn’t realize that a successful Ghost Dance would make him disappear, too. But maybe he doesn’t think he’s white. Or maybe he thinks he’s invincible.
“The thing is,” Justice says, “what if this Ghost Dance is real? What if you can bring back your parents if you dance?”
“I don’t have rhythm,” I say.
“Be serious,” he says, and flashes the pistols at me. “What if you could resurrect your parents with these? Would you kill a white man if it would bring back your mother?”
Jesus, what a question.
Justice lets me think about my answer for two or three minutes, but I can’t say yes or no. I don’t know what I would do if I knew that killing someone would bring my mother back to life.
Then Justice says he’s hungry, so he hides the pistols again and we go on a food quest, rummaging through supermarket Dumpsters and restaurant trash cans.
For two weeks, we hunt for food during the night and talk during the day.
When we talk, Justice lets me hold the real pistol. We take the bullets out of it, and I practice pulling the trigger.
Click, click.
Then we tape up newspaper and magazine photos of people we hate, like George W Bush and Dick Cheney and Michael Jackson and that British dude from American Idol, and I practice shooting at them with the empty gun.
Click, click, click.
Then we go up on the roof of the warehouse, and I practice shooting at cars driving by on the freeway. And at people walking the streets down below us.
Click, click, click, click.
Some nights, Justice and I go out with the paint gun, hide in dark places, and shoot people.
The thing is, when two kids jump out of an alley and point a gun at you, it isn’t like you’re going to think, Oh, it’s just a paint gun.
Nope, you’re going to think, Oh, shit, two kids are going to kill me!
So, man, oh, man, do I hear some people scream. You know what’s really funny? When people think they’re going to die, they all scream like nine-year-old girls.
One night, down on the waterfront, a big old white guy faints when I point the gun at him. I don’t even have to cover him with red dye. He just falls down on the sidewalk and twitches.
Justice and I stand over the unconscious dude. He looks dead, and I feel powerful.
There are moments when a boy can feel immortal.
I practice killing people until it feels like I’m really killing them. I wonder how long it would take me to really shoot somebody. I wonder what would happen if I killed ten, twenty, or thirty people. If I killed enough people for real, would it begin to feel like practice?
Every night, after hours of talking and practice-shooting with the real gun and fake-shooting with the paint gun, Justice asks, “What would you do if the Ghost Dance is real?”
His question echoes in my head. It stays there and I want to give Justice the best answer. The only answer. The answer he wants.
“What if the Ghost Dance is real?” Justice asks me again and again.
The question crawls into my clothes and pushes its way through my skin and into my stomach. The question feeds me.
“Do you think the Ghost Dance is real?” Justice asks.
After hearing that question a thousand times, I finally have the answer.
“Yes,” I say.
Justice laughs and hugs me. I am so proud. I feel like I finally deserve his love.
“Okay, okay,” he says. “Now you can dance. Now you understand. Now you have the knowledge. Now you have the power. So what are you going to do with that power?”
I stare at the pistol in my hand.
“I’m going to start a fire,” I say.
“Yes,” Justice says, and keeps on hugging me. He loves me. And I love Justice.
The next day, during lunch hour, I stand in the lobby of a bank in downtown Seattle. Fifty or sixty people are here with me: men, women, and children of many different colors. I hear four or five different languages being spoken. And I guess these people have many different religions. But none of that matters. I know these people must die so my mother and father can return.
I breathe, try to relax, and pull the real and paint pistols out of my pocket. I say a little prayer and dance through the lobby. I aim my pistols at the faces of these strangers. They scream or fall to the floor or run or freeze or weep or curse or close their eyes.
One man points at me.
“You’re not real,” he says.
What a strange thing to say to a boy with a gun. But then I wonder if he’s right. Maybe I’m not real. And if I’m not real, none of these people are real. Maybe all of us are ghosts.
Can a ghost kill another ghost?
I push the real and paint pistols into the man’s face. And I pull the triggers.
I spin in circles and shoot and shoot and shoot. I keep pulling the triggers until the bank guard shoots me in the back of the head. I am still alive when I start to fall, but I die before I hit the floor.
Four
“WAKE UP, KID; COME ON, it’s time to go.”
I open my eyes. I’m lying in a hospital bed. No. I’m in a motel-room bed, a small and cheap and filthy motel room. A room where a million ugly people have done a million ugly things. There are stains on the walls, and you don’t even want to guess what caused them.
Why am I in this horrible motel room? Well, I did one of the ugliest things a person can do, right? I just shot up a bank full of people. How could I have done that? I think about that man who didn’t think I was real. Maybe I wasn’t real. Maybe none of it happened. I pray to God that it didn’t happen.
But I remember the bank so clearly. I can hear the screams and smell the gunpowder. No nightmare can feel that real, can it?
I want to vomit.
I once read that twenty or thirty people jump off Seattle’s Aurora Avenue Bridge every year. And I’m sure that all of them probably changed their minds about suicide the moment after they jumped. Let me tell you, I feel like one of those jumpers. I feel like I jumped off some kind of bridge and changed my mind too late to save any of us.
But why am I alive? Did I really survive a bullet to the brain?
“Damn it, kid,” a man says. “Get up, we only have a few minutes.”
I don’t recognize the man’s voice. I sit up in bed and see him sitting on the other bed. He puts on his shoes. He’s a serious white guy, maybe forty years old, wearing a blue shirt and blue jeans. He’s fat but strong-looking at the same time, like a professional wrestler.
He’s also got a pistol in the holster on his belt.
A cop.
I’m not dead, but I am under arrest. But how could I not be dead? I felt that bullet crash through my brain. I saw white light. And then it went dark. And I don’t mean asleep dark. I mean shot-in-the-brain-until-you’re-dead dark.
But I guess they saved me. Some amazing doctors and nurses must have saved me. They saved the life of a killer. I wonder if it makes them mad or sad when they do that. I wonder if I deserve to live. What the hell was I thinking? What kind of bastard am I? I’m just another zit-faced freak with a gun. Man, I had no idea I was this evil. And then it makes me wonder. Do evil people know they’re evil? Or do they just think they’re doing the right thing?