In “The Only Traffic Signal on the Reservation Doesn’t Flash Red Anymore,” Victor and his friend Adrian are drinking Pepsis on Victor’s porch when they see a group of Indian boys walking by. They go home together, but each find that they are disappointed by the other. In “Crazy Horse Dreams,” Victor meets an attractive and engaging Indian woman at a powwow. This story outlines the dissolution of Victor’s father’s marriage to Victor’s mother “when an Indian marriage starts to fall apart, it’s destructive Indians fight their way to the end, holding onto the last good thing, because our whole lives have to do with survival.” “Because My Father Always Said He Was the Only Indian Who Saw Jimi Hendrix Play ‘The Star-Spangled Banner’ at Woodstock” is an ode to Victor’s father, who was, according to Victor, “the perfect hippie during the sixties, since all the hippies were trying to be Indians.” Victor recollects nights when his father would come home drunk, and could only be comforted and lulled by Jimi Hendrix tapes. In “A Drug Called Tradition,” Victor and his friends Junior Polatkin and Thomas Builds-the-Fire take drugs in hopes of each experiencing their own visions.
In “Every Little Hurricane,” Alexie introduces the volatile world of Victor’s childhood-the Spokane Indian Reservation, 1976-when a hurricane “drops from the sky” during a raucous, drunken, violent party at Victor’s family’s HUD house.
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