Sacred Alarm Clock Read online

  I hear Mexican words mixed up with English a few steps away—right around the corner. Mexicans are Indians too, conquered by the Spanish, pretending to be white long enough to take their country back. They gave Geronimo his name, so maybe they can tell me what I need to know.

  Their ears are turned to the street so they don’t notice me until I’m close enough to touch them.

  “Yaa ta sai.” That’s how Geronimo says hello when I can hear him. I smile at these Mexicans before I remember that’s a white man thing.

  There are three of them. Exact copies of each other with their short hair and goatees. The Mexicans keep their normal length arms crossed and remember about not smiling.

  One of them says, “You smell like garbage, puto.”

  “Puto. Is that my war name?”

  “Tonto del culo.”

  Now I see it. The leader’s eyes are filled to the brim with being mean.

  “Stupid pendejo.”

  “Mayate.”

  They all talk at once, frowning like the Indians on the back of my T-shirt. I turn around so they can see.

  “What you want man?” I can’t tell who asks me that because I’m giving them plenty of time to look at my Indians.

  I want to tell them about the tattoo under my shirt, because these Mexicans have lots of ink on their skin. The Fosters call it jailhouse ink, but I’ve only seen it on the street.

  When I turn around again, they are standing like a formation of geese with the meanest one in front. He lifts up his T-shirt and shows me his pistol.

  “Already got one.” I lift my T-shirt and show him the pistol Usen gave me.

  The Mexican takes his pistol out and points it at me, holding it sideways like the black gangsters do on television. The three Mexicans back down the sidewalk spitting Spanish words into the air. When they get to the corner, the one with the gun fires three shots before they take off running. I don’t shoot back because I don’t know how many bullets I have, and it isn’t a good day to kill someone.

  Cars skid to a stop behind me. Doors open and slam. People shout things about wild Indians and guns. They all take off running when I turn around to see—except for a big man who steps out of an old pickup truck wearing overalls and an oil field cap with the bill in front.

  He walks up to me like there hasn’t been a one-sided gunfight in the street and says, “Buddy, you’d better get out of here.”

  I tell him my name’s Wylie E. Chatto and he tells me, “Mine’s Governor Annotubby—and not those Annotubbys that run the Chicasaws neither.”

  He’s the most Indian-looking man I’ve ever met—not afraid of anything, not even rats or an Apache kid with long arms and a pistol.

  “Power failure.” He points at the traffic light that’s gone dead. Horns are honking at it, like the wire spirits will hear and make things right. Only horns aren’t honking behind Governor Annotubby, because everyone has run away from the gunfight but him.

  “They’ll be after you when the electric comes back on,” he says. “And it always does. At least it has so far.”

  I tell him, “When wire spirits sleep, the rats and Apaches wake up.” That is one of the things I’m supposed to figure out, but there is a lot more… “What is it every Indian in the whole world knows except for me?”

  “You better take off, Wylie. Somebody’s sure to call the cops.”

  The stoplights are flashing red now, and Governor Annotubby tells me, “They’ll start working proper soon.”

  I can see he’s right about that. Before long, people are driving through green lights and stopping for red ones, except for the cars that are stuck behind Governor Annotubby’s old pickup truck.

  And pretty soon, even those cars manage to get clear, and there is no one on the street but me and Governor. He’s still not told me what I need to hear.

  There are sirens all over town, cops and ambulances cleaning up after the power failure, and Governor tells me I’m part of what they want to get off the street.

  “The Fosters are tired of me,” I tell him. “Didn’t know what it would be like to live with an Apache who can’t read or write.”

  Governor Annotubby doesn’t mind my crazy talk. “You’d be a holy man back in the day, but now. . .”

  I tell him about my WHITE POWER tattoo. I tell him about Geronimo. I tell him about the spirits who live inside electric wires and give white people their power.

  “You got to go, Wylie. Before they come for you.” Governor Annotubby sounds exactly like Geronimo only louder, and the air fills with a trouble smell that’s stronger than the garbage splotches on my T-shirt.

  I look past Governor Annotubby and see a policeman with a bruised forehead getting out of a police car, and a man in a khaki uniform getting out of an ambulance, and The Fosters watching everything.

  The air is so full of rosemary it stings my eyes, and the man in the khaki uniform has a rifle like the ones animal police use to tranquilize tigers.

  Am I one of those? Indications are positive.

  I can read The Fosters’ lips perfectly—even better than Geronimo’s. They’re taking turns telling each other, “We really had no choice.”

  The man in the khaki uniform says, “Put up your hands,” but he’s already taking aim.

  Even though I do exactly what he says, he pulls the trigger—once, twice. Two darts sting me on the chest like yellow jackets. I pull them out but it’s too late. The electric gods sing their victory song.

  “The cowboys always win,” I tell Governor Annotubby, who looks exactly like Geronimo now.

  “Your time will come,” he tells me. “Got to wait until the sacred alarm clock wakes you up.”

  The man in the khaki uniform stands beside Geronimo, waiting to catch me when I fall.

  “Peyote?” I ask him. Geronimo is winding his sacred alarm clock, one that doesn’t need electricity. It’s got to be a vision.

  “Ketamine,” the khaki man tells me. “I guess they’re pretty similar.”

  He catches me as I pitch toward the pavement. Then he lets me down gently, like white people always do.

  Some kids sell tacos after school. I make arrows. Four of them a day, because that’s a sacred number. I haft them to shafts of white aspen harvested from the spirit-mountains somewhere in Montana. I fletch the shafts with wing feathers of the red-backed hawk—that’s Crazy Horse’s spirit bird. Mom sells them for a hundred bucks apiece on the Internet.

  The flint is real, but everything else is as phony as my website name. In cyber-space I’m Joseph Little Wolf, a cool old dude whose great-great grandpa was the Cheyenne Chief who kicked Custer’s butt.

  Joseph Little Wolf doesn’t care about things like making friends or why girls don’t seem to like him. He’s too busy selling Authentic Cheyenne Medicine Arrows so he can pay for Authentic Native American Struggles, like freeing Leonard Peltier and tearing the white presidents off of Mount Rushmore. I don’t mind being Joseph Little Wolf. It’s better than being Joseph Beaver. That’s who I am everywhere but cyber-space.

  Mom says taking the white man’s money is an act of revolution. She says I’m a cyber-warrior, even if I am a fifteen-year-old Choctaw kid instead of a grown up Northern Cheyenne.

  “It’s Karma, Joseph.” Mom talks about Karma a lot.

  Karma is how the Choctaw will get back everything we’ve lost. Our land. Our history.

  “One Authentic Cheyenne Medicine Arrow at a time.” Mom says it might take a while.

  Mom says the white man’s world is falling apart and pretty soon America will belong to us again. She’s not talking Ghost Dances or bulletproof shirts like the Indians at Wounded Knee. We’re Choctaw, after all, one of the civilized tribes.

  “It’s the riots,” she says. “The power failures, the strikes, the murders.”

  In the old days the cowboys always won. They had the most guns and the cavalry. They’ve still got the most guns, and now they have armored cars and tanks and airplanes instead of horses.

  �
��The Indians are winning quietly,” Mom says. “It’s our way.”

  “We’re used to cars that don’t start,” she says. “We don’t fly in airplanes or ride in tanks.” She says Indians can get by without electricity, and gasoline, and all those things that are going to quit working pretty soon. Mom’s been talking about Indian ways ever since we moved to Oklahoma City so she could be with her girlfriend Chris.

  That’s something I’ve learned to be quiet about. Cowboys hate lesbians even more than Indians.

  Mom says, “Indians win plenty, but we don’t brag about it, so no one notices.”

  I tell her, “Quiet’s kind of lonely.” Sometimes those feelings just slip out.

  She says, “It won’t be forever. Things will change when the time is right. Karma is another Indian thing, but a different kind of Indian entirely.”

  • • •

  Old time Choctaw blended into grass and trees like rabbits and white tailed deer. Three steps into the woods and we were gone. One extra tree in a forest that went on forever.

  In the city we blend into crowds. Not the tallest, or the shortest, or the best dressed, or the worst. Someone is always first to be noticed. Someone is always last. Invisible people aren’t noticed at all. Eyes skate over them and land on someone prettier or uglier or more unusual. One more Choctaw is never noticed if he stays in the shadows of important people where everyone’s attention naturally goes.

  An invisible Choctaw can walk through a crowd without anyone noticing. He can watch the prettiest girl in Putnam City Central High School from a few feet away and she won’t complain to her boyfriend that, “Some Indian kid is stalking me.”

  But that’s really difficult, because girls are harder to sneak up on than buffalo. Girls are the most observant creatures in the world, except for Mom, who never notices how miserable I’ve been since we moved here.

  The lunchroom is an easy place to go invisible, because everybody there is either looking at their food or talking with friends who have to listen because their mouths are full.

  No one in the cafeteria uses an inside voice, and everybody has a lot to say. People cheer when a glass breaks or a tray hits the floor. The place is so noisy I don’t have to take careful steps or avoid accidental bumps. Anyone can go invisible in a lunchroom, but it takes a real Indian to infiltrate the athlete’s table.

  The most important jocks leave the campus for lunch, but the second-string football and basketball players sit together. Each one talks louder and nastier than the next to see if anyone notices. Of course everyone does.

  I move among them smoothly and suddenly at the same time. No one knows what to expect, so after a while they give up trying. First one way, then the other, and pretty soon I’m at the table where the jocks are playing who can boast the loudest. No one notices when I sit down. Almost like I’ve been invited.

  If they were catfish, I could pull them out of their hiding places. If they were deer, I could smoke their meat and feed my two mothers for a month. They aren’t any of those interesting things. They talk about girls, but the things they say don’t help me and I lose my going-invisible-attitude.

  The second-string quarterback says, “Get lost Chief Red Cloud.”

  The other jocks laugh at that, even though Red Cloud was an Oglala Sioux and not the tiniest bit Choctaw. I don’t tell them, because I’m busy drifting on the wind again, going invisible so fast they barely see me leave.

  • • •

  White people have this thing about eye contact, and talking all the time. They don’t understand how hard it is to stand up under the weight of a steady gaze, or how difficult it is to breathe air that’s thick with words. White people think you’re lying when you look at your feet. They think you’re stupid if you shut up for a minute. It’s hard for a Choctaw boy to fit in.

  I watch the popular kids and imitate them in front of the full-length mirror in my room. Over and over, until I’ve almost got it. White means you’re the center of attention. Exactly the opposite of being Joseph Little Wolf. That should be easy for a smart Choctaw boy who’s only Joseph Little Wolf when he’s making arrows.

  The Internet has lots of tips on making friends.

  Introduce yourself.

  I figure out a little too late, the P.E. shower room is not the place for that one. White boys scream while they are getting wet, like they’re emptying out all of the dirty stuff inside. Soap and steam, like a warrior cleansing his spirit before going off to battle. I think maybe I’m beginning to understand, but then the naked dancing starts and the towel popping and genital grabbing and loud talk about blowjobs and anal sex and queers. Everyone’s an expert but me.

  It’s hard to be an Indian when you’re naked and unarmed, a good place to go invisible, but I’ve made up my mind to change my ways. I try my friendship skills on a black boy first. He’s an oppressed minority too, so maybe he’ll understand if I don’t get it exactly right. He doesn’t look at me when I say hello the first time, and I wonder if he has a little Indian blood.

  “Hello.” This time I say it in my loudest, least invisible voice. I stick my hand out in the white businessman shake position, and then I remember black boys have a special way of doing this.

  I can’t back out now, because the locker room is suddenly quiet and everybody looks at me and the black boy. My eye contact is perfect—strong, aggressive, a little bit dangerous. My hand is out, the fingers wiggling the way they would if I was sneaking up on a sleeping catfish.

  “My name is Joseph Beaver.” My voice hardly quavers, but it’s the only sound in the room. Dead silence for a dozen heart beats, then everybody starts laughing all at once.

  Except for me.

  The black boy says, “Pussy name.” He doesn’t shake my hand. He claps both of his instead and does a little dance while everybody else in the room shouts, “Pussy name! Pussy name!” so loud it makes the lockers rattle.

  I don’t know what to do, because nobody is getting dressed and there are so many enemy eyes turned toward me that I wonder how long it will be till someone goes looking for a rope.

  The mostly naked boys form a circle with me at the center. Their faces look like the faces of the rioters on TV who break store windows and set fires when the electricity goes out. Mom says that’s how the white man’s world will fall, but right now it looks like it is going to fall on top of a Choctaw boy who is trying to make friends.

  Before that happens, the coach pushes through the door. He yells at everybody in general, but the only one he’s looking at is me. One more enemy, but not the kind who’ll kill me. The Internet doesn’t tell you things like this can happen when you introduce yourself.

  • • •

  Mom says girlfriends aren’t important, but she moved us to Oklahoma City so she could be with hers—even though Chris is white. Mom says some white people are just fine. Especially lesbians. In the end everything comes down to girls.

  Chris says a girlfriend will happen at exactly the right time. “The way it did for your mom and me. That’s Karma.”

  Lesbians must all know about Karma.

  “Meanwhile you should get a dog,” she says. “A dog will let you be yourself. A dog doesn’t care about your lifestyle or how much money you have.”

  Chris is driving me to school because I slept in late. Indians get up with the sun, so maybe sleeping in late means I am finally fitting in.

  Chris says, “A dog doesn’t care what kind of car you drive.”

  I think she is talking about her old Volvo with the rusted fenders and the cracked windshield and the engine that works perfectly except for a little blue smoke.

  “I don’t have a car,” I tell her. “I don’t have a driver’s license.”

  “A dog wouldn’t care about that either,” she says.

  We are a block from my school and I can already see some students walking in, smoking cigarettes, flipping cars the bird. The girls all look pretty and the boys all look mean. No dogs anywhere around.

 
“Let me out here,” I say, but Chris is busy sharing her worldly knowledge so she doesn’t pay attention. Pretty soon it will be too late. Maybe it’s already too late, because it’s impossible to go invisible when you are riding in a rusty old Volvo with a lesbian who looks like Chris.

  “I can walk from here,” I tell her, but she is still going on about how dogs are so much better than girlfriends.

  When she pulls into the drive-through to let me off, one of the cigarette-smoking guys flips her off. The pretty girls all laugh. I can hear them through the Volvo’s cracked windshield.

  Chris slams on the brakes and jumps out of the car. The Volvo’s engine doesn’t stop right away, and Chris doesn’t stop either. She can kick anybody’s ass—even the jocks are afraid. The cigarette smokers scatter before her the way the U.S. Cavalry scattered before Joseph Little Wolf’s great-great grandpa. She could catch them if she wanted, but she just puts her hands on her hips and spits. She will take no scalps today.

  I jump out of the car and run to the front door, like I’m scared of her too. I’m not exactly ashamed of Chris, but I don’t want to be seen with her. I don’t want the other kids asking questions. I’m a little bit ashamed of the things I don’t want. It’s hard to go invisible when you feel that way.

  • • •

  No people in the hall, as if everyone is hiding from something I don’t know about. The lights are dim, the way they get before the power goes out completely. It hasn’t done that much in this part of Oklahoma City. Chris says that’s because this is the newest part of town with buried power lines and good transformers. I walk back to the front doors to see if she is gone.

  Before I get there I hear footsteps move in behind me. Two people, scraping their heels across the floor like they don’t care about leaving marks. White kids, pretending to be thugs. Chris says moms never know when their boys act like gangsters. I wish she was here right now, because the thug-steps head my way.

  “Hey, Geronimo!” Only one of them speaks. He thinks it is an insult to call me by a dead Apache’s name.

  I practice my quiet Indian ways while I wait to see if they will take things past the talking stage.