War Stories

Stained Glass Art by Tom White



War Stories


I've got an uncle who punched a man's eye
straight out of his skull. My uncle died
young, but the one-eyed man turned
eighty-five

Last week. I went to his birthday party
where he, drunk on whiskey and memory,
pulled out his glass eye
and gave it to me.

"Your uncle hit me with his wedding ring."
he said, "and scooped out my eye.
I would sing an honor song for him,
but here's the thing:

I got no voice. So I'll have to say it
true. Before your uncle's punch, I was
closed and cruel, but now I see more
with one eye than two.

I had to lose some sense to get some
sense. Ain't that some crazy shit?"
It all depends, I guess, on context.
If the audience

Is willing to suspend their disbelief--
if they trust what a half-blind man
can see--then they'll discover the beauty
of grief.

He wasn't really my uncle. I lied.
He was my cousin and he's still alive.
But he really did punch out
a man's eye.

My cousin says, "There was war on
the rez in those days. It was almost
self-defense when any rez boys maimed
any white man."

We Indians love to sing songs about
death: we celebrate war's length and
breadth; we sing more about the life that
comes next

Than the one we live now. And we proudly
carry a flag of this brutal country
and never fret about that irony.

I've got a friend who insists that we
red folks invented the blues. "Who loves
the dead and grieves them better than we
do," she says,

And I suppose I would have to agree.
Shoot, if you open our dictionary,
you'll find "indigenous" right below
"grief."

----------------------------------------

According to the State of Washington Law
9A.16.050, homicide is justifiable
when commited either:

(1) In the lawful defense of the slayer,
or his or her husband, wife, parent, child,
brother, or sister, or any other person in
the presence of company, when there is
reasonable ground to apprehend a design
on the part of the person slain to commit
a felony or to some great personal injury
to the slayer or any such person, and
there is imminent danger of such design
being accomplished, or
(2) In the actual resistance of an attempt
to commit a felony upon the slayer, in his
presence, or upon or in a dwelling, or
other place of abode, in which he is.

--------------------------------------------

So, in defining his Indian-ness, was my
cousin practicing a form of self-defense?
Well, considering that I am terrified of
him--and have never actually asked him
about the innumerable beatings he's given
to white and Indian guys alike--
I hesitate to answer in the affirmative.
I think that violent men will always
find logical and rational and emotional
and compelling ways to justify
their violence.

At every powwow, whether in the sawdust
of a rez arena or on the carpet of a
Holiday Inn conference room, we Indians
have a war veteran's dance. We honor
them; we sing for them. I understand
why we do that. I respect their
service and sacrifice. But I dream of
the day when we also have an honor
dance for those Indian men (and
women) who refused to go to war.
Can you imagine the beauty of that
powwow? Can you imagine the emcee
taking the microphone and saying,
"This is an honor dance for all those
Indians who have never picked up a gun."
Can you see them, the Indian heroes,
circling for peace?

Of course, my friend, a musician,
happens to belong to one of those
tribes who think they created
everything. Years ago, while
traveling with white Hollywood
producers in upstate New York,
I told them, "Be careful with these
Six Nations Indians--these Mohawks,
and Seneca and the others--
because they tend to brag. We call
them the Navajos of the North because
they're so stuck on themselves."
Sure enough, five minutes after we
sat to meet with an Onondaga man,
he looked upward and said,
"It was my people who invented the sky."


Sherman Alexie

from his book FACE.