Indian Killer

Marie attends the first session of Introduction to Native American Literature. She is the only Indian student. The other students are discussing how the recent murder victim was scalped and associating this with Indians. Marie explains that Indians learned scalping from the French colonizers, but when they realize that she is Indian, the white students ignore her. The curriculum is filled with books written or edited by white people, supposed autobiographies from Indians that were co-written by white people, and texts by white people who claim to be Indian.

The lecturer, Dr. Clarence Mather, is also white, and Marie has been warned that he is “a Wannabe Indian” who wants to share in Indian culture and is obsessed with his own image of what an Indian is (58). They briefly discuss how Marie’s cousin, Reggie, an ex-student of Mather’s, was expelled from the university after assaulting the lecturer. Marie distances herself from her cousin, whom she barely knows, but she continues to interrupt the lecture and point out Mather’s assumptions, stereotypes, and lack of Indian representation. Mather is patronizingly dismissive of her criticism, assuming that he knows more about Indian culture. Marie is particularly annoyed that the course includes a mystery novel by Jack Wilson, a white man who claims to be Indian and who Mather believes offers an authentic and traditional vision of Indian culture.

A fellow student, David Rogers, is impressed by Marie’s forthrightness. He grew up near her reservation, and Spokane Indians used to sneak onto his family farm in order to “steal” camas root, a root that the local Indians considered sacred for thousands of years. When he was younger, David’s father made him and his brother, Aaron, wait in a hunting hide with him so they could fire shots to scare off Indians. Instead of firing warning shots, Aaron tried to actually shoot one Indian in the head, although he missed, and no one was hurt. David was upset and frightened, much to his father’s annoyance. He insisted that their actions were justified because the Indians were trying to steal their land.

David asks Marie on a date, but she says that she does not date white men. Later, David returns to the house he shares with his brother and two other students. When he tells Aaron about Marie, Aaron makes racist and misogynistic comments about how “Indian women like it up the ass. Like dogs, you know?” (69).

The police interview one of the drunk students who saw the killer carrying the body of Justin Summers. The student cannot remember much from the night, except that the shadowy figure had long hair. He explains that his inability to remember is in part due to drunkenness but confesses that he believes something more mysterious was at play, saying that things were distorted that night and that, “I think I don’t remember anything about that night because somebody wants me not to remember” (72).

John walks in the rain and is unsure quite how he made it back to his apartment. He goes to bed fully dressed but cannot sleep. At first, he thinks it is Father Duncan keeping him awake, then he blames his phone, before deciding it was his parents knocking at his door. They do this often, especially at night, trying to catch him unprepared. Shouting through the door, they offer him breakfast, but he tells them to go away, claiming not to know them. He believes that he has different sets of parents who fulfill different purposes, including a pair that pays his rent and tries to convince him to take his medication. He is especially afraid of them.

After hours of knocking, Olivia and Daniel leave, and John falls asleep thinking of Father Duncan and dreams of the desert. The next day, John nearly falls off a girder after vividly picturing Duncan’s hands in front of him. Although he is wearing a harness, he believes that it was made by white men so will only save people with white skin. Thinking of his mother, he remembers a time in high school when a classmate made lude comments about Olivia’s attractiveness as well as racist comments about Indians desiring sex with white women. He fought the boy and was sent to the principal, who was understanding, but John still felt that he trivialized the other boy’s transgression. He thanked the principal anyway, as “the polite student, wanting to push his anger into a small place” (79).

Coming back from this memory, John almost falls from the girder again. The foreman is shouting at him, but John cannot understand a word he is saying as his speech suddenly seems entirely foreign. He decides that he cannot trust the foreman and looks for escape routes. Later, the foreman tells his wife that he is worried about John, who seems to be going from simply being unusual to being disturbed and possibly unwell. However, he concludes that none of his superiors would do anything to help because John is a good worker so they would not recognize that there is a problem.

In his university class, Clarence Mather presents Indian casinos as an act of rebellion but also wonders, “Are the Indians polluting their cultural purity by engaging in such a boldly capitalistic activity?” (83). Marie raises her hand to comment, but he ignores her. After the lecture, she follows him back to his office and tells him that she refuses to study Wilson’s novel. She also tries to explain that Indian casinos are acts not of rebellion but of survival—that Indians simply need to earn money so that they can eat.

Mather again dismisses Marie’s criticisms, arguing that he is trying to present a positive image of Indians and that they are on the same side. Marie rejects this, declaring that he does not have the right to make such a claim. When Mather walks into the office and shuts the door, she is furious and wishes that all the white men would simply disappear.

Later, she sees David and Aaron in a store. Aaron dismisses her criticisms of the class, commenting, “Politically correct bullshit” (86), and Marie leaves. David catches up with her to apologize for his brother, but she is not interested. When she asks him why he is making such an effort, he explains that he feels bad for what happened to the Indians and that he has never had a chance to speak to a “real” Indian before. He invites her to come with him to an Indian casino, suggesting that they might get extra credit from Mather, but she tells him to leave her alone.

When Marie returns home, she is surprised to see that her cousin Reggie has managed to get into her apartment. Reggie was raised by his Spokane Indian mother and his white father, Bird, a violent man who regularly quizzed his young son on pro-colonial American history so that he could become something other than “a dirty Indian” or “a hostile Indian” (91). If Reggie failed to remember a fact or gave an explanation that favored the Indians over the white colonizers, Bird would beat him. As a result, Reggie grew up suppressing his Indian identity and emphasizing what he believed to be his superior white identity.

Marie tells Reggie that she is taking a class with Mather, and Reggie calls Mather a liar. She offers Reggie a dinner of water and cereal, the only food she has. They briefly discuss some details of their lives, Reggie revealing that Bird has cancer but that he does not care. He asks to borrow some money, but Marie has none. When he asks what she thinks of the white man being scalped, Marie shrugs, and Reggie says that he agrees. He stays on the couch and is gone the next morning.

John is exhausted and, for the first time ever, leaves work early. He goes to sleep but has a nightmare and wakes, remembering the time when he was 20 and was absolutely certain that he was going to have a baby, spending nine months making himself vomit in the morning and buying baby clothes and other supplies.

Unable to return to sleep, John goes to a late-night donut shop. The workers, two black men named Paul and Paul Too, know him and his difficulties and gently enquire about his health. As he always does, Paul Too eats a bite of John’s donut and sips his coffee to prove that they are not poisoned. Paul asks after Olivia and Daniel, who often come to the shop when they are trying to find John, but John does not answer.

Paul Too is reading a newspaper and mentions the white man being murdered and scalped. When John asks, Paul Too tells him that the man was named Justin Summer. John begins to cry, and the other men wonder about calling his parents, whose number they keep near the telephone. John’s sobs turn to huge, deep laughter, and they worry instead that he will laugh until he passes out, as he has done before. However, when another customer enters the shop, he snaps out of it and walks off into the night.