So, by action and ambition, my father had always been a traveler.
But my mother, except for a brief period where she became a teen mother in Sacramento and another where she became a teen bride in Arlee, Montana, had never lived off the reservation. And difficult and terrible things had happened to her when she had traveled away from the rez.
So, considering their respective histories with adventure, it is not surprising that my father supported my escape. But I remain stunned that my mother gave her consent. I know I was brave to leave the reservation school, but I think my parents were far more courageous in letting me go. I was so young. I was a fucked-up Indian boy. And, despite being descended from thousands of years of traditional Native people and their conservative lives, my parents said yes when I asked to be a total radical and leave my tribal school.
My mother, despite all the pain she caused me, saved my life twice. The first time, in 1973, she saved my siblings and me when she stopped drinking and made our home a safe—a relatively safe—place to live. And then she saved my life again when she let me walk away from the Spokane Indian Reservation in 1979, never to fully return.
This is a familiar story for those readers who already know my work. But I have never fully told the truth about all of my reasons for leaving the reservation school for the white high school twenty-two miles away. So, for the first time in print, here’s my most honest account for my actions: I left the reservation in the desperate pursuit of a higher and better education—in search of a more epic life. But, with an equal amount of desperation, I also fled the reservation because I believed that no Spokane Indian woman would ever marry me. Because I was too ugly to be loved by any of them. I set sail on an academic adventure, but I was also on a mission to find love. So, after a year-long effort in building courage, I transferred to the farm-town junior high in Reardan, where I became Jason, and my ambitions became the Argonauts.
I allowed my wife—who’d seen me naked and touched me thousands of times—to finally touch me in those places where I had hoarded so much of my pain and shame.
While I was working on the early drafts of this chapter, I said to my wife, “You know, I have been thinking about the rez. And what would have happened to me if I hadn’t left. I have been trying to figure out which Spokane Indian woman I would have married if I’d stayed. And, you know, I don’t think any of them would have married me. I really don’t. And not any women from other tribes living on our rez either.”
My wife was reluctant to follow that particular line of conversation with me. What person wants to debate the merits, the possibilities, of their real spouse’s imaginary husbands or wives? At the time, I was miffed that she was unwilling to hear me think out loud about potential lovers and spouses. But, shit, I was obsessed with this book and its ideas. Like every other writer, I’d set aside my real-world manners in order to rudely pursue an idea.
So I continued to ponder the question by myself: If I’d stayed on the reservation, then who would I have loved, and who would have loved me? Nobody, nobody, nobody.
And then I remembered Angie, the white daughter of a white traveling salesman. Sounds like the beginnings of a dirty joke, right? I met Angie during my tribe’s Memorial Day Powwow in 1979. I was almost thirteen and she was fourteen. Angie’s father owned and operated a mobile arts-and-crafts and toy shop. That description is way too polite. So let me try again. Angie and her family lived in a rugged RV that also served as the warehouse and storefront for glass jewelry and polyester T-shirts and stuffed animals that resembled no living creature and thin plastic toys that broke within hours and candies that were clumsy-ass rip-offs of famous brands. So, yeah, maybe Hershey’s chocolate bars were your favorite candy, but that’s only because you never had a bag of Horshey’s Choco-Dust.
Angie and her family lived in Seattle or Tacoma, I think. But they spent their summers and school-year weekends traveling from powwow to state fair to rodeo to car shows to wherever they could park their RV and sell their cheap goods.
In 1979, twenty or thirty of those traveling vendors had set up shop at our powwow grounds. And we Indian kids—the ones who didn’t dance powwow—would “walk the circle” of those vendors like we were cruising in cars. Around and around we’d go, examining and reexamining the cheap merchandise, eating fry bread and cotton candy and sno-cones, and staring at all the Indians we knew and all of those Indians who were strangers. And we’d also stare at the white tourists and vendors.
It was past 10 p.m. as I walked by Angie and her family’s booth for the first time. I stopped and stared. She was a very skinny and pale girl with brown hair. Rather plain, I guess, but a confident and loud salesperson.
“What are you staring at?” she asked me.
“Your shirt,” I said.
She looked down as if she’d forgotten what she was wearing. On the front of her shirt, on her flattish chest, was the image of an old radio with two anatomical-looking dials. Below that radio was the printed command DON’T TOUCH THESE KNOBS! THEY’RE WELL ADJUSTED!
Angie laughed at her sexually suggestive shirt, then turned around. On the back of her shirt was the message FROM BEHIND, IT’S ALL THE SAME.
At that time, I was too young and damaged to understand the explicit pedophilia of that shirt. I was only twelve. But there were hundreds of adults who must have seen the young girl wearing that shirt. What did they think when they saw it?
“T-shirts are five dollars each,” Angie said. “Or three for ten bucks.”
“I don’t have any money,” I said.
“Then why are you here?” she asked.
I didn’t have an answer.
“Do you like me?” she asked.
I think I took a step back because she took two steps toward me.
“Come back in an hour,” she said. “I have my bathroom break. We can walk. In the dark.”
She was only fourteen, but she was as brash as her shirt. I was terrified and intrigued.
“Okay,” I said.
I didn’t have any clue what to do for that next hour. So I reverted to habit and kept walking the circle and walked by Angie eight or ten times. I would smile at her: she’d smile at me. I didn’t know a thing about romance, so I didn’t realize that my aimless circles had become courtship.
Finally, after an hour, Angie ran to me, grabbed my hand, and pulled me away into the dark parking lot near the darker and unused rodeo arena. She sat on a truck bumper, and I leaned against a light pole.
“What’s your name?” she asked.
“Junior,” I said.
“I’m Angie. Some people call me Annie or AJ. My dad says I shouldn’t be chasing after Indian boys.”
She leaned toward me and whispered, “My dad hates Indians.”
I wasn’t surprised by the racism. I’ve rarely been surprised to encounter racism.
“Do you like Indians?” I asked.