I briefly fantasized about driving to the rez to help fight the blaze. I would extinguish it all by myself. I’d blow out the flames with my epic and poetic breath like I was an Indian X-Man mutant. In reality, I knew I would throw out my bad back after scooping up maybe the sixth shovelful of dirt and ash. Then some Indian or Indians would have to carry my sad-sack ass away from the fire line.
“Jerry, Tinker, and Steve are cutting firebreaks with their tractors,” my sister texted. They were cousins, very good friends with my big brother but distant to me. I was proud to hear of their courage. They were blue-collar Indians. Their hands were callused from years of hard work. My hands are writer-smooth.
My late mother’s hands were often rough from manual labor. She sold her quilts mostly to white people and sometimes to other Indians. During my childhood, for months at a time, my mother’s quilt money was our minimum basic income.
“I’m scared of fire,” I texted my sister.
“Me, too,” she texted back.
My siblings and I have been afraid of flames ever since our big sister died in a trailer fire. I don’t have to imagine her face when I stare into a fire. My dead sister’s face screams at me from every fire—from the small embers of lit cigarettes to the massive fireworks shows in Seattle every Fourth of July and New Year’s Eve. Looking at these satellite images of that forest fire on my reservation, I could see that it was burning closer and closer to the abandoned uranium mine.
Yes, that out-of-control forest fire was threatening to turn the abandoned uranium mine into Dante’s rez-ferno.
That might be all you need to know about Native American history.
Or maybe you just need to know that my tribe survived that forest fire. And survived the much larger forest fire that burned a year later.
We Indians know how to survive every fire.
89.
Love Story
MY MATERNAL GRANDFATHER, James Cox, Spokane Indian and Scottish, died six years before I was born.
My paternal grandmother and grandfather, Susan and Adolph Alexie, Coeur d’Alene Indians, both died twenty years before I was born.
My maternal grandmother, Etta Adams, Spokane, died when I was fourteen.
So 75 percent of my direct connection to ancestral culture and history was gone before I was born. And 100 percent of that direct connection disappeared before I had a driver’s license.
My mother and father taught me more about modern Indian powwows and Indian basketball than they did about ancient tribal practices and beliefs. Much more. Well, to be specific, my mother taught my sisters how to be powwow fanatics, and my father taught basketball to my brothers and me. My parents sometimes talked about their autobiographical histories. But, in telling their stories, my mother often aggressively lied and my father often passively omitted key details. I think they both sought to disguise and hide their trauma.
Until I began writing this book, and doing some fairly basic genealogical research, I didn’t know that my father had uncles and aunts who died young. I had no inkling of any of this until I stood in Sacred Heart Mission Cemetery on the Coeur d’Alene Indian Reservation and saw the grave of a man named Edward Alexie.
“Who is Edward Alexie?” I texted my sister.
“Some relative, I guess,” my sister texted back.
At Edward’s graveside, I pulled out my iPad and did some quick research on him. Though I am half Coeur d’Alene through my father, I didn’t grow up on that reservation. Culturally speaking, I am Spokane. So my knowledge of day-to-day Coeur d’Alene life is limited. I have family and friends on the CDA rez, but I see them only occasionally. And, after reading only a few documents, I called my sis. I needed to say more than texting would allow.
“Edward was Dad’s uncle,” I said. “He died the same year that Dad was born.”
“What did he die of?” my sister asked.
“Smallpox, bubonic plague, Custer’s ghost, I don’t know,” I said. “I’m an Indian on an iPad in an Indian cemetery with access to all the information on the Internet. But I can’t find his cause of death.”
“Why don’t you call somebody with the Coeur d’Alene tribe? A historian or somebody? Or be really crazy and ask one of our cousins what they know.”
“I can’t,” I said. “I’m too embarrassed to let them know how much I don’t know.”
“They’re sure gonna find out how much you didn’t know when you publish your book.”
I laughed.
“This memoir,” I said. “It’s going to have a lot of blank spaces. I suppose I could really dig into the research and get stuff as accurate as possible. But I like the blank spaces. I like how they feel. I want my readers to feel how I feel. I want them to feel the loss. To feel our loss. I want them to know how guilty I feel for not knowing this stuff.”
“It’s not your fault,” my sister said. “Dad never talked about bad things.”
“And Mom lied so much,” I said.
“Yes, she did,” my sister said, and laughed. “Just like you.”
I laughed.
“Okay,” I said. “I gotta do more research.”
I think nearly all of my father’s uncles and aunts, and his mother and father, died young.
One aunt, named Mary Magdoline Alexie, was five years old when she died, on January 16, 1911. I don’t know if her misspelled middle name was a typo on the official records or if it was misspelled on purpose by her parents. Two days after Mary Magdoline’s death, Eugene Burton Ely landed his plane on the deck of the USS Pennsylvania in San Francisco Bay. That was the first time an airplane landed on a ship.
My father’s other aunt, Mary Catherine Alexie, was only a year old when she died, on April 11, 1911. Six days after Mary Catherine’s death, Southern Methodist University was chartered.
So, yes, while my great-aunts were dying young on the rez, some incredible things were happening in the outside world.
I can’t find any evidence of where my great-aunts are buried. I don’t know why they died. Were they buried in the old Coeur d’Alene way? Were they wrapped in blankets and placed in graves dug by their parents? I know those graves, unmarked and forgotten, must be located somewhere on my father’s reservation. Probably close to the town, Desmet, Idaho, where they were born. But that town is surrounded by wheat fields now. So did my great-aunts long ago become part of a harvest? Did they help wheat to grow? Did my great-aunts become bread?
I don’t know. I don’t know.
There is another Mary Alexie. She was my father’s great-aunt and lived until 1982. Early census reports have her listed as Mary Agatha Alexie, though her gravestone reads MARY AGATH ALEXIE, dropping the third a from Agatha. So which is mistaken, the early census reports or the gravestone? Has to be the gravestone that’s correct, right?
But I don’t know for certain. I don’t know.