The Toughest Indian in the World (23 page)

Q: And what is your point in telling me this?

A: I know so much more about you than you will ever know about me.

Q: Miss Joseph, I am a leading authority, no, I am the, the, the leading authority in the field…

A: Mr. Cox, Spencer. For the last one hundred and eighteen years, I have lived in your world, your white world. In order to survive, to thrive, I have to be white for fifty-seven minutes of every hour.

Q: How about the other three minutes?

A: That, sir, is when I get to be Indian, and you have no idea, no concept, no possible way of knowing what happens in those three minutes.

Q: Then tell me. That’s what I’m here for.

A: Oh, no, no, no. Those three minutes belong to us. They are very secret. You’ve colonized Indian land but I am not about to let you colonize my heart and mind.

Q: Tell me then. Why are you here? Why did you consent to this interview? What do you have to tell me that could possibly help me with my work? You, you are speaking political nonsense. Colonialism. That’s the tired mantra of liberals who’ve run out of intellectual imagination. I am here to engage in a free exchange of ideas, and you’re here, you want to inject politics into this. I will have no part of it.

A: I lost my virginity to John Wayne.

(forty-nine seconds of silence)

Q: You’re speaking metaphorically, of course.

A: Spencer, I am speaking of the vagina and the penis.

Q: As metaphors?

A: Do you know the movie
The Searchers?

Q: The western? Directed by John Ford? Yes, yes, quite well, actually. Released in 1956, I believe.

A: 1952.

Q: No, no, I’m quite sure it was 1956.

A: You’re quite sure of a lot of things and you’re quite wrong about a lot of them, too.

(five seconds of silence)

Q: Well, I do know
The Searchers.
Wayne plays Ethan Edwards, the ex-Confederate soldier who sets out to find his niece, played by Natalie Wood. She’s been captured by the Comanches who massacred Ethan’s family. Along with Jeffrey Hunter, who plays a half-breed Cherokee, of all things! Wayne will not surrender to hunger, thirst, snow, heat, or loneliness in his quest, his search. A quite brilliant film.

A: Enough with that academic crap. Listen to me. Listen carefully. In 1952, in Kayenta, Arizona, while John Wayne was playing Ethan Edwards, and I was playing a Navajo extra, we fell in love. Him, for the first and only time with an Indian. Me, for the first time with anybody.

“My real name is Marion,” said John Wayne as he slid the condom over his erect penis. His hands were shaking, making it nearly impossible for him to properly fit the condom, so Etta Joseph reached down, smoothed the rubber with the palm of her left hand—she was touching John Wayne—and then guided him inside of her. He made love carefully, with an unintentional tantric rhythm: three shallow thrusts followed by one deep thrust, repeat as necessary.

“Does it hurt?” asked John Wayne, with genuine concern, and not because he was arrogant about being her first lover.

“It’s okay,” said Etta, but it did hurt. It hurt a lot. She wondered why people were so crazy about this act. But still, she was making love to John Wayne.

“Oh, oh, John Wayne,” she moaned. She felt uncomfortable, silly, like a bad actress in a bad love scene.

“Call me Marion,” he said between thrusts. “My real name is Marion. Call me Marion.”

“Marion, Marion, Marion,” she whispered.

They laid together on a Pendleton blanket on the red sand of Navajo Monument Valley. All around them, the impossible mesas. Above them, the most stars either of them had ever seen.

“I love you, I love you,” he said as he kissed her face, neck, breasts. His lips were thin, his face rough with three days of beard.

“Oh,” she said, surprised by his words, even frightened. How could he be in love with her? He didn’t even know her. She was just an eighteen-year-old Spokane Indian woman—a girl—a thousand miles away from home, from her reservation. She was not in Navajo land by accident—she was an actress, after all—but she hadn’t planned on lying beneath John Wayne—Marion!—as he confessed his love, his impossible love for her.

Three days earlier, she’d been an extra in the Navajo camp when John Wayne and Jeffrey Hunter traded blankets, hats, and secrets with the Navajo chief. Etta hadn’t had any lines. She’d only been set dressing, a pretty girl in a purple dress. But she’d been proud and she was sure to be on camera because John Ford told her so.

“Girl,” Ford had said. “You are as pretty as the mesa.”

For just a moment, Etta had wondered if Ford might cast her then and there for a speaking role, perhaps even give her the role of Look, the chubby daughter of the Navajo chief, and send that other Indian woman packing. Of course not! But Etta had wished for it, however briefly, and had chided herself for her ambition. She’d wished ill will on another Indian woman just because a white man had called her pretty. Desperate and shallow, of course, but Etta had not been able to help herself.

This was John Ford! He was not handsome, no, but he was a Hollywood director. He made dreams come true. He was the one who filled the movie screens with the movies! He was a magician! He was a feature-film director and she knew they were the kindest and most decent men in the world.

“Stand here,” Ford had directed Etta. “Right here, so the audience can see your lovely face in the background here. Right between Jeffrey and the Duke.” She had not been able to contain her excitement. Five feet away, John Wayne was smoking a cigarette. John Wayne! But more than that, it had been Jeffrey Hunter who’d captured her imagination. He was a beautiful boy, with dark hair, brown skin, and those blue, blue eyes. John Wayne might have been a movie star—and a relatively homely one at that—but Jeffrey Hunter was simply the most gorgeous white man on the planet. But here he was playing an Indian, a half-breed Cherokee, so perhaps Jeffrey himself was part Indian. After all, Etta had thought, why would they cast a white man as an Indian if he didn’t have some Indian blood himself? Otherwise, the movie would have been a lie, and John Wayne didn’t lie. And judging by the kindness in his eyes, by the graceful turn of his spine, by the way he waved his sensuous hands when he talked, Jeffrey Hunter was no liar either.

Anyway, they’d filmed the scene, a funny one where Jeffrey Hunter had inadvertently traded a hat for a Navajo wife, for Look—how positively amusing!—and all the while, Etta had looked on and wished that Jeffrey Hunter had traded for her. Not Jeffrey Hunter the actor in the scene, but Jeffrey Hunter the blue-eyed man.

“Mr. Hunter, you were wonderful,” she’d said when she’d approached him after the scene.

Without a word to her, he’d turned and walked away. She’d admired his silence, his commitment to his craft. He hadn’t wanted to be distracted by the shallow attentions of some Indian girl other than Look. Still. Her feelings had been hurt and there might have been a tear in her eye when John Wayne sidled up close to her—yes, sidled—and shook his head.

“I don’t understand actors,” the Duke had said. “It’s the audience that matters, and yet, so often, we shun them.”

“What does shun mean?” she asked.

“Exactly. I mean, how can we, as actors, get close to the soul, to our hearts, if we don’t look deeply into the souls and hearts of others? In the end, how can we fragile human beings possibly be sympathetic actors if we don’t refuse to show sympathy for other people’s emotions? How can we realistically project love, hope, and faith if we are not loving, hopeful, and faithful ourselves?”

“That’s beautiful.”

“Yes, yes. If we don’t feel it in here, in our chest, then the audience will never feel it in their hearts.”

“That’s why I act,” she said.

“Hello, my name is John Wayne.”

“I’m Etta Joseph.”

Now, three days after Jeffrey Hunter had walked away from her, Etta was naked with John Wayne.

“I love you, I love you,” he whispered to her. He was gentle with her, of course, but he was strong as well. He rolled onto his back and lifted her, then lowered her down onto him. His penis was huge! It was a movie star’s penis, for sure. Etta had never really thought about John Wayne’s penis before. She’d never really thought about any man’s or actor’s penis before. Sure, she’d felt strong desires for men, sexual desires, but they’d always taken the form of vague shapes and sizes inside of her body. She’d never imagined what John Wayne would look like naked, but there he was! Strong arms, long legs, a pot belly. As he lay beneath her, as he closed his eyes, Etta wondered what she should do with her hands. Nobody had ever taught her how to do this, how to make love to a man. And it was John Wayne, so he must have made love to a thousand different women in his life. Other movie stars! He must have made love to Bette Davis, Vivien Leigh, Greta Garbo, Grace Kelly, maybe even Judy Garland. All those perfect women. Etta felt small and terrified in the presence of John Wayne.

“What’s wrong?” he asked.

“I’m afraid.”

“If you get pregnant, I’ll take care of it.”

In the rush, she’d never even thought about pregnancy. How stupid! She was only eighteen years old, unmarried, a thousand miles away from home. What would she do with a baby? And what did he mean by taking care of it? Did he want to marry her, be the husband of an Indian woman and the father of an Indian child, or did he want her to have an abortion? God, she’d heard about abortions, how they reached inside of you with a metal hook and scraped out all of your woman parts. In terror, she rolled away from John Wayne and ran naked through the desert, toward the lights of the distant set, where John Ford and Jeffrey Hunter were sure to have the answers to all of her questions.

“Wait, wait, wait,” cried John Wayne as he chased after her. He was not a young man. He wondered if he could possibly catch her. But she was a child of the river and pine tree, of wild grass and mountain. She understood gravity in a different way and, therefore, tripped in the rough sands of the desert. She fell face first into the red dirt and waited for John Wayne to catch and hurt her. Isn’t that what he had always done? Wasn’t he the man who killed Indians?

“Etta, Etta.” He kneeled beside her. He stroked her long black hair. She flinched and pushed him away.

“Go away, go away, John Wayne,” she cried out.

“Oh, Etta, I’m not going to hurt you,” he said. “I couldn’t hurt you. I love you.”

“But you can’t love me. You don’t even know me.”

John Wayne wept.

There, in Navajo Monument Valley, John Wayne wept. His tears fell to the sand and flooded the desert.

“Nobody knows me,” he cried. “Nobody knows me.”

He was so afraid! Etta was shocked into silence. This was the great John Wayne and he was afraid.

“But, but, but,” Etta stammered. “But you’re a star.”

“John Wayne is the star. I’m Marion, I’m just Marion Morrison.”

She held him for a good long time.

Q: I can’t believe this. Are you telling me the truth?

A: Yes, as far as I can remember it.

Q: This is not a lie, one of those good lies you were talking about?

A: Spencer, I was fooling you. There’s no such thing as a good lie.

Q: Bad lies, good lies, whatever. Just tell me the truth. Did you really lose your virginity to John Wayne?

(seven seconds of silence)

A: He was afraid of horses, did you know that?

Q: John Wayne was afraid of horses? That’s completely implausible. I mean, I’d sooner believe that you slept with him. We’re talking about John Wayne here.

A: When he was seven years old, a horse kicked him in the head. He was in a coma for nearly three months. Everybody thought he was going to die. In the hospital, his mother brought in a Catholic priest to baptize him. His father brought in a Presbyterian priest for last rites. They thought he was going to die. They were sure he was going to die.

Q: I don’t recall reading any of this about John Wayne. Kicked in the head by a horse? That must be urban legend.

A: He showed me the scar. Just behind his right ear. About five inches long. They hid it with makeup. The horse’s name was Rooster. He liked me to kiss it whenever we made love.

Q: Wait, wait, wait, he liked you to kiss the horse?

A: Oh, no, no, no, silly. He liked me to kiss his scar. He said it was really sensitive, still, after all those years. He was really a sensitive man, you know? He knew how to cry. He cried every time we made love. Well, this is really embarrassing, but he cried every time he had, every time, he, well, you know, had an orgasm.

Q: Wait, wait, wait, what are you telling me? How many times did you make love?

A: Most every night during the filming of the movie. Except for those nights when his wife and kids came to visit.

Q: So, hold on here, let me get my head around this. Not only were you having sex with John Wayne, you were also having an affair with him?

A: I’m not proud of that particular nature of our relationship, but yes, John Wayne was a married man.

In Navajo Monument Valley, during a long day of filming, John Wayne stepped into the makeup trailer for a touch-up and discovered his sons happily covering their faces with lipstick and mascara.

“Well, hello there,” John Wayne said to his sons.

They were petrified, afraid of this large man, this male.

“Are you having fun?” the Duke asked his sons.

They didn’t know how to answer. If they said no, they’d be lying, and their father always knew when they were lying. If they said yes, well, then, that could mean all sorts of things, and all of them were bad.

“Are you having fun?” he asked again. His face revealed nothing, his thin mouth was closed tight, his teeth were hidden behind that weathered face.

The eldest son cried, so the youngest son decided to join him.

“Wait, wait, wait,” said John Wayne. “What’s with all of the tears?”

“You hate us,” cried the oldest boy.

“Don’t hate me, don’t hate me,” cried the youngest boy.

John Wayne scooped up his boys. He set his big cowboy hat on the youngest boy’s head.

“I don’t hate you, I could never hate you,” said John Wayne. “What makes you think I hate you?”