Death Chants (5 page)

"Well, that's
Hollywood for you." Forbes took a sip from the other beer can, seemingly quite unaware that he
was drinking from both cans of beer. "It has the courage of its own lack of convictions. But
remember, my old friend, I gave you a job. I gave you your chance. It didn't matter to me if you
were a ..."

Red Horse
interrupted. "I lied to get the job."

Forbes choked,
mid-gulp, and beer dribbled down his chin.

"What?"

"I told you I was
Italian."

"Uh, really?"
Forbes tried to remember, looking somewhat confused. "Uh, I thought that ... uh ..."

"You didn't find
out I was really an Indian until our third film,
Son of the Apache Devil.
I was the only
one who didn't get a sunburn. That's how you found out."

Forbes shook his
head, suddenly remembering. "Now I re­member. I always said you rode a horse too good to be an
Italian."

He tilted his head
back, drained the beer intended for Red Horse. He shook the can to make sure it was empty, then
tossed it over his shoulder. It banged against the back wall of the cabin.

Red Horse had
almost risen out of his chair, as if his body had been trying to follow the path of the beer can.
There was a look of abject longing on his face. He eyed the paper bag at Forbes's feet with hope
and expectation.

One-handed, Forbes
stuck a cigarette in his mouth and lit it, unaware of Red Horse's distress.

Forbes coughed
rackingly, with the first inhalation of the ciga­rette. He looked over at Red Horse.

"So you faked it a
little at a time when everybody faked it a lot. So what? It doesn't matter now. The point is, I
kept you on. I made you the first Indian star of the shoot-'em-ups. And I hired more real Indians
in my films than any other director." He had another coughing fit, which he soothed with a swig
of beer from the other can. "You can't take that away from me."

"What's to take? I
always figured the Great Spirit gave you your chance to direct motion pictures. It was the Great
Spirit who chose you to make so many Westerns about Indians."

Forbes almost
choked on his beer.

"For a second
there, I thought you might actually be compli­menting me on something."

Red Horse nodded
slyly as if in agreement. "I think you were the Great Spirit's choice."

Forbes finished the
second beer, and shook the empty can. "Thanks, Red Horse. I'm truly flattered."

"The Great Spirit
would have wanted somebody who wasn't going to mess it up by knowing anything."

Forbe's hand
tightened around his cigarette, snapping it off behind the filter. He realized he had been
had.

"You talk more than
any Indian I ever met."

He paused for
emphasis.

"Talk is
silver."

He took a long
dramatic pause, broken only by the sound of the empty beer can rattling off the wall as he
flipped it over his shoulder. Then he spoke.

"BUT SILENCE IS
GOLDEN!"

Red Horse's body
again unconsciously tracked the flight of the beer can.

He answered. "And a
fart is nobody's friend. Let's have AN­OTHER goddamn beer!"

Forbes nodded in
agreement with the sentiment. He started to bend over and had another coughing spasm which left
him gasp­ing for breath, pale and shaken. He looked over at Red Horse. "You don't really like me,
do you?"

He averted his eyes
then and reached down and got two more beers out of the bag. He held the cans in his lap, keeping
his eyes on them.

Red Horse took the
corncob pipe out of his mouth slowly and cradled it in the palm of his hand as if it suddenly
were very heavy. He looked suddenly very weary.

Forbes went on,
"When I think of all the years, all the things we went through. Out on location in the middle of
a thousand nowheres, not quite in hell and no ways near heaven. Seems like I spent two whole
lifetimes with you . . . and with your peo­ple." He opened both cans slowly as if the act helped
him shape his thoughts. "I made it possible for you to live in a better way. I gave you money. I
gave you fame even. And even though it was Hollywood all the way where everything is bent, I
think I pretty damn near always was straight with you."

Red Horse nodded.
"In that I agree. In Hollywood, honest meant undetected. But you were straight with me in your
heart."

Forbes settled back
deeper into the rocking chair, extended a can of beer to Red Horse and said, "So how come, that
being true ... all those years . . . you never took my hand in friendship?"

Red Horse, his hand
about to close on the beer, said, "Maybe because there was always the rustle of paper money when
your hand came out."

Angry, Forbes
withdrew his hand, letting the beer can come back to rest in his lap.

Red Horse lunged
futilely at the can of beer.

Forbes bolted a
gulp of beer angrily, from the can he had been offering to Red Horse.

Red Horse balled
his hand into a fist, as if he wished to take a poke at Forbes, but thinking better of it,
unclenched his hand.

"You don't need to
take it so personal. There was always one more take, one more horse to fall off of. I never did
anything for you that I wasn't paid for. That is a difficult way to live."

Forbes drank again
from Red Horse's beer and then said, "I never cheated you. I was generous. I paid you what you
were worth and then some. A man can look back on that with pride, can't he?"

Red Horse watched
him drink, licking his lips.

"What I did you
always asked me to do for money, you never asked me to do it for you because I was your
friend."

Forbes waved both
cans of beer for emphasis. "Christ! I didn't want to take advantage of our
friendship!"

"Until you do
something to test it, friendship has no strength. It has no heart until you risk it."

Forbes started to
hand the can of beer to Red Horse as if suddenly remembering that it was his beer.

"I held back," and
Forbes, unaware of the action, drew back the can just as Red Horse lunged for it, "because I
respected you."

"You can't expect
that of friends in this life. Respect is only good after you are dead. Then you hope your friends
don't let their horses stand too long over your grave."

Forbes grimaced and
downed the rest of Red Horse's beer. "Well, you give me a pain in the . . ."

Red Horse, half
angry about the past and half angry about the beer, cut in. "Don't tell me pain stories. I fell
off three hundred and fifty horses of a different Technicolor. I rode across your screen. I
danced for you. I fell off horses for you. I got shot for you. I was living in two worlds and the
Great Spirit was working the night shift. When you said do a rain dance, I did a rain dance." He
banged his corncob pipe angrily against the wooden arm of the rocking chair. "When the script
called for a woman, you changed me into one. Don't tell me about pain!"

"I feel pain too.
Like the one in my heart right now. I always
liked you. . . . Always. . . . You treat me badly. Would it break your red rear end to
admit to liking me, even a little? Just once, maybe, for old times' sakes?"

Red Horse smiled
cagily. "Supposing I did like you, always did like you, I wouldn't tell you."

"It isn't fair. I'm
always getting the shaft. I guess I shot too many movies and not enough actors."

"Being liked is
something that is known and doesn't have to be told," said Red Horse.

The white man
looked unhappy. "We all like to be liked. What's the harm in saying it?"

The Indian shook
his head. "Plenty harm. All these years, you are the same man who drank the water. You never
changed. If it wasn't a cattle stampede or dynamiting the dam, you couldn't feel it. If I saw a
hundred people on horseback, I looked for someone I knew. You worried if they had taken their
wrist-watches off or whether or not the horses would do something unfortunate on camera when they
rode by. I looked for a home in every face I saw. But what did you look for?"

"I was always
looking for the big picture," said Forbes defen­sively.

"There was never a
big picture. Only big people with hearts as big as the sky, for the man who had time to see
it."

"I must be crazy,
talking about movies to you. You never sat in the director's chair. I had to move mountains. I
had to play God!"

Forbes had a dreamy
sort of look on his face. "In the begin­ning, was montage. Then it was an endless parade of
forty-nine-year-old starlets in soft focus who had never been kissed. I was a good director!
Hell, I was a great director because I was lonely. Because in that silence that surrounded me, I
chased the great­est loneliness of all, that a man can aspire to. I moved and shaked. My power
was in my ability to motivate, to show the donkey the carrot."

He drank from the
other can of beer.

Red Horse eyed the
beer can and said, "You never had it so good."

"Or parted with it
so fast. Yes sir, Red Horse, you're a genius in Hollywood, until you lose your job."

Red Horse looked at
the bowl of his pipe. "Well, life is a choice of choices. You could have ridden some other horse,
chased some other sunset."

Forbes shook his
head. "I don't think so. I didn't know any­thing else. Didn't want to know anything else. A
director is a guy who aims at something he can't see and hits it if he's lucky with bullets from
empty guns." He finished his beer and tossed the can away. "A director has certain
responsibilities."

"A human being only
has one. Being human."

"I could never
explain my life to you, Red Horse."

"It's not my job to
understand your life. That's the white woman's burden," said Red Horse solemnly.

"Leave my ex-wife
out of this," said Forbes wearily.

"Even so, I always
understood you. You wanted to hit the big jackpot which meant you had to become a slug in the
machine. You wanted to get into the big poker game of the ages but you bluffed with the same hand
for too long. They brought in a new dealer and your Westerns fell off the same horse I once rode.
A six-gun stopped beating four of a kind."

Forbes stared at
the old Indian with simulated disgust. "You are a philosopher. That is not good. They'll say you
use drugs."

Forbes threw the
last beer can over his shoulder. Red Horse winced as it bounced noisily off the wall.

"I WOULD if I could
get any." He stared down at the bag in front of Forbes's chair with longing. "But beer is up
another dollar a six-pack. I say the world is coming to an end."

Forbes nodded in
half-drunken agreement. "Have another beer, Red Horse."

Red Horse sighed.
"Maybe you should stop being so gener­ous with my beer."

Forbes took out two
more cans of beer, set them in his lap and began to open them. His fingers were now very
unsteady. He paused from this task to put another cigarette in his mouth. Red Horse leaned over
and lit the cigarette for him.

Forbes thanked him
with a nod, took a few puffs and then had such a violent coughing fit, the cigarette flew out of
his mouth.

Forbes bent over,
tears in his eyes, barely able to breathe. "I didn't have to be a film director. I could have
been a gynecologist."

Red Horse agreed.
"Cowboys and Indians can't last forever but women are something the world can't live
without."

Forbes shook his
head with regret. "I used to have a real personality but a producer got rid of it for me. I spent
a lot of time working for people who tried to put my head in a wine bottle."

"You should have
quit when it started to fit," said Red Horse.

Forbes announced
decisively, "Another beer. Just the thing to wash the rotten taste of Hollywood out of our
mouths."

"At least I wasn't
a Hollywood phony. People hated me for myself."

Forbes drank from
the can in his left hand, nodded in satisfac­tion and then treated himself to another gulp, this
time from the can in the other hand that he had just opened for Red Horse.

Red Horse sighed.
"My generosity knows no bounds."

"Forty years a
director. I spent most of my life in half-lit rooms with half-lit people. I was drunk on success,
drunk on money, drunk on power . . . and I was drunk, too. And then, right into the toilet. I
went from the house on the hill to the phone booth on the corner of walk and don't walk. It
should have meant more than that."

"I always said the
same thing about your films."

"What's wrong with
my films, you drunken old totem pole!"

"Aside from me
being in them, everything else is what is wrong with them."

Forbes gestured
with the beer cans, angrily spilling some of the beer.

"You take that
back! My films were true to life. They meant something! They were steeped in
authenticity!"