Sherman Alexie - The Toughest Indian in the World

“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.