stand there for another minute, and then I say: “You ever feel trapped between two worlds?” Then I face palm. “Sorry, that was a stupid question.”
“No, it’s fine, Carlos. And yes, every single day that I put on this suit and go to work, actually. And every time I walk down the street and someone mistakes me for something I’m not. Also, anytime I step foot back on the rez and get called a sellout. And during certain arguments me and Eddie have had. Yes. Quite a bit actually.”
“Damn.”
“But I’m all right with it.”
“Oh?”
“I’m gonna be fifty-three years old next week, Carlos.”
“Happy birthday.”
He shrugs it off. “Yeah, yeah, whatever. The point is, I could give a fuck what people see me as now. Does it still vex the shit out of me when someone calls me a cracker? Of course, especially if I haven’t gotten my mochaccino yet.”
“I’m sure the mochaccino does wonders for you not looking white.”
Russell rolls his eyes. “You know what I mean though. There’s moments, sure. There’ll always be moments. But in the grand scheme of things, I know what the fuck I am. The one man I truly give a fuck about knows what the fuck I am, and the Creator on high definitely knows what the fuck I am. So what the fuck do I care about anybody else?”
He makes a good case for not giving a fuck. I’ll give him that. “You ever feel like you might one day have to pick sides?”
“Oh, like the apocalyptic race war? Let me tell you something, Carlos: that shit’s been going on every single day since the country was born and long before that too. People walking around waiting for it like it’s gonna be some moment, us and them, but no: war is the constant state of things. Slow fucking death. We’re just trying to squeeze out whatever little slab of peace we can find. You feel me?”
I nod, regretting slightly that I unleashed the rampage. But instead of going on, Russell just stares at me for a few seconds.
“What is it?” I ask.
“This is usually the part where, having listened to what I have to say, you then share something.”
“Oh.” I forget how these things work. I think for a second, then shrug. “I really have no fucking idea what’s going on. All I know is: I ain’t really this and I ain’t really that. I don’t know if I believe in God, but if there is one, I feel like he or she or whatever is fucking with me right now.”
Russell nods. “Sounds about right. God’s good for fucking with a man. We get our britches in a wad about it, but usually? That shit ends up pointing us exactly where we need to go.”
“I guess . . .”
“And you wanna know something else . . .” It’s a demand, not a question. “They took me aside one time, when I went back to the rez and I was all fucked up. I was a complete alcoholic, to tell you the truth, and a fuckup in general at life. And that’s not even to mention the fact that I had one foot in the closet and the other on the dance floor.” He belly laughs. “Anyway, yeah, they took me aside, some of the elders. We call them elders, you know, not senior fucking citizens, where I come from, because they’re people and not cheap boxes you check off to get a discount on your car insurance.”
“Okay.”
“Anyway, they were like, ‘Look, Russell, this can go one of two ways: you can continue to fuck up your life and die in a sniffling pool of your own self-centeredness’—I’m paraphrasing, of course.”
“Of course.”
“‘Or you can embrace that wild enigmatic complicated bitch that is your destiny and ride it into the motherfucking sunset.’”
“Damn.”
“Again, paraphrasing.”
“Right.”
“They said the Creator made certain ones of us look white for a reason, that we had a mission: to infiltrate the white man’s world and find out what we could, right? Because the fact is, a white dude will tell my pale ass some shit he won’t even tell your pale-but-brown ass, just on the sheer fact that I pass much more than you do, Carlos. It’s just a fact of it. And I can complain about it, because it’s easy to fall into bitterness when you got white people in your ear talking about all their twisted fears and fantasies, trust me. But now it’s ordained as such. There’s a reason