The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven

BECAUSE MY FATHER ALWAYS SAID HE WAS THE ONLY INDIAN WHO SAW JIMI HENDRIX PLAY “THE STAR-SPANGLED BANNER” AT WOODSTOCK

DURING THE SIXTIES, MY father was the perfect hippie, since all the hippies were trying to be Indians. Because of that, how could anyone recognize that my father was trying to make a social statement?

But there is evidence, a photograph of my father demonstrating in Spokane, Washington, during the Vietnam War. The photograph made it onto the wire service and was reprinted in newspapers throughout the country. In fact, it was on the cover of Time.

In the photograph, my father is dressed in bell-bottoms and flowered shirt, his hair in braids, with red peace symbols splashed across his face like war paint. In his hands my father holds a rifle above his head, captured in that moment just before he proceeded to beat the shit out of the National Guard private lying prone on the ground. A fellow demonstrator holds a sign that is just barely visible over my father’s left shoulder. It read MAKE LOVE NOT WAR.

The photographer won a Pulitzer Prize, and editors across the country had a lot of fun creating captions and headlines. I’ve read many of them collected in my father’s scrapbook, and my favorite was run in the Seattle Times. The caption under the photograph read DEMONSTRATOR GOES TO WAR FOR PEACE. The editors capitalized on my father’s Native American identity with other headlines like ONE WARRIOR AGAINST WAR and PEACEFUL GATHERING TURNS INTO NATIVE UPRISING.

Anyway, my father was arrested, charged with attempted murder, which was reduced to assault with a deadly weapon. It was a high-profile case so my father was used as an example. Convicted and sentenced quickly, he spent two years in Walla Walla State Penitentiary. Although his prison sentence effectively kept him out of the war, my father went through a different kind of war behind bars.

“There was Indian gangs and white gangs and black gangs and Mexican gangs,” he told me once. “And there was somebody new killed every day. We’d hear about somebody getting it in the shower or wherever and the word would go down the line. Just one word. Just the color of his skin. Red, white, black, or brown. Then we’d chalk it up on the mental scoreboard and wait for the next broadcast.”

My father made it through all that, never got into any serious trouble, somehow avoided rape, and got out of prison just in time to hitchhike to Woodstock to watch Jimi Hendrix play “The Star-Spangled Banner.”

“After all the shit I’d been through,” my father said, “I figured Jimi must have known I was there in the crowd to play something like that. It was exactly how I felt.”

Twenty years later, my father played his Jimi Hendrix tape until it wore down. Over and over, the house filled with the rockets’ red glare and the bombs bursting in air. He’d sit by the stereo with a cooler of beer beside him and cry, laugh, call me over and hold me tight in his arms, his bad breath and body odor covering me like a blanket.

Jimi Hendrix and my father became drinking buddies. Jimi Hendrix waited for my father to come home after a long night of drinking. Here’s how the ceremony worked:

1. I would lie awake all night and listen for the sounds of my father’s pickup.

2. When I heard my father’s pickup, I would run upstairs and throw Jimi’s tape into the stereo.

3. Jimi would bend his guitar into the first note of “The Star-Spangled Banner” just as my father walked inside.

4. My father would weep, attempt to hum along with Jimi, and then pass out with his head on the kitchen table.

5. I would fall asleep under the table with my head near my father’s feet.

6. We’d dream together until the sun came up.

The days after, my father would feel so guilty that he would tell me stories as a means of apology.

“I met your mother at a party in Spokane,” my father told me once. “We were the only two Indians at the party. Maybe the only two Indians in the whole town. I thought she was so beautiful. I figured she was the kind of woman who could make buffalo walk on up to her and give up their lives. She wouldn’t have needed to hunt. Every time we went walking, birds would follow us around. Hell, tumbleweeds would follow us around.”

Somehow my father’s memories of my mother grew more beautiful as their relationship became more hostile. By the time the divorce was final, my mother was quite possibly the most beautiful woman who ever lived.

“Your father was always half crazy,” my mother told me more than once. “And the other half was on medication.”

But she loved him, too, with a ferocity that eventually forced her to leave him. They fought each other with the kind of graceful anger that only love can create. Still, their love was passionate, unpredictable, and selfish. My mother and father would get drunk and leave parties abruptly to go home and make love.

“Don’t tell your father I told you this,” my mother said. “But there must have been a hundred times he passed out on top of me. We’d be right in the middle of it, he’d say I love you, his eyes would roll backwards, and then out went his lights. It sounds strange, I know, but those were good times.”

I was conceived during one of those drunken nights, half of me formed by my father’s whiskey sperm, the other half formed by my mother’s vodka egg. I was born a goofy reservation mixed drink, and my father needed me just as much as he needed every other kind of drink.

One night my father and I were driving home in a near-blizzard after a basketball game, listening to the radio. We didn’t talk much. One, because my father didn’t talk much when he was sober, and two, because Indians don’t need to talk to communicate.

“Hello out there, folks, this is Big Bill Baggins, with the late-night classics show on KROC, 97.2 on your FM dial. We have a request from Betty in Tekoa. She wants to hear Jimi Hendrix’s version of ‘The Star-Spangled Banner’ recorded live at Woodstock.”

My father smiled, turned the volume up, and we rode down the highway while Jimi led the way like a snowplow. Until that night, I’d always been neutral about Jimi Hendrix. But, in that near-blizzard with my father at the wheel, with the nervous silence caused by the dangerous roads and Jimi’s guitar, there seemed to be more to all that music. The reverberation came to mean something, took form and function.

That song made me want to learn to play guitar, not because I wanted to be Jimi Hendrix and not because I thought I’d ever play for anyone. I just wanted to touch the strings, to hold the guitar tight against my body, invent a chord, and come closer to what Jimi knew, to what my father knew.

“You know,” I said to my father after the song was over, “my generation of Indian boys ain’t ever had no real war to fight. The first Indians had Custer to fight. My great-grandfather had World War I, my grandfather had World War II, you had Vietnam. All I have is video games.”

My father laughed for a long time, nearly drove off the road into the snowy fields.

“Shit,” he said. “I don’t know why you’re feeling sorry for yourself because you ain’t had to fight a war. You’re lucky. Shit, all you had was that damn Desert Storm. Should have called it Dessert Storm because it just made the fat cats get fatter. It was all sugar and whipped cream with a cherry on top. And besides that, you didn’t even have to fight it. All you lost during that war was sleep because you stayed up all night watching CNN.”

We kept driving through the snow, talked about war and peace.

“That’s all there is,” my father said. “War and peace with nothing in between. It’s always one or the other.”

“You sound like a book,” I said.

“Yeah, well, that’s how it is. Just because it’s in a book doesn’t make it not true. And besides, why the hell would you want to fight a war for this country? It’s been trying to kill Indians since the very beginning. Indians are pretty much born soldiers anyway. Don’t need a uniform to prove it.”

Those were the kinds of conversations that Jimi Hendrix forced us to have. I guess every song has a special meaning for someone somewhere. Elvis Presley is still showing up in 7-11 stores across the country, even though he’s been dead for years, so I figure music just might be the most important thing there is. Music turned my father into a reservation philosopher. Music had powerful medicine.

“I remember the first time your mother and I danced,” my father told me once. “We were in this cowboy bar. We were the only real cowboys there despite the fact that we’re Indians. We danced to a Hank Williams song. Danced to that real sad one, you know. ‘I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry.’ Except your mother and I weren’t lonesome or crying. We just shuffled along and fell right goddamn down into love.”

“Hank Williams and Jimi Hendrix don’t have much in common,” I said.

“Hell, yes, they do. They knew all about broken hearts,” my father said.

“You sound like a bad movie.”

“Yeah, well, that’s how it is. You kids today don’t know shit about romance. Don’t know shit about music either. Especially you Indian kids. You all have been spoiled by those drums. Been hearing them beat so long, you think that’s all you need. Hell, son, even an Indian needs a piano or guitar or saxophone now and again.”

My father played in a band in high school. He was the drummer. I guess he’d burned out on those. Now, he was like the universal defender of the guitar.

“I remember when your father would haul that old guitar out and play me songs,” my mother said. “He couldn’t play all that well but he tried. You could see him thinking about what chord he was going to play next. His eyes got all squeezed up and his face turned all red. He kind of looked that way when he kissed me, too. But don’t tell him I said that.”

Some nights I lay awake and listened to my parents’ lovemaking. I know white people keep it quiet, pretend they don’t ever make love. My white friends tell me they can’t even imagine their own parents getting it on. I know exactly what it sounds like when my parents are touching each other. It makes up for knowing exactly what they sound like when they’re fighting. Plus and minus. Add and subtract. It comes out just about even.

Some nights I would fall asleep to the sounds of my parents’ lovemaking. I would dream Jimi Hendrix. I could see my father standing in the front row in the dark at Woodstock as Jimi Hendrix played “The Star-Spangled Banner.” My mother was at home with me, both of us waiting for my father to find his way back home to the reservation. It’s amazing to realize I was alive, breathing and wetting my bed, when Jimi was alive and breaking guitars.

I dreamed my father dancing with all these skinny hippie women, smoking a few joints, dropping acid, laughing when the rain fell. And it did rain there. I’ve seen actual news footage. I’ve seen the documentaries. It rained. People had to share food. People got sick. People got married. People cried all kinds of tears.

But as much as I dream about it, I don’t have any clue about what it meant for my father to be the only Indian who saw Jimi Hendrix play at Woodstock. And maybe he wasn’t the only Indian there. Most likely there were hundreds but my father thought he was the only one. He told me that a million times when he was drunk and a couple hundred times when he was sober.

“I was there,” he said. “You got to remember this was near the end and there weren’t as many people as before. Not nearly as many. But I waited it out. I waited for Jimi.”

A few years back, my father packed up the family and the three of us drove to Seattle to visit Jimi Hendrix’s grave. We had our photograph taken lying down next to the grave. There isn’t a gravestone there. Just one of those flat markers.

Jimi was twenty-eight when he died. That’s younger than Jesus Christ when he died. Younger than my father as we stood over the grave.

“Only the good die young,” my father said.

“No,” my mother said. “Only the crazy people choke to death on their own vomit.”

“Why you talking about my hero that way?” my father asked.

“Shit,” my mother said. “Old Jesse WildShoe choked to death on his own vomit and he ain’t anybody’s hero.”

I stood back and watched my parents argue. I was used to these battles. When an Indian marriage starts to fall apart, it’s even more destructive and painful than usual. A hundred years ago, an Indian marriage was broken easily. The woman or man just packed up all their possessions and left the tipi. There were no arguments, no discussions. Now, Indians fight their way to the end, holding onto the last good thing, because our whole lives have to do with survival.

After a while, after too much fighting and too many angry words had been exchanged, my father went out and bought a motorcycle. A big bike. He left the house often to ride that thing for hours, sometimes for days. He even strapped an old cassette player to the gas tank so he could listen to music. With that bike, he learned something new about running away. He stopped talking as much, stopped drinking as much. He didn’t do much of anything except ride that bike and listen to music.

Then one night my father wrecked his bike on Devil’s Gap Road and ended up in the hospital for two months. He broke both his legs, cracked his ribs, and punctured a lung. He also lacerated his kidney. The doctors said he could have died easily. In fact, they were surprised he made it through surgery, let alone survived those first few hours when he lay on the road, bleeding. But I wasn’t surprised. That’s how my father was.

And even though my mother didn’t want to be married to him anymore and his wreck didn’t change her mind about that, she still came to see him every day. She sang Indian tunes under her breath, in time with the hum of the machines hooked into my father. Although my father could barely move, he tapped his finger in rhythm.

When he had the strength to finally sit up and talk, hold conversations, and tell stories, he called for me.

“Victor,” he said. “Stick with four wheels.”

After he began to recover, my mother stopped visiting as often. She helped him through the worst, though. When he didn’t need her anymore, she went back to the life she had created. She traveled to powwows, started to dance again. She was a champion traditional dancer when she was younger.

“I remember your mother when she was the best traditional dancer in the world,” my father said. “Everyone wanted to call her sweetheart. But she only danced for me. That’s how it was. She told me that every other step was just for me.”

“But that’s only half of the dance,” I said.

“Yeah,” my father said. “She was keeping the rest for herself. Nobody can give everything away. It ain’t healthy.”

“You know,” I said, “sometimes you sound like you ain’t even real.”

“What’s real? I ain’t interested in what’s real. I’m interested in how things should be.”

My father’s mind always worked that way. If you don’t like the things you remember, then all you have to do is change the memories. Instead of remembering the bad things, remember what happened immediately before. That’s what I learned from my father. For me, I remember how good the first drink of that Diet Pepsi tasted instead of how my mouth felt when I swallowed a wasp with the second drink.

Because of all that, my father always remembered the second before my mother left him for good and took me with her. No. I remembered the second before my father left my mother and me. No. My mother remembered the second before my father left her to finish raising me all by herself.

But however memory actually worked, it was my father who climbed on his motorcycle, waved to me as I stood in the window, and rode away. He lived in Seattle, San Francisco, Los Angeles, before he finally ended up in Phoenix. For a while, I got postcards nearly every week. Then it was once a month. Then it was on Christmas and my birthday.

On a reservation, Indian men who abandon their children are treated worse than white fathers who do the same thing. It’s because white men have been doing that forever and Indian men have just learned how. That’s how assimilation can work.

My mother did her best to explain it all to me, although I understood most of what happened.

“Was it because of Jimi Hendrix?” I asked her.

“Part of it, yeah,” she said. “This might be the only marriage broken up by a dead guitar player.”

“There’s a first time for everything, enit?”

“I guess. Your father just likes being alone more than he likes being with other people. Even me and you.”

Sometimes I caught my mother digging through old photo albums or staring at the wall or out the window. She’d get that look on her face that I knew meant she missed my father. Not enough to want him back. She missed him just enough for it to hurt.

On those nights I missed him most I listened to music. Not always Jimi Hendrix. Usually I listened to the blues. Robert Johnson mostly. The first time I heard Robert Johnson sing I knew he understood what it meant to be Indian on the edge of the twenty-first century, even if he was black at the beginning of the twentieth. That must have been how my father felt when he heard Jimi Hendrix. When he stood there in the rain at Woodstock.

Then on the night I missed my father most, when I lay in bed and cried, with that photograph of him beating that National Guard private in my hands, I imagined his motorcycle pulling up outside. I knew I was dreaming it all but I let it be real for a moment.

“Victor,” my father yelled. “Let’s go for a ride.”

“I’ll be right down. I need to get my coat on.”

I rushed around the house, pulled my shoes and socks on, struggled into my coat, and ran outside to find an empty driveway. It was so quiet, a reservation kind of quiet, where you can hear somebody drinking whiskey on the rocks three miles away. I stood on the porch and waited until my mother came outside.

“Come on back inside,” she said. “It’s cold.”

“No,” I said. “I know he’s coming back tonight.”

My mother didn’t say anything. She just wrapped me in her favorite quilt and went back to sleep. I stood on the porch all night long and imagined I heard motorcycles and guitars, until the sun rose so bright that I knew it was time to go back inside to my mother. She made breakfast for both of us and we ate until we were full.