The Pale-Faced Lie

by David Crow

Dad came up behind me and said, “This is an idiot’s paradise.”

Dad said some of the drunks would pass out and freeze to death overnight when the temperature dropped. The police called them Popsicles.

According to Dad, Cherokees were superior to everyone, so it was okay for us to pull pranks on the low-life Navajos and Mexican merchants. None of us kids had met any other Cherokees, but Dad assured us they were all supermen, just like him. I felt proud, knowing how much better I was, even though I was still scrawny and not very strong.

And I discovered that Mom wasn’t the only sad woman. Gallup was full of them.

With Dad, fun was always mixed with pain and suffering. All allegiance had to be to him alone.

Rich people worship money, and poor people worship Jesus. It’s all they’ve got.

She told us to have hozhoni (harmony) and show ajooba (kindness) because those things will return to you.

After dinner, he sat next to me on the old red couch and draped his arm around me. It was the first time he had touched me without hitting me since we moved to Fort Defiance.

Dad always had more compassion for animals than he did for humans. I was almost jealous of that poor coyote. Why couldn’t he show the same kindness toward his four children and their mom?

He loved violence as much as he loved knowledge, as if they went hand in hand.

Murder is the easiest crime to get away with because you have no witnesses. Robbery, kidnapping, any of the other crimes—there are witnesses or people you need to depend on. The perfect murder will never be solved.”

“Based on the condition of this pickup,” he said, “the guy went to the happy hunting ground, the place where drunks go when they exit the surly bonds of Earth’s grasp.”

“Half the PhDs in America study Indian alcoholism, but nothing changes because no one really gives a shit. And you’re worried about stealing tools.”

Our little suburb had more roads, bridges, libraries, recreation centers, and sidewalks than on the entire reservation. How could the Navajos have so little in a land where there was so much?

Math explains itself.

I had no intention of trying to succeed in a world that had nothing to offer me.

And those psychologists are like the stupid ones we had in San Quentin. Who cares what they say? The more educated they are, the easier they are to fool.”

I couldn’t think of a career that required the art of bullshit besides politics, but that was a useless profession. My thorough reading of the Washington Post each day convinced me of that.