Free Flight by Sherman Alexie

him. I trust him. I would follow him anywhere.”
    I guess I am some kind of hero.
    “Two months ago, in Kansas,” General Mustache continues, “a group of settlers was attacked by wild Indians. They were all slaughtered: men, women, and children. Whole families. Those savages murdered twenty-five Christian folks. And Gus here, all on his own, went looking for the Indians who did it. And he found their camp on the Colorado River and he’s going to lead us there. And we are going to deliver unto them the swift and deadly blow of justice.”
    Okay, so this is not good. I am supposed to lead one hundred white soldiers into an Indian village.
    I can’t do it.
    I’m in control of Gus now so I’m just going to lead all these soldiers away from the Indian village. That might be a little difficult, I suppose, since I have no idea where the village is. I don’t even know north from south. But my lack of direction will probably be a good thing. I don’t need to get lost on purpose.
    So that’s my plan. I’m just going to get on my horse, point it in a random direction, and get very, very lost.
    Of course, when you’re a time-traveling mass murderer, you can’t really expect things to work out as planned. If there are rules for time travelers, I don’t know them.
    But things are not just happening. None of this is random.
    You see, I try to get lost. I try to lead the soldiers astray. But it doesn’t work that way.
    Some part of the old Gus remains inside of me. I still have Gus’s abilities. Whenever I zig, Gus makes me zag and so, zigzagging through the trees and grass and hills, we make our way toward the Indian camp. And even though I keep thinking, I want to be lost, I want to be lost, I want to be lost, I can’t do it. Gus won’t let me. What it comes to is this: I can’t completely control Gus. I can move his arms and legs. I can talk with his voice. And I can think my own thoughts. But Gus is stronger than I am. His memories become my memories, too. This is new. I couldn’t see into the past of the other bodies I’ve inhabited. I’m scared that Gus might reclaim his body and drown me in his blood.
    And so here we are on the ridge above the Indian camp. The sun is hot over the hills. And Gus remembers—and I remember—what he saw when he came upon those slaughtered white settlers.
    Dead white bodies stripped naked and mutilated and ruined.
    There was the body of a little girl, blond, blue-eyed, pretty even in death. She was still wearing her little blue gingham dress. She was the only person still wearing her clothes. The Indians had shown her that much respect: They murdered her, but they didn’t strip her naked. They let her die as an innocent.
    Three arrows in her stomach. She was still clutching a rag doll.
    Gus’s eyes water at the memory. My eyes water.
    I weep on the ridge above the Indian camp. I stare with watery vision down on the camp where that little girl’s murderers are sleeping and eating and laughing and telling stories and having sex and dancing and singing.
    It’s Indians down there. And I’m an Indian. But we’re not all the same kind of Indians, are we?
    No, those Indians down there killed a little girl. Shot three arrows into her belly and left her to die. And two feet away from that little girl’s body lay the naked body of a woman. Three arrows in her belly, too. A blond and blue-eyed woman, bloody and violated, her right hand forever reaching out toward the little girl.
    Yes, the girl’s mother, as she was dying, crawled across the grass toward her dying daughter and didn’t make it.
    The mother died two feet away from her daughter. Separated. They are cursed to be ghost mother and ghost daughter and will wander the grassy plains in the endless search for each other.
    These are not my thoughts. This is not my sadness. This all belongs to Gus, and his grief and rage are huge, so my grief and rage are huge, too, and I scream as I lead one hundred soldiers down the hill into