Ten Little Indians Read Online Free

stranger nonetheless.
    “And I’ll tell you what,” her father said. “After Corliss graduates from college and gets her law degree, she’s going to move back to the reservation and fix what’s wrong. We men have had our chances, I’ll tell you what. We’ll send all the tribal councilmen to the golf courses and let the smart women run the show. I’ll tell you what. My daughter is going to save our tribe.”
    Yes, her family loved and supported her, so how could she resent them for being clueless about her real dreams and ambitions? Her mother and father and all of her uncles and aunts sent her money to help her through college. How many times had she opened an envelope and discovered a miraculous twenty-dollar bill? The family and the tribe were helping her, so maybe she was a selfish bitch for questioning the usefulness of tribalism. Here she was sitting in a corner of her tiny apartment, pretending to be alone in the world, the one poetic Spokane, and she was reading a book of poems, of sonnets, by another Spokane. How could she ever be alone if Harlan Atwater was somewhere out there in the world? Okay, his poems weren’t great. Some of them were amateurish and trite, and others were comedic throwaways, but there were a few poems and a few lines that contained small bits of power and magic:
The Little Spokane
    My river is not the same size as your river.
    My river is smaller and colder.
    My river begins in the north
    And rushes to find me.
    My river calls to me.
    I swim it because it is water.
    Water doesn’t care about anybody
    But this water cares about me.
    Or maybe it doesn’t care about me.
    Maybe the river thinks I’m driftwood
    Or a rubber tire or a bird or a dead dog.
    Maybe the river is not a river.
    Maybe the river is my father.
    Maybe he’s smaller and colder than your father.
    Corliss had swum the Little Spokane River. She’d floated down the river in a makeshift raft. She’d drifted beneath bridges and the limbs of trees. She’d been in the physical and emotional places described in the poem. She’d been in the same places where Harlan Atwater had been, and that made her sad and happy. She felt connected to him and wanted to know more about him. She picked up the telephone and called her mother.
    “Hey, Mom.”
    “Corliss, hey, sweetie, it’s so good to hear your voice. I miss you.”
    Her mother was a loan officer for Farmers’ Bank. Twenty years earlier, she’d started as a bank teller and had swum her way up the corporate fish ladder.
    “I miss you, too, Mom. How is everybody?”
    “We’re still Indian. How’s school going?”
    “Good.”
    All of their conversations began the same way. The mother-daughter telephone ceremony. Corliss knew her mother would soon become emotional and tell her how proud the family was of her accomplishments.
    “I don’t know if we tell you this enough,” her mother said. “But we’re so proud of you.”
    “You tell me every time we talk.”
    “Oh, well, you know, I’m a mother. I’m supposed to talk that way. It’s just, well, you’re the first person from our family to ever go to college.”
    “I know, Mom, you don’t need to tell me my résumé.”
    “You don’t need to get smart.”
    Corliss couldn’t help herself. She loved her mother, but her mother was a bipolar storyteller who told lies during her manic phases and heavily exaggerated during her depressed times. Those lies and exaggerations were often flattering to Corliss, so it was hard to completely resent them. According to the stories, Corliss had already been accepted to Harvard Medical School but had declined because she didn’t feel Harvard would respect her indigenous healing methods. You couldn’t hate a mother full of such tender and flattering garbage, but you could certainly view her with a large measure of contempt.
    “I’m sorry, Mom. Listen, I picked up this book of poems—”
    “Corliss, you know how your father feels about those poems.”
    “They’re