For Reggie, Mather’s lie had become the breaking point after which he believed all white men were lying all the time. Reggie knew the history. Mather’s friendship had simply become another broken treaty. Another beautiful series of promises that had been, in fact, a worthless stack of paper.
“I’m sure I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Mather had lied to Reggie first, and then to Dr. Faulkner, the department chair, after Reggie had lodged a formal protest. All three men had been sitting in Faulkner’s office, along with Bernice Zamora, the department secretary, who’d been taking notes.
“Why do you think Mr. Polatkin would make these kinds of accusations against you?” Dr. Faulkner had asked Mather.
“Frankly, I think it’s because of Reggie’s distrust of authority figures. In particular, Reggie has had an extremely difficult relationship with his father, a white man. I don’t pretend to be a psychologist, but I believe Reggie is confusing his feelings about his father with his feelings for me.”
“You liar,” Reggie had said and left the office. He’d understood that Mather’s lies would go undetected and unpunished. Later that day, Reggie had cornered Mather in the Student Union Building.
“I trusted you,” Reggie had said.
“It’s you who violated my trust,” Mather had replied. “You certainly aren’t behaving like a true Spokane.”
Reggie had punched Mather then and wrestled him to the ground, but a few other students had broken it up quickly. Naturally, Reggie had been expelled from the University.
Now, as Mather sat in the Anthropology Building basement and listened to his beloved secret tapes, he was professionally disappointed that he could never reveal their existence. Still, he was personally in love with the Indian elders’ voices, men and women, Snohomish, Makah, Yakama, Spokane, and he’d memorized all of the stories. With those tapes, Mather owned twelve hours’ worth of magic. He listened to the magical recording of a Spokane Indian elder telling a traditional story. A true Spokane. She spoke fractured English, which Mather could barely understand, but her fluent Spokane was being translated by a Bureau of Indian Affairs agent. The story was about Coyote, the trickster, and it echoed through the cluttered basement. Boxes of various artifacts were stacked in tall piles. A maze of doors, small rooms, and hallways. Some rooms had not been opened since the early part of the century, and exploring the basement involved a contemporary sort of archaeology. The basement even had its own mythology. Chief Seattle’s bones were supposedly lost somewhere in the labyrinth. And the bones of dozens of other Indians were said to be stored in a hidden room.
As the Spokane Indian elder finished her trickster story, the basement went dark. Mather smiled and thought of Coyote, assuming it was just a temporary power outage. But as five minutes passed, then ten, Mather grew agitated. At least, he told himself he was agitated. Actually he was becoming very frightened. The building creaked and groaned. Other mysterious noises in the distance sounded like footsteps, whispers, a door slowly opening.
“Hello, this is Dr. Mather.” His voice echoed loudly. “I’m in the northwest corner. By the furnace.”
Dr. Mather listened for a response, heard nothing, and then realized he’d given away his exact position. If somebody was trying to hurt him, he’d know where Mather was. Nonsense, Mather thought, someone’s coming to help me. But then he realized that nobody knew he was in the basement. It was late. Very late. Probably nobody was in the entire Anthropology Building except Mather. Or, nobody should be.
“Hello?” Mather asked, a question now.
He continued to sit at the desk and listen carefully. He heard somebody breathing, though he soon realized he was hearing his own inhalation and exhalation. Holding his breath, he listened, and heard a strange rattling. There, off to his right, that rattling again. Not like a snake, but like beads shaking, or sand in a shell, or bones rubbing together. Mather sat up straight in his chair. He thought of the Indian remains in that basement. The forgotten bones and fragments of clothing, Chief Seattle’s bones. The rattling again. Mather was sweating, telling himself not to be such a child, a superstitious fool. Be analytical, he thought, decipher the sound. Wasn’t it there before? Hadn’t it been there all along? The total darkness had intensified other senses. You’re hearing things you simply didn’t notice before, Mather told himself. You hear better with your eyes closed. So what is it you’re hearing? He listened. Bone moving against bone, ancient and forgotten. Calm yourself, Mather thought, and then something brushed against his face, and he panicked. The instinct for flight took over and Mather was up and running, tripping over boxes, smashing into shelves and closed doors. He could feel that something was chasing him, was right behind him, reaching for his neck. Mather ran for his life. He was still running when the lights suddenly flickered and brightened. Nearly blinded, he caught a brief glimpse of the low overhang ahead of him just before he ran into it, knocking himself unconscious.
“Dr. Mather?” asked the janitor as he came around the corner and saw the professor lying on the floor. “Is that you?”
20. The Sandwich Lady
JOHN SAT ON A sidewalk in downtown Seattle beneath the Alaskan Way Viaduct. An ugly, gray monstrosity that would surely fall to pieces during a major earthquake, it served as a noisy barrier between downtown Seattle and the waters of Elliott Bay. However, as an unplanned benefit, the Viaduct also provided shelter for Seattle’s homeless. Beneath the Viaduct, one could find cover from Seattle’s rains, with the nearby waterfront and Pike Place Market attracting tourists who were sometimes willing to empty their pockets of loose change.
When he worked downtown, John visited the homeless Indians who congregated beneath the Viaduct and those in Occidental Park in Pioneer Square. But John was more often drawn to the Indians beneath the Viaduct. He’d walk down there during his lunch hours to spend time with them, though he never spoke more than a few words to anyone. Usually, he just walked by those real Indians, who sat in groups of three or four, nodding their heads when John walked past.
“Hey, cousin,” the homeless Indians always called out to John. “You got any coins?”
John had come to know a few by their names, King, Agnes, and Joseph, and he recognized a few dozen by sight. Before he’d met them, John had shared the common assumption that all homeless Indians were drunks. But he had soon discovered that many of them didn’t drink. John had been surprised by that discovery, and both relieved and saddened. He was relieved that many of the homeless Indians refused to surrender and drink themselves to death. He was saddened that so many Indians were homeless and had no simple reasons to offer for their condition.
On that evening, John sat by himself, apart from a group of Indians who were singing and telling jokes. More laughter. John watched those Indians, in dirty clothes and thirdhand shoes, miles and years from their reservations, estranged from their families and tribes, yet still able to laugh, to sing. John wondered where they found the strength to do such things. They were still joking and singing when Marie Polatkin drove up in a battered white delivery van. John recognized her from the powwow at the University. The Indian woman with crowded teeth. She haphazardly parked the truck and jumped out, talking fast and loud. The dozens of homeless women and men, Indian and otherwise, who lived beneath the Viaduct soon gathered around her.