Free The Toughest Indian in the World by Sherman Alexie Page B

said the old woman. He’s buried. He’s buried in the snow out there, he’s buried in the sand over there, there are pieces of my husband buried everywhere.
    Salmon Boy stared down into his coffee. In that darkness, he saw a white man with a rifle.
    He was a hero, said the old woman. My husband shot twelve Japs on the island. Twelve of them! Can you imagine that? All by himself. My husband, he always said he would whisper in my ear in the middle of the night, he always said most men can kill eleven people, but only a few can kill twelve, and only the best, the very best, can kill thirteen.
    She put her head down on the cold table.
    My husband, she said, he was never the best. He was a good man, but he was never a great man.
    With her head down, she breathed deep. With her head down, she fell asleep like somebody had flipped a switch.
    Seymour placed his left hand on her gray hair. He held it there.
    Salmon Boy was jealous. He closed his eyes and sipped at his coffee. It was bitter and instant and when the Indian opened his eyes, he was sitting in the car right at the edge of the Grand Canyon.
    Through the windshield, Salmon Boy watched as Seymour pointed the gun at a tourist family. Mother, father, son, daughter.
    Here, here, said the father, you can have all my money.
    I don’t want your money, said Seymour, I want to know how you met, I want to know how you fell in love.
    But that’s our story, said the father, you can’t steal it.
    Tell me, tell me, shouted Seymour as he grabbed one of the children, the son, and held the empty pistol against his temple.
    Please, please, said the mother, my husband was somebody else’s husband when we met. But I waited for him. I didn’t want to break up his marriage. I never told him I loved him. I just loved him and hoped that was enough. And it was and it was. They divorced and he called me three days later and asked me to marry him. We’d never been on a date, but he asked me to marry him. We’d never done anything but talk in the copy room, but he asked me to marry him. And I knew it was crazy but I married him and we’ve been married for fifteen years.
    How does that happen? Seymour asked. He pushed the son back toward his parents, back toward his sister.
    It happens all the time, said the father, you just never hear about it.
    No, no, no, said Seymour, people don’t love each other anymore. Not anymore like that. Not anymore.
    Seymour turned toward the Grand Canyon, ran toward the void.
    In the car, Salmon Boy held his breath because he was positive that Seymour was going to jump. Salmon Boy’s blood climbed the ladder over his heart. But Seymour stopped just short of the chasm and threw the pistol down, down, down.
    The pistol fell then and is still falling now.
    Oh, said Salmon Boy as Seymour turned to face him.
    How do you love a man? Seymour asked the sky, but the sky didn’t answer.
    Salmon Boy closed his eyes and when he opened them again he was lying in a motel room in Flagstaff, Arizona.
    Seymour quietly slept on the other side of the bed, or perhaps he wasn’t asleep at all.
    Salmon Boy watched the television, watched a black-and-white movie where the people didn’t make any sense.
    Salmon Boy remembered another time, when he was a child, when his father was driving the family back from some powwow or another, when Salmon Boy had picked up the newspaper to discover that the Batman movie was playing on local television. The old-time Batman, the Adam-West-as-Batman Batman.
    Can you drive faster? Salmon Boy asked his father. He wanted to watch the movie.
    We’ll never make it in time, said his father. But he loved his son and so he drove as fast as he could, through the tunnel of his son’s dreams, through a tunnel crowded with all of his son’s dreams.
    They drove by a coyote nailed to a speed-limit sign.
    They drove by a coyote howling from an overpass.
    They drove by a coyote drinking a cup of coffee in a truck-stop diner.
    When they reached the motel,