Death Chants (6 page)

"They were steeped
in something," admitted Red Horse.

Forbes
acknowledged, "Oh, I may have cut a few corners here and there but I attempted to depict what I
could see."

"A crazy man and a
not crazy man think the same way. The difference is where you start."

Forbes gestured
even more wildly, spilling more beer. "If you didn't like my films, if you didn't believe in the
... in the moral integrity of my films, why did you stay all these years?"

"I didn't have to
believe in your films, only your money. You had the most believable money I ever saw."

Forbes smashed the
beer cans against his chest, spraying him­self with beer. "Let me tell you something, you
miserable model for a buffalo nickel, I had to believe in them. Every producer insisted, so he
wouldn't have to. I sweated out every word ut­tered in every one of my films." Contemptuously,
Forbes flung the half-filled beer cans over his shoulder, spraying both of them in a fine shower
of beer. "What other director can say that?"

Red Horse wiped
beer off his face, and looked disgusted. "Kissing yourself above the knees is hard
work."

"Remember that
death scene in
They Rode Bold for Gold}
You helped me write it yourself! You can't tell me
that scene didn't have something!"

Forbes was very
much caught up in the memory, making elab­orately drunken gestures with his hands. "The faithful
Indian returning to warn his white master of the ambush, only to drop dead at his feet. I said to
you, 'Red Horse, you gasp out your words of warning in English, then look far away into the
distance and say your dying words in your own tongue. Thinking of your wife and child back at the
wigwam, never to see them again. You gave your all for the white man but your heart returned to
your people at the last moment.' It was your greatest moment on screen and it wasn't even in
English. I did that. I insisted that the last words you spoke should be Indian. I made it
authentic. It was just the right touch. I had the audiences crying in their socks! Remember! It
was so successful I had you do it in all the other movies."

"You also said not
to say it in real Indian. You just wanted to make it sound Indian."

"I said
that?"

"I wouldn't forget
something like that."

Forbes frowned.
"Well, so what? It's the thought that counted. It sounded Indian. Nobody could tell it wasn't
Indian. I didn't want to offend any particular Indian tribe. I had producers to answer
to."

"I could tell. My
people could tell. Which is why I went ahead and said it in my own language anyway."

"You what? You did
what?"

"In my death scene,
I spoke my own language."

Forbes stared
darkly at him, rebuke on his face. "If I had
known, I'd have skinned you alive. No director has to take that kind of
insubordination."

"Aren't you curious
to know what I really said?"

Forbes shrugged.
"It was a death scene, the highest point in the film. I'm sure you said something
appropriate."

Red Horse
deliberately spoke in the stiff, unnatural Indianese of the old bad Westerns. "Translated, it
went like this. 'No. This . . . not . . . arrow in my stomach. I just excited.' "

Forbes spread his
hands to the heavens above as if inviting a lightning bolt to put him out of his misery. "And to
think, I wasted a whole lifetime liking you. I should have stuck with the Italians. They ride
horses like old people make love but they don't shaft you when you're NOT looking."

Red Horse snorted
derisively. "They only shaft you when you ARE looking."

"Red Horse, you're
the kind of guy who takes a sack full of kittens down to the river to drown them and then starts
to cry," he said wickedly, "because you can't get them to skip."

He pointed an
accusing finger at Red Horse's chest.

"What did I ever do
to you, anyway? Is it because a lot of Indians think you're an Uncle Tomahawk because of the
films you made with me? Is that what you're holding against me? Are you blaming me because some
people think you're some kind of stupid wooden Indian Hollywood clown?"

"I enjoy being a
clown. That is my sanity. If you laugh you survive death, if you don't you die out. To be an
Indian and to be too serious is to be blind and trapped in the white man's frantic world where
death is not an old friend, just a terrifying interrup­tion."

"I take what I do
seriously, what I have done. In Europe, they still watch my old films. They call me a great
artist. They appreci­ate my vision, my sensitivity."

"To be appreciated.
That is a very serious hell. It is a power too strong to be overcome by anything except
flight."

Forbes said
defensively, "I put things on film that had never been seen before. I spent my whole life at it.
It had to mean something to you, to your people."

"Your films landed
where the hands of man never set foot."

"I sought
truth."

"You could have had
the dreams locked in men's hearts. The dreams of my people. You could have had my hand in
friendship. That is all the truth a man need know."

"I helped keep your
people alive. I created visions of your life, maybe not accurate in every detail, but the meaning
was there. I gave the world moments of your people's lives for all to see."

"You may have shown
the world how we might have lived and behaved but never how we thought or felt. The fire you lit
for us, flashed and flared and danced on the silver screen but showed us only the dark in which
we lived."

Forbes was overcome
with a sudden, convulsive fit of cough­ing. It left him looking very ill and old and worn out. He
looked at the old Indian next to him and there was pain in his eyes that was not from the illness
inside him.

"All these years,
have you hated me?"

"Could I hate you
when the whole world was watching? You always had the courage to make a fool of yourself and then
you were willing to take the rest of the world with you. I never felt exploited or used. Mostly I
was amazed at your earnest stupid-ity."

Red Horse looked
into Forbes's eyes, understanding the pain there.

"I was born a
savage. You called me forth from my reservation prison, dressed me up as a Noble Savage or a
vicious one, taught me to ride horses I couldn't afford to own and to pretend to kill men I had
no reason to hate.

"I put away the
cowboy boots that really fit and wore the costumer's moccasins that didn't fit and never
would.

"I danced dances
for the camera that meant nothing, chanted chants even I didn't understand, scalped bald men and
endlessly rode in a circle around Western Civilization.

"You always said
you were looking for truth but instead I always thought you were looking for some purity in my
primi-liveness.

"You called me
forth in a hundred different costumes no man of my tribe would have been caught dead in, painted
like devils loo evil for us to even dream of.

"You brought me and
my people exotic and disguised onto
the
silver screen in every shape and color and flavor of reality but our own. And why?

"Every time I fell
off a horse when a white man shot his six-shooter for the seventh time, I always asked myself
what was in it for you.

"Then one day I
figured it out.

"I was a guilty
pleasure. I was something suppressed in your own life. I and my people were an experience,
civilized white people are denied the luxury of indulging in.

"So we were
summoned forth but our reality didn't match your forbidden fantasy ... so you recast, rewrote,
recut and reclothed the missing part of your heart's forbidden desires, thereby giving the rest
of the world a chance to satisfy its own deepest secret fears.

"Some of my people
called me Uncle Tomahawk because I danced for you. Because I got shot for you, because I always
fell off horses so beautifully for you.

"But I seduced the
world with your foolish help. I gave the world an interesting lie. I kept truth for
myself."

"How could you live
a lie?" said Forbes, shocked.

"How could you film
one?" said Red Horse with a smile.

"I was
approximating a truth. I felt it to be true. I had my beliefs in some of it. I was cynical, God
knows. I gave the hicks what they wanted to see. I never disappointed my audience. Well, not for
a long time anyway. Later I lost control of myself and lost my grip on the audience
too."

Red Horse turned
and looked at the empty beer cans on the floor. "Drinking wore away the first half of your
strength."

Forbes agreed. "My
ex-wife, who fancied herself, considered herself entitled to the second half. I did my last films
with what was left."

"I still don't know
how you spent your whole life chasing a truth that would not fit in your hand or
heart."

Forbes was looking
at something outside the room, as if he were staring at his own past. "Maybe because I was in
love, in love with all the faces in the dark I never knew. Maybe because I thought when I found
my audience, I would somehow find my­self. When I touched them, I would touch me.

"Maybe because
people were too full of feelings I couldn't express in me, because I could be content with an
image.

"I was looking for
a place to die on the photograph of my soul. I lived like some kind of deranged ghoul who put
cameras in Geronimo's coffin in order to interview Indian worms.

"Sometimes I think
I am an evil old man because I chased a truth about a people who wouldn't tell it to me, because
I wanted selfishly to put it all in one stunning montage, in one brilliant symbolic lap dissolve,
seeing you and your people chained to my wishes, turning from untamed bodies dancing on trees to
a pair of eyes staring beautifully in the dark."

"You are a dying
man. It is in your voice. It is in your eyes." Red Horse reached out and put his arm around
Forbes's shoul­der. "This is a good joke. It is all behind you. It is up to other people to
stumble upon new lies. You will make no more films, my old friend, and that is well and just, for
I do not wish to fall off
a
ny more horses."

Forbes's voice
trembled with emotion. "I've got cancer. I just came to say good-bye. I don't have much
time."

Red Horse smiled.
He seemed strangely cheerful at the news. "I too am nearing my time. Big parts of my body are
ready to fall off. It is a hell of a good joke. We can race and see which one falls apart
first.

"I was beginning to
get angry at you. I have been waiting up lor you. I have been saving up some of the most
interesting lies, also lots of dirty stories.

"I have been
holding off on the dying business, waiting for you to catch up. If you think I am going to fall
off three hundred and fifty goddamn horses of a different Technicolor for you and get bumps and
bruises and damaged parts for every damn inch of me, having gone through all that, then die all
alone, you're crazy!

"We are old and out
of horses. We are past sex and the arro­gance of it. We have lived a lifetime together and the
hurts and lies of the past are not only over, they are forgiven.

"All our lives, we
have loved each other, as friends, as human beings.

"I have always
known this because I am Indian but you have
only suspected it because you are white and stupid and as crazy as three ducks with
wooden legs trying to be quiet.

"Now it is right
that we will be together at the end. I am glad you did not stay in Hollywood, to die among
strangers. What I cannot understand, is what took you so long to get here. I almost had to sit on
matches all day long just to keep the heart fire lit."

Forbes smiled. "I
had to help my ex-wife get her cat down out of a tree. The reason I'm late is because I'm such a
poor shot."

"You always were a
gentleman. You never hit a woman with your hat on."

Forbes tried to
hide the tears leaking from the corners of his eyes. He tried to straighten his back, get a grip
on himself. "What gets me ... I ... all these years . . . what I tried to do ... tried to say ...
how I carried myself ... I was so ... so damn afraid you wouldn't like me. Goddamn, I tried so
damn hard to be your friend. ... I hoped . . . why am I so goddamned dim that I have to wait till
the last reel to find out the truth?"

"The truth only
waits for eyes not filled with longing."

There was a silence
between the two of them. The thought hung in the air between them, like a bridge that spanned an
old, deep river they had always longed to cross.

Forbes bent over
and got out two cans of beer. They were the last two cans in the sack. He opened them, held them
in his lap, a can in each hand. Red Horse was staring at him, his hands balled into
fists.

Forbes peered into
the growing darkness of the day and said, "I think the matinee is almost over. We didn't ride off
into the sunset and we didn't get the girl."