McSweeney's Mammoth Treasury of Thrilling Tales - Michael Chabon [163]
“You know where you are?” the big cop asked the Indians.
“Yes,” said the older one.
“Tell me.”
“Little Big Horn.”
“You know what happened here?”
The older Indian remained silent.
“You better talk to me, boy,” said the big cop. “Or I’m going to hurt you piece by piece.”
The older Indian knew he was supposed to be pleading and begging for mercy, for his life, as he’d had to beg for his life from other uniformed white men. But the older Indian was suddenly tired of being afraid. He felt brave and stupid. The younger Indian knew how defiant his older friend could be. He wanted to run.
“Hey, chief,” said the big cop. “I asked you a question. Do you know what happened here?”
The older Indian refused to talk. He lifted his chin and glared at the big cop.
“Fuck it,” said the big cop as he pulled his revolver and shot the older Indian in the face, then shot him twice more in the chest after he crashed to the ground. Though the big cop had lived and worked violently, this was his first murder, and he was surprised by how easy it was.
After a moment of stunned silence, the younger Indian ran, clumsily zigzagging between gravestones, and made it thirty feet before the big cop shot him in the spine, and dropped him into the dirt.
“Oh, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus,” said the younger cop, terrified. He knew he had to make a decision: Be a good man and die there in the cemetery with the Indians or be an evil man and help disappear two dead bodies.
“What do you think of that?” the big cop asked the little cop.
“I think it was good shooting.”
Decision made, the little cop jogged over to the younger Indian lying there alive and half-paralyzed. His spine was shattered, and he’d die soon, but the Indian reached out with bloodied hands, grabbed handfuls of dirt, rock, and grass, tearing his nails off in the process, and pulled himself away in one last stupid and primal effort to survive. With his useless legs dragging behind him, the Indian looked like a squashed bug. Like a cockroach in blue jeans, thought the little cop and laughed a little, then retched his truck stop dinner all over the back of the dying Indian.
There and here, everywhere, Indian blood spilled onto the ground, and seeped down into the cemetery dirt.
The big cop kneeled beside the body of the old Indian and pushed his right index finger into the facial entrance wound and wondered why he was doing such a terrible thing. With his damn finger in this dead man’s brain, the big cop felt himself split in two and become twins, one brother a killer and the other an eyewitness to murder.
Away, the little cop was down on all fours, dry heaving and moaning like a lonely coyote.
“What’s going on over there?” asked the big cop.
“This one is still alive,” said the little cop.
“Well, then, finish him off.”
The little cop struggled to his feet, pulled his revolver, and pressed it against the back of the Indian’s head. Maybe he would have found enough cowardice and courage to pull the trigger, but he never got the chance. All around him, awakened and enraptured by Indian blood, the white soldiers in tattered uniforms exploded from their graves and came for the little cop. As he spun in circles, surrounded, he saw how many of these soldiers were little more than skeletons with pieces of dried meat clinging to their bones. Some of the soldiers still had stomachs and lungs leaking blood through jagged wounds, and other soldiers picked at their own brains through arrow holes punched into their skulls, and a few dumb, clumsy ones tripped over their intestines and ropy veins spilling onto the ground. Dead for over a century and now alive and dead at the same time, these soldiers rushed the little cop. Backpedaling, stepping side to side, the little cop dodged arms and tongueless mouths as he fired his revolver fifteen times.