Death Chants by Craig Strete Read Free Book Online

you recast, rewrote,
recut and reclothed the missing part of your heart's forbidden desires, thereby giving the rest
of the world a chance to satisfy its own deepest secret fears.
    "Some of my people
called me Uncle Tomahawk because I danced for you. Because I got shot for you, because I always
fell off horses so beautifully for you.
    "But I seduced the
world with your foolish help. I gave the world an interesting lie. I kept truth for
myself."
    "How could you live
a lie?" said Forbes, shocked.
    "How could you film
one?" said Red Horse with a smile.
    "I was
approximating a truth. I felt it to be true. I had my beliefs in some of it. I was cynical, God
knows. I gave the hicks what they wanted to see. I never disappointed my audience. Well, not for
a long time anyway. Later I lost control of myself and lost my grip on the audience
too."
    Red Horse turned
and looked at the empty beer cans on the floor. "Drinking wore away the first half of your
strength."
    Forbes agreed. "My
ex-wife, who fancied herself, considered herself entitled to the second half. I did my last films
with what was left."
    "I still don't know
how you spent your whole life chasing a truth that would not fit in your hand or
heart."
    Forbes was looking
at something outside the room, as if he were staring at his own past. "Maybe because I was in
love, in love with all the faces in the dark I never knew. Maybe because I thought when I found
my audience, I would somehow find my­self. When I touched them, I would touch me.
    "Maybe because
people were too full of feelings I couldn't express in me, because I could be content with an
image.
    "I was looking for
a place to die on the photograph of my soul. I lived like some kind of deranged ghoul who put
cameras in Geronimo's coffin in order to interview Indian worms.
    "Sometimes I think
I am an evil old man because I chased a truth about a people who wouldn't tell it to me, because
I wanted selfishly to put it all in one stunning montage, in one brilliant symbolic lap dissolve,
seeing you and your people chained to my wishes, turning from untamed bodies dancing on trees to
a pair of eyes staring beautifully in the dark."
    "You are a dying
man. It is in your voice. It is in your eyes." Red Horse reached out and put his arm around
Forbes's shoul­der. "This is a good joke. It is all behind you. It is up to other people to
stumble upon new lies. You will make no more films, my old friend, and that is well and just, for
I do not wish to fall off a ny more horses."
    Forbes's voice
trembled with emotion. "I've got cancer. I just came to say good-bye. I don't have much
time."
    Red Horse smiled.
He seemed strangely cheerful at the news. "I too am nearing my time. Big parts of my body are
ready to fall off. It is a hell of a good joke. We can race and see which one falls apart
first.
    "I was beginning to
get angry at you. I have been waiting up lor you. I have been saving up some of the most
interesting lies, also lots of dirty stories.
    "I have been
holding off on the dying business, waiting for you to catch up. If you think I am going to fall
off three hundred and fifty goddamn horses of a different Technicolor for you and get bumps and
bruises and damaged parts for every damn inch of me, having gone through all that, then die all
alone, you're crazy!
    "We are old and out
of horses. We are past sex and the arro­gance of it. We have lived a lifetime together and the
hurts and lies of the past are not only over, they are forgiven.
    "All our lives, we
have loved each other, as friends, as human beings.
    "I have always
known this because I am Indian but you have only suspected it because you are white and stupid and as crazy as three ducks with
wooden legs trying to be quiet.
    "Now it is right
that we will be together at the end. I am glad you did not stay in Hollywood, to die among
strangers. What I cannot understand, is what took you so long to get here. I almost had to sit on