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    War Dances: Stories and Poems
    War Dances: Stories and Poems
    War Dances: Stories and Poems
    Ebook214 pages2 hours

    War Dances: Stories and Poems

    By Sherman Alexie

    3.5/5

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    About this ebook

    The bestselling, award-winning author’s “fiercely freewheeling collection of stories and poems about the tragicomedies of ordinary lives” (O, The Oprah Magazine).
    Winner of the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction, War Dances blends short stories, poems, call-and-response, and more into something that only Sherman Alexie could have written. Ordinary men stand at the threshold of profound change, from a story about a famous writer caring for a dying but still willful father, to the tale of a young Indian boy who learns to value his own life by appreciating the deaths of others. Perceptions change, too, as “Another Proclamation” casts a shadow over Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation, and “Invisible Dog on a Leash” limns the heartbreak of shattered childhood illusions. And nostalgia for antiquated technology is tenderly rendered in “Ode to Mix Tapes” and “Ode for Pay Phones.”
    With his versatile voice, Alexie explores love, betrayal, fatherhood, alcoholism, and art in this spirited, soulful, and endlessly entertaining collection, transcending genre boundaries to create something truly unique.
      This ebook features an illustrated biography including rare photos from the author’s personal collection.  
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherOpen Road Media
    Release dateOct 15, 2013
    ISBN9781480457225
    War Dances: Stories and Poems
    Author

    Sherman Alexie

    Sherman Alexie is the author of, most recently, Blasphemy, stories, from Grove Press, and Face, poetry, from Hanging Loose Press. He is the winner of the 2010 PEN/Faulkner Award, the 2007 National Book Award for Young People’s Literature, the 2001 PEN/Malamud Award for Excellence in the Short Story, and a Special Citation for the 1994 PEN/Hemingway Award for Best First Fiction. Smoke Signals, the film he wrote and coproduced, won both the Audience Award and the Filmmakers Trophy at the 1998 Sundance Film Festival. Alexie lives with his family in Seattle.

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    Reviews for War Dances

    3.5/5

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    • 3/5
      I generally like Sherman Alexie's writing, but this collection felt more like the sort that gathers in all the unpublished scraps that were not as good as the published stuff, the sort of stories and poems that might sell on the strength of the author's other more popular books, but that is not expected to draw in new fans. A few of the short stories were pretty solid, but not 'amazing', and the rest were dull or seemed unfinished.
    • 4/5
      I've been meaning to read this book for ages, I don't know why it's taken me so ridiculously long. But when I had a rare moment to actually step over into the adult fiction section in the library, in between talking Solomon down from putting every Go, Diego Go! DVD in the entire system on hold at once, this book jumped out at me.

      I confess it took a bit for me to get into this collection. I prefer Alexie's poetry and longer stories, often finding his short stories a little dry. (Of course, I admit also to a long held prejudice against short stories themselves as a format.) Where Alexie won me over was with the story "War Dances," which somehow manages to be everything I associate with Alexie, and then again with "Fearful Symmetry," which is about so many things, but the part I especially loved was about the crazy Hollywood machine and how it treats screenwriters.

      The very first story in the collection, "Breaking and Entering," didn't connect at first, but as time went on, I think I've thought about this story more than any other. About a man who accidentally kills a youth who he fins breaking into his home, it is just so relevant to everything that I think of it often.
    • 4/5
      I enjoyed this collection of short stories and poetry by Sherman Alexie. They are fun, passionate and witty and filled with larger themes of identity and belonging, pride, redemption and failure. A captivating writer. One of my favorite collections of short stories.
    • 4/5
      An eclectic mix of short story and poetry. Some is endearing, some engaging, some is somewhat dark, most of it is interspersed with Alexie's wry humour. For me, not all of it worked, but it's worth it for when the story and/or the humour works, because then it's really good.
    • 4/5
      Great collection of short stories and poems. The central story "War Dances" is awesome. But there are other really good ones as well.
    • 5/5
      I listened to the author read his work and I was completely mesmerized. His reading was flawless and the poetic nature of these memoir-like pieces surfaced in all of the writing. Achingly honest, I would really recommended listening to the audio version. I could not turn it off!
    • 3/5
      A collection of poems and short stories from Sherman Alexie, whose ironic take on Americans, no matter when they or their ancestors arrived here, is by turns funny, poignant, sometimes weird but always on the mark.
    • 3/5
      Someone has lost a little bit of his verve. Title story is the best.
    • 3/5
      I didn't enjoy this as much as his previous short story collection, Ten Little Indians. Good, but it didn't have the perfect "voice" of his previous stories.
    • 3/5
      This is a book of short stories and poems by Sherman Alexie who is a very popular Native American author. I was kind of disappointed in this small volume and wonder if that was because I'd recently seen this author in person and was so totally entertained by his deadpan humor. It doesn't come across quite that strongly in this book. I think the best story was one called "Salt" in which a Native American teenager who works for a newspaper is called upon to write an obituary for the obituary writer who just died. I'm still going to look for Alexie's most popular book called The Absolutely True Diary of a Part Time Indian.
    • 5/5
      I love Sherman Alexie's stories; the move to insert poetry I think worked in this collection.
    • 4/5
      sherman alexie is dark and funny, and brutally honest.very touching book. very well crafted short stories. the poems in between help a lot. i think it's a good way of using poetry, as intermission. a quick read but it feels like a perfectly well crafted book.
    • 5/5
      One of the best books I've read in a long time. Alexie's writing is honest, poetic, and inspiring. I didn't want it to end!
    • 4/5
      Any book by Sherman Alexie will contain quality writing and this one is no exception, although I wouldn't hold it up as one of his best. It's a somewhat uneven collection where a few stories and poems just punch you in the gut - in true Alexie style - but where many are too meandering or blurry to really carry their weight. Although I'm happy to have read it for such gems as "The Limited," "Breaking and Entering," "Another Proclamation," and the magnificent title story, "War Dances," it's unfortunately not a book that's going in my permanent collection.
    • 3/5
      Sherman Alexie does it again! This book's best part is its ability to sidle up and teach a white girl what it's like to be Native American in today's society. Alexie exposes myths and stereotypes about marriage, parenting, and Native Americans in these short stories and poems in such a deft way that you won't feel preached at or beaten over the head with his politics. You'll just pause to think how clever this National Book Award winning author really is!!
    • 4/5
      a well written collection of short stories. many dealing with men facing you they are. some of these men I didn't like which in a strange way made me like them
    • 1/5
      latest book by Sherman - after Lysa and I saw him at the Phila. Library - unfortunately he must have read all the best parts at the Library - this book was weak - I got 2/3 of the way through and put it down.
    • 3/5
      This is a collection of short stories and poems linked mainly by the fact that they're about whiny guys. I don't know. I did like a couple of the stories (especially the last one, Salt, and the title story), but the ones that left a bad taste in my mouth really left a bad taste in my mouth and kind of overpower all the rest. The Ballad of Paul Nonetheless was just gross, and I get that he was supposed to be a gross asshat guy, but I don't really need to read a story about a guy who's just wallowing in his assholishness while going "wah, wah, poor me", you know? I could go anywhere on the internet and find a million of them.Added to that the fact that I'm not a big fan of poetry and these poems didn't do anything to change my mind, and that the writing itself wasn't that great, this was just really not the book for me. I'm glad this wasn't the first thing of his I ever read, otherwise I'd probably write him off and never read anything of his again.
    • 5/5
      This is an excellent collection of stories, difficult to read in that they are often unsettling, reflecting the pain of being a Native American both in the past and today. It makes the experience of being a much reviled and mistreated minority clear and shares the pain felt in that existence with those of the majority white race that caused the pain. But beyond that, the stories also give insight into what we lost, what we sacrificed by permitting this genocide to keep America from fully integrating its own cultures with those which were here long before "white men" came to the continent.
      I was particularly impressed with the story, "The Senator's Son" because it so beautifully told the story of moral bankruptcy present in so many of us: we SAY we believe something, and those of us who are more thoughtful about matching our actions to our words try to "practice what we preach," but, given the right circumstances, self interest overwhelms moral imperatives for many of us.
      The entire book was a lesson in morals, cultural awareness, and in the effects of oppression on both the oppressed and the oppressors and I believe this book ought to find a wide audience. We need to hear what Alexie has to say.
    • 3/5
      I wasn't as impressed with this volume as I wanted to be. I vastly enjoyed the stories over the poems. Now that I know so much about his personal life, I also stopped several times in the book wondering whether or not this actually happened to him...not that it really matters, but it just kept stopping me up (not to mention it makes the content a wee bit repetitive). I'm still keeping the faith, but I'm hoping for the next to woo me a little more.
    • 5/5
      I loved this collection. It was poignant, funny, harsh, and brilliantly written. I will be picking up more of Sherman Alexie's work.
    • 4/5
      War Dances by Sherman Alexie (Grove Press, 2009)

      Sherman Alexie’s award winning, War Dances, is a book of short stories, poems, and question and answer sections, which surprisingly work quite well together. This book includes 23 pieces of literature which cover a wide array of topics, ranging from homosexuality, to corruption in politics, to struggles with alcoholism, to marriage, and even struggles faced by Native Americans. The way I see it, the book’s title, War Dances, could very well be a reference to the struggles, or wars, everyday people fight throughout their lives.

      When talking about Native Americans and their traditions in this book’s title story, War Dances, Alexie holds nothing back. “You should see my dad right now. He’s pretending to go into this, like, fucking trance and is dancing around my sister’s bed.” He offers valuable, yet often grotesque insight into the life of a modern Native American.


      Alexie seamlessly blends together a serious yet comedic tone as he describes various tragedies and unfortunate coincidences. Part auto-biography, this book goes to great length to reveal much about what could very well be Sherman Alexie’s life. In his short story, Orphans, Sherman Alexie writes through the eyes of a family man diagnosed with a tumor. “I was worried that I had a brain tumor. Or that my hydrocephalus had returned. I was scared that I was going to die and orphan my sons.” While Alexie is quick to touch on dark themes such as that mentioned in Orphans, he often balances these stories with sarcasm and humor.

      The somewhat quirky and questionable format of Sherman Alexie’s stories attests to his unconventional writing style, and leaves readers desiring more from this Native-American man. His short stories can be as short as a page or as long as seven, however, all have value and serve a purpose. As the book weaves through various stories, it reveals multiple underlying themes including, holding oneself accountable for one’s actions, and how success can cause corruption. Overall, this 2010 PEN/Faulkner Award winner adds to Alexie’s collection of worthwhile reads, which includes various other award winning and nominated books.

      --Michael Lurigio
    • 4/5
      War Dances by Sherman Alexie

      A nice mix of short stories and poetry by an insightful writer. I sometimes got confused about how much of his writings were his personal truths or if he was telling others' stories or just making up stories. It was all very honest. He understands the inner workings of people.

      What stood out for me was his story about Elder Briggs, a young man killed in the midst of a burglary, and how one moment in time can change so many lives. It also was thought-provoking in how those affected by tragedy can look at the same situation in different ways in order to find a comfortable scapegoat on which to place the blame. It was an interesting study on human nature. None of us want to be the ones at fault.

      Also, his poem about watching a man intentionally swerving his car to try to hit a stray dog, and how a witness to that terrible act has to make a decision about whether to do anything about it...or not...when their own personal safety may be in jeopardy.

      There are snippets about life as a Native American (or really insert any minority) which are telling when describing them having to tolerate ignorance, such as an interview with an old-timer recalling a brave act by an American Indian soldier in WWII who saved others' lives at the risk of his own, and even in the honored way the old soldier spoke of his former buddy's courage, he still made light of the fact that they called him "Chief". Another story recalls a little boy raging against a blatant deception, and then being referred to as "Little Crazy Horse".

      This is veering off track here, but I need to try to relieve some personal guilt or vent a bit. I was a kid in the 70s in a very small town where the predominant tribal people are Lakota Sioux, and remarks like this were used, although most people around me were oblivious to how hurtful these digs could be, and probably would have felt terrible if they were made aware. It was the general insensitivity of the times, especially in an area that had no diversity to speak of. It's easy to make fun of a general anonymous group of people when you'll never have to look them in the eye. Back then, we told "Polack" jokes or "Ole & Lena" jokes (Scandinavian version) with the same blase' attitude and umbrella stereotyping as today's blonde jokes. We had common terms for things that had lost their original (derogatory) meaning for my generation. We as kids honestly didn't know better; anything we would have said would have been repeated from what we heard adults say, kind of like in today's world you can ask any 6- or 7-year-old kid who they would vote for in the presidential election and they will have very strong opinions which will immediately let you know whether their parents are conservative or liberal. As a whole we now know about the need for tolerance/kindness/fairness. We now know. Let's move in the right direction and make sure we are teaching our children to be better than we have been.
    • 3/5
      Sherman Alexie has become one of my favorite writes, but this is not my favorite work by him. This book is sort of a random collection of stories and poetry, and I not that fond of a lot of poetry so that has a lot to do with it. The title story, and "The Ballad of Paul Nonetheless" are really good, but the rest of it was not as good as the other things I’ve read by him.
    • 5/5
      Alexie’s War Dances is a collection of stories about the complexities of all manner of relationships: father/son, husband/wife, homeowner/robber, boyfriend/girlfriend, friend/friend, modern Native American/cultural heritage. Alexie uses both poetry and variations on the standard short story to communicate the tragic struggles and small triumphs of forgiveness and quiet resolution at turning points in the character’s lives. Critical moments for reflection—a son seeing his father’s alcoholism lead to his death, a man mindlessly committing a violent hate crime, another man losing innocence by learning the lies behind all he has believed—center each story and guide the character and the reader through a thoughtful, meditative examination of self and belief.

      I believe this book deserves its honor of the National Book Award because Alexie has mastered the art of capturing a deeply true and tragically beautiful thought’s essence and crafting it into the fabric of a honest, fallible, and heartbreakingly real character’s life experience. His dialogue is piercing, moving, and challenging, and his pacing in his prose development mirrors the careful construction of his poetry, which I have always found sublime. I would recommend this book because it is highly enjoyable and freeing in spite of (or even because of) its heavy content. His wrenching vignettes, interwoven with his powerful poetry, sing of expert, intentional wordsmithing, that both refreshes with its sparseness and originality and soothes with rhythm and truth.

      Rebecca H.
    • 4/5
      This collection of short stories and poetry is fabulous. I read it in an evening. The mixture of humour and tragedy is deftly handled and just when you are relaxing and laughing you are punched in the stomach with reality. A young man winces as a traditional healing song is sung at his father's hospital bedside and the hospital staff looks on in wonder at this wonderful display of aboriginal culture. And he thinks,
      "I knew this song would not bring back my father's feet . This song would not repair my father's bladder, kidneys , lungs , and heart. This song would not prevent my father from drinking a bottle of vodka as soon as he could sit up in bed. This song would not defeat death."
      As for the smiling nurse,
      "Sometimes , even after all of these years , she could still be surprised by her work. She still marveled at the infinite and ridiculous faith of other people."
      And the young man ponders whether dying slowly from alcohol and disabetes should be called an "a natural Indian death".
      Sherman Alexie is a fearless writer, mocking, rebellious, yet completely entertaining.
    • 4/5
      Sherman Alexie’s War Dances is a collection of short stories and poems that may at first glance seem deceptively simple but have the capacity to catch you unaware of the ingrained depth.

      The stories and poems included in War Dances are pretty easy reading and are amusing, especially the poems which precede and follow each story. The poems encapsulate little modern slices of life and serve to punctuate the theme of the story. War Dances is anchored by six stories of urban/suburban life, in the stories some characters are identified as Indians, some not. These characters are all just people going through similar searches as human beings and not Indian or Anglo. The best example would be the first short story Breaking and Entering which is a homeowners reaction to a thief breaking into his house while he’s home and the ramifications of their encounter.

      Some of the stories or poems may convince you to look at the world differently than you do (the aim of most art), Looking Glass is a poem about Chief Joseph of the Nez Pearce who’s famous quote, “I will fight no more forever” which through the looking glass of history is taught as a victory over the Indians; but Looking Glass puts it into the Indian and perhaps correct connotation. The story, The Ballad of Paul Nonetheless, is a look at a marriage and infidelity and Alexie stays away from the usual clichés of this type of story, looking at it from all angles and advances some ideas that aren’t usually voiced. That is the beauty of stories included in War Dances, is Alexie’s ability to look at all sides of the situations the characters find themselves in and still deliver a pithy and entertaining story.

      Sherman Alexie is a master of the short story and War Dances, while not the strongest of Alexie’s work is still a strong addition to the body of work he’s building in his career.
    • 4/5
      This was ... fine, I guess. I'm not really sure how I ended up as a self-appointed quality monitor for Mr. Alexie, but I've felt for a while now that he's not exactly working up to his potential. This collection of short stories and poetry was perfectly adequate, and there were a few truly fantastic moments within the work, but overall not one single piece was extraordinary. He is not bringing his A game.

      Grade: B-
      Recommended: Well, yes. Alexie's B material is better than a lot of stuff out there.
    • 4/5
      It’s a collection of poems and short stories- some traditional, some in the form of questions and answers.
      Very interesting. An absolutely distinct voice of a typical American intellectual totally immersed in contemporary big city life, not missing a beat, yet always conscious of his Spokane Indian ancestry. Intelligent, witty and poignant.
      There is a caveat to the rating: some of the stories left me cold, but I absolutely loved some others. Same with the poems. Some didn’t leave a lasting impression on me, but others stayed, and the rating is sort of a mean of this all.
      Favourite poem: Theology of Reptiles.
      Favourite stories: War Dances and Salt.
    • 3/5
      just love Sherman Alexie's writing. I love the ironic humor in his fiction. Much of it is humorous but with a point, often a very blunt point.

      War Dances is a collection of short stories and poems. Most of them involve Native American characters. Alexie is a Spokane/Coeur d'Alene Indian. He wrote the screenplay to one of my favorite movies, "Smoke Signals." One of the scenes in that movie has become an inside joke with Sweetie and I, "John Wayne's Teeth." loved this book. I read it in less than 24 hours.

    Book preview

    War Dances - Sherman Alexie

    The Limited

    I SAW A MAN swerve his car

    And try to hit a stray dog,

    But the quick mutt dodged

    Between two parked cars

    And made his escape.

    God, I thought, did I just see

    What I think I saw?

    At the next red light,

    I pulled up beside the man

    And stared hard at him.

    He knew that’d I seen

    His murder attempt,

    But he didn’t care.

    He smiled and yelled loud

    Enough for me to hear him

    Through our closed windows:

    "Don’t give me that face

    Unless you’re going to do

    Something about it.

    Come on, tough guy,

    What are you going to do?"

    I didn’t do anything.

    I turned right on the green.

    He turned left against traffic.

    I don’t know what happened

    To that man or the dog,

    But I drove home

    And wrote this poem.

    Why do poets think

    They can change the world?

    The only life I can save

    Is my own.

    Breaking and Entering

    BACK IN COLLEGE, WHEN I was first LEARNING how to edit film—how to construct a scene—my professor, Mr. Baron, said to me, You don’t have to show people using a door to walk into a room. If people are already in the room, the audience will understand that they didn’t crawl through a window or drop from the ceiling or just materialize. The audience understands that a door has been used—the eyes and mind will make the connection—so you can just skip the door.

    Mr. Baron, a full-time visual aid, skipped as he said, Skip the door. And I laughed, not knowing that I would always remember his bit of teaching, though of course, when I tell the story now, I turn my emotive professor into the scene-eating lead of a Broadway musical.

    Skip the door, young man! Mr. Baron sings in my stories—my lies and exaggerations—skipping across the stage with a top hat in one hand and a cane in the other. Skip the door, old friend! And you will be set free!

    Skip the door is a good piece of advice—a maxim, if you will—that I’ve applied to my entire editorial career, if not my entire life. To state it in less poetic terms, one would say, An editor must omit all unnecessary information. So in telling you this story—with words, not film or video stock—in constructing its scenes, I will attempt to omit all unnecessary information. But oddly enough, in order to skip the door in telling this story, I am forced to begin with a door: the front door of my home on Twenty-seventh Avenue in the Central District neighborhood of Seattle, Washington.

    One year ago, there was a knock on that door. I heard it, but I did not rise from my chair to answer. As a freelance editor, I work at home, and I had been struggling with a scene from a locally made film, an independent. Written, directed, and shot by amateurs, the footage was both incomplete and voluminous. Simply stated, there was far too much of nothing. Moreover, it was a love scene—a graphic sex scene, in fact—and the director and the producer had somehow convinced a naive and ambitious local actress to shoot the scene full frontal, graphically so. This was not supposed to be a pornographic movie; this was to be a tender coming-of-age work of art. But it wasn’t artistic, or not the kind of art it pretended to be. This young woman had been exploited—with her permission, of course—but I was still going to do my best to protect her.

    Don’t get me wrong. I’m not a prude—I’ve edited and enjoyed sexual and violent films that were far more graphic—but I’d spotted honest transformative vulnerability in that young actress’s performance. Though the director and the producer thought she’d just been acting—had created her fear and shame through technical skill—I knew better. And so, by editing out the more gratuitous nudity and focusing on faces and small pieces of dialogue—and by paying more attention to fingertips than to what those fingertips were touching—I was hoping to turn a sleazy gymnastic sex scene into an exchange that resembled how two people in new love might actually touch each other.

    Was I being paternalistic, condescending, and hypocritical? Sure. After all, I was being paid to work with exploiters, so didn’t that mean I was also being exploited as I helped exploit the woman? And what about the young man, the actor, in the scene? Was he dumb and vulnerable as well? Though he was allowed—was legally bound—to keep his penis hidden, wasn’t he more exploited than exploiter? These things are hard to define. Still, even in the most compromised of situations, one must find a moral center.

    But how could I find any center with that knocking on the door? It had become an evangelical pounding: Bang, bang, bang, bang! It had to be the four/four beat of a Jehovah’s Witness or a Mormon. Bang, cha, bang, cha! It had to be the iambic pentameter of a Sierra Club shill or a magazine sales kid.

    Trust me, nobody interesting or vital has ever knocked on a front door at three in the afternoon, so I ignored the knocking and kept at my good work. And, sure enough, my potential guest stopped the noise and went away. I could hear feet pounding down the stairs and there was only silence—or, rather, the relative silence of my urban neighborhood.

    But then, a few moments later, I heard a window shatter in my basement. Is shatter too strong a verb? I heard my window break. But break seems too weak a verb. As I visualize the moment—as I edit in my mind—I add the sound track, or rather I completely silence the sound track. I cut the sounds of the city—the planes overhead, the cars on the streets, the boats on the lake, the televisions and the voices and the music and the wind through the trees—until one can hear only shards of glass dropping onto a hardwood floor.

    And then one hears—feels—the epic thump of two feet landing on that same floor.

    Somebody—the same person who had knocked on my front door to ascertain if anybody was home, had just broken and entered my life.

    Now please forgive me if my tenses—my past, present, and future—blend, but one must understand that I happen to be one editor who is not afraid of jump cuts—of rapid flashbacks and flash-forwards. In order to be terrified, one must lose all sense of time and place. When I heard those feet hit the floor, I traveled back in time—I de-evolved, I suppose—and became a primitive version of myself. I had been a complex organism—but I’d turned into a two-hundred-and-two pound one-celled amoeba. And that amoeba knew only fear.

    Looking back, I suppose I should have just run away. I could have run out the front door into the street, or the back door onto the patio, or the side door off the kitchen into the alley, or even through the door into the garage—where I could have dived through the dog door cut into the garage and made my caninelike escape.

    But here’s the salt of the thing: though I cannot be certain, I believe that I was making my way toward the front door—after all, the front door was the only place in my house where I could be positive that my intruder was not waiting. But in order to get from my office to the front door, I had to walk past the basement door. And as I walked past the basement door, I spotted the baseball bat.

    It wasn’t my baseball bat. Now, when one thinks of baseball bats, one conjures images of huge slabs of ash wielded by steroid-fueled freaks. But that particular bat belonged to my ten-year-old son. It was a Little League bat, so it was comically small. I could easily swing it with one hand and had, in fact, often swung it one-handed as I hit practice grounders to the little second baseman of my heart, my son, my Maximilian, my Max. Yes, I am a father. And a husband. That is information you need to know. My wife, Wendy, and my son were not in the house. To give me the space and time I needed to finish editing the film, my wife had taken our son to visit her mother and father in Chicago; they’d been gone for one week and would be gone for another. So, to be truthful, I was in no sense being forced to defend my family, and I’d never been the kind of man to defend his home, his property, his shit. In fact, I’d often laughed at the news footage of silly men armed with garden hoses as they tried to defend their homes from wildfires. I always figured those men would die, go to hell, and spend the rest of eternity having squirt-gun fights with demons.

    So with all that information in mind, why did I grab my son’s baseball bat and open the basement door? Why did I creep down the stairs? Trust me, I’ve spent many long nights awake, asking myself those questions. There are no easy answers. Of course, there are many men—and more than a few women—who believe I was fully within my rights to head down those stairs and confront my intruder. There are laws that define—that frankly encourage—the art of self-defense. But since I wasn’t interested in defending my property, and since my family and I were not being directly threatened, what part of my self could I have possibly been defending?

    In the end, I think I wasn’t defending anything at all. I’m an editor—an artist—and I like to make connections; I am paid to make connections. And so I wonder. Did I walk down those stairs because I was curious? Because a question had been asked (Who owned the feet that landed on my basement floor?) and I, the editor, wanted to discover the answer?

    So, yes, slowly I made my way down the stairs and through the dark hallway and turned the corner into our downstairs family room—the man cave, really, with the big television and the pool table—and saw a teenaged burglar. I stood still and silent. Standing with his back to me, obsessed with the task—the crime—at hand, he hadn’t yet realized that I was in the room with him.

    Let me get something straight. Up until that point I hadn’t made any guesses as to the identity of my intruder. I mean, yes, I live in a black neighborhood—and I’m not black—and there had been news of a series of local burglaries perpetrated by black teenagers, but I swear none of that entered my mind. And when I saw him, the burglar, rifling through my DVD collection and shoving selected titles into his backpack—he was a felon with cinematic taste, I guess, and that was a strangely pleasing observation—I didn’t think, There’s a black teenager stealing from me. I only remembering being afraid and wanting to make my fear go away.

    Get the fuck out of here! I screamed. You fucking fucker!

    The black kid was so startled that he staggered into my television—cracking the screen—and nearly fell before he caught his balance and ran for the broken window. I could have—would have—let him make his escape, but he stopped and turned back toward me. Why did he do that? I don’t know. He was young and scared and made an irrational decision. Or maybe it wasn’t irrational at all. He’d slashed his right hand when he crawled through the broken window, so he must have decided the opening with its jagged glass edges was not a valid or safe exit—who’d ever think a broken window was a proper entry or exit—so he searched for a door. But the door was behind me. He paused, weighed his options, and sprinted toward me. He was going to bulldoze me. Once again, I could have made the decision to avoid conflict and step aside. But I didn’t. As that kid ran toward me I swung the baseball bat with one hand.

    I often wonder what would have happened if that bat had been made of wood. When Max and I had gone shopping for bats, I’d tried to convince him to let me buy him a wooden one, an old-fashioned slugger, the type I’d used when I was a Little Leaguer. I’ve always been a nostalgic guy. But my son recognized that a ten-dollar wooden bat purchased at Target was not a good investment.

    That wood one will break easy, Max had said. I want the lum-a-lum one.

    Of course, he’d meant to say aluminum; we’d both laughed at his mispronunciation. And I’d purchased the lum-a-lum bat.

    So it was a metal bat that I swung one-handed at the black teenager’s head. If it had been cheap and wooden, perhaps the bat would have snapped upon contact and dissipated the force. Perhaps. But this bat did not snap. It was strong and sure, so when it made full contact with the kid’s temple, he dropped to the floor and did not move.

    He was dead. I had killed him.

    I fell to my knees next to the kid, dropped my head onto his chest, and wept.

    I don’t remember much else about the next few hours, but I called 911, opened the door for the police, and led them to the body. And I answered and asked questions.

    Did he have a gun or knife?

    "I don’t

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