Let the Bullet Speak, Let the Bullet Sing

Short fiction with audio performance

Edgar was the son of a quiet man who'd moved to Montana to work the open pit copper mine in Butte. Five years later, Edgar's mother divorced his father and packed two suitcases—one for her and one for her son.

The next day, she and Edgar waited in the station for the train to Salt Lake City. The Butte Special. Edgar was twelve. His mother was thirty. From Salt Lake, they were scheduled to ride a bus to Sacramento where an aunt had room enough to take them in.

"Mom," Edgar said as they waited in Butte. "I don't want to go."

She studied his face and saw that he was telling the truth.

"Okay," she said. "You go on back to your father."

She kissed him on the forehead. He picked up his suitcase and walked home and found his father heating soup on the stove. Father and son regarded each other. Then the father opened another can of soup and poured it into the pot.

Five years after that, his father left to work at a uranium mine in New Mexico. But Edgar stayed. He graduated from high school and was halfway toward an English degree at Montana State University when he dropped out and volunteered to serve in the Vietnam War. He earned a Purple Heart, received his honorable discharge, and wrote his first novel after he returned to Butte. It was a war story told from the first-person point of view of the bullet that had traveled from a Vietnamese sniper's rifle into the neck of a small town private from Montana. That fictional bullet kills the American boy but Edgar had survived the real bullet that tore through his neck. His scar was epic. Envious men touched their unmarked necks in his presence. Over the years, a dozen women had gently traced his scar with their fingertips. That first novel, Let the Bullet Speak, Let the Bullet Sing, was an international bestseller and was the basis for the film that won the Academy Award Winner for Best Picture. He wrote ten more novels and two memoirs over the next four decades, each published to decreasing levels of praise and sales. That was okay. He was good with money and had invested well. The writer as modest millionire. He owned a small working ranch and raised beef, pork, and lamb. Not in large numbers. His ranch was artisanal. One ex-wife was his most trusted confidant. His favorite drinking buddy was his second ex-wife's little brother. Edgar's mother and father, until their deaths, were frequent house guests. They hadn't spoken to each other in decades and always visited at separate times.

Edgar's daughter was a writer who used her mother's maiden name and taught at a small college in Southern Idaho. She claimed to be polyamorous but she'd been married to an ex-Mormon man for twelve years and was mother to five kids, which seemed to be quite a Mormon-ish number. She'd published a short story in The Paris Review where a fictional father told his fictional daughter that polyamory was to sex addicts like whiskey was to drunks.

Of course, that was a direct quote of something that Edgar had once said to her. He'd meant it in jest, he thought, but his daughter's story had chastised him.

Edgar's son was a nomad activist, moving from city to city to work for whichever progressive cause was most currently popular. He was a handsome man, maybe even beautiful, and his masculine courtliness was immensely attractive to the women surrounded by socialist boys who were afraid of their own lustful shadows. When those jobs and his romantic relationships ended, Edgar's son would make his way back to the ranch for work. His hands would blister and bleed. Edgar believed that a man should have scars on his knuckles. His own hands were calloused from shovels and saws and he knew how to tie the knots that were demanded for different tasks.

And Edgar was enamored with Indians. He believed us to be soul-shattered mystics. And he also believed that our mysticism was contagious but only communicable to a special kind of white man—a man like Edgar.

In the early 1990s, he'd founded a literary festival for Native American writers. And every year, we Indian poets, short story writers, and novelists would gather in Missoula, Montana, to give readings, sit on panels, and accept the beneficence,  condescension, and cash of white readers. Every year, there'd only be one or two reservation Indian writers. The other Indian writers were urban-born and raised—Urbs, they were called in Native parlance. Many of those Urbs were barely Indian and there were always five or six pretend Indians—pretendians—who based their tribal identity on varying levels of amorphous family mythology and organized grift.

Over the years, I'd enjoyed romantic relationships with three real Indian men—two of them ended amicably—but I'm embarrassed to admit that I'd had a one-night stand with a pretendian. I'd had my suspicions beforehand. He didn't have that real Indian vibe. He always felt rehearsed. But he excessively praised my novels and I'm a narcissistic bastard. So we got naked. His body was home to many ornate and generic Indian tattoos—bears, snakes, and coyotes on his arms and legs with eagle wings on his shoulder blades. He told me the story of each tattoo and I told him that my rez Indian brother had one tattoo—a small and primitive arrow on his left thumb that he'd given himself in prison with ball point pen ink and a paper clip sharpened to a point. But I didn't tell him about my rez Indian sister’s tattoo. It was just the first two letters of her husband’s name—LO—because it had hurt too much for her to let the tattooist finish with the NNY.

At the 2012 conference, during the crowded opening night party at Edgar's house, he sat across a table from me and said, "I heard you moved back to the rez."

"I'm tired of the adjunct professor life," I said.

He was an old man. His neck scar was not as prominent against his sun-damaged, wrinkled, and age-spotted skin.

"Aren't you gonna miss Seattle?" he asked.

"I'm gonna miss all the movie theaters," I said.

"And I heard you left your husband."

I said, "The fight for gay marrige was also the fight for gay divorce."

"Cheers," he said.

"Yeah," I said. "I'm gonna teach at the tribal school and coach basketball."

"Are you gonna teach Buffalo Boy?" he asked. That was his murder mystery about the lonesome death of a Cheyenne man.

"Never read that one," I said.

"Damn," he said.

I'd hurt his feelings.

"Don't worry about it," I said. "I haven't read any of the Indians here, either."

It bugged the shit out of me when Urbs wrote about the rez. What did they know about rez life? Hell, I'd rather read a novel by a white guy who'd been a tribal cop for twenty years.

All my novels were Edith Wharton-ish studies of the social means and mores on the Spokane Indian Reservation. In Wharton's fictional world, you had to know which fork to use. In my world, you had to know why some families cooked at all the funerals and wakes and why some Indians are allowed to hunt deer and elk with a bow and arrow while others can only hunt with a rifle.

"I'm happy you're here," Edgar said to me. "You've been saying no for years,"

"I need the money," I said.

"You know," he said. "A few weeks ago, I was fixing a fence up north. I was hurrying too much and cut my hand on the barbs."

He showed me the healing wound on his right palm.

"My little stigmata," he said.

"How many stitches?" I asked.

"None," he said. "Super Glue works just as good."

"You're lucky it didn't get infected."

"I rubbed some white clover on it," he said. "A Crow Indian taught me that."

Yeah, I thought, it seemed like Crow Indians were always teaching him something traditional. And maybe they were. Some Indians share ancient knowledge like they’re information booths in a shopping mall.

"So I bandaged my hand as well as I could," Edgar said. "And I was driving back home when I saw a kestral breeding pair sitting on a telephone. You know kestrals?"

"Yeah," I said. "Teacup falcons."

"I don't know what it was about those two kestrals,” he said. "But it felt like they wanted me to stop. So I pulled my truck over to the roadside and got out. And I swear to you those kestrals were talking to me. Their minds and my mind."

"Uh huh," I said.

I can't even tell you how many times a white person has pulled me aside to tell me an animal story. Plenty of Indians have also told me those same kind of animal stories. And those tales and fables are always about the magnificent creatures—the orca and whales and bison and elk and condors of the world. They're never about the ordinary animals. The small ones. The ugly ones. The pests. Nobody ever claims to know what the wise old fruit fly thinks about the compost bin.

"And you're not gonna believe this," Edgar said. "But then those kestrals flew down from the line and landed on my truck."

"Okay," I said as neutrally as possible. He was paying me to be there so I didn't want to insult him. But I also didn't want to encourage him.

"And then I put my hands out," he said. "And those kestrals flitted from the truck and landed on my palms. One in each hand. They're small birds, you know, but they felt heavy. And I had to struggle against their weight. Against the weight of their meaning. The mystery of their meaning."

I sipped at my coffee and thought of an old joke: I take my coffee dark and bitter...like my men.

"You're smiling," Edgar said. "You know something, don't you?"

"What do you think I know?" I asked.

"You know what those kestrals meant, don't you?"

I thought of the bald eagles who live in Seattle. Indians and white people love to connect those birds to sacred events. Maybe ten years earlier, at a totem pole ceremony outside the Burke Museum, an eagle floated overhead. An Indian guy leaned over toward me.

"Hey, Mr. Writer," he said. "That eagle has come to bless us."

I nodded my head but I really wanted to tell him that I saw that same eagle at least three times a week. I wanted to pull up a map on my phone and show him that Lake Washington was less than a mile away. You know, I wanted to say, the water where all that eagle food is swimming.

"Come on," Edgar said to me. "Tell me what those kestrals meant."

"I would guess that only you could know their meaning," I said. Jesus, I thought, I sound like a circus mentalist guessing at somebody's weight.

But tears welled in his eyes and Edgar hugged me hard. Then he whispered in my ear.

"I knew you would understand," he said. "Those kestrals were my mother and father. They're finally together again."

In my arms, Edgar suddenly felt heavier—as heavy as the boy who'd been witness to his parents' coming apart—and then he suddenly felt lighter, as if he'd become a small bird.

I knew his emotions were real but it wasn't because of anything I'd said or done. He'd taken himself on a journey and I was just the Indian dude riding three seats back.

Edgar kissed me on the forehead and then excused himself to seek the approval of other Indians. I hovered around the party until that tattooed pretendian appeared, smiled, and pointed at me. I'd given him power by having sex with him—by being vulnerable beneath him. I'd given naked credibility to his deceptions. He knew that he'd defeated me without ever having to declare war.

A year later, I was at home in Wellpinit, on the Spokane Indian Reservation, when my phone rang. Everybody still had landlines because the cell phone reception was spotty on the rez.

"Hello," said the woman when I answered. "My name is Vera Marsh. I'm a fact checker for The New Yorker."

She was working on a personal essay that Edgar had written. It had been at least twenty years since they'd last published him.

"Wow, Vera," I said. "This is a big comeback for Edgar."

"It's a beautiful work," she said. "I've read it many, many times and I cry everytime. I guess he's gonna turn it into a full memoir. Grove Press won the auction to publish it."

"That's great," I said. "How can I help you?"

"Edgar has written about a house party where he talked to you about birds."

"Yes," I said. "Kestrals."

"A breeding pair?" Vera asked.

"Yes," I said. "He saw them perched on a telephone line and stopped his truck."

"And those birds landed on his truck?" she asked. "And then on his hands?"

"Well," I said. "That's what he told me. I wasn't there to see the kestrals."

"But he told you they landed on his hands—on his palms, to be exact?"

"Yes," I said. "That was his story. I don't know if it's a true story. We're writers. Literary license and all, you know."

"Yes," Vera said. "He's clear that he isn't sure what happened. Or why it happened. Or even if it happened at all. He writes that it would be difficult for anybody to think of him as a rational being after his encounter with those kestrals."

"I can't comment on his rationality," I said. "I mean—he wrote a novel from a bullet's point of view. A coming of age novel about a bullet. I mean—can a bullet write a billdungsroman? Edgar is a brilliant writer. And that means he's also a brilliant liar."

"Yes," Vera said. "He calls himself a professional fabulist."

"That's an accurate job description. For all of us.”

"He writes that you hugged him after he told you about the birds."

"Ah, I'd say he initiated the hug."

"Okay," Vera said. "And then he says you whispered in his ear."

I laughed.

"Um," I said. "He whispered in my ear,"

"Okay," she said. "He writes that you told him the meaning of the kestrals. You whispered that they were the spirits of his late mother and father, reconciled."

"Wow," I said.

I wasn't surprised by Edgar's blending of fact and fiction. That's what we writers do. But his depiction of our conversation made me sound like a religious person. I'm not. My mother and father had been Spokane Indian literalists. They believed that Coyote had created us Spokanes with just as much ferocity as a literal Christian believed in Adam and Eve. My parents' literalism was stifling. They wouldn't even let me and my siblings go to powwows because they believed them to be 20th Century inventions that were about money and not the soul. So, just like liberal Catholics fled the Latin Mass, I fled my mother and father's archaic home. I still loved them, of course, but from a safe distance. My sister kept her distance, too, but my brother always fought for a bit of ordinary attention so he went the most spectacular route and shot a Colville Indian man twice in the chest and killed him.

"Vera," I said to the fact checker. "I need to tend to something. Can I call you back?"

She gave me her number and I hung up the phone and walked outside. Our reservation is essentially one epic forest. I looked at my favorite tree—the second-tallest one on my property—and said, "Hey, Mr. Pine, what are we supposed to do about these damn white people?"

Whether consciously or subconsciously, Edgar had given me the shamanic power to define his visions but had also defined himself, a white man, as the special soul who'd earned an Indian shaman's attention.

Over the next week. I ignored Vera's calls and messages and wondered how Edgar might be forced to rewrite our kestral conundrum to keep it legal. And then I wondered if The New Yorker would kill his piece if I didn't confirm the facts and fictions. And if The New Yorker killed the essay then maybe Grove Press would kill his book deal.

Edgar was an elderly and almost fogotten writer. Seven of his books were out of print. Most contemporary critics claimed that the movie version of Let the Bullet Speak, Let the Bullet Sing was a colonial and archaic specimen that had not aged well.

I didn't want to take away Edgar's last and best chance to be heard. So I called Vera.

"Hey." I said. "I'm so sorry for the delay. I needed to write everything down to make sure my memory was clear and accurate."

"That's cool," she said. "Not everybody is serious about this process."

"I respect your seriousness," I said.

"Thank you very much. Now, okay, did you whisper to Edgar that night when you hugged him and did you tell him those kestrals were the spirits of his mother and father?"

"He hugged me first," I said. "And he whispered to me first."

"What did he say?" Vera asked.

"He asked me if I knew what those kestrals meant."

"And how did you reply?"

"I told him that birds were messengers. And that they usually carried messages from the dead."

I closed my eyes. I was a storyteller. I needed to finish my story. So I said, "And then Edgar looked me in the eyes. He was crying. And I asked him who he thought might need to send him messages."

And then I told Vera that it was Edgar who realized that the kestrals weren't just messengers. It was Edgar who suddenly realized that his mother and father had returned to him.

"Edgar is the poet and the preacher," I said. "I was just his editor."

"Thank you," Vera said. "I've got it now."

After we said our goodbyes, I made a cup of coffee and sat on my front porch until the sun went down and the mosquitoes came for me. Everybody expects Indians to lead them through the dark. And sometimes, very rarely, we reluctantly switch on the plastic flashlight and illuminate the gas station map.