LAST STAND by Scott Bear Don’t Walk
We had the bluecoats surrounded, pinned down. Eagle feathers and scalps decorating my war shield shook in the wind. I edged towards the cliff to get a better look down the canyon. They were firing up from the draw, a writhing mass of men in blue uniforms huddled together. The mid-summer sun offered no shadows, no place to hide. Some cowered behind dead horses, some sat desperate and exhausted, back to back. I would gather many scalps today and many eagle feathers. My feet hurt. Damn thin-soled moccasins. A warrior, with yellow lightning flashes on his face, rode his red roan up with great speed, firing his repeating rifle. It was Chuck, I was pretty sure. Hey, Chuck, hey. Aiming my bow, I opened my mouth and a war cry came out.
“Cut. Cut!” the voice said over a bullhorn – the director.
The assistant director blew a whistle. Guns gradually stopped firing. The hectic thrum of men and horses died down.
I lowered my bow, the afternoon wind whipping around me.
Down the draw, the camera pointed up at us – their point of view. We were attacking the soldiers but aiming at the camera. Many rubber-tipped arrows had bounced off the clear Plexiglas shield. Though dummies, one good shot, without the plastic, could have taken the camera out. The rifles and pistols shot blanks. We were warned not to take any chances, after a TV actor had killed himself. He got himself in the head with a blank, wadding in the brain. No chances were taken with the camera, worth more than all of our extra’s wages.
The director emerged from his perch beside the camera, a gopher from his hole, dressed in layers of polyester khaki, the kind favored by fishermen from the big city because it breathed. He put his bearded mouth up to the bullhorn, “All right you blokes – ”
An arrow arced across the blue of sky, landing at his Teva-clad feet.
The Indian warriors tried to stifle their laughter.
“Cut, I say,” the director said over the bullhorn.
“Cease fire!” the AD, beside, yelled blowing his whistle. “Cease fire.”
A horse nickered uneasily.
* * *
The longest day of summer began at 4 a.m., with costume and makeup. A line of extras, Indian faces from around the reservation border town, snaked out of the converted “HOCKEY MONTANA” arena. Some looked familiar. Everyone waited to be made into movie Indians. German “Indian” hobbyists waited too. For extra cash, they brought their own “authentic” Native costumes.
“Udo,” the Polaroid photo in his hand said, came from Tubingen, he told me. He was attired in buckskin leggings, and medicine shirt with scalps of real human hair attached, his own he said. While we waited in the snaking conga-line he told me that he made his own buckskin. Killing the deer, he used the deer’s brains to tan the hide. He sounded like a great hunter.
“Did you piss on it, too?” an Indian who everyone knew as Chuck said. He stood behind me. I could smell booze and sweat. This was my first day as an extra.
Udo told of “oor-inating” on the hide to get that supple feel – something about “oor-ea salts.” He said he also made the quillwork decorating his outfit. He found road-kill porcupine along the autobahn, and gathered the barbed quills by hand. Everything done, Udo said, with the utmost “aw-ten-ticity.”
“German hobbyists,” Chuck said.
“Udo,” Chuck said, “You know how Indian men could tell if a woman was worth marrying?”
Udo was excited to hear authentic Indian folklore.
“He checked her teeth,” Chuck said. “If she had a groove in front from flattening all those porcupine quills, she was a keeper.”
The Indians in line, they were all Indians except for the odd German, laughed.
Udo covered his mouth.
I tried not to look at his teeth.
Chuck said Udo would make a fine bride, someday.
At the costume area they had me try on various looks. After a buckskin number, and a scratchy woolen cavalry jacket, I was picked for something special. The costumer, a fifty-something woman with a “New Yawk” accent told me to strip off. She stopped me before I got off my underwear. I thought that’s how it worked. Eyeing me in the fluorescent lights, she called Deb over, from makeup, who took a Polaroid of my skinny torso. Then she called over Sheila, the assistant costumer. Collectively they gave the photo the once over. I would do. Though sallow, at least I was skinny. The costumer handed me a strip of blanket to be worn like a sling. I was chosen to go shirtless.
“Don’t worry about your definition, hon,” the costumer said, “makeup will take care of it.”
She told me that I wouldn’t get extra pay for going shirtless, but I could brag about it to friends and family, my girlfriend.
“Getting noticed is a good thing,” the costumer said.
“Do it for the glory,” Chuck said. He wore a giant feathered headdress. “After all that Aerobicising.”
“You do have a girlfriend, don’t you, hon?” the costumer said, winking at me. “Sheila’s available.”
“What about me, honey?” Chuck said.
“Sheila’s not into older men,” the costume lady said.
“I’m young at heart,” Chuck smiled, showing missing front teeth.
“I’ll keep you for myself,” the costumer laughed.
“Oh, you’d like that,” Chuck said.
Madonna’s “Vogue” played on the portable radio. Chuck danced around the room, striking poses.
I took my clothes into the dressing room where half-naked guys changed. I tried to figure out how to wear the long strip of buckskin with a thong on the end. I had it wrapped around my neck like a scarf. When I tried to put on the buckskin leggings, I found there was no crotch to them. Chuck knew the drill. The long strip went between the legs, he said, and tied around the waist with the thong – a breechcloth. Watching, and following along, I figured out what to put between my legs, what to tie around my waist, what to leave hanging out. It was like tying your shoes crossed with putting up a tent.
“You won’t believe how comfortable these things are,” Chuck said. “Better than any boxers, or briefs. I know why those old timers were smiling. Great support, wicks moisture, lifts and separates.”
Chuck was right.
Then came moccasins. I had a pair when I was kid, proof I was born Indian. My mother called them my “pissy moccasins.” She still had them, threatening to take them out to show girls I brought home from college. I had forgotten I was an Indian, sometime between those moccasins and my college Native American studies classes. The moccasins I put on now were soft and thin, unlike the safe feeling of shoes. After I was properly dressed, though shirtless, I pussyfooted across the arena concrete to makeup and hair.
The hair and makeup lady finished on Udo. A larger woman, she wore a tie-dyed shirt and soft pants. She had applied “brown face” to Udo, darkening his light hair, which he normally wore in braids.
My long hair, that of a college kid, hung loose. I was newly self-consciously Native American, a term I acquired in college while I read: God is Red, and Custer Died for Your Sins. My long hair and college nativism stood out against the Indian men, who wore theirs short, in almost a crew cut. I didn’t need fake braids or a hairpiece, most real Indians did.
I sat in the barber chair, the hair lady combed and plaited my hair into two braids, almost lovingly. She said that the small black rubber bands would be invisible on camera, if I got any camera time.
“And that’s a big if,” she said. “Most end up on the cutting room floor.”
She wanted to paint my face, pointing to the drawings taped to the makeup mirror. They were actual Sioux and Cheyenne face paint designs. I chose the black stripe across the eyes, white dots on my forehead from the design that said “Heyoka: Contrary Warrior.” Sheila peeked in, watching.
Heyokas, I had learned in a class, rode into battle when everyone else retreated. Contraries stood firm when everyone else ran away, said yes when they meant no, no for yes. A crazy magic was part of their vision, part of their power. I tried to remember if it involved a dream of lightning or a horse with a white face. I didn’t even ride – which would have paid extra. To my family’s eternal shame, I was useless on a horse. Worse to a tribe of horse people, I was allergic. Here because my mother told me to get a summer job, I did what I was told. I’d retreat when they said to, Heyoka war paint, or no. It just looked cool.
“That one’s real popular,” the lady said, “number two beside the Dog-Soldier-lightning-flash-covering-the-forehead look.”
A tall bulky blonde in a duster, cowboy hat, and galoshes, blew a whistle. The first bus was leaving for the location.
Chuck snored beside me in the bus seat, head back crushing the feathers of the headdress he hadn’t taken off. Udo took notes in a small buckskin-bound book, pausing every few minutes to take photos of the lightening horizon. In the aisle a guy in heavy eyeliner talked about the previous day’s shoot. He said he was Yaqui from California. Another guy said he looked Mexican. The Yaqui guy said an extra broke his collarbone yesterday, falling off a cliff during a “peaceful village” scene. Today we would be shooting heavy battle scenes.
A bagel and egg sandwich was handed to me on the way onto the bus. I balanced a cup of coffee between my legs. The paper cup was hot, burning slightly my soft inner thighs exposed in the gap between the breechcloth and leggings. The sun showed itself over clouds far off on the plains. We rode southwards from town towards the reservation. Shivering shirtless in the cool dawn, I didn’t dare untie my costumer folded blanket bolero. Under the paint and braids I felt like a new Indian. I wanted the movie people to see me get off the bus and say, “oooh.” Maybe I would become a star. I imagined leaving college to live in Hollywood. I thought about cars and babes and money. Then I realized I had forgotten to ask Deb to paint some definition on my body.
Bouncing twenty miles down a dirt road towards Custer Battlefield, the school bus came to a rest in the tall grass, beside the others. The landscape looked like my fourth grade fieldtrip to Head Smashed In Buffalo Jump, where we saw prairie grass, lichen on rocks and meadowlarks. The best part of that trip was when a classmate got bored of nature spotting, grabbed a stick poked into dog shit, and chased girls around with it. A year before I had come out this road to play paintball with friends high on magic mushrooms. We skipped the safety equipment. A friend took a paintball in the eye. We rushed him to NowCare.
“Everyone, line up, we’ll hand out weapons,” the blonde extra wrangler said. Under hat and duster she looked like a professional wrestler, muscular about the shoulders. It was early, but a cheer went up from the extras, who looked more like warriors now. I was freezing.
A double-barrel sawed-off shotgun – I was in front, so I got my choice. When I held it, I realized it was made out of rubber and fiberglass. No matter, the fake eagle feather tied to its barrel looked badass. Fake eagle feather because real ones were legal only for Indians, possession by non-Indians a federal crime. I didn’t care. Those feathers, probably painted turkey, looked one-hundred-percent perfect.
Udo chose an old-fashioned gun with a long barrel, muzzle loader. He had one at home, he said, used to kill the deer. He couldn’t get it through customs. I wondered if he had access to real eagle feathers, probably only in his dreams.
A tall guy, from the Blackfeet Tribe, he just had that look, stood beside Udo, eyeing me, my gun. With black and white face paint, he looked like a member of the band Kiss. Fake braids combined with a wolfish nose to give him a fearsome look. As big as a cottonwood, he must have been six foot seven. He pointed at me with his chin, a Blackfeet gesture – I knew it – like pointing his finger. My tribe pointed with our lips.
“Hey man, I like that shotgun. Sawed off?” he said.
I cradled it in my arms.
“Trade me,” he said.
“Whattya got?”
“Bow and a quiver of arrows,” he said. The quiver, red with yellow painted design, a thunderbird, possibly, or peyote bird.
He also had a war club, carved out of wood, like a stylized rifle, but smaller, the size of a baseball bat.
“What’s that for?” I asked, gesturing with my lips to a metal shank pointing out one end of the club.
“For bashing in skulls,” he said.
“Got anything else?” I said.
“Some primo weed, man, from those Yaquis, real Humboldt County,” he said.
Right there, I had an insight, not a vision exactly, more like an inspiration. As a Heyoka, a contrary warrior, I would forgo the modern convenience of a double-barreled sawed-off shotgun, for the time-honored way of the bow and arrow, and head-bashing-in‑club. It was only right.
We asked around for matches. Udo had none, probably used flint and rock, or sticks to rub together, more authentic.
Chuck perked up at the mention of weed. He had outfitted himself smartly with a repeating rifle. And he had matches.
* * *
The director had yelled cut while we were shooting our big scene looking down the canyon, attacking the bluecoats. “Ok, you blokes – ” he said on the bullhorn. “We’re going to have to run through that again.”
First he gave us a pep talk. Except for the English accent, he sounded like my junior high football coach for the Lewis and Clark Scouts. “This time remember that your wives and family are being threatened by the invader. Remember that Custer wants your land. Remember that he’s come to end your way of life – so for God’s sake, STOP SMILING. You look like you’re quite enjoying this,” he said.
Under war paint, beneath headdresses, we suddenly made to look serious, glum, somber, stoic. I had been smiling, the whole time, not realizing. Smiling when I held my war club aloft. Smiling when I ran behind the warriors on horseback, though stepping on cacti and horseshit. Smiling when twenty of us moved down the draw. Smiling shooting arrows down the canyon. A great big grin when, for a few moments, I forgot what day and age it was. My body took over, knowing what to do. I smiled the whole time, a whole-body smile, I felt it in my feet, though I was pricking them with cactus through thin buckskin. I felt it in my hands, my head, my lungs as they drew breath to give a war cry. I felt it most of all in my heart, as it beat to the drumming of the horse hooves. I forgot about the camera. I forgot that soon I’d have to hand in the bow and arrows and club, and check in my costume, and wash off the face paint. I forgot that I’d ride back on a yellow school bus. Once I got home I’d watch Carson with my mother. In those moments I was a Heyoka, a contrary warrior. I found something in the noise, the war cries, the feeling of attacking the enemy with honor, with my handsome, brave fellow warriors. Something I was likely to never feel again. I stifled my smile.
* * *
Fifteen years later I saw a videotape at a garage sale in Seattle. My new girlfriend, Laura, and I were shopping for towels and bowls for my tiny new apartment. I had recently left my wife. I didn’t have a VCR. Laura did.
I told her about the movie I made in Montana one summer in college. The thought of seeing me dressed up like an Indian excited her. She taught ESL to immigrant kids. She said she never dated white guys; they reminded her of her stepfather.
Laura made popcorn; I poured wine. We followed the story: Custer, his wife, their love, told from her perspective. She was played by that famous blonde actress from the 80s. The band Toto had a song about her. The guy playing Custer was a no-name, Gary-something. Mrs. Custer tells her husband that she doesn’t want him to ride into battle, she’s been having terrible dreams, about him losing his long blonde hair. He refuses to stay home. He must do his duty.
In the bath, a racy scene, she cuts his hair, trims his curling mustache and pointed beard. She tells him of her undying love. They’re off to bed as movie music swells. We fast-forward the parts with his troops, the journey west, dialogue between military characters who try to warn him. He’s going to be president, he says. Laura squirms. She’s getting bored, with the movie, or is it me? This was just a movie of the week from the early 90s after Dances With Wolves made cowboys and Indians interesting again, briefly.
More fast-forwarding, then we see the first Indians. Crazy Horse is played by that Indian guy with long black hair made famous for a moment in that Costner epic. I heard he spent most of his time drunk trying to pick up girls. Sitting Bull is played by that other Indian, a Canadian, from the same Costner epic, older. I heard he was a Buddhist, who spent time in his trailer. I walked by once, though it was off limits for extras. On my way back from the “Honey Wagon” I heard chanting and bell ringing from inside.
We got to the battles: red dust, pounding hooves, blue smoke from rifles, and finally painted faces of Indians. I didn’t see my painted face. Then there’s the canyon scene. I see a flash, a face. I pause and rewind, pause and rewind, watching in slo-mo. For a brief moment I can see it’s Chuck, peering over the ridge, on horseback, a big smile on his face. He’s stoned. Then the rest of the movie: Custer’s gone, the wife bereft, “He rode into history,” Miss Blonde Actress from the 1980s says, credits.
“Well, that was a disappointment,” Laura said.
For that entire scene, I must have been standing just outside the frame. If the camera had moved ever so slightly, I could have seen me, in full war paint, raising my bow and arrow.
“Last Stand” is Scott Bear Don’t Walk’s first published fiction in a national literary magazine.