“We can’t do this anymore,” John Wayne said to Etta Joseph.
It was the last day of shooting. Natalie Wood had already gone home; John Wayne had already saved her from the Indians.
“I’m going back to Hollywood,” he said.
Etta wept.
“I knew this day would come,” she said. “And I understand. You’re a family man.”
“Yes, my family needs me,” he said. “But more than that, my country needs me. They need me to be John Wayne.”
He kissed her then, one last kiss, and gave her his cowboy hat. She never wore it, not once, and gave it to her next lover, a rodeo Indian who lost it somewhere at a powwow in Arlee, Montana.
Q: I don’t want to insult an elder. I know, within the indigenous cultures, that we’re supposed to respect our elders…
A: Oh, no, no, you’ve got that all wrong. You’re not required to respect elders. After all, most people are idiots, regardless of age. In tribal cultures, we just make sure that elders remain an active part of the culture, even if they’re idiots. Especially if they’re idiots. You can’t just abandon your old people, even if they have nothing intelligent to say. Even if they’re crazy.
Q: Are you crazy?
On his deathbed in a Santa Monica hospital, over twenty years after he’d played Ethan Edwards in The Searchers, John Wayne picked up the telephone and dialed a number that had not changed since 1952.
“Hello,” said Etta when she answered. “Hello, hello, hello.”
John Wayne listened to her voice. He didn’t know what to say. He hadn’t talked to her since that last night in Monument Valley, when he’d climbed into the bed of a traveling pickup, and stood tall and proud — with the sun rising, of all things — and watched Etta get smaller and smaller on the horizon.
What was the last thing he’d said to her before he left her forever? He couldn’t remember now — the painkiller, chemotherapy, and exhaustion all played tricks with his memory — but he knew it was something he should not have said. And what was he supposed to say to her now, all these years later, as he lay dying? Should he apologize, confess, repent? He had lived a large and brilliant life with his wife and sons — he’d loved them and been loved with tenderness — but he had often thought of that tiny and lovely Spokane Indian woman who was all alone and lost in the Navajo desert. He knew he was going to die soon — and would, in fact, die later that night with his wife and sons at his bedside — but he wanted to leave the world without his earthly doubts and fears. But how could he tell Etta that? How could he tell her the story of his last twenty years, how could he listen to her story of the last twenty years, and how could either of them find enough time and forgiveness for each other?
John Wayne held the telephone close to his mouth and eyes and wept his way across all of the miles and years.
“Marion?” asked Etta. “Marion, is that you?”
Q: Is that everything?
A: It’s all I can remember. Quite an example of the oral tradition, enit?
Q: Lovely. But I wonder, how much of it is true and how much of it is lies?
A: Well, now, an Indian has to keep her secrets, or she’s just not Indian. But an Indian a lot smarter than me once said this: If it’s fiction, then it better be true.
Q: How oxymoronic.
A: Yeah, kind of like saying Native American. There’s an oxymoron for you.
Q: Well, I better get going. I got to find a flight to California.
A: Good for you. But don’t you want to talk about powwow dancing?
Q: Well, sure, what would you like to say?
A: I was the worst powwow dancer in the world. I’d start dancing at some powwow, and the Master of Ceremonies would shout out, “Hey, stop the powwow, stop the powwow, Etta is dancing, she’s ruining ten thousand years of tribal traditions. If we don’t stop the powwow now, she might start singing, and then we’re really going to be in trouble.”
Q: Well, I suppose that’s not going to help my thesis.
A: No, I suppose not. But my sons were really good powwow dancers. They still like to dance now and again.
Q: Your sons? My God, how old are they?
A: One hundred years old today. They’re twins. I have nine children, thirty-two grandchildren, sixty-seven great-grandchildren, one hundred and three great-great-grandchildren, and one great-great-great-grandchild. I’ve made my own damn tribe.
Q: I’d love to talk to your sons. Where are they, on the reservation?
A: Oh, no, they live up on the men’s floor here. I baked them a cake. My whole family is coming.
Q: Your sons, what are their names?
A: Oh, look, here they come now. They’re early. Boys, I’d like you to meet Dr. Spencer Cox, he’s a good friend of the Indians. Dr. Cox, I’d like you to meet my sons, Marion and John.
Sitting alone in his car outside of the retirement home, Spencer ejected the cassette tape from his recorder. He could destroy the tape or keep it; he could erase Etta’s voice or transcribe it. It didn’t matter what he chose to do with her story because the story would continue to exist with or without him. Was the story true or false? Was that the question Spencer needed to ask?
Inside, an old woman kneeled in a circle with her loved ones and led them in prayer.
Outside, a white man closed his eyes and prayed to the ghosts of John Wayne, Ethan Edwards, and Marion Morrison, that Holy Trinity.
Somebody said nothing and somebody said amen, amen, amen.
ONE GOOD MAN
OUTSIDE THE HOUSE, SWEETWATER and Wonder Horse were building a wheelchair ramp for my father. They didn’t need a blueprint, having built twenty-seven ramps on the Spokane Indian Reservation over the years, including five ramps that summer alone. They knew how to fix such things, and they knew how to work quietly, without needless conversation or interaction with their employers. Sweetwater was known to go whole weeks without uttering a single word, opting instead to communicate through monosyllabic grunts and hand gestures, as if he were a very bright infant. Consequently, on that day when my father’s wheelchair ramp needed only a few more nails, a coat of paint, and a closing prayer, Wonder Horse was deeply surprised when Sweetwater broke his unofficial vow of silence.
“Jesus was a carpenter,” said Sweetwater, trying to make it sound casual, as if he’d merely commented on the weather or the game (What game? Any game!) and then he said it again: “Jesus was a carpenter.”
Wonder Horse heard it both times, looked up from his nail and hammer, and stared into Sweetwater’s eyes. Though the two men had worked together for thirty years, building three or four generations of outhouses, picnic tables, and front and back porches, they’d never been much for looking at each other, for seeing. God forbid one of them ever turned up missing and the other became the only person who could provide a proper description to the authorities.
“Jesus was a carpenter,” said Sweetwater, this time in the Spokane language, to make sure that Wonder Horse understood all the inflections and nuances (the aboriginal poetry) of such a bold statement.
“What?” asked Wonder Horse, as simple a question as could possibly be tendered, though he made it sound as if he’d asked Where’s the tumor?
“Jesus was a carpenter,” said Sweetwater. He would have said it in Spanish, Russian, and German if he could have.
Wonder Horse could think of no logical reply (in any language) to such a complicated statement, especially coming from a simple man like Sweetwater. The whole conversation reeked of theology, and Wonder Horse wanted no part of that. Confused, maybe even a little frightened, he turned back to his work and pounded a nail into the wood, then another, a third, a fourth. He was a middle-aged man made older by too much exposure to direct sunlight and one-and-a-half bad marriages. He knew the cost of wood (six bucks for one standard two-by-four, by God!). With dark hair, eyes, and skin, he was fifty or eighty, take your pick. A small man with large hands, he had to resist the daily urge to get in his pickup and drive away from the reservation, never to return. Sure, the people, the residents of the reservation, be they Indian or white or whatever, certainly needed him to build things, but he also believed the whole of the reservation — the streams, rivers, pine trees, topsoil, and stalks of wild wheat — needed him, even loved him. And so he remained because he was loyal and vain.