Shoes on Fire

Essay

During seventh grade, my best friend was named Randy. I lived in Wellpinit, across the street from the tribal school, while he lived ten miles away on the eastern border of our reservation. So he’d ride the bus to school.

On warm days, he wore jeans and a t-shirt. On cold days, he wore a down vest over his T-shirt.

On most mornings, he’d get off the bus in front of the school and walk across the street to my house. Then we’d have about fifteen minutes to watch TV, talk shit, and maybe eat a bowl of cereal. That was our ceremony. It was simple and beautiful.

One morning, I was still asleep when Randy burst into my bedroom and yelled, “Fire! Fire! Fire! Fire!”

Terrified, I leapt out of my bed and ran. I followed Randy out of my room, up the stairs, and out the door onto the front lawn, where he fell laughing onto the grass.

There was no fire. It was a prank.

“Fuck you!” I yelled but I was laughing, too. Soon enough, my laughter dropped me to my knees.

“Your face, the look on your face!” Randy yelled.

“Fuck you!” I yelled back.

I loved that kid as much as one kid can love anybody.

Thirty-six years later, on December 8th, 2015, I received a flurry of texts, emails, and phone calls from friends and family to inform me that Randy had died in a car wreck.

It was a daytime crash. He was talking on his cell phone while driving. He wasn’t wearing his seat belt. The people in the other car survived. Randy died instantly.

He and I hadn’t seen each other much in our adulthood. I became a traveling storyteller—a city Indian with one million frequent flyer miles—while Randy stayed on the rez and worked at the tribal fish hatchery.

He was the inspiration for Rowdy, a beloved character in my novel, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian. Before publication, I sent him the book to read for his approval. He said it was fine. He said, “Some of it is true. Some of it isn’t.”

This morning, as I stepped out of my bed, I tripped on a pair of my shoes and remembered a pair of Randy’s shoes. Why did my mind make that association? I don’t know. Memory is a trickster. Memory is Coyote digging at the corners of our brains.

I remembered a seventh grade basketball game where I followed Randy into the locker room. I don’t remember if we won or lost that game but I remember that Randy was limping.

“Are you okay?” I asked. “Did you sprain it?”

He sat on a bench and pulled off his left basketball shoe to reveal that his sock was coated with blood at his toes and heel.

“Jesus,” I said. “What happened?”

“They’re too small,” he said. “They’re last year’s basketball shoes. We couldn’t afford new ones this year.”

During our childhood, I’d never thought of Randy and his family as being poor. Even now, all these decades later, I still don’t remember them as being poor. But Randy did have six siblings and, like my family, they also lived in a house built by the United States government.

Randy’s family definitely had more money than mine did. Or maybe it’s more accurate to say that they usually had more money than we did. Maybe they almost always had more money that we did.

But there was one basketball season where I had new basketball shoes and Rowdy bled his way through the games. But, then again, I don’t recall ever again seeing his bloody sock. So maybe his blisters became calluses. Maybe his calluses became armor.

But I don’t wear any armor when I remember Randy.

I grieve his death and I grieve what I lost when I left our reservation. I’m an Indian boy who knows that some of our wounds never heal.