War Dances

  MUTUALLY ASSURED DESTRUCTION

  When I was nine, my father sliced his knee

  With a chain saw. But he let himself bleed

  And finished cutting down one more tree

  Before his boss drove him to EMERGENCY.

  Late that night, stoned on morphine and beer,

  My father needed my help to steer

  His pickup into the woods. “Watch for deer,”

  My father said. “Those things just appear

  Like magic.” It was an Indian summer

  And we drove through warm rain and thunder,

  Until we found that chain saw, lying under

  The fallen pine. Then I watched, with wonder,

  As my father, shotgun-rich and impulse-poor,

  Blasted that chain saw dead. “What was that for?”

  I asked. “Son,” my father said, “here’s the score.

  Once a thing tastes blood, it will come for more.”

  Well, first of all, as you know, you did cut your knee with a chain saw, but in direct contradiction to your son’s poem:

  A) You immediately went to the emergency room after injuring yourself.

  B) Your boss called your wife, who drove you to the emergency room.

  C) You were given morphine but even you were not alcoholically stupid enough to drink alcohol while on serious narcotics.

  D) You and your son did not get into the pickup that night.

  E) And even if you had driven the pickup, you were not injured seriously enough to need your son’s help with the pedals and/or steering wheel.

  F) You never in your life used the word, appear, and certainly never used the phrase, like magic.

  G) You also agree that Indian summer is a fairly questionable seasonal reference for an Indian poet to use.

  H) What the fuck is “warm rain and thunder”? Well, everybody knows what warm rain is, but what the fuck is warm thunder?

  I) You never went looking for that chain saw because it belonged to the Spokane tribe of Indians and what kind of freak would want to reclaim the chain saw that had just cut the shit out of his knee?

  J) You also agree that the entire third stanza of this poem sounds like a Bruce Springsteen song and not necessarily one of the great ones.

  K) And yet, “shotgun-rich and impulse-poor” is one of the greatest descriptions your son has ever written and probably redeems the entire poem.

  L) You never owned a shotgun. You did own a few rifles during your lifetime, but did not own even so much as a pellet gun during the last thirty years of your life.

  M) You never said, in any context, “Once a thing tastes your blood, it will come for more.”

  N) But you, as you read it, know that it is absolutely true and does indeed sound suspiciously like your entire life philosophy.

  O) Other summations of your life philosophy include: “I’ll be there before the next teardrop falls.”

  P) And: “If God really loved Indians, he would have made us white people.”

  Q) And: “Oscar Robertson should be the man on the NBA logo. They only put Jerry West on there because he’s a white guy.”

  R) And: “A peanut butter sandwich with onions. Damn, that’s the way to go.”

  S) And: “Why eat a pomegranate when you can eat a plain old apple. Or peach. Or orange. When it comes to fruit and vegetables, only eat the stuff you know how to grow.”

  T) And: “If you really want a woman to love you, then you have to dance. And if you don’t want to dance, then you’re going to have to work extrahard to make a woman love you forever, and you will always run the risk that she will leave you at any second for a man who knows how to tango.”

  U) And: “I really miss those cafeterias they use to have in Kmart. I don’t know why they stopped having those. If there is a Heaven then I firmly believe it’s a Kmart cafeteria.”

  V) And: “A father always knows what his sons are doing. For instance, boys, I knew you were sneaking that Hustler magazine out of my bedroom. You remember that one? Where actors who looked like Captain Kirk and Lieutenant Uhura were screwing on the bridge of the Enterprise. Yeah, that one. I know you kept borrowing it. I let you borrow it. Remember this: men and pornography are like plants and sunshine. To me, porn is photosynthesis.”

  W) And: “Your mother is a better man than me. Mothers are almost always better men than men are.”

  16. Reunion

  After she returned from Italy, my wife climbed into bed with me. I felt like I had not slept comfortably in years.

  I said, “There was a rumor that I’d grown a tumor but I killed it with humor.”

  “How long have you been waiting to tell me that one?” she asked.

  “Oh, probably since the first time some doctor put his fingers in my brain.”

  We made love. We fell asleep. But I, agitated by the steroids, woke at two, three, four, and five a.m. The bed was killing my back so I lay flat on the floor. I wasn’t going to die anytime soon, at least not because of my little friend, Mr. Tumor, but that didn’t make me feel any more comfortable or comforted. I felt distant from the world—from my wife and sons, from my mother and siblings—from all of my friends. I felt closer to those who’ve always had fingers in their brains.

  And I didn’t feel any closer to the world six months later when another MRI revealed that my meningioma had not grown in size or changed its shape.

  “You’re looking good,” my doctor said. “How’s your hearing?”

  “I think I’ve got about 90 percent of it back.”

  “Well, then, the steroids worked. Good.”

  And I didn’t feel any more intimate with God nine months later when one more MRI made my doctor hypothesize that my meningioma might only be more scar tissue from the hydrocephalus.

  “Frankly,” my doctor said. “Your brain is beautiful.”

  “Thank you,” I said, though it was the oddest compliment I’d ever received.

  I wanted to call up my father and tell him that a white man thought my brain was beautiful. But I couldn’t tell him anything. He was dead. I told my wife and sons that I was okay. I told my mother and siblings. I told my friends. But none of them laughed as hard about my beautiful brain as I knew my father would have. I miss him, the drunk bastard. I would always feel closest to the man who had most disappointed me.

  “The Theology of Reptiles”

  We found a snake, dead in midmolt.

  “It’s almost like two snakes,” I said.

  My brother grabbed it by the head

  And said, “It just needs lightning bolts.”

  Laughing, he jumped the creek and draped

  The snake over an electric fence.

  Was my brother being cruel? Yes,

  But we were shocked when that damn snake

  Spiraled off the wire and splayed,

  Alive, on the grass, made a fist

  Of itself, then, gorgeous and pissed,

  Uncurled, stood on end, and swayed

  For my brother, who, bemused and odd,

  Had somehow become one snake’s god.

  Catechism

  Why did your big brother, during one hot summer, sleep in the hallway closet?

  My mother, a Spokane Indian, kept bags of fabric scraps in that hallway closet. My brother arranged these scrap bags into shapes that approximated a mattress and pillows. My mother used these scraps to make quilts.

  As an Indian, were you taught to worship the sun or the moon?

  My mother was (and is) a Protestant of random varieties. My late father, a Coeur d’Alene, was a Catholic until the day that he decided to become an atheist. But it wasn’t until twelve years after he decided to become an atheist that he made this information public.

  MY MOTHER: “Why did you wait so long to tell us?”

  MY FATHER: “I didn’t want to make a quick decision.”

  Do you think that religious ceremony is an effective treatment for grief?

  My mother once made a quilt from dozens of p
airs of second- and third- and fourth-hand blue jeans that she bought at Goodwill, the Salvation Army, Value Village, and garage sales. My late sister studied my mother’s denim quilt and said, “That’s a lot of pants. There’s been a lot of ass in those pants. This is a blanket of asses.”

  If your reservation is surrounded on all sides by two rivers and a creek, doesn’t that make it an island?

  A Coeur d’Alene Indian holy man—on my father’s side—received this vision: Three crows, luminescent and black, except for collars of white feathers, perched in a pine tree above my ancestor’s camp and told him that three strangers would soon be arriving and their advice must be heeded or the Coeur d’Alene would vanish from the earth. The next day, the first Jesuits—three men in black robes with white collars—walked into a Coeur d’Alene Indian fishing camp.

  Do you believe that God, in the form of his son, Jesus Christ, once walked the Earth?

  Thus the Coeur d’Alene soon became, and remain, among the most Catholicized Indians in the country.

  Has any member of the clergy ever given you a clear and concise explanation of this Holy Ghost business?

  Therefore, nuns taught my father, as a child, to play classical piano.

  Do you think that Beethoven was not actually deaf and was just having a laugh at his family’s expense?

  By the time I was born, my father had long since stopped playing piano.

  ME: “Dad, what did the nuns teach you to play?”

  HIM: “I don’t want to talk about that shit.”

  After you catch a sliver from a wooden crucifix, how soon afterward will you gain superpowers?

  When he was drunk, my father would sit at the kitchen table and hum an indecipherable tune while playing an imaginary keyboard.

  Did your mother ever make a quilt that featured a real piano keyboard?

  I have mounted my father’s imaginary keyboard on my office wall.

  ME: “And, here, on the wall, is my favorite work of art.”

  GUEST: “I don’t see anything.”

  ME: “It’s an installation piece created by my father.”

  GUEST: “I still can’t see anything.”

  ME: “Exactly.”

  If you could only pick one word to describe your family, then what would that word be?

  Honorificabilitudinitas.

  Is that a real word?

  Yes, Shakespeare used it. It means “The state of being able to achieve honors.”

  So you’re stating your multisyllabic, overeducated, and pretentious belief that your family is and was in a state of being able to achieve honors?

  Yep.

  What kind of honors?

  Whenever anybody in my family did something good, my mother would make an honor blanket. She used pieces of people’s clothes and stitched in little photographs and images or important dates and names. Very ornate.

  So if your mother were going to honor your family’s religious history with an honor blanket, what shape would it take?

  It wouldn’t be an honor blanket. It would be a quilt of guilt.

  Do you actually believe in God?

  My mother kept scraps of God in our hallway closet. My big brother arranged these scraps of God into shapes that approximated a mattress and pillows, and slept in that closet. My mother once used these scraps of God to make an epic quilt. My late sister studied this quilt and said, “That’s a lot of God. There’s been a lot of God in this God. This is a blanket of God.” However, my late father, when drunk, would sit at the kitchen table and sing to an indecipherable God while playing an imaginary keyboard.

  But what do you think about God?

  I’m at my kitchen window, and I’m watching three crows perched on the telephone wire. I think they’re talking trash about me.

  Ode to Small-town Sweethearts

  O, when you are driving through a blizzard

  And your vision has been reduced—

  Has been scissored—

  Into two headlights and a noose,

  How joyous to come upon the Wizard

  Of Snowplows driving his glorious machine.

  Now you will survive if you ride

  In his slipstream.

  He pushes back the fear and ice.

  This is not a time for prayer, so you scream

  With joy (Snowplow! Snowplow! Snowplow! Snowplow!)

  As he leads you into the next

  Snowed-in town.

  You are not dead! You did not wreck!

  And you know a family who live here—the Browns.

  They run that little diner on Main Street.

  It must be shut at this dark hour—

  Quarter past three—

  But the son, Mark, plays power

  Forward for the high school, the Wolverines—

  And once broke your nose with a stray elbow

  While playing some tough-ass defense—

  And you know him and call him friend.

  So you park your car and trudge through the snow—

  Cursing and/or blessing this fierce winter—

  To find Mark and his dad awake

  And cooking chicken-fried steaks

  For a dozen other survivors and sinners.

  “Dang,” Mark says. “Why are you out in this stuff?”

  “For a girl,” you say. And Mark nods.

  Mortals have always fought the gods

  And braved epic storms for love and/or lust.

  So don’t be afraid to speak honestly

  About how you obeyed beauty’s call.

  And though your triumph was small,

  You can still sing of your teenage odyssey.

  The Senator’s Son

  I HADN’T SEEN MY best friend in sixteen years, half of our lives ago, so I didn’t recognize him when I pulled him out of the car and hit him in the face. I’d taken a few self-defense classes, so I’d learned to strike with the heel of my open hand. It’s too easy to break fingers if one slams a fist against the hard bones of the head. A good student, I also remembered to stand with my feet a shoulder’s width apart, for maximum balance, and to twist my hips and shoulders back before I thrust forward, for maximum leverage and striking power. And so, maximally educated, I hit my best friend and snapped his nose.

  It made an astonishing noise. I imagine it could have been heard a block away. And the blood! Oh, his red glow drenched my shirt. He screamed, slumped back against his car, and slid to the ground. After that, it would have been impossible to recognize him because his face was a bloody mask. Drunk and enraged, I tried to kick him and might have beaten him unconscious or worse, but Bernard, my old college friend and drinking buddy, wrapped me in a bear hug and dragged me away.

  Meanwhile, on the other side of the car, a faggot was winning his fight with Spence and Eddie, my other friends. They’d picked the wrong guy to bash. He was a talented fighter and danced, ducked, and threw mean kicks and elbows that snap-snap-snapped into my friends’ faces. This guy had to be one of those ultimate fighters, a mixed-martial artist.

  This was in Seattle, on a dark street on Capitol Hill, the Pacific Northwest center of all things shabby, leftist, and gay. What was I, a straight Republican boy, doing on Capitol Hill? Well, it’s also the home of my favorite Thai joint. I love peanut sauce and Asian beer. So my friends and I had feasted in celebration of my new junior partnership in the law firm of Robber Baron, Tax Dodger & Guilt-ridden Pro Bono. I was cash-heavy, lived in a three-bedroom condo overlooking Elliott Bay, and drove a hybrid Lexus SUV.

  My father was in his first term as U.S. senator from Washington State, and he was already being talked about as a candidate for U.S. president. “I’m something different,” he said to me once. “This country wants Jimmy Stewart. And I am Jimmy Stewart.”

  It was true. My father was handsome without being beautiful, intelligent without being pretentious, and charming without being sexual. And he was a widower, a single father who’d raised an accomplished son. My mother had died of breast cancer when
I was six years old, and my father, too much in love with her memory, had never remarried. He was now as devoted and loyal to curing breast cancer as he had been to my mother.

  A University of Washington Law graduate, he had begun life as the only son of a wheat farmer and his schoolteacher wife. Eagle Scout, captain of the basketball team, and homecoming king, my father was the perfect candidate. He was a city commissioner, then a state representative, and then he ran for the U.S. Senate. After decades of voting for the sons and grandsons of privilege, the state’s conservatives were excited, even proud, to vote for a public school veteran, a blue-collar prince, a farmer’s son, a boy with dirt in his shoes.

  His best moment during his senatorial campaign was during the final debate with his Democratic rival. “My opponent keeps talking about how hard he’s worked for his country, for our state. And I’m sure he has. But my grandfather and my father taught me how to be a farmer. They taught me how to plant the seed and grow the wheat that feeds our country. I worked so hard that my hands bled; look, you can still see my scars. And I promise you, my fellow Washingtonians, that I will work hard for you. And I will work hard with you.”

  My father lost liberal King County by a surprisingly close margin but kicked ass in the rest of the state and was declared senator at 9:35 P.M. on the night of the election.

  Yes, my father had become Jefferson Smith and had marched into the other Washington as the first real populist in decades.

  I’m not ashamed to admit that I cried a little on the night my father was elected. You’ve seen the photograph. It was on the cover of the Seattle Times and was reprinted all over the country. Everybody assumed that I was happy for my father. Overjoyed, in fact. But I was also slapped hard by grief. I desperately missed my mother, but I desperately missed my father as well. You see, he was now a U.S. senator with presidential ambitions, and that meant he belonged to everybody. I knew I’d forever lost a huge part of his energy and time and, yes, his love; I’d have to share my father with the world. I also knew I’d lost my chance to ever be anything other than an all-star politician’s son.

  But who wants to hear the sob story of a senator’s son? The real question is this: Why the hell would I risk my reputation and future and my father’s political career—the entire meaning of his life—for a street fight—for a gay bashing? I don’t know, but it was high comedy.