Grateful, we feasted.
Noon
I said farewell to the Aleuts and walked toward the pawnshop. I later heard the Aleuts had waded into the saltwater near Dock 47 and disappeared. Some Indians said the Aleuts walked on the water and headed north. Other Indians saw the Aleuts drown. I don’t know what happened to them.
I looked for the pawnshop and couldn’t find it. I swear it wasn’t located in the place where it had been before. I walked twenty or thirty blocks looking for the pawnshop, turned corners and bisected intersections, looked up its name in the phone books, and asked people walking past me if they’d ever heard of it. But that pawnshop seemed to have sailed away from me like a ghost ship. I wanted to cry. Right when I’d given up, when I turned one last corner and thought I might die if I didn’t find that pawnshop, there it was, located in a space I swore it hadn’t been filling up a few minutes before.
I walked inside and greeted the pawnbroker, who looked a little younger than he had before.
“It’s you,” he said.
“Yes, it’s me,” I said.
“Jackson Jackson.”
“That is my name.”
“Where are your friends?”
“They went traveling. But it’s okay. Indians are everywhere.”
“Do you have my money?”
“How much do you need again?” I asked and hoped the price had changed.
“Nine hundred and ninety-nine dollars.”
It was still the same price. Of course it was the same price. Why would it change?
“I don’t have that,” I said.
“What do you have?”
“Five dollars.”
I set the crumpled Lincoln on the countertop. The pawnbroker studied it.
“Is that the same five dollars from yesterday?”
“No, it’s different.”
He thought about the possibilities.
“Did you work hard for this money?” he asked.
“Yes,” I said.
He closed his eyes and thought harder about the possibilities. Then he stepped into his back room and returned with my grandmother’s regalia.
“Take it,” he said and held it out to me.
“I don’t have the money.”
“I don’t want your money.”
“But I wanted to win it.”
“You did win it. Now, take it before I change my mind.”
Do you know how many good men live in this world? Too many to count!
I took my grandmother’s regalia and walked outside. I knew that solitary yellow bead was part of me. I knew I was that yellow bead in part. Outside, I wrapped myself in my grandmother’s regalia and breathed her in. I stepped off the sidewalk and into the intersection. Pedestrians stopped. Cars stopped. The city stopped. They all watched me dance with my grandmother. I was my grandmother, dancing.
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.
How much can one son love one father? Frank loved his father enough to stand and stagger five miles to the logging road where he’d parked his truck. He knew he should get on the radio and call for help. He was exhausted and in no safe shape to drive. But he also knew that his father was lying dead on the kitchen floor. Covered with blood and food, half naked in a ratty bathrobe that his father called a valuable antique, Jerry Springer or Dr. Phil lecturing on the television. Frank needed to be the first on the scene. He needed to restore his father’s dignity before the proper authorities were called. Perhaps his father’s spirit was waiting for him. But Frank didn’t believe in spirits, in souls, in the afterlife. Why was he thinking about his father’s soul? Mr. Death, Frank thought, you have entered my house and rearranged the furniture. But it didn’t matter what Frank believed. With or without soul and spirit, Harrison was lying dead on the kitchen floor and should be lifted, cleaned, and covered with old quilts. Frank needed to perform burial ceremonies. Harrison needed to have his honor restored, and Frank was the only one who could, or should, do the restoration.