Sherman Alexie - War Dances

And

Just

To

Hang

Thirty-eight

Sioux

simultaneously. Yes, in front of a large and cheering crowd, thirty-eight Indians dropped to their deaths. Yes, thirty-eight necks snapped. But before they died, thirty-eight Indians sang their death songs. Can you imagine the cacophony of thirty-eight different death songs? But wait, one Indian was pardoned at the last minute, so only thirty-seven Indians had to sing their death songs. But, O, O, O, O, can you imagine the cacophony of that one survivor’s mourning song? If he taught you the words, do you think you would sing along?

1.

In 1973, my father and I saw Enter the Dragon, the greatest martial arts movie of all time. I loved Bruce Lee. I wanted to be Bruce Lee. Afterward, as we walked to our car, I threw punches and kicks at the air.

“Hey, Dad,” I asked, “is Bruce Lee the toughest guy in the world?”

My father said, “No way. There are five guys in Spokane who could probably kick Bruce Lee’s ass.”

“Really? You mean in a fair fistfight and everything?”

“Who said anything about fair? And who’d want to throw punches with Bruce Lee? I’m not talking about fists. I’m saying there are at least five guys in Spokane who, if they even saw Bruce Lee, they’d walk up to him and just sucker punch him with a baseball bat or a two-by-four or something.”

“That’s not right.”

“You didn’t ask me about right. You asked me about tough.”

“Are you tougher than Bruce Lee?”

“Well, I’m tough in some ways, I guess. But I’m not the kind of guy who will knock somebody in the head with a baseball bat. I’m not going to do that to Bruce Lee. But let me tell you, there are more than five guys in Spokane who would do that. As I’m thinking more and more about it, I’m thinking there are probably fifty crazy guys who’d sneak up behind Bruce Lee at a restaurant and just knock him out with a big frying pan or something.”

“Okay, Dad, that’s enough.”

“And I haven’t even talked about prison dudes. Shoot, every other guy in prison would be happy to sucker punch Bruce Lee. They’d wait in a dark corner for a week, just waiting to ambush Bruce Lee with a chain saw or something. Man, those prison guys aren’t going to mess around with a Jeet Kune Do guy like Bruce Lee. No way. Those prison dudes would build a catapult and fling giant boulders at Bruce Lee.”

“Okay, Dad, I believe you. I’ve heard enough. Stop it, Dad, stop it!”

“Okay, Okay, I’m sorry. I’m just telling you the truth.”

2.

On TV, Uri Geller was bending spoons

With just his mind. “Wow,” I said. “That’s so cool.”

Then, three days later, as I browsed through Rick’s

Pawn Shop, I picked up a book of magic tricks

And learned how to bend spoons almost as well.

I called my act URI GELLER IS GOING TO HELL.

3.

At Expo ’74, in Spokane, I saw my first invisible dog on a leash. A hilarious and agile Chinese man was selling them. “My dog is fast,” he said. And his little pet, in its leash and harness, dragged him across the grass. I thought it was real magic. I didn’t know it was just an illusion. I didn’t know that thick and flexible wires had been threaded through the leash and harness and then shaped to look like a dog — an invisible dog. In fact, I didn’t discover the truth until two years later at our tribe’s powwow, when a felonious-looking white man tried to sell me an invisible dog with a broken leash. Without a taut leash, that invisible dog didn’t move or dance in its harness. The magic was gone. I was an emotional kid, so I started to cry, and the felonious dude said, “Shit, kid, take it, I found it in the garbage anyway.”

4.

In ’76, I also saw the remake of King Kong. It was terrible. Even my father, who loved the worst drive-in exploitation crap, said, “It’s Kong, man. What went so wrong?” But that does remind me of a drive-in flick whose name I can’t recall. It’s about a herd of Sasquatch who sneak into a biker gang’s house and kidnap all of the biker women. Later, the biker gang puts spiked wheels on their rods, roars into the woods, somehow finds the Sasquatch, and battles for the women. As the Sasquatch fight and fall and pretend to die, two or three of them lose their costume heads. Their furry masks just go sailing but the actors playing Sasquatch, and the other actors, and the director, and the writer, and the producers, and God just keep on going as if it didn’t matter. And I suppose, for the sake of budget, it didn’t matter, but I stood on the top of our van and shouted, “It’s not real. It’s not real. It’s not real. It’s not real!” And some politically aware but unseen dude shouted from out of the dark, “Okay, Little Crazy Horse, we know it’s not real, so get your ass back in your van.”

5.

Speaking of Sasquatch, I met the love of my life in 1979, in Redding, California, the heart of Bigfoot Country. Okay, she wasn’t the love of my life, she just happened to be the first world-class beauty I’d ever seen. Honestly. She could have been on the cover of Glamour magazine. But she was just a teenage girl from Redding, California, which, like I said, was the heart of Bigfoot Country. And I was obsessed with Bigfoot, with the real Sasquatch, not the fake biker-gang-fighting and biker-chick-kidnapping type. So, as this gorgeous girl asked me what I wanted (my family had stopped to eat at some fast-food joint on our way to Disneyland), I said, “Isn’t it cool to live in Bigfoot Country? In the heart of Bigfoot Country. In the heart of the heart of Bigfoot Country.”

“Oh,” she said. “That stuff ain’t real. It’s my two uncles — Little Jim and Big Jim — who make all those footprints with these big wooden feet they carved out and tie up on their boots.”

“What?”

“Yeah. If you’ve ever seen that movie Planet of the Apes, you’ve seen my uncles, because they played gorillas.”

“Are you kidding?”

“No, my uncles used to work at the San Francisco Zoo when they were in college. They helped feed the gorillas and monkeys and chimps and stuff. So they really learned how to walk around like apes. But those Hollywood people didn’t appreciate them, you know? Didn’t pay them hardly anything for being in that first Planet movie. So my uncles didn’t work on any of the sequels.”

“I can’t believe what I’m hearing.”

“Well, it’s all true. You can even go visit my uncles if you want. They’ve got a bunch of those fake Bigfoot feet you can buy. And if you tell them I sent you over, they’ll even show you their Bigfoot costumes.”

“They have costumes?”

“Yeah, and you will not believe how much those costumes look like a real Bigfoot. It was Big Jim who was playing Bigfoot in that famous movie. You’ve seen that one, right? The one where Bigfoot is walking across the riverbed? Yeah, whenever I see that video on TV, I scream, “Hey, Uncle Big Jim!” Anyway, I have to remember my job. What do you want to eat, little man?”

“A corn dog, I guess.”

6.

O, the ’70s broke my heart. No,

The ’70s broke my heart’s ass.

When my female friends are left

By horrid spouses and lovers,

I commiserate. I send gifts—

Powwow songs and poems — and wonder

Why my gorgeous friends cannot find

Someone who knows them as I do.

Is the whole world deaf and blind?

I tell my friends, “I’d marry you