Flight: A Novel by Sherman Alexie

Author:Sherman Alexie [Alexie, Sherman]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781480457263
Publisher: Open Road Media
Published: 2013-10-15T06:00:00+00:00

Twelve

THIS IS WHAT IT feels like to be old.

After crashing headfirst off a horse into a campfire, and swinging two people onto the back of your pony with one arm, and all the excitement of outrunning killer soldiers with rifles, you have a few bruises and burns and scrapes and cuts and sore muscles.

In fact, after you ride fast and hard a mile or two into the trees, and think you have left behind your enemies, you need to slow down.

And when an old guy relaxes, when the fear juices leave his body, he is immediately reminded of exactly how old he is.

How old am I? How old is this body?

After I relax, my back seizes up. It goes completely stiff, like I’m made out of steel. And I fall off my pony.

I hit the ground and hurt my ribs. I think I might have cracked something. I can barely breathe.

Small Saint and Bow Boy are still on the horse. Small Saint has taken the reins and spins the pony back toward me.

There are sixteen tiny little men with sharp knives slashing my spine. I’m curled into a ball. And every time I try to straighten up, or even move or breathe, another tiny little guy shows up with a sharp knife.

If the soldiers caught up to us right now, I wouldn’t be able to defend myself. They could walk right up to me and I’d just be curled into a ball like a bug. And one of them, or all of them, would raise their boots and squish me.

I’m useless.

And then it’s over. My back relaxes. The knife-wielding little guys run away. And I can slowly straighten my back. I don’t want to stand up yet. I can still feel little tremors in my muscles, as if my body was just waiting and preparing for another big quake. Or for those little bastards to come back with chain saws.

So I lie on the ground and I look up at Small Saint and Bow Boy still on the pony. The Indian boy has curled into the white soldier. Has his little arms wrapped around the soldier’s neck. Bow Boy loves Small Saint like he was his father. Or his mother. Or both.

I remember I used to be like that little boy, holding tightly on to anybody who showed me even the tiniest bit of love. I haven’t been like that in a long time.

“Are you okay, sir?” Small Saint asks me.

“Define okay,” I say.

Small Saint smiles. He’s missing half his teeth. I guess dental care wasn’t a high priority in the nineteenth century.

“We can’t stay here long, sir,” Small Saint says. “They’re going to be coming after us. They’re not going to let us go.”

He’s right. I’m not a soldier, but I know that we just did about two million of the worst things any soldier can do. We disobeyed orders. I smacked a general in the face with a rifle. I might have killed him.

And I think I broke my rifle.

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