The Only Good Indians

Lewis, a Blackfoot man and friend of Ricky’s who has moved to Great Falls, Montana, stares at a broken spotlight over his mantel, which he intends to fix as a surprise for his wife Peta. The spotlight flickers on and off at random. His dog Harley barks outside, and he is reminded of the fact that he has made it to 36 without succumbing to the common pitfalls of his people—health problems, alcoholism, or jail. He thinks of himself in newspaper headlines that recall his past as a basketball player on the reservation.

He climbs a ladder in his living room without turning off the ceiling fan. Once he is above it, he looks down through it and has a vision of a young cow elk he killed a decade ago. The elk’s hide is still in his freezer. The elk’s eye opens and blinks up at him, which causes Lewis to flinch backwards. He begins to topple over, sure that he will smash his head against the brick hearth, when Peta returns from the grocery store.

Peta runs toward him and tackles him into the wall, saving his life. She is outraged that he would be so stupid, and as they lay there, he sees that the spotlight has flickered on again.

At work, Lewis calls Cass, an old friend from the reservation. Cass chides him, asking if he’s in jail or if Peta finally left. Lewis has called to ask Cass if he ever thinks about the elk they killed together. Cass says he still hates the game warden, Denny Pease, over the incident. It is near the 10-year anniversary of the incident, which took place on the last day of the hunting season.

Lewis still feels guilt over the cow elk he killed. Before he left the reservation, he gave away all the meat he got from her to the elders, stamping the packages with a racoon paw stamp because he couldn’t find an elk stamp. The elk was killed on the land saved for the elders to hunt in, so he thinks giving the meat to them is fitting. He doesn’t believe that the elk could be haunting him, because “her meat had got where it was meant to get” (24).

Lewis gets off the phone with Cass and calls Gabe. They exchange pleasantries, and Lewis asks if Gabe is still poaching regularly, which he is. They talk of Denorah, Gabe’s daughter, who has become a high school basketball prodigy. Lewis asks if Gabe ever goes out to the “drop-off place,” and Gabe tells him the place is haunted now, that the elk don’t even go there. Lewis wonders if the elk might remember the incident, which Gabe mocks.

Lewis gets off the phone to see that Shaney, his trainee, has been watching him. She’s Crow, and he worries that their mutual Indigenous identity is leading people to try and put them together romantically. He makes up a story about his wife asking him to call an electrician, and Shaney flirts with him as they head back to work.

Lewis and his coworkers head to his place on their motorcycles so he can show them that Harley has learned how to jump over their high fence. Since Lewis is the new guy despite five years at the job, Shaney rides with him on his motorcycle, leading to uncomfortable tension. Lewis wishes he hadn’t mentioned Harley’s new trick, but he wonders if Harley’s escapes have something to do with the elk he saw.

They arrive at the house and Lewis’s friend tease him, disbelieving him about the dog. Inside, Shaney makes note of Peta’s underwear while the men look at the motorcycle parts Lewis has left around. Out back, Harley isn’t in the yard, despite Lewis chaining him up that morning. They find Harley hanging over the fence, strangled. Lewis’ coworkers apologize, but Harley twitches awake. Lewis freezes, so a coworker, Silas, rushes in to pull Harley down right as the train that abuts Lewis’s property rushes by. Silas frees Harley, who turns and bites him viciously on the face.

The next day, Lewis uses masking tape to make an outline of the dead elk on his living room floor. Peta is in the garage with Harley, who she wrapped up in blankets. She walks in the house with a bottle of goat milk, and Lewis sees her briefly as a mother; though her decision to not want children isn’t about Lewis, he can’t help but think about his Indigenous bloodline. Peta says her care for Harley is helping, but Lewis knows he will soon have to go retrieve the rifle from the reservation that he used to kill the cow elk.

Peta offers to help Lewis with his project, which he appreciates. She thinks what he saw is a manifestation of guilt, even though he hasn’t told her the full story of the incident. When he finishes, it is a poor resemblance, but he sets up the ladder and brings out the cow elk’s hide from the freezer, setting it inside the outline. He climbs the ladder again and looks through the fan blades. When he tells Peta to go get a bag to recreate the scene fully, he sees a woman with an elk’s head looking up at him. He tries to cover his face, but he knows it’s too late.

Lewis wakes to the sound of a basketball dribbling. He checks on Harley and sees that Shaney is outside using his driveway hoop. She has stopped by to see Harley and to borrow a book he mentioned, but she knows that Peta wouldn’t want her to be there. He notices that her eye is bloodshot and assumes that she had a bad date.

Lewis likes fantasy novels, which Peta doesn’t understand, and he’s surprised in Shaney’s interest. Lewis and Shaney play basketball together while talking about which books she might like, and Shaney makes double entendres that make Lewis uncomfortable. She ties up her shirt to play, and Lewis sees a long scar on her stomach. She notices his attention on it and says it’s the result of the poor medical care on the reservation without telling him the underlying cause.

They continue playing, and Shaney is overt about making physical contact with Lewis. He tries to ignore it. The game ends, and she heads inside ahead of him. When she sees the scene in the living room, she thinks that the bundled hide has ceremonial purpose, which Lewis denies. Shaney bends down and moves some of the masking tape around, making the elk look more like a proper depiction. She asks him what the elk figure is doing there, and before he can stop himself, he is confessing to her all the details of the incident.

The narrative flashes back to the day of the hunting incident. Lewis, Gabe, Cass, and Ricky are out hunting near Duck Lake when they find elk tracks near their truck. The tracks lead into the hunting grounds reserved for the tribal elders. Gabe points out that the elders aren’t hunting today, and it’s the last day of the season. They are technically allowed into the hunting grounds, but not by truck. Cass decides that he will take the heat if they get caught, since the truck belongs to him.

They take the truck through deep snow, getting stuck several times along the way and digging themselves out again. When they stop suddenly because of a sharp drop-off, Gabe hushes them and reaches for his rifle. They’ve stumbled onto the herd of elk. They leave the truck start shooting, and in a panic, the herd heads uphill toward them. They manage to kill nine of the elk, though they know there’s no way to transport the meat back and Lewis has fractured his orbital bone with his rifle scope.

A heavy snow starts, but the men are elated—Gabe calls it “old-time buffalo jump” and dubs it the “Thanksgiving Classic” (64). But Lewis is startled to find the young cow elk with yellow eyes begins to stand up, still alive. He puts the rifle to her head, apologizes, and shoots point blank, but the cow still doesn’t die despite its injuries and begins to stand up again. He searches for another shell, finds one, and fires again, directly into the eye this time, thinking that animals don’t have the same awareness as people, which he tells Shaney he believed until he saw the elk again in his living room. As he finishes his story, Peta walks in on the two of them sitting close.