War Dances by Sherman Alexie Page B

teeter-totter, on the baseball field. Even the losers. And you learned that from your father.”
    “My father is a great man,” I said, but I wasn’t sure I believed it. I had to believe it, though, or my foundations would collapse.
    “No,” Jeremy said. “Your father has great ideas, but he’s an ordinary man, just like all of us. No, your father is more of an asshole than usual. He likes to hit people.”
    “He’s only hit me a couple of times.”
    “That you can remember.”
    “What does that mean?”
    “We wouldn’t practice denial if it didn’t work.”
    “Fuck you,” I said.
    “Oh, you’re scary. What are you going to do, punch me in the face?”
    We laughed.
    “It comes down to this,” Jeremy said. “You can’t be a great father and a great politician at the same time. Impossible. Can’t be a great father and a great writer, either. Just ask Hemingway’s kids.”
    “I prefer Faulkner.”
    “Yeah, there’s another candidate for Father of the Year.”
    “Okay, okay, writers are bad dads. What’s your point?”
    “Your father is great because of his ideas. And those great ideas will make him a great president.”
    “Why do you believe in him so much?”
    “It’s about sacrifice. Listen, I am a wealthy American male. I can’t campaign for something as silly and fractured as gay marriage when there are millions of Muslim women who can’t even show their ankles. Your daddy knows that. Everybody knows it.”
    “I don’t know anything.”
    “I hate to sound like a campaign worker or something, but listen to me. I believe in him so much that I’ll pay ten bucks for a gallon of gas. I believe in him so much that I’m going to let you go free.”
    I wondered if Jeremy had been beaten so often that it had destroyed his spirit. Had he lost the ability to defend himself? How many times could he forgive the men who had bloodied and broken him? Is there a finite amount of forgiveness in the world? Was there a point after which forgiveness, even the most divinely inspired, is simply the act of a coward? Or has forgiveness always been used as political capital?
    “Jeremy,” I asked, “what am I supposed to do with all this information?”
    “That’s up to you, sweetheart.”
    Oh, there are more things in heaven and earth than can be explained by Meet the Press.
    Jeremy and I haven’t talked since that day. We agreed that our friendship was best left abandoned in the past. My crime against him was also left in the past. As expected, the police did not pursue the case, and it was soon filed away. There was never any need to invent a story.
    I cannot tell you what happened to James, or to Eddie and Spence, or to Bernard. We who shared the most important moment of our lives no longer have any part in the lives of the others. It happens that way. I imagine that someday one of them might try to tell the whole story. And I imagine nobody would believe them. Who would believe any of them? Or me? Has a liar ever told the truth?
    As for my father, he lost his reelection bid and retired to the relatively sad life of an ex-senator. He plays golf three times a week. State leaders beg for his advice.
    My father and I have never again discussed that horrible night. We have no need or right to judge each other for sins that might have already doomed us to a fiery afterlife. Instead, we both silently forgave each other, and separately and loudly pray to God for his forgiveness. I’ll let you know how that works out.

Another Proclamation
    When
    Lincoln
    Delivered
    The
    Emancipation
    Proclamation,
    Who
    Knew
    that, one year earlier, in 1862, he’d signed and approved the order for the largest public execution in United States history? Who did they execute? “Mulatto, mixed-bloods, and Indians.” Why did they execute them? “For uprisings against the State and her citizens.” Where did they execute them? Mankato, Minnesota. How did they execute them? Well, Abraham Lincoln thought it was