Blasphemy Read Free Page A

his trailer house, Junior shot himself in the head.
    He’d chosen death over a return to prison.
    I wasn’t charged with any crime. I could have been, I suppose, and maybe should have been. But I guess I’d done the right thing, or maybe something close enough to the right thing.
    And Jeri? She left the rez. I hear she’s working on another rez in Arizona. I pray that she never falls in love again. I’m not blaming her for what happened. I just think she’s better off alone. Who isn’t better off alone?
    I didn’t go to Junior’s funeral. I figured somebody might shoot me if I did. Most everybody thought I was evil for turning against Junior. Yeah, I was the bad guy because I betrayed another Indian.
    And, yes, it’s true that I betrayed Junior. But if betrayal can be righteous, then I believe I was righteous. But who knows except God?
    Anyway, in honor of Junior, I started war-dancing. I had to buy my regalia from a Sioux Indian who didn’t care about my troubles, but that was okay. I think the Sioux make the best outfits anyway.
    So I danced.
    I practiced dancing first in front of a mirror. I’d put a powwow CD in my computer and I’d stumble in circles around my living room. After a few months of that, I felt confident enough to make my public debut.
    It was a minor powwow in the high school gym. Just another social event during a boring early December.
    At first, nobody recognized me. I’d war-painted my whole face black. I wanted to look like a villain, I guess.
    Anyway, as I danced, a few people recognized me and started talking to everybody around them. Soon enough, the whole powwow knew it was me swinging my feathers. A few folks jeered and threw curses my way. But most just watched me. I felt like crying. But then one of the elders, a great-grandmother named Agnes, trilled like a bird. She said my name quietly but everybody heard it anyway. Indians stand to honor people, so she stood for me. Then another elder woman trilled and said my name. And then a third. Soon enough, a dozen elder women were standing for me. I wept. I realized that I wasn’t dancing for Junior. No, I was dancing for the old women. I was dancing for all of the dead. And all of the living. But I wasn’t dancing for war. I was dancing for my soul and for the soul of my tribe. I was dancing for what we Indians used to be and who we might become again.

GREEN WORLD
    In a little town on an Indian reservation, whose name I don’t want to mention, there lived a man, a Native American, who owned a shotgun. This was forty or so years ago, in the early part of the twenty-first century, just before the government hired thousands of hungry, desperate people to build the windmills. How many windmills did they build? I suppose there is a bureaucrat willing to apply for the grant that would pay her to do the extensive research that would yield a number, but one might as well try to count all of the grains of rice in the world. But, wait, before I continue, let me make something clear: I am not afraid of large numbers. Just write down a number, any number, and follow it with more numbers, and keep writing numbers for a week. You will find, in that strange exercise, more patterns than you’d ever imagine. And you’ll find mysteries, too. There is beauty and magic in numbers. Take, for instance, the windmills spinning off the Southern California coast. I’ve been there and I’ve seen them, with their huge white wings slowly rotating and their long legs buried deep in the ocean floor. On the most blustery of days, they look like an infinite flock of giant birds lifting into flight, forever caught in that moment of leaving the water for the sky.
    But please, as I speak of infinity, don’t worry that I am trying to tell you an infinite tale. I cannot tell you about every windmill; I can only tell you about the twelve windmills that were built a few miles outside of the little town on that unnameable Indian reservation. I don’t know who built