Flight: A Novel

Zits soon realizes that he’s not in heaven. He realizes, too, that “[a]ll these old-time Indians are doomed” (66). Some will die of disease. Others will be slaughtered. Others still will be sent away to reservations far from their true homes. They will be forced to assimilate to Anglo-Christian culture. Many of them will become alcoholics.

Zits watches his father talk to “a funny-looking Indian guy” (66). This stranger looks like a white man and has light-brown, almost blond hair. He realizes that this is Crazy Horse, a member of the Oglala tribe and “the greatest warrior ever” (67). There is an “older Indian dude” standing near horses who looks to Zits like Sitting Bull. He notices a small river. It’s the Little Big Horn. The Battle of Little Big Horn will soon take place here. He’s “been transported back to June 1876” (67). He tries to warn his father about what will happen, but his voice emits nothing. Zits remembers that the tribespeople know that General George Armstrong Custer is coming and that this camp is actually a trap for him and his army of 700 soldiers. Three to five thousand indigenous warriors await Custer and his men. They will “ride out to meet Custer and his doomed soldiers” (67).

Zits thinks that the Battle of Little Big Horn was improperly nicknamed Custer’s Last Stand. Custer was ineffectual and his soldiers were better than he was in battle. Custer proved vainglorious and hasty. He sent half of his army out “to attack one side of the Indian camp and he took the other half and rode toward the opposite end of the camp” (68).

During the battle, Zits sees indigenous women warriors, too, which he never knew existed. He finds the women “sexy in their war paint” (70). On Custer’s Hill, there are already “hundreds of dead cavalry soldiers” (70). The tribespeople desecrate the bodies—stripping off clothes, cutting off penises, and digging into eyes. Someone grabs Zits while he fights off a 10-year-old girl who is trying to take a dead soldier’s eyes. It’s his father who leads him into a circle where a young white soldier is present. His father says something to him in their tribal language, which Zits doesn’t understand. His father then points to Zits’ throat. This soldier cut Zits’ throat with a bayonet some time ago and Zits’ new father “wants [him] to want revenge” (72).

In his new body as a young Native American warrior, Zits remembers when he was just Zits and eight years old and living in a “foster home on a mountain near Seattle” with a “rich white family” (72). They bought him nice things, making him feel rich, too. He lived there for a week with two new siblings. One day, Zits’ new father took him to the basement of the house where he had “miles and miles of railroad track” (72). Zits played with the trains for hours. Then, his foster father took him into a dark room and molested him.

Zits looks at his new father and wonders if he paints his hands in the war paint to remember all of the indigenous children who have been slaughtered by white soldiers. Zits then looks at the white soldier and thinks about the foster father who hurt him, who did things to him that made him bleed. He wonders if he would kill him, but can’t know for sure. He feels increasingly angry but doesn’t know if it’s the anger of the boy whose body he has entered or if it’s his own anger. He wonders if he killed all of the bank customers because he wanted revenge. If he kills this white soldier, would the soldier’s family and friends then kill him?

Zits sees Crazy Horse watching from another hill. He rides away on his pony and disappears; he will soon be killed by his old friend Little Big Man, who will hold Crazy Horse’s arms back “as a white soldier punches a bayonet into [his] belly” (74). Zits looks again at the white soldier, who appears to be around 18. Zits knows that he must slash the soldier’s throat, but he’s only a child. He doesn’t know what to do, so he shuts his eyes.