“Mr. Furry,” said the CAT secretary, mispronouncing his name for the third time, adding an extra r that changed Roman from an angry Indian into a cute rodent. She sat behind a small desk. She’d worked for CAT for ten years. She’d never taken any of their tests.
Roman sat in silence. He hated wooden chairs.
“Mr. Furry,” she said.
“I’m not a hamster,” said Roman.
“Excuse me?”
“My name is not Furry. It’s not Hairy or Hirsute either. My name is Fury, as in righteous anger.”
“You don’t have to be so impolite.”
“You don’t have to mispronounce my name.”
“Well, Mr. Fury,” she said, feeling somehow smaller in the presence of a boy who was twenty years younger. “You can go in now. Mr. Williams will see you.”
“Assuming that he has eyes, I’m sure that’s an anatomical possibility.”
Roman stepped into another office and sat in another wooden chair across a large oak desk from Mr. Williams, a white man who studied, or pretended to study, the contents of a file folder.
“Hmmm,” said Mr. Williams, as if the guttural were an important part of his vocabulary.
“Yes,” said Roman, because he wanted to be the first one to use a word actually found in Webster’s Dictionary, Ninth Edition.
“Well,” said Mr. Williams. “Let me see here. It says here in your file that you’re eighteen years old, a member of the Spokane Tribe of Indians, valedictorian of Wellpinit High School on said reservation, captain of the chess, math, history, and basketball teams, accepted on full academic scholarship to St. Jerome the Second University here in Spokane.”
“Yes,” said Roman, with the same inflection as before.
“That’s quite the all-American résumé, Mr. Fury.”
“No, I think it’s more of an all-Native American résumé.”
Mr. Williams smiled. His teeth, skin, and pinstriped suit were all the same shade of gray. Roman couldn’t tell where the three-season wool ended and where the man began.
“Roman Gabriel Fury,” said Williams. “Quite an interesting name.”
“Normally, I’d say thank you, sir, but I don’t think that was a sincere compliment, was it?”
“Just an observation, young Mr. Fury. I am very good with observation. In fact, at this very moment, I am observing the fact that your parents are absent. A very distressing observation, to be sure, considering our specific request that your mother and father attend this meeting with you.”
“Sir, my parents are dead. If you’d read my file in its entirety, you might have observed that.”
Mr. Williams’s eyes flashed with anger, the first display of any color. He flipped through the file, searching for the two words that would confirm the truth: deceased, deceased.
At that moment, if Roman had closed his eyes, he could have seen the yellow headlights of the red truck that smashed head-on into his father’s blue Chevy out on Reservation Road. He could have remembered that his father was buried in a brown suit. At that moment, if Roman had closed his eyes, he could have seen his mother’s red blood coughed into the folds of a white handkerchief. Roman was three years old when his mother was buried in a purple dress. He barely remembered her.
“Yes,” said Mr. Williams. “I see now. Your grandmother has been your guardian for the last three years. Why didn’t she come?”
“She doesn’t speak much English, sir.”
“And yet, you speak English so well, speak it well enough to score in the ninety-ninth percentile in the verbal section of our little test. Quite an amazing feat for someone from, well, let’s call it a modest background.”
“I’ve never been accused of modesty.”
“No, I would guess not,” said Williams, setting the file down on his desk. He picked up a Mont Blanc pen as if it were a weapon.
“But I guess you’ve been called arrogant,” added Williams. “And, perhaps, calculating?”
“Calculating enough for a ninety-nine on the math section of your little test,” Roman said. He really hated wooden chairs.
“Yes, indeed,” said Williams. “A nearly perfect score. In fact, the second-highest score ever for a Native American. Congratulations.”
“Normally, I’d say thank you, sir, but I don’t think that was a sincere compliment, was it?”
Mr. Williams leaned across his desk, straightened his back, placed his hands flat on either side of his desk, took a deep breath, exhaled, and made himself larger. He owned all ten volumes of Harris Brubaker’s How to Use Body Language to Destroy Your Enemies.
“Son,” said Williams, using what Brubaker considered to be the second-most effective diminutive. “We’ve been informed there were certain irregularities in your test-taking process.”
“Could you be more specific, sir?”
“You were twenty minutes late for the test.”
“Yes, I was.”
“I also understand that your test-taking apparel was, to say the least, quite distracting.”
Roman smiled. He’d worn his red, yellow, white, and blue grass-dance outfit while taking the test — highly unusual, to say the least — but he had used two standard number-two pencils, as specified in the rule book.
“There’s nothing in the rule book about a dress code,” said Roman.
“No, no, there’s not. But I certainly would enjoy an explanation.”
“My grandmother told me your little test was culturally biased,” said Roman. “And that I might need a little extra power to do my best. I was going to bring my favorite drum group and let them sing a few honor songs, but I thought the non-Indians in the room might get a little, as you say, distracted.”
“Power?” asked Williams, using Harris Brubaker’s favorite word.
Roman stood and leaned across the desk. He’d read Brubaker’s first volume, had found it derivative and ambiguous, and never bothered to read any of the others.
“Well, you see, sir,” said Roman. “The thing is, I was exhausted from having to walk seventy-five miles to get from my reservation to Spokane for the test, because my grandmother and I are too poor to afford a dependable car.”
“You hitchhiked?” asked Williams.
“Oh, no, hitchhiking would mean that I actually got a ride. But people don’t pick up Indians much, you know?”
“Do you expect me to believe you walked seventy-five miles?”
“Well, that’s the way it is,” said Roman. “Anyway, I get to the city, but then I have to run thirty blocks to get to the private high school where they’re giving the test, because I had enough money for lunch or a bus, but not both, and sometimes you have to make hard choices.
“And then, once I got to the private high school, I had to convince the security guard, who looked suspiciously like a member of the Seventh Cavalry, that I was there to take the test, and not to vandalize the place. And hey, thank God I wasn’t wearing my grass-dance outfit yet because he might have shot me down on the spot.
“Anyway, once I got past him, I was, as you observed, twenty minutes late. So I ran into a bathroom, changed into my grass-dance outfit, then sat down with your little test, realizing belatedly that I was definitely the only Injun in the room, and aside from the black kid in the front row and the ambiguously ethnic chick in the back, the only so-called minority in the room, and that frightened me more than you will ever know.
“But I crack open the test anyway, and launch into some three-dimensional calculus problem, which is written in French translated from the Latin translated from the Phoenician or some other Godawful language that only white people seem to find relevant or useful, and I’m thinking, I am Crazy Horse, I am Geronimo, I am Sitting Bull, and I’m thinking the required number-two pencil is a bow and arrow, that every math question is Columbus, that every essay question is Custer, and I’m going to kill them dead.