Free The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven by Sherman Alexie

place where the STOP signs are just suggestions?
    “What time is it?” Adrian asked.
    “I don’t know. Ten, I think.”
    “Let’s go somewhere.”
    “Where?”
    “I don’t know, Spokane, anywhere. Let’s just go.”
    “Okay,” I said, and we both walked inside the house, shut the door, and locked it tight. No. We left it open just a little bit in case some crazy Indian needed a place to sleep. And in the morning we found crazy Julius passed out on the living room carpet.
    “Hey, you bum,” Adrian yelled. “Get off my floor.”
    “This is my house, Adrian,” I said.
    “That’s right. I forgot. Hey, you bum, get your ass off Victor’s floor.”
    Julius groaned and farted but he didn’t wake up. It really didn’t bother Adrian that Julius was on the floor, so he threw an old blanket on top of him. Adrian and I grabbed our morning coffee and went back out to sit on the porch. We had both just about finished our cups when a group of Indian kids walked by, all holding basketballs of various shapes and conditions.
    “Hey, look,” Adrian said. “Ain’t that the Lucy girl?”
    I saw that it was, a little brown girl with scarred knees, wearing her daddy’s shirt.
    “Yeah, that’s her,” I said.
    “I heard she’s so good that she plays for the sixth grade boys team.”
    “Really? She’s only in third grade herself, isn’t she?”
    “Yeah, yeah, she’s a little warrior.”
    Adrian and I watched those Indian children walk down the road, walking toward another basketball game.
    “God, I hope she makes it all the way,” I said.
    “Yeah, yeah,” Adrian said, stared into the bottom of his cup, and then threw it across the yard. And we both watched it with all of our eyes, while the sun rose straight up above us and settled down behind the house, watched that cup revolve, revolve, until it came down whole to the ground.

AMUSEMENTS
I lower a frayed rope into the depths and hoist
    the same old Indian tears to my eyes. The liquid is pure and
    irresistible.
    —Adrian C. Louis
    A FTER SUMMER HEAT and too much coat-pocket whiskey, Dirty Joe passed out on the worn grass of the carnival midway and Sadie and I stood over him, looked down at his flat face, a map for all the wars he fought in the Indian bars. Dirty Joe was no warrior in the old sense. He got his name because he cruised the taverns at closing time, drank all the half-empties and never cared who might have left them there.
    “What the hell do we do with him?” I asked Sadie.
    “Ah, Victor, let’s leave the old bastard here,” Sadie said, but we both knew we couldn’t leave another Indian passed out in the middle of a white carnival. Then again, we didn’t want to carry his temporarily dead body to wherever it was we were headed next.
    “We leave him here and he’s going to jail for sure,” I said.
    “Maybe the drunk tank will do him some good,” she said, sat down hard on the grass, her hair falling out of the braid. A century ago she might have been beautiful, her face reflected in the river instead of a mirror. But all the years have changed more than the shape of our blood and eyes. We wear fear now like a turquoise choker, like a familiar shawl.
    We sat there beside Dirty Joe and watched all the white tourists watch us, laugh, point a finger, their faces twisted with hate and disgust. I was afraid of all of them, wanted to hide behind my Indian teeth, the quick joke.
    “Shit,” I said. “We should be charging admission for this show.”
    “Yeah, a quarter a head and we’d be drinking Coors Light for a week.”
    “For the rest of our lives, enit?”
    After a while I started to agree with Sadie about leaving Dirty Joe to the broom and dustpan. I was just about to stand up when I heard a scream behind me, turned quick to find out what the hell was going on, and saw the reason: a miniature roller coaster called the Stallion.
    “Sadie,” I said. “Let’s put him on the roller coaster.”
    She smiled for the first time in four