Read The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven for Free Online

larger until we are standing on the shore, watching all the ships returning to Europe. All the white hands are waving good-bye and we continue to dance, dance until the ships fall off the horizon, dance until we are so tall and strong that the sun is nearly jealous. We dance that way .
    “Junior,” I yelled. “Slow down, slow down.” Junior had the car spinning in circles, doing donuts across empty fields, coming too close to fences and lonely trees.
    “Thomas,” Junior yelled. “You’re dancing, dancing hard.”
    I leaned over and slammed on the brakes. Junior jumped out of the car and ran across the field. I turned the car off and followed him. We’d gotten about a mile down the road toward Benjamin Lake when Thomas came driving by.
    “Stop the car,” I yelled, and Thomas did just that.
    “Where were you going?” I asked him.
    “I was chasing you and your horse, cousin.”
    “Jesus, this shit is powerful,” I said and swallowed some. Instantly I saw and heard Junior singing. He stood on a stage in a ribbon shirt and blue jeans. Singing. With a guitar.
    Indians make the best cowboys . I can tell you that. I’ve been singing at the Plantation since I was ten years old and have always drawn big crowds. All the white folks come to hear my songs, my little pieces of Indian wisdom, although they have to sit in the back of the theater because all the Indians get the best tickets for my shows. It’s not racism. The Indians just camp out all night to buy tickets. Even the President of the United States, Mr. Edgar Crazy Horse himself, came to hear me once. I played a song I wrote for his great-grandfather, the famous Lakota warrior who helped us win the war against the whites:
    Crazy Horse, what have you done?
    Crazy Horse, what have you done?
    It took four hundred years
    and four hundred thousand guns
    but the Indians finally won.
    Ya-hey, the Indians finally won.
    Crazy Horse , are you still singing?
    Crazy Horse , are you still singing?
    I honor your old songs
    and all they keep on bringing
    because the Indians keep winning.
    Ya-hey , the Indians keep winning.
    Believe me, I’m the best guitar player who ever lived. I can make my guitar sound like a drum. More than that, I can make any drum sound like a guitar. I can take a single hair from the braids of an Indian woman and make it sound like a promise come true. Like a thousand promises come true .
    “Junior,” I asked. “Where’d you learn to sing?”
    “I don’t know how to sing,” he said.
    We made our way down the road to Benjamin Lake and stood by the water. Thomas sat on the dock with his feet in the water and laughed softly. Junior sat on the hood of his car, and I danced around them both.
    After a little bit, I tired out and sat on the hood of the car with Junior. The drug was beginning to wear off. All I could see in my vision of Junior was his guitar. Junior pulled out a can of warm Diet Pepsi and we passed it back and forth and watched Thomas talking to himself.
    “He’s telling himself stories,” Junior said.
    “Well,” I said. “Ain’t nobody else going to listen.”
    “Why’s he like that?” Junior asked. “Why’s he always talking about strange shit? Hell, he don’t even need drugs.”
    “Some people say he got dropped on his head when he was little. Some of the old people think he’s magic.”
    “What do you think?”
    “I think he got dropped on his head and I think he’s magic.”
    We laughed, and Thomas looked up from the water, from his stories, and smiled at us.
    “Hey,” he said. “You two want to hear a story?”
    Junior and I looked at each other, looked back at Thomas, and decided that it would be all right. Thomas closed his eyes and told his story.
    It is now . Three Indian boys are drinking Diet Pepsi and talking out by Benjamin Lake. They are wearing only loincloths and braids. Although it is the twentieth century and planes are passing overhead, the Indian boys have decided to be real Indians