“WAKE UP, KID; COME ON, it’s time to go.”
I open my eyes. I’m lying in a hospital bed. No. I’m in a motel-room bed, a small and cheap and filthy motel room. A room where a million ugly people have done a million ugly things. There are stains on the walls, and you don’t even want to guess what caused them.
Why am I in this horrible motel room? Well, I did one of the ugliest things a person can do, right? I just shot up a bank full of people. How could I have done that? I think about that man who didn’t think I was real. Maybe I wasn’t real. Maybe none of it happened. I pray to God that it didn’t happen.
But I remember the bank so clearly. I can hear the screams and smell the gunpowder. No nightmare can feel that real, can it?
I want to vomit.
I once read that twenty or thirty people jump off Seattle’s Aurora Avenue Bridge every year. And I’m sure that all of them probably changed their minds about suicide the moment after they jumped. Let me tell you, I feel like one of those jumpers. I feel like I jumped off some kind of bridge and changed my mind too late to save any of us.
But why am I alive? Did I really survive a bullet to the brain?
“Damn it, kid,” a man says. “Get up, we only have a few minutes.”
I don’t recognize the man’s voice. I sit up in bed and see him sitting on the other bed. He puts on his shoes. He’s a serious white guy, maybe forty years old, wearing a blue shirt and blue jeans. He’s fat but strong-looking at the same time, like a professional wrestler.
He’s also got a pistol in the holster on his belt.
A cop.
I’m not dead, but I am under arrest. But how could I not be dead? I felt that bullet crash through my brain. I saw white light. And then it went dark. And I don’t mean asleep dark. I mean shot-in-the-brain-until-you’re-dead dark.
But I guess they saved me. Some amazing doctors and nurses must have saved me. They saved the life of a killer. I wonder if it makes them mad or sad when they do that. I wonder if I deserve to live. What the hell was I thinking? What kind of bastard am I? I’m just another zit-faced freak with a gun. Man, I had no idea I was this evil. And then it makes me wonder. Do evil people know they’re evil? Or do they just think they’re doing the right thing?
I think about Justice. I think he fooled me. I think he brainwashed me. If he was so righteous, why wasn’t he in the bank with me?
He’s free and I’m trapped.
That bullet must have done some major damage. I hope I still have a face and complete skull. I reach up to touch the bandages. But there are no bandages. And there’s no blood or scars or any other disgusting head-wound shit. I don’t feel any pain at all. In fact, I feel stronger than ever before.
I don’t understand what has happened. I survived a bullet to the brain. And I’m in a motel room with a cop.
“Where am I?” I ask the cop.
“We’ll both be in a shit storm if we miss this meeting. We fell asleep. Come on. Get up, get your stuff, and let’s go.”
“Where are we going?”
“Jeez, Hank, shake the sleep out of your brain and get moving.”
Hank? Did he just call me Hank?
“My name isn’t Hank,” I say.
“Quit fooling around, Hank, you’re getting me mad.”
“Quit calling me Hank.”
The cop stands and walks over to me. He leans over me and stares hard at me. His breath smells like beer and onions.
Yes, I’ve had quite a few ugly smelly guys lean over my bed. I get the urge to punch this cop in the crotch.
“Are you still asleep?” he asks.
“No.”
“You’re in one of them waking dreams, aren’t you?” he asks. “Like sleepwalking or something, right?”
He slaps my cheek lightly. Then slaps me harder.
“Did that help, Hank?” he asks.
“You call me Hank one more time,” I say, “and I’m going to kick your ass.”
He laughs, pulls me off the bed and to my feet, and shoves me across the room. I trip over a pair of shoes and bump the back of my head against a mirror.
“That’s police brutality!” I shout.
The cop just laughs. I’ve always been good at making cops laugh. But I’m not trying to be funny this time.
“I just got shot in the brain,” I say. “Are you trying to kill me?”
He laughs again, grabs a holstered pistol off the table, and hands it to me.
“Okay, soldier up, funny guy,” he says. “We got real work to do.”
I am stunned. I am the psycho teen who shot up a bank filled with people and a cop just handed me a gigantic freakin’ gun! A .357 Magnum! At least, I think it’s a Magnum. I don’t know guns much, but I’ve seen this one in the movies.
I turn around to look at myself in the mirror. I expect to see me pretending to be Clint Eastwood. But instead I am looking at a face that is not my own.
Huh. Isn’t that something?
They must have done plastic surgery on me. That bullet must have taken off my face. And so they had to take my zitty teenage Indian mug and replace it with a handsome white guy’s face.
Yes, I am looking at a very handsome white guy in the mirror. His hair is blond. His eyes are blue. His skin is clear. This guy hasn’t had a zit in his whole life. And this guy is me.
Isn’t modern medicine amazing?
“Wow,” I say to the cop. “I really like my new face.”
He just stares at me.
“It’s like that movie with John Travolta,” I say. “The one where he switches faces with Nicolas Cage. I didn’t know that stuff was real.”
The cop’s face changes expression. All of a sudden he looks a little confused. And worried. “Did you have a stroke or something, Hank?” he asks. “You’re not talking or looking right.”
I can’t figure out why he keeps calling me Hank. Well, maybe they changed my face and my name. And so I look down and realize I am shorter than I used to be. In fact, I realize I’m about six or seven inches shorter than I used to be. I’m a short guy now, but I have a lot more muscles. My arms are huge. I have the face and body of a bodybuilder white guy. I am beautiful.
Jeez, I should get shot in the brain every day.
I suddenly get an idea. I reach down and check the size of my groinal region, and I realize that I’m different down there, too. I am a big guy in all sorts of ways.
“Are you sure you’re okay?” the cop asks me. “I’m calling this off if you’re not okay. It’s too dangerous if you’re not okay.”
“No, no, no,” I say. “Everything is good.”
Of course, I’m lying. I don’t know that everything is good. I am very confused.
“Tell me you’re okay,” the cop says. “We’re not leaving this room unless you say you’re okay.”
“I’m okay,” I say.
He believes me.
“Good. Good, partner, let’s go kick some butt,” the cop says, and tosses me a wallet. My wallet. I open it up and see a gold badge. My badge. And then I pull an ID card out of the wallet and look at the photo. It’s me.
Well, it’s a picture of a guy with my new white face. But that ID says that this face belongs to a guy named Hank Storm, and that he’s thirty-five years old, and that he’s an FBI agent. Yep, a federal agent. A supercop.
“I’m Hank Storm?” I ask the other cop, who must be an FBI guy, too.
“Yes,” he says. “You’re finally awake. Jeez, Hank, you really had me worried there. All right, let’s go save the world.”
I put on my shoes and follow him out the door.
THE OTHER FBI DUDE and I step out of our motel room. It’s dark and clear and I can see stars in the sky. More stars than I’ve ever seen. I also see a sign that says this is the Red River Motor Inn.
Red River, Red River, Red River; that name is so familiar. I think I read about it somewhere. And then I remember. Red River is on the Nannapush Indian Reservation.
“Red River, Idaho,” I say.
“Yep,” the other FBI says. “The asshole of America.”
“Lot of Indians here.”
“Yeah. I wish Custer would have killed a few more of these damn tepee creepers.”
“Wow,” I say. “You really hate Indians, don’t you?”
“I didn’t know any Indians until they sent me to work here. And then I met Indians. And trust me, none of them is worth much. Well, maybe some of the kids. Some of the kids are still okay. But they’re going to go bad, too. Just you watch. There’s something bad inside these Indians. They can’t help themselves.”
I wonder what this racist FBI man would do if he knew his partner was really a half-breed Indian. I want to tell him, but I don’t want to get punched. Or shot in the head. Again.
So I keep quiet. As quiet as this reservation.
I look at the map inside my memory and realize I’m six hundred miles from the nearest real city. And there are so many stars. I know city lights but I don’t know stars.
“The sky is beautiful,” I say. “Like a starry blanket.”
The other FBI laughs and laughs. “Jeez,” he says. “You go to sleep a killer and you wake up like some kind of poet.”
“I’m a killer poet,” I say.
The other FBI loves that. He slaps me hard on the back, but it doesn’t hurt at all because I am very muscular.
“What time is it anyway?” I ask.
“Three in the morn,” the other FBI says. “We have to hurry.”
So we get into the government sedan and the other FBI drives us through a maze of dirt roads to an old shack sitting out the middle of a dark nowhere. It’s so dark I can’t see more than four or five feet away. It’s like being in the belly of a whale.
“I bet you can’t get cell phone reception out here,” I say.
“What’s a cell phone?” the other FBI asks.
It’s my turn to laugh.
“Is the FBI too cheap to give cell phones to its agents?” I ask.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he says.
Wow, this guy isn’t kidding. He doesn’t know about cell phones. I guess he’s old-fashioned. I want to ask him if he’s heard of electricity.
Then I see headlights coming down the road behind us.
“All right, all right, get your game face on, kid,” says the other FBI. “Things could get ugly real quick.”
He pulls out his pistol and checks the ammo.
“Are we going to have a gunfight?” I ask.
“Wouldn’t be the first time,” he says.
So I pull out my pistol and check the ammo. Okay, I think, I have to be in some kind of dream. This can’t be real. I cannot be getting ready for a gunfight. I’m excited and scared. And then I realize something.
“Hey,” I say to the other FBI. “What’s your name?”
He reacts like I just slapped him.
“You’re not okay, are you?” he asks. I can see big fear in his eyes. That fear doesn’t seem fake. It doesn’t feel like a dream. The headlights behind us move closer.
“I’m okay,” I say. “I just forgot your name.”
“You lied to me,” he says. “There is something wrong with you, isn’t there? Jeez, you had one of them strokes, didn’t you? Ah, man, we’re in trouble.”
He looks back at those headlights traveling toward us. There must be seriously dangerous dudes in that car.
“Just tell me your name,” I say.
“Art,” he says. “My name is Art. You and I have been partners for twelve years.”
“That’s a long time,” I say.
The other car pulls up beside us. I look inside and see two Indian guys. They look familiar. I stare at them. And they stare at me. And then I realize who they are. They’re activists from IRON, which is the acronym for Indigenous Rights Now!
“Hey, Art,” I say, “those guys are famous.”
Art almost gasps and lets out this squeaky whine, like a little girl on a roller coaster.
“The passenger, what’s his name?” I ask.
I remember that the members of IRON gave up their birth names because they were “colonial poison” and named themselves after animals.
“Oh, I remember, his name is Horse,” I say.
“Yeah,” Art says. His voice cracks.
“And the driver, that’s Elk,” I say.
Art just nods his head. He looks at me bug-eyed.
“Those guys are super famous,” I say. “Famous for Indians, at least. I saw them both in this documentary about the civil war in Red River. You know, that’s where IRON was protecting traditional Indians from the evil Indian tribal government dudes. What were they called?”
“HAMMER,” Art says.
“Yeah, HAMMER,” I say. “What was that short for?”
“Nothing, they just call themselves HAMMER.”
“Yeah, IRON versus HAMMER. It was like a goddamn monster movie,” I say.
Art’s eyes are wide like he’s looking at a ghost. And he’s looking at me, so I guess he is looking at a ghost. He looks over at Horse and Elk, the IRON dudes in the other car. They’re talking to each other. But we can’t hear them through the glass. Everybody has secrets.
“Oh, yeah, man, I remember now,” I say. “Those HAMMER guys were killing everybody back then. And then the FBI joined up with HAMMER and started killing people, too. Man, when was that, back in 1975 or 1976?”
“Hank, you are fucking crazy,” Art says. “This is 1975, and—you and me—we are the FBI.”
I laugh. But Art is not kidding. He’s telling the truth. Oh, my God! Those damn doctors changed my face and body and put me in a time machine. No, wait. I realize the bank guard did kill me when he shot me in the brain. And I did die, and now I’m living in Hell. I’ve been sent to Hell. And Hell is Red River, Idaho, in 1975.
“Am I in Hell?” I ask.
Art’s anger suddenly changes. There’s a little bit of water in his eyes. He looks all compassionate.
“Kid,” he says, “I’m sorry, but I think your mind just snapped. But you got to hold it together—okay?—just for a little while. I’ll get you through this shit, and we’ll get you out of here as soon as we can, okay? We’ll get you a head doctor, okay?”
“Okay,” I say. I wonder if maybe I did survive that bank guard’s bullet but it put me into some kind of coma. I hope this is just a coma nightmare.
“Art,” I say, “I’m getting a little freaked out here.”
My partner’s compassion runs away. His eyes get mean.
“I love you, Hank,” he says. “I really do. You’re my best friend. You and me, man, together we’ve been partners for twelve years. I respect you for that, okay? I love you for it. But if you screw this up, I’m going to shoot you in the face.”
I believe Art does love me. I am his best friend. And despite all that love and friendship, I am convinced that he will kill me if he has to.
Art rolls down his window. Horse rolls down his window. He has a blue feather tied to his long black braid.
“Hey, Art,” Horse says.
“Hey,” Art says.
“Hey, Hank,” Horse says.
He knows me.
The driver, Elk, who has a square face like he’s some kind of Indian Frankenstein, doesn’t say anything. He just tries to look tough, and he’s doing a pretty good job of it. I’m scared of him.
And then I wonder why these two famous Indian guys are having a meeting with us, the white FBI. I thought they hated the FBI. I thought they were fighting against the FBI.
And then I realize that Elk and Horse are double agents. They are traitors to IRON.
This is major news. Back in the future, these guys are still heroes. Everybody still thinks they fought against the FBI. My heart is beating a punk rock song against my chest.
“You ready to do this?” Elk asks Art.
“Ready steady,” Art says.
All four of us get out of the cars.
Then Elk and Horse open their trunk and pull out another Indian guy: a young dude, maybe twenty. His hands are tied behind his back. His mouth is gagged. And his face is bloody and beaten. He’s terrified. And then I notice that all the fingers on his right hand are missing. Somebody cut them off.
I think I’m going to die tonight. Again.
“Is this him?” Art asks. “Does he know what we need to know?”
“Yeah,” Elk says. “But he won’t tell us.”
“What’s his name?”
“Junior.”
“Looks like you tortured poor Junior,” Art says.
“Yeah, but we heap primitive Injuns,” Elk says. “We don’t have fancy interrogation techniques like the F and B and I.”
“I don’t know anything fancy,” Art says. “Take off his gag.”
Elk pulls the gag out of Junior’s mouth. All of his teeth are smashed and broken. I almost vomit.
“How’s he going to talk with a mouth like that?” Art asks.
“Didn’t mean to punch him that hard,” Horse says.
“You did that much damage with one punch?” Art asks.
“Yeah,” Horse says. He’s proud. And I do vomit a little bit into my mouth and swallow it back down.
“All right,” Art says. “Hold his arms.”
Elk and Horse hold Junior’s arms. He doesn’t fight back.
“All right, Junior,” Art says. “Are you going to tell me what I want to know?”
Junior shakes his head.
In my head, I scream, Tell them, Junior, tell them everything!
I wish I knew what Art wanted to know. Maybe I could save Junior if I knew.
Art takes out his pistol and presses it against Junior’s forehead. Poor Junior barely even reacts. He’s already given up.
I look at Elk and Horse. They’re smiling. I realize they aren’t freedom fighters or anything like that. They don’t care about protecting the poor and defenseless. No, man, these guys just like to hurt people. And I look at the weird light in Art’s eyes. He isn’t a lawman. He doesn’t protect our country. He just likes to hurt people, too.
“All right, Junior,” Art says. “You get one chance. Tell me what I want to know.”
And then Junior, amazing little Junior, he gets this look in his eyes. It’s peaceful and defiant at the same time. It’s like he’s saying, Kill me if you want. It doesn’t matter. I’m still a better person than you.
“Are you going to talk?” Art asks.
Junior shakes his head.
“Are you going to talk?” Art asks again.
“No,” Junior says.
Horse and Elk release Junior’s arms and step back. He could run now if he wanted to, but he wouldn’t get far.
“Are you going to talk?” Art asks for the third time.
“Fuck you,” Junior says.
Art shoots him in the face and Junior drops. He’s gone.
“You got blood on me,” Elk says to Art.
“We all got blood on us,” Art says.
He’s right about that.
Art looks at me. I stare back. And then I spin around and vomit all over the place.
Art killed that guy so easily. You don’t kill that easily unless you’ve done it lots of times before. I wonder who taught Art how to shoot people with a real gun.
And all of this just makes me vomit some more.
When I look up, Elk and Horse smirk at me.
“What’s wrong with you, FBI?” Elk asks. “It’s not like this is your first one.”
“What?” I ask.
“Don’t play dumb,” he says. “I know what you did. I saw you.”
Elk smiles. I hate that smile. He knows me.
Have I killed somebody out here on the reservation? Why don’t I remember it? Maybe Hank Storm killed people. But then I remember the bank. I’m not any better than these men. I’m not any better than the real Hank Storm.
I am Hank Storm, too.
“Don’t worry about Hank,” Art says. “He isn’t himself tonight.”
“Yeah,” I say. “I am most definitely not the old Hank Storm. I’m a whole different kind of Hank.”
“What are we going to do about Junior’s body?” Elk asks.
“Let him rot,” Art says.
“He’s a traditionalist,” Elk says. “His soul won’t get to Heaven if we don’t bury him the Indian way.”
“Why do you care?” Art asks.
“Because I was taught to,” Elk says. He’s thinking hard. Then he surprises me. “Why don’t you guys get going,” he says. “We’ll bury him the right way.”
Horse grunts in agreement.
Elk and Horse tortured Junior and delivered him to his murderers. But now they are going to bury him with respect. I don’t understand people.
“All right,” Art says. “But I need something else first.”
“What?” Elk asks.
Art looks hard at me. “Shoot Junior,” he says.
“What?” I ask.
“Shoot Junior,” Art says again.
“He’s already dead.”
“Shoot him,” Art says and points his gun at me. “Or I’ll shoot you.”
“I don’t understand,” I say. “He’s already dead. You can’t kill him twice.”
“I want your bullet in him,” Art says. “I want us to be in this one together.”
“But that’s not respectful, is it?” I ask Elk. “That’s not the Indian thing to do, is it?”
“You’re not Indian,” Elk says.
“Shoot him,” Art says. “Now.”
Scared, I pull out my pistol and stand over Junior’s body. He looks so young. He’s a kid. Like me. I aim my gun at his chest. At his heart.
I can’t do this. It somehow seems worse to shoot a dead body than to shoot a living man. Justice made killing make sense. But it doesn’t make sense, does it?
I’m going crazy. I am crazy. I want somebody to tell me that I’m not real.
“Shoot him,” Art says.
I close my eyes and pull the trigger.
Maybe you can’t kill somebody twice for real, but it sure hurts your heart just the same.