Sherman Alexie - The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven

“You guys know it ain’t my party anyway,” Thomas said. “I just paid for it.”

We laughed. I looked at Junior and he nodded his head.

“Hey,” I said. “Jump in with us. We’re going out to Benjamin Lake to do this new drug I got. It’ll be very fucking Indian. Spiritual shit, you know?”

Thomas climbed in back and was just about ready to tell another one of his goddamn stories when I stopped him.

“Now, listen,” I said. “You can only come with us if you don’t tell any of your stories until after you’ve taken the drug.”

Thomas thought that over awhile. He nodded his head in the affirmative and we drove on. He looked so happy to be spending the time with us that I gave him the new drug.

“Eat up, Thomas,” I said. “The party’s on me now.”

Thomas downed it and smiled.

“Tell us what you see, Mr. Builds-the-Fire,” Junior said.

Thomas looked around the car. Hell, he looked around our world and then poked his head through some hole in the wall into another world. A better world.

“Victor,” Thomas said. “I can see you. God, you’re beautiful. You’ve got braids and you’re stealing a horse. Wait, no. It’s not a horse. It’s a cow.”

Junior almost wrecked because he laughed so hard.

“Why the fuck would I be stealing a cow?” I asked.

“I’m just giving you shit,” Thomas said. “No, really, you’re stealing a horse and you’re riding by moonlight. Van Gogh should’ve painted this one, Victor. Van Gogh should’ve painted you.”

It was a cold, cold night . I had crawled through the brush for hours, moved by inches so the Others would not hear me. I wanted one of their ponies. I needed one of their ponies. I needed to be a hero and earn my name.

I crawl close enough to their camp to hear voices, to hear an old man sucking the last bit of meat off a bone. I can see the pony I want. He is black, twenty hands high. I can feel him shiver because he knows I have come for him in the middle of this cold night.

Crawling more quickly now, I make my way to the corral, right between the legs of a young boy asleep on his feet. He was supposed to keep watch for men like me. I barely touch his bare leg and he swipes at it, thinking it is a mosquito. If I stood and kissed the young boy full on the mouth, he would only think he was dreaming of the girl who smiled at him earlier in the day.

When I finally come close to the beautiful black pony, I stand up straight and touch his nose, his mane.

I have come for you , I tell the horse, and he moves against me, knows it is true. I mount him and ride silently through the camp, right in front of a blind man who smells us pass by and thinks we are just a pleasant memory. When he finds out the next day who we really were, he will remain haunted and crowded the rest of his life.

I am riding that pony across the open plain, in moonlight that makes everything a shadow.

What’s your name? I ask the horse, and he rears back on his hind legs. He pulls air deep into his lungs and rises above the ground.

Flight , he tells me, my name is Flight .

“That’s what I see,” Thomas said. “I see you on that horse.”

Junior looked at Thomas in the rearview mirror, looked at me, looked at the road in front of him.

“Victor,” Junior said. “Give me some of that stuff.”

“But you’re driving,” I said.

“That’ll make it even better,” he said, and I had to agree with him.

“Tell us what you see,” Thomas said and leaned forward.

“Nothing yet,” Junior said.

“Am I still on that horse?” I asked Thomas.

“Oh, yeah.”

We came up on the turnoff to Benjamin Lake, and Junior made it into a screaming corner. Just another Indian boy engaged in some rough play.

“Oh, shit,” Junior said. “I can see Thomas dancing.”

“I don’t dance,” Thomas said.

“You’re dancing and you ain’t wearing nothing. You’re dancing naked around a fire.”

“No, I’m not.”

“Shit, you’re not. I can see you, you’re tall and dark and fucking huge, cousin.”

They’re all gone, my tribe is gone . Those blankets they gave us, infected with smallpox, have killed us. I’m the last, the very last, and I’m sick, too. So very sick. Hot. My fever burning so hot.

I have to take off my clothes, feel the cold air, splash the water across my bare skin. And dance. I’ll dance a Ghost Dance. I’ll bring them back. Can you hear the drums? I can hear them, and it’s my grandfather and my grandmother singing. Can you hear them?

I dance one step and my sister rises from the ash. I dance another and a buffalo crashes down from the sky onto a log cabin in Nebraska. With every step, an Indian rises. With every other step, a buffalo falls.

I’m growing, too. My blisters heal, my muscles stretch, expand. My tribe dances behind me. At first they are no bigger than children. Then they begin to grow, larger than me, larger than the trees around us. The buffalo come to join us and their hooves shake the earth, knock all the white people from their beds, send their plates crashing to the floor.

We dance in circles growing larger and larger until we are standing on the shore, watching all the ships returning to Europe. All the white hands are waving good-bye and we continue to dance, dance until the ships fall off the horizon, dance until we are so tall and strong that the sun is nearly jealous. We dance that way .

“Junior,” I yelled. “Slow down, slow down.” Junior had the car spinning in circles, doing donuts across empty fields, coming too close to fences and lonely trees.

“Thomas,” Junior yelled. “You’re dancing, dancing hard.”

I leaned over and slammed on the brakes. Junior jumped out of the car and ran across the field. I turned the car off and followed him. We’d gotten about a mile down the road toward Benjamin Lake when Thomas came driving by.

“Stop the car,” I yelled, and Thomas did just that.

“Where were you going?” I asked him.

“I was chasing you and your horse, cousin.”

“Jesus, this shit is powerful,” I said and swallowed some. Instantly I saw and heard Junior singing. He stood on a stage in a ribbon shirt and blue jeans. Singing. With a guitar.

Indians make the best cowboys . I can tell you that. I’ve been singing at the Plantation since I was ten years old and have always drawn big crowds. All the white folks come to hear my songs, my little pieces of Indian wisdom, although they have to sit in the back of the theater because all the Indians get the best tickets for my shows. It’s not racism. The Indians just camp out all night to buy tickets. Even the President of the United States, Mr. Edgar Crazy Horse himself, came to hear me once. I played a song I wrote for his great-grandfather, the famous Lakota warrior who helped us win the war against the whites:

Crazy Horse, what have you done?

Crazy Horse, what have you done?

It took four hundred years

and four hundred thousand guns

but the Indians finally won.

Ya-hey, the Indians finally won.

Crazy Horse, are you still singing?

Crazy Horse, are you still singing?

I honor your old songs

and all they keep on bringing

because the Indians keep winning.

Ya-hey, the Indians keep winning.

Believe me, I’m the best guitar player who ever lived. I can make my guitar sound like a drum. More than that, I can make any drum sound like a guitar. I can take a single hair from the braids of an Indian woman and make it sound like a promise come true. Like a thousand promises come true .