Smoke Signals(1998)

Victor (Adam Beach) and Thomas (Evan Adams) make it to Arizona and find the valley outside Phoenix that Victor’s father, Arnold (Gary Farmer), had been living in before his death, and they knock on the door of the home of his only neighbor and friend, Suzy (Irene Bedard), who was the one who called Victor’s mother Arlene (Tantoo Cardinal) and informed her about Arnold’s passing. Suzy greets them and invites them inside, and she soon presents them with the metal can containing Arnold’s ashes, but only Thomas takes it. Having told Thomas that they were going straight back to northern Idaho once they got the ashes, Victor immediately starts to leave, but he winds up being forced to stay – much to his annoyance – when Suzy offers them food and drink and Thomas agrees to have some.

That night, while Thomas sleeps in Suzy’s trailer, Suzy gets to talking with Victor outside about Arnold and their friendship, and she lets him know that his father had quit drinking in the years since he left Idaho and that he always spoke of Victor proudly. She eventually tells Victor that his father’s stuff is still in his trailer and that there might be something in there for him to take back home with him, but Victor firmly refuses to go inside of it. Suzy then informs him that Arnold had told her all about what really started that house fire that killed Thomas’ parents back on the night of July 4th, 1976: While drunk, Arnold stumbled outside the house with a lit Roman candle and started firing shots into the air to celebrate Independence Day, but he accidentally let one of the candle’s shots go into the living room through an open window and land on the carpet, which is what started the fire. She tells Victor that Arnold was haunted by this mistake for the rest of his life and always wished that he could’ve changed it, and she reminds Victor that Arnold went back into that burning house to save him and Thomas. She also tells Victor that his father regretted abandoning him and his mother and always wanted to go back home to them, and she lastly tells him that his father is waiting for him in the trailer. Victor thus walks into it and starts searching through his father’s belongings, and when he eventually finds his wallet, he opens it up and discovers that it contains a picture of himself, Victor, and Arlene and the word “Home” written on the back of it. Victor then finds his father’s pocket knife, and he uses it to cut the length of his hair in half as a symbol of mourning, not unlike how Arnold cut his long hair short and never grew it back as a way of mourning the deaths of Thomas’ parents.

At sunrise, Victor wakes Thomas, and they take off back to Idaho in Arnold’s truck without saying goodbye to Suzy. They spend the whole day driving, with Thomas telling stories the entire time and Victor not saying a word, but that night, Victor loses his patience with Thomas and tells him that he is sick and tired of him telling him all these stories about his father like he knew him. When Thomas replies that he did know him, Victor asks him if he knew about him being a drunk, beating up him and his mother, and leaving his family, and he tells Thomas to let it go because his father was nothing but a liar. Thomas replies that he has it all wrong and maybe HE is the one who doesn’t know who he is, then points out that he has been moping around their reservation for ten years doing nothing and has nothing to show for it. He then angers Victor by telling him that he makes his mother cry because he left her like his father did, but he is worse because he still lives in the same house with her. Victor yells that Arnold saved him (Thomas) from that fire, but not him, and Thomas yells back that he needs to quit feeling sorry for himself. Victor then angrily declares to Thomas that he wishes that his father had let him burn in that fire, because then he wouldn’t have abandoned him and his mother. Suddenly, a car that has stopped in the middle of the road appears out of the darkness, so Victor swerves to avoid it and crashes into a ditch on the left side of the road. They get out and find that the car they avoided already had a drunk driving accident with another car close by, with a drunken Burt (Robert Miano) and his wife Penny (Molly Cheek) having collided with a car being driven by friends Holly (Perrey Reeves) and Julie (Nicolette Vajtay). Burt baselessly blames Victor for causing him to crash, and Thomas tends to Julie, who is unconscious and injured. Victor then declares that he is going to get help, but Burt tells him that the nearest town is 20 miles away and he will never make it. Victor yells to Thomas that he is leaving to get help, and he starts running in the direction of the town, all the while flooding his mind with images of the fire, his father, and what Suzy had told him. He runs all night and into the morning until he collapses from exhaustion and side stitch on both sides of his ribs, and soon after, he looks up and sees a vision of Arnold extending his hand to him to help him up. After he takes it, we see that the person helping him up is actually a road crew worker who spotted him.

Emergency services find everyone and get them to a hospital, and Victor is treated for injuries to his feet. As Thomas moves him through the hospital in a wheelchair towards the exit, they decide to stop by the room where Julie and Holly have been placed. After Holly tells them that Julie will be okay and that she considers them both heroes, she warns them that the police were just here; Burt had earlier spoken with them and told them that the wreck was Victor’s and Thomas’ fault, plus he claimed that they tried to kill him, and even though she spoke to the cops herself and told them the truth, she doesn’t think that they believed her. Victor and Thomas decide that they need to get out of town right away, but when the reach the main lobby, they find the local police chief (Tom Skerritt) and one of his officers standing there waiting for them. The chief takes them both down to the station, where he tells them about the statement that Burt gave claiming that they were drunk and that they assaulted him, but he also tells them that he has a statement from Penny where she explained how Burt is an awful person, so Burt doesn’t have much of a case against them. After asking for and getting confirmation about the contents of Arnold’s urn, the chief lets Victor and Thomas go. They are taken to an impound lot by another officer so they can reclaim their truck, and before they get in, Victor apologizes to Thomas for getting them into the wreck, as well as all of the other bad things that they have been through. As the guys resume their drive home, we see Suzy destroying Arnold’s trailer by setting it on fire.

After arriving back at the Coeur d’Alene Reservation later that day, Victor drops Thomas off at his grandmother’s house. Before Thomas goes inside, Victor thanks him for giving him the money to make this trip, then empties the remaining coins out of Thomas’ money jar and puts half of Arnold’s ashes into it for him to keep. Thomas tells him that he now plans to travel to Spokane one last time and toss these ashes into the Spokane River so Arnold will “rise like a salmon”, and Victor replies that he was thinking about doing the same thing with his half. He soon begins to drive back to his mother’s house, but Thomas gets him to stop before he gets too far and asks him if he knows why his father really left. Victor replies that he does, and he knows that he didn’t mean to. Upon returning home, Victor hands Arlene the urn, and she silently pays her respects to Arnold before she and Victor walk inside with their arms around each other. Meanwhile, Thomas happily greets his grandmother (Monique Mojica), and she asks him to tell her what happened and to tell her what is going to happen.

While Thomas recites the Dick Lourie poem “Forgiving Our Fathers” in a voiceover, we see Victor in Spokane standing on the bridge over Spokane Falls, and he emotionally dumps his father’s ashes and urn into the water.