Blasphemy Read Online Free Page A

dude.”
    Mike’s right ear was cauliflowered like a boxer’s.
    “It looks like an alien is fucking my earhole,” he said. “But people don’t mess with me because of it. They think I’m some mixed-martial artist who will spinning-backfist them into the hospital.
    “My father did it,” he said. “First time, I was maybe seven, and I dropped my orange juice on the kitchen floor, and he slapped me on the side of my head. Knocked me out. Woke up, my ear swollen and all bloody and funny-color bruised. You know what I said to my mom? I told her my ear had a black eye.
    “Yeah, my mom knew my dad hit me,” he said. “She never did anything about it. But that’s okay. Nobody else did anything about it, either.
    “Dad kept hitting the same ear,” he said. “He kept hitting me whenever he was pissed. And he was pissed all the time. Hit me maybe fifty times over the years.
    “It’s my right ear,” he said, “because my dad was left-handed.
    “Last time he hit me was the night I graduated from high school,” he said. “He was drunk and kept pushing at me. Kept asking me if I thought I was too good for him now. Kept saying I thought I’d taken a shit on the moon. And then I told him I was going to community college and he hit me. But I was bigger than I used to be. Same size as him. And I was younger and sober. So, yeah, I just kicked his ass out the front door and onto the lawn. Had an audience after a while.
    “And nobody stopped me, either,” Mike said. “Not my mom. Not even Pastor Arnold. Because they all knew for years that dad was beating on me, and none of them did a thing to stop him. And now I was getting revenge. And they were okay with that. All they could do was call the ambulance after I was done.
    “Got five years for manslaughter,” he said. “Out early for good behavior. Got my bachelor’s degree in education. I want to teach high school. But no way in hell they’ll let an ex-con teach in a real school. No way they’ll let me teach white kids. So I moved back to the rez. Back in with my mother.
    “Sometimes,” he said, “she asks me why I had to kill him. She still misses him.
    “And sometimes,” he said, “she rubs this lotion on my ear. It’s some miracle medicine that’s supposed to make scars go away. I don’t tell her that shit might have worked when I was ten, but it ain’t going to work now. This ear is going to look like this forever.
    “And, yeah,” Mike said, “prison was horrible at first. I got scars way deep inside. But things got better as soon as the other Indians realized I was Indian, too. They saw my blond hair and blue eyes, you know, and thought I was just another Aryan. The real Aryans thought I was one of them, too. But I speak my tribal language, man, and I play drum and sing. So I just walked up to the Indians gathered in the prison yard. And I clapped my hands together like a drum and I sang a powwow song, northern style, maybe a little too fast because I was nervous.
    “And, man, oh, man,” he said. “Did those Indians laugh and cheer and war-whoop it up when I was done. And this one elder, with these long, gray braids and about ten thousand tattoos, he calls for quiet. And all these hard-ass Indians shut up because they respect the elder. And he says to me and everybody else, he says, the Creator has gifted us with a half-breed who can sing full-blood.
    “So Full-Blood became my prison name,” Mike said. “Funny as shit, right? A blond Indian named Full-Blood. And, let me tell you, I sang ten thousand songs in prison, even sang for the governor, this tiny white woman, when she came to visit.
    “Before I sang, she asked me what crime I’d committed,” he said. “And that’s a question you don’t ask or answer in prison. But I figure, Hey, she’s the Governor, so I tell her the truth. I tell her I manslaughtered my father. That I punched him to death because he punched me for years. And the governor leans in close to me, so close I could