The Indian in the Cupboard

At school, Omri cannot stop thinking about the Indian and nearly blurts out the story to Patrick, who gets suspicious anyway. They would have played on their skateboards today, but Omri wants to get back to the Indian: He is worried the tiny man might starve or suffocate in the cupboard. Patrick wants to tag along, but Omri refuses.

At home, he opens the cabinet, but the Indian lies at the bottom, once again a plastic toy. Anguished by guilt, Omri cries for ten minutes. At dinner, he mopes, and his parents ask what’s the matter, but he won’t say. Omri goes to bed early.

Once again, he hears noises from the cupboard. He opens it, and the Indian is alive again. The man says he had “good sleep,” but he needs food, blankets, and fire. Omri hurries downstairs, sneaks into the kitchen, and searches the refrigerator for food. There is no meat, but he finds bread, corn, cheese, and some Coke.

He returns to his room and puts one crumb of bread, one of cheese, and a kernel of corn on the shelf. The Indian eats hungrily until he gets to the corn, which he says tastes good but is “[t]oo big […] Like you” (19). Omri pours a bit of Coke into a very small plastic mug from an Action Man toy, and the Indian drinks the Coke and likes it.

Omri says it is time for sleep, but the man objects that the sun is still up. Omri switches off the light, which frightens the Indian; then he turns it back on and explains that it is a lamp. The Indian says it must use a great deal of oil.

Fearing the man will turn back into a plastic toy if he locks him up again, Omri asks if he will come out of the cupboard. He offers him a toy tepee, which the Indian rejects, saying he sleeps in a longhouse. Omri suddenly grabs him; the tiny man struggles then gives up and stares defiantly at Omri. He feels alive and real in Omri’s hands, and the boy sets him on the chest of drawers and apologizes.

Omri asks the figurine’s name, and the man says he is “Little Bear,” son of a chief. Omri tells him his own name and admits he is not related to a chief; the Indian looks at him with disdain. Omri quickly fashions a tepee from pick-up sticks, felt, and safety pins. Little Bear examines it carefully, accepts it, and demands a blanket. Omri snips some fabric from an old sweater; Little Bear takes it happily and crawls into the tepee. A moment later he sticks his head out and says there should be pictures on the walls—and meat. Omri promises they will work on getting those tomorrow. 

Before he goes to sleep, Omri performs an experiment. He places a toy plastic tepee into the cupboard, adds a toy car, and locks the box. The next morning, he is awakened by Little Bear, who says, “Day come! Why you still sleep? Time eat—hunt—fight—make pictures!” (26) Omri opens the cabinet: The car is the same, but the tepee is made of real wood and leather skins.

Omri cries out that the cupboard performs real magic. Little Bear shrugs: To him, magic is everywhere. Omri places the transformed tepee next to the one he built for Little Bear. The man says its pictures are Algonquin, not Iroquois, and that the spirits of the Iroquois will be angry if he sleeps in it. Omri promises to upgrade his handmade tepee at school, and Little Bear agrees to sleep in it awhile longer until they build a longhouse.

Little Bear insists on meat for breakfast. First, though, Omri sets him down on the carpet, which Little Bear thinks is a blanket. Omri points out that they are inside a room in England. Little Bear likes the English because they battle alongside the Iroquois in their war against the French and the Algonquin. Little Bear already has taken 30 scalps.

Omri feels stunned and a little afraid: This tiny man has fought and killed many and has somehow been transported 200 years from his home into Omri’s life. He realizes that, even today, people make war and kill one another, so Little Bear’s experience is not unusual. For a moment, though, Omri wants to put the Iroquoian back in the cabinet and convert him back to plastic.

Omri goes downstairs and finds a tin of corned beef and begins to eat it idly. He wants to tell an adult, but he is afraid they will just hand Little Bear over to scientists who will experiment on him. As he goes back upstairs, he realizes he has eaten most of the corned beef. He gives the rest to Little Bear, who compliments Omri’s wife on her cooking skills. Omri says he is not married; Little Bear says he was, but his wife is dead.

Little Bear wants a gun; Omri offers to convert toy bows and arrows. He also suggests a horse and pulls several from his pile of toys. Little Bear selects one, and Omri places it in the cupboard and locks the door. At once, noises erupt, and he opens it to find a tiny living horse. Little Bear tries to ride it, but it throws him. He changes tactics and approaches the horse very slowly until they are nose to nose. He touches the horse’s neck and declares that this “Crazy-horse” now belongs to him. He removes the saddle, climbs on carefully, and the horse obeys him.

Man and horse leap from the cabinet onto the carpet, but it is too soft to ride on. Omri takes them outside and sets the box on a dirt path. He warns Little Bear about giant cats that can eat them; Little Bear nods, leaps on the horse, and rides out into the morning.

Little Bear and the Crazy-horse sniff the outside air and then gallop off down the dirt path. They are so small that Omri can keep up by running alongside them on the grass. Little bear steers around small stones and weeds that, to him, are the size of boulders and trees. The horse shies away when an ant crosses their path, and it halts and freezes when a bird’s shadow crosses it. Little Bear turns the horse around and they gallop back.

The tiny man now wants weapons to protect against dangers. Omri promises to find some. Man and horse walk back into the box, and Omri picks it up. At the door, his father appears; Omri clutches the box and it bends. His dad wants to know what Omri is doing outside at dawn in his bare feet. Omri promises to put on some slippers and goes upstairs.

Omri sets the box down, and the horse rushes out, trembling. Inside the box, Little Bear sits, nursing a gash on his leg. The horse kicked in fear when Omri clutched it, and its hoof struck Little Bear. The boy hurries to the bathroom, puts some Listerine in water, grabs a cotton ball, and brings them to Little Bear, who applies it to his leg. He startles at the sting of the disinfectant.

The tiny Iroquois asks for something to bandage the wound. Omri searches his toys and finds a World War I soldier holding a doctor’s bag. Quickly, he puts the toy soldier into the cupboard and turns the key. Right away, a voice issues from the cabinet: “Here! Where am I? Come back, you blokes—don’t leave a chap alone in the dark!” (42)

Omri opens the cupboard; inside is a tiny English soldier, alive and suddenly terrified to see a gigantic boy looking in at him. He nearly faints, but Omri gets an idea and tells the man that he is having a dream. Omri needs him to do something and then the man will wake up. Satisfied with this explanation, the soldier accepts Omri’s help to the floor where he walks over to Little Bear, opens his medical bag, and draws forth minuscule bandages. Omri sneaks a magnifying glass from Gillon’s room and watches as the soldier applies the bandages to the Iroquois’s wound. The boy also can see the teeny “bottles, pill boxes, ointments” and other medical supplies laid out inside the bag (46).

The soldier finishes the bandaging—Little Bear is impressed by the work—and Omri puts him back in the cupboard. He hopes the medic will “dream” him again; the medic nods, gives his name as Tommy Atkins, and salutes. Omri closes and locks the cabinet then reopens it: Inside stands a toy British soldier made of plastic.

Off to one side, Omri finds the horse trying to graze on the carpet. He feeds the animal a bread crumb and some water. Little Bear wants to build a longhouse while Omri is at school; he recites to the boy a list of things to collect from the garden. After breakfast, Omri goes outside and grabs a seed tray filled with dirt; he also clips bark from a tree, gathers a handful of sticks, and pulls some grass for the horse to eat. He brings everything upstairs. Next, he retrieves from his toys an ax-wielding knight, locks him in the magic cupboard, opens the door, and steals the ax from the startled knight, before re-locking the cupboard and converting the knight back to plastic. He sets the ax next to Little Bear and hurries off to school. 

At the school library, Omri reads from a book about the Iroquois, confirming Little Bear’s stories about longhouses, battles with Algonquin and white men, and scalp-taking. Sleep-deprived, he keeps nodding off in class; he explains to Patrick that he is thinking about the toy Indian, but Patrick believes he is taunting him.

At lunch, Omri sneaks out of school to the toy store and buys an Indian chief figurine with headdress, cloak, bow, and arrows. During handicrafts period, Omri builds from scratch a new and better tepee. Patrick asks what he is doing, and Omri says it is for the Indian, Little Bear, who will paint pictures on it. Patrick thinks his friend is losing his mind.

Back at home, Omri finds Little Bear building his longhouse, the sticks bent into a row of arches, crosspieces lashed with string, and bark chips beginning to cover the roof. A ramp for the horse that leads up to the rim of the box even has some horse manure on it. Omri shows Little Bear the toy chief, but the Iroquois doesn’t want him to convert the chief into a real person. Omri does so merely to steal the bow and arrows, but the chief turns out to be a very old one, and he faints at the sight of the giant boy.

Omri brings Little Bear to the chief’s side, but the old man is dead. Little Bear promptly takes the headdress and cloak, declaring himself the new chief. With a sudden burst of authority, he demands that Omri produce a tiny deer and a fire. Omri doesn’t want to become Little Bear’s servant, so he begins to object, but he is interrupted by his father’s angry voice ordering him downstairs.

His father demands the return of his seed tray, which is planted with marrow squash. Omri says he simply cannot, but he will buy another for him. His father agrees but insists that Omri do so immediately.

Omri rides to the hardware store and buys a seed tray. He bumps into Patrick who tries to give him a toy cowboy, but Omri says that the cowboy and his Indian might hurt each other. Now realizing that his friend at least thinks he is telling the truth, Patrick insists on seeing the live Indian. Omri gives in, and they head back to his house. On the way, they collect a bit of tar from a pavement project so the Indian can have a fire on a tin plate.

Omri gives the seed tray to his father, who makes him promise to fill it the next day. The boys go upstairs where they find Adiel and Gillon in his room: They entered to retrieve Gillon’s runaway pet rat, but now they are staring at the longhouse. They wonder how Omri did such detailed work. Crazy-horse whinnies; Omri quickly says it is a wind-up toy under his bed and pushes his brothers out.

Omri and Patrick peer under the bed and see the horse and Little Bear. Omri invites the chief to meet his friend. The chief rides out, looks up, and says, “Omri’s friend, Little Bear’s friend” (68). Patrick’s eyes widen; he is speechless. Omri explains that the cupboard somehow converts plastic people into real ones. Patrick grabs a bunch of figurines and heads for the cupboard, but Omri stops him. He says they are actual, real people, pulled from their lives in the past, who do what they want. Moreover, one already has died. Omri opens the cupboard door, and they see the dead chief lying there, his headdress and cloak missing.

Omri say that Little Bear has gotten very bossy since he became the new chief. Little Bear repeats his demand for real animals to hunt, explaining that he will lose his skills if he eats what others kill. Omri runs downstairs, breaks off a piece of a firelighter fuel tablet, then sneaks a tidbit of steak from the refrigerator. Upstairs, he finds Little Bear directing Patrick to put paint in jar lids so he can use them with a brush he created out of his own hair. Omri scavenges parts from an old Erector Set and fashions them into a tiny cooking spit. He places it on a tin plate, skewers the meat, ignites the firelighter, and positions the spit over the fire. He shows Little Bear how to turn the spit, and soon the little steak browns and smells good.

Patrick suddenly insists on having a miniature person of his own. He begs Omri to let him convert a toy into a little man.