When he travels for work (as he often does), William notices how other people eyeball him, given that he himself is a small brown man. Though he is of Native American descent, with his hair in the stereotypical two braids, William is aware that he appears as racially ambiguous to people who do not know him. Alexie adds that when William travels “…the other travelers were always sniffing around him, but he smelled only of Dove soap, Mennen deodorant, and sarcasm” (108). Evidently, William is no threat to the others around him. He is just an ordinary citizen, but by racially profiling him, an unnecessary boundary is fabricated through assumptions that are not true. Because of these speculations, people probably do not try to get to know William or attempt to understand his personality. Even so, William is not offended by the suspicion he is met with at airports and in airplanes, because he knows that people cannot help their feelings of incertitude towards dark men due to whom the public thinks were responsible for 9/11.