The Toughest Indian in the World: Stories

by Sherman Alexie

“Etta, Etta.” He kneeled beside her. He stroked her long black hair. She flinched and pushed him away.

  “Go away, go away, John Wayne,” she cried out.

  “Oh, Etta, I’m not going to hurt you,” he said. “I couldn’t hurt you. I love you.”

  “But you can’t love me. You don’t even know me.”

  John Wayne wept.

  There, in Navajo Monument Valley, John Wayne wept. His tears fell to the sand and flooded the desert.

  “Nobody knows me,” he cried. “Nobody knows me.”

  He was so afraid! Etta was shocked into silence. This was the great John Wayne and he was afraid.

  “But, but, but,” Etta stammered. “But you’re a star.”

  “John Wayne is the star. I’m Marion, I’m just Marion Morrison.”

  She held him for a good long time.

  Q: I can’t believe this. Are you telling me the truth?

  A: Yes, as far as I can remember it.

  Q: This is not a lie, one of those good lies you were talking about?

  A: Spencer, I was fooling you. There’s no such thing as a good lie.

  Q: Bad lies, good lies, whatever. Just tell me the truth. Did you really lose your virginity to John Wayne?

  (seven seconds of silence)

  A: He was afraid of horses, did you know that?

  Q: John Wayne was afraid of horses? That’s completely implausible. I mean, I’d sooner believe that you slept with him. We’re talking about John Wayne here.

  A: When he was seven years old, a horse kicked him in the head. He was in a coma for nearly three months. Everybody thought he was going to die. In the hospital, his mother brought in a Catholic priest to baptize him. His father brought in a Presbyterian priest for last rites. They thought he was going to die. They were sure he was going to die.

  Q: I don’t recall reading any of this about John Wayne. Kicked in the head by a horse? That must be urban legend.

  A: He showed me the scar. Just behind his right ear. About five inches long. They hid it with makeup. The horse’s name was Rooster. He liked me to kiss it whenever we made love.

  Q: Wait, wait, wait, he liked you to kiss the horse?

  A: Oh, no, no, no, silly. He liked me to kiss his scar. He said it was really sensitive, still, after all those years. He was really a sensitive man, you know? He knew how to cry. He cried every time we made love. Well, this is really embarrassing, but he cried every time he had, every time, he, well, you know, had an orgasm.

  Q: Wait, wait, wait, what are you telling me? How many times did you make love?

  A: Most every night during the filming of the movie. Except for those nights when his wife and kids came to visit.

  Q: So, hold on here, let me get my head around this. Not only were you having sex with John Wayne, you were also having an affair with him?

  A: I’m not proud of that particular nature of our relationship, but yes, John Wayne was a married man.

  In Navajo Monument Valley, during a long day of filming, John Wayne stepped into the makeup trailer for a touch-up and discovered his sons happily covering their faces with lipstick and mascara.

  “Well, hello there,” John Wayne said to his sons.

  They were petrified, afraid of this large man, this male.

  “Are you having fun?” the Duke asked his sons.

  They didn’t know how to answer. If they said no, they’d be lying, and their father always knew when they were lying. If they said yes, well, then, that could mean all sorts of things, and all of them were bad.

  “Are you having fun?” he asked again. His face revealed nothing, his thin mouth was closed tight, his teeth were hidden behind that weathered face.

  The eldest son cried, so the youngest son decided to join him.

  “Wait, wait, wait,” said John Wayne. “What’s with all of the tears?”

  “You hate us,” cried the oldest boy.

  “Don’t hate me, don’t hate me,” cried the youngest boy.

  John Wayne scooped up his boys. He set his big cowboy hat on the youngest boy’s head.

  “I don’t hate you, I could never hate you,” said John Wayne. “What makes you think I hate you?”

  “Because we’re girls,” wailed the boys.

  John Wayne held his sons and stroked their hair.

  “Oh, there, there, you’re not girls, you’re not girls,” said the father. “What makes you think you’re girls?”

  “Because we’re putting on lipstick,” said the youngest.

  John Wayne laughed.

  “Oh, sons, you’re just engaging in some harmless gender play. Some sexual experimentation. Every boy does this kind of thing. Every man likes to pretend he’s a woman now and again. It’s very healthy.”

  “Daddy,” said the oldest. “Do you dress up like a woman?”

  “Well, I don’t put on a dress or anything. But I often close my eyes and try to put myself into a woman’s shoes. I try to think like a woman. I try to embrace the feminine in myself. Do you know what I mean?”

  “No,” said the boys.

  “Well, sons, let me tell you the honest truth. There’s really not that much difference between men and women. In all things, intelligence, passion, hope, dreams, strength, men and women are pretty much equals. I mean, gender is mostly a social construction. After all, males and females share about ninety-nine percent of the same genetic material. So, given that, how could we really be that much different? In fact, we’re all so much alike that every woman must have some masculine inside of her and every man must have feminine inside of him. You just ain’t a whole person otherwise.”

  “Daddy!” shouted the boys. They were shocked. “That’s not what you said before when you were on the radio and television.”

  “Boys, I know. I know. I have a public image to maintain. But that’s not who I really am. I may act like a cowboy, I might pretend to be a cowboy, but I am not a cowboy in real life, do you understand?”

  “I think so,” said the oldest son. “Is it like in school, when you’re supposed to be listening to the teacher, but you’re only pretending to listen so you don’t get in trouble?”

  John Wayne smiled.

  “Yes, yes, it’s something like that,” he said to his sons. “Now, let me teach you a little something about the birds and bees. If you want to make a woman happy, really happy, there’s only one thing you got to do.”

  “What, Daddy, what?”

  “Listen to her stories.”

  Q: So, what happened, I mean, what did you do when his wife and sons came to visit?

  A: I felt bad, bad, bad. That John Wayne, he was a good father and a good husband, too. I mean, he was cheating on them, that’s for sure, but he wasn’t going to leave them. No way. All the time he and I were together, he just kept telling me the same thing. “I ain’t leaving them,” he’d say. “I ain’t leaving them. I am a good man, and a good man ain’t a good man without a good family.”

  Q: But how do you reconcile that? How did he reconcile that? How can a man claim to love his wife and children if he’s sleeping, if he’s in love with another woman?

  A: Are you married, Spencer?

  Q: No.

  A: Kids?

  Q: No.

  A: Then you don’t really understand why John Wayne fell in love with me or why he left me, do you?

  “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.

  “What did you say?” Wonder Horse asked again, hoping that Sweetwater would change the subject, take back the complicated thing he had said, and make their lives simple again.

  They were building a wheelchair ramp for my father, who was coming home from the hospital without his diabetic, gangrenous feet.

  “Jesus was a carpenter,” said Sweetwater for the fifth
time. Surely, it had become a kind of spell, possibly a curse.

  “I don’t care,” said Wonder Horse, though he cared very much about carpenters and carpentry, about those artists whose medium was wood, and about the art of woodworking itself. Wonder Horse respected wood. He touched it like good lovers touched the skin of their loved ones. He was a Casanova with the hammer, wrench, screwdriver, and circular saw. But now, he felt clumsy and desperate.

  “Harrison Ford was a carpenter, too,” said Wonder Horse. It was all that he could think to say.

  “Who?” asked Sweetwater.

  “Harrison Ford, the guy who played Han Solo, you know? In Star Wars, the movie?”

  “Oh,” said Sweetwater. “But Jesus was, you know, a real carpenter.”

  Wonder Horse stared into Sweetwater’s eyes (Blue eyes! A half-breed who had never considered himself white, or been considered white by other Spokanes!) and wondered why his best friend had decided to become a casual enemy. Wonder Horse hoped it was an impulsive and individual act and not part of a larger conspiracy.

  “So, what are you saying?” asked Wonder Horse. “Are you telling me that Jesus was a good carpenter?”

  “You’d think so,” said Sweetwater. “Yeah, I bet he was.”

  “But does it say that, anywhere in the Bible, in those exact words, does it say Jesus was a good carpenter?”

  “I don’t know. I mean, maybe, yeah, of course. He had to be.”

  “Have you ever read the Bible?”

  “No, not really, but I know all about it.”

  “Now you sound like a Christian.”

  “Hey, that’s dirty.”

  “Yeah, you’re right, I’m sorry,” said Wonder Horse. He wanted to get back to work. He wanted to jump in his pickup and drive away. He swung his hammer again and again, missed the head of the nail once, twice, three times, and drove it sideways into the plywood floor, splitting the two-by-four that lay beneath.

  “Damn,” said Wonder Horse and punched the wood. He studied his bloody knuckles.

  “Are you okay?” asked Sweetwater.

  “Always,” said Wonder Horse as he tugged at the wayward nail.

  They were building a wheelchair ramp for my father, who was coming home from the hospital with no more than six months to live, according to most of his doctors, and as little as two weeks left, according to the others.