“See you tomorrow, chief,” the foreman said to himself as John disappeared into the lunch-hour crowd. The foreman was pissed that John had not bothered to officially clock out. But John had been so withdrawn and goofy this morning, the foreman had even thought John might try to take a dive off the building. Better to just let him walk away. The foreman wiped his face with a dirty handkerchief and turned back to work.
John kept walking. He was unsure of where to go and could not tell the difference between the noise of the lunch-hour crowd and the noise of the crowd in his head. Maybe they were the same people. He smelled the salt in the air and decided to walk to Elliott Bay. Maybe if he stood near the water, he could clear his head. But he was not sure how to get there. He knew he should carry a map because he was always getting lost, but he had just never bothered to buy one. Besides, maps were dangerous. If you were seen looking at a map, then everybody knew you were lost and vulnerable. You were easy prey. But John was strong. He looked for familiar landmarks, saw the neon lights of a porno shop and the huge sculpture outside the Seattle Art Museum. The Hammering Man. Fifty feet tall. Nothing abstract or confusing. Just a tall man with a hammer pounding the air. A moving sculpture that had received so many insults. A waste of tax money. No face, no hair, no sexual organs, no pores, no skin. Just the metal skeleton and the metal hammer. The Hammering Man was neither Indian nor white. He may have not been a man. What did it mean? John wasn’t sure what the artist might have meant. But that didn’t matter to John. The artist wasn’t important anymore. The Hammering Man was simply all that John wanted to be. Important and powerful. Simple, unconcerned. The Hammering Man looked as if he could have stepped away from the museum, away from all the small details and painful reminders of his past, and walked into Elliott Bay. Walked until his head and hammer disappeared beneath the surface of the water. Kept walking. The hammer still pounding, still moving, back and forth, back and forth. The hammer was all that mattered. The tool and the use of the tool.
19. Native American Studies
DR. CLARENCE MATHER SAT at a disorganized desk in the bowels of the Anthropology Building. He always came down here to relax, and he needed relaxation because his office was being bombarded with crank calls concerning the murder of Justin Summers and the disappearance of David Rogers, and because his Native American literature class had become a terrible power struggle with Marie Polatkin. Though fairly intelligent and physically attractive, she was rude and arrogant, thought Mather, hardly the qualities of a true Spokane. As if it ran in the family like some disease, Reggie Polatkin had also failed to behave like a true Spokane. Mather knew he could teach both of them a thing or two about being Indian if they would listen to him, but it seemed all of the Spokanes were destined to misunderstand his intentions.
Mather and Reggie Polatkin had been friends from the very beginning. Though Reggie couldn’t have said as much, he’d immediately felt a strange kinship with the white man who wanted to be so completely Indian. Reggie was a half-Indian who wanted to be completely white, or failing that, to earn the respect of white men. Mather and Reggie were mirror opposites. Each had something the other wanted, and both had worked hard to obtain it.
Reggie and Mather traveled to men’s gatherings and went into the sweathouse together. Reggie had usually been the only Indian at those gatherings and willingly played the part of shaman for the sad and lonely white men, many years his senior, who’d come to him for answers. For the first time in his life, Reggie felt as if being Indian meant something, as if he could obtain tangible reward from simply behaving as an Indian was supposed to behave, acting as an Indian was supposed to act. And the act became so convincing that Reggie began to believe it himself. His Indian act earned him the respect of white men and the sexual favors of white women.
Through Reggie, Mather was able to obtain entry into the Seattle urban Indian community. He went to parties where all the guests were Indian. He used a counterfeit tribal enrollment card to play in the all-Indian basketball tournaments. Together, Mather and Reggie went into Indian taverns and snagged Indian women. While Reggie went to bed with the most attractive woman of any pair of friends, Mather slept with the other, only slightly less attractive, half.
This had all continued until Mather found that box of recordings of traditional Indian stories. Mather had always enjoyed negotiating the narrow passageways, rummaging and foraging here and there. A few years earlier, he had found two boxes of reel-to-reel tapes filled with the voices of Pacific Northwest Indian elders. Recorded by a forgotten anthropologist during the summer of 1926, the tapes had just been collecting dust in a storage room when Dr. Mather stumbled upon them. Excited, but still protective of the discovery, Mather had decided to play the tapes for Reggie, one of the brightest Indians Mather had ever encountered.
The professor thought Reggie had a grasp of Indian history almost as strong as his own. And Reggie’s knowledge of Spokane Indian history was probably a little more complete than Mather’s. Mather thought the young Spokane might have been able to clarify some aspects of the story.
“Listen to this woman,” Mather had said to Reggie as they listened to an Indian elder telling a story. “She’s Spokane. Do you think you can identify her?”
Reggie didn’t speak Spokane well, but he’d recognized that Spokane Indian elder’s story.
“That’s a family story. It belongs to the family. Not on some tape. It’s not supposed to be told this way. You should erase that tape.”
Mather had been shocked by the suggestion. Up until that point, Reggie had been a dedicated student. In fact, Mather had seen himself as a father figure for Reggie, and the young Indian had become something of a son. Mather had trusted Reggie, maybe even loved him, and had always assumed that Reggie felt the same about him. But Mather had felt only disappointment when Reggie said he wanted to erase the tapes. The professor had wanted to make them public and publish an article about them, but Reggie had heard the recorded voice of that old Spokane woman and had been suddenly ashamed of himself. He’d heard that ancient voice and wanted to destroy it. He’d wanted to erase the tapes because he had not wanted anybody else, especially a white man like Mather, to have them. He’d wanted to erase them because they’d never be his stories.
“This is a very valuable anthropological find,” Mather had said. “I mean, nobody even tells these stories anymore. Not even Indians. We have to save them.”
“Stories die because they’re supposed to die,” Reggie had said.
“But these stories aren’t dead,” Mather had said. “The elders must have wanted them to be saved. They allowed the anthropologist to record them.”
“Look, I’m sure the elders definitely didn’t understand how these stories were going to be used. Dr. Mather, you have to let these stories go. Burn the tapes. Or I’ll burn them for you.”
Reggie had stared at Mather with such startling anger that the professor had stepped backward and, frightened, had promised to burn the tapes. Later, angry at himself for having played the tapes for Reggie, Mather had hidden them in a dark corner of the basement instead. When Reggie had asked him later if the tapes had been destroyed, Mather denied that the tapes had ever existed. Mather had told that first lie because he believed he was protecting the recordings. He’d come to see those stories as his possessions, as his stories, as if it had been his voice on those tapes. He’d lied to preserve his idea of order. But with each successive lie Mather had told, he’d begun to lose track of the original reasons for lying. Layer after layer of lies. As an anthropologist, Mather could have dug into himself for years and not discovered the truth.