The Chief

by Robert Lipsyte

  “Who gets these ideas?”

  “White guys, say they want to make up for all those westerns where we got killed. Long as they pay for all the meals, ’s okay by me.” He started laughing so hard he began to cough.

  After a while, when he caught his breath, he said, “If they knew who Sonny was, they’d be afraid of him.”

  “Why?”

  “He got the blood of the Running Braves. He’s followed the Hawk. He could be a chief.” He opened another beer.

  “But why should they be afraid of him?”

  “He’s no pet, Sonny. Strong. Got his own mind, once he starts thinking.”

  Between Thanksgiving and Christmas the New England weather turned raw and mean, kicking up a wind that sliced through your clothes no matter what you were wearing. It was the time to burrow in, read and write, nail your courses, but I had trouble concentrating. I’d lucked into a single room in the dorms, but I turned into a hermit without using the time right. I watched TV for Sonny sightings, read the papers and magazines for Sonny mentions, and I ate too much. I was falling behind in my courses, especially my writing courses. I hated to turn anything in; I’d lost confidence. Marks was working with individual students, so it was easy to avoid him. He called me a couple of times, but I never called him back. I didn’t call anybody. After a while no one called me, except for Denise and my folks. Friends stopped coming by.

  Sonny wasn’t bad on late-night talk shows. He smiled easily, and what little he said sounded smart. Hosts would run the clip of him knocking down the Hubbards and standing over them, looking around for someone else to hit, and Sonny would say, “Looks like Sonny’s Last Stand,” and the audience would go crazy.

  When serious hosts tried to make it a metaphor for The Rising of the Red Man, Sonny would smile and say that sports wasn’t the answer—Jim Thorpe was the greatest athlete America ever produced, and look what happened to him. He’d get applause for that. When the ESPN types asked him if he planned to fight again, he would remind them he was under suspension by various boxing commissions for hitting the Hubbards. He avoided answering the question.

  He dressed TV Indian—beaded shirts, jeans, boots, a bandanna. I caught him once on a music video with Dung Beetle. He was wearing boxing shorts and moccasins and punching the heavy bag to the beat of a drum. For a Hollywood guy he looked in great shape, but I could see a softening along his beltline. He wasn’t working out. According to the gossip columns he was getting all his exercise on the dance floor and in bed. He was running with a wild crowd. He was a passenger in a Jeep when a famous leading man was picked up for drunk driving.

  All by myself, I started thinking too much. Is this where it ends up for Sonny? Chiefing in Hollywood, a new breed freeway Indian? Is this why I went ballistic in Vegas, the best thing I ever did? So he can sell out? Is he selling out? What’s he getting? Isn’t it his life? At least no one’s hitting him.

  I was mad at him and proud of him. And I missed him. I wondered if he ever thought of me.

  My folks had a big Christmas dinner. Alfred and his wife and their two little girls showed up; so did Henry, his wife and sons. Jake came down. Robin stopped by with champagne; she was in New York for Christmas with her folks. But there was a big hollow place in the middle of the party.

  Robin showed a videotape she had put together, a rough cut of her documentary. It started with the famous shot of Sonny standing over the Hubbards, and then went to flashbacks and interviews. Everybody laughed and applauded when Jake and Alfred and I came on screen.

  When Iron Pete Viera opened the cut over Sonny’s left eye, I saw my dad and Alfred exchange glances.

  That was how Hubbard knew about the old cut. He had screened Robin’s tapes. Was he looking for something to give Junior an edge, or did he just happen to see it? Whatever he paid her, it was worth it.

  Robin left, and the party was winding down when Sonny called. Denise answered the phone. One by one, Jake and Alfred and Mom and Dad and Henry talked to him.

  Finally, it was my turn. He sounded tired or mellow, wasted or lonely. I couldn’t tell for sure anymore.

  “How’s it going?” he asked.

  “Hangin’.”

  “No school, huh?”

  “Not for another three weeks.”

  He laughed. “Man, this place is weird. Need a writer to describe it. So come on out, huh?”

  I thought he was jiving. “Yeah, why not? Get me a three-picture deal. Young Black writers are hot these days.”

  “Redskins, too. Okay, see you soon.”

  “Hey, wait, what’s going on?”

  “Be a package for you tomorrow. Christmas present.” Then his voice changed a little. “Come out, Marty.” He sounded like he needed a friend.

  24

  I FLEW FIRST-CLASS to L.A. It’s a good thing I don’t like the taste of champagne, because the flight attendants were pouring it like water, and I would have been smashed by the time I got there. I watched the movie, dozed, sampled the music channels, enjoyed the great window seat, especially when we flew over the Rockies, and wondered if the other people in first class were rich or got a ticket from a friend.

  There was a chauffeur—black uniform and cap—waiting at the arrival gate with a sign: MR. WITHERSPOON. He took my bags to a white stretch limo. There was a TV with a VCR in the back, the tape cued to the part in the Dung Beetle video where Sonny was pounding the heavy bag to the drum.

  There was more champagne in a bucket at the hotel. A man in a tuxedo who was in charge of the bellman who carried my bags told me that Mr. Bear wanted me to be comfortable and to order anything I wanted from room service. He suggested the filet mignon, rare, with a California merlot wine. He said that Mr. Bear would be back soon. I ordered dinner and settled down to wait. The hotel TV had ten different pay-per-view movies. I ate and watched three before I fell asleep thinking that I could get used to this.

  Sonny showed up the next afternoon. He looked different. Thinner but softer, smiley, a little spacey. I wondered if he was on anything, but I didn’t ask. Not right away. “How you doing?”

  “Great. What’s going on?”

  “Everybody missed you at Christmas.”

  “Yeah. Parties out here you wouldn’t believe. Santa Claus carved out of…”

  “Things are really screwed on the Res.”

  “What else is new?”

  “I think Jake’s in big trouble.”

  He nodded and lowered himself carefully into the couch, as if he was achy. “Jake’s tough, he can handle it.”

  “They poisoned Custer.”

  He grunted and rocked. “When?”

  “Around Thanksgiving.”

  His eyes narrowed. The rusty gears inside his head were grinding. “Like a month ago. Jake never said.”

  “You ever call him?”

  “Who did it?”

  “Don’t know.”

  “What’s Jake say?”

  “He doesn’t want to start a civil war.”

  Sonny nodded. He was waking up. “They want to shut him up. That was a warning. What did he say he’s gonna do?”

  “He’s going to wait for the Running Braves to save the People.”

  He held up his hand. “I didn’t bring you out here to bring me down.”

  “You asked me a question.”

  “Maybe that wasn’t the right answer.”

  “Maybe you’re brain dead.”

  “Maybe you’re starting to listen to footprints like Jake.”

  “What if he needs you?”

  “For what?”

  I made the Running Brave fist.

  “That’s not me.”

  “What’s you?”

  “We’ll see.”

  “Here?”

  “Why not?”

  I tried to get him to open up. “What about John L.?”

  “What about him?” Sonny talked tough. “He’s still dead.”

  A different limo, a black stretch, picked us up at the hotel and took us out
to the studio. A guard at the gate peeked in, checked us off on his clipboard list, and saluted us through.

  We drove through the back lot, which was just like in the movies, phony streets with false-front buildings and actors wandering around in costume and makeup. I saw a dying alien jam a muffin into what looked like a laser wound.

  We got out at a cottage and walked around to the back where some white guys were playing three-on-three basketball. They wore raggedy T-shirts, baggy shorts and the newest pump-up aerodynamic basketball shoes.

  Sonny and I watched for a while. Most of them were in their early thirties and they were playing hard, but clean. Except that one of them, a little older and heavier, could foul, travel, anything he wanted and no one called it. He would have been dead in my school yard, really dead, like nine-millimeter poisoning. Unless, of course, he was the head drug dealer, in which case he would be playing by his own set of rules, just like here.

  After a few minutes, they stopped and the head drug dealer said, “Want a run?”

  Sonny held up his hands and said, “Too rough for me,” which got a laugh, and when the head guy held up the ball toward me, I said, “I’m the only Black guy in America who can’t jump,” which got a smaller laugh than Sonny’s, but I could tell everybody liked that. I felt like an instant Uncle Tom.

  The big guy tossed the ball behind his head, feinted a jab at Sonny and shook my hand. “I’m Harley. You must be the famous Martin Malcolm Witherspoon.”

  We all followed Harley into the cottage, past women typing on word processors and into a large room with a giant TV screen, sofas and chairs, pinball machines, a Coke machine, a rocking horse with a real leather saddle, and big yellow plastic water-guns shaped like Uzis. It looked like the ultimate suburban rec room for teenagers. The younger guys introduced themselves to me. There were two Garys, a Franny, a Nick, and a Welles. They all grabbed sodas and threw themselves onto the soft chairs. Harley spread out on the couch.

  “We want to do something real here,” said Harley. “A pilot for a series about modern Indians. It’s about identity, about a young Indian torn between his people and making it in the white world.”

  “We want to call it The Chief,” said one of the Garys.

  Sonny looked at me. I was on the spot. I suddenly realized he’d brought me out to talk for him.

  “That’s pretty serious,” I said. “Being a chief is a big responsibility.”

  “On the money,” said the other Gary. “This would be a very responsible guy.”

  “Chiefs are usually pretty old—thirties, forties at least.” As soon as I said it, I felt like I had stepped in it. They all looked at each other and chuckled. “I mean in terms of…”

  “Speak with straight tongue, that’s what you’re here for,” said Harley, and he milked his laughs by rolling his eyes.

  “His youth is important,” said the first Gary. He was the serious guy. “He represents the new Indian, sensitive to what’s going on in the world, yet respectful of the tribe’s position.”

  “Nation,” I said. “Tribe is kind of a white word.”

  “That’s useful,” said Harley. They all nodded at me.

  “You’re thinking of Sonny for the title role?” I asked.

  “We are committed to a Native American as the lead,” said the first Gary. “We’d like it to be Sonny. He tells us you’re his writer.”

  Welles said, “We could put you on one of our sitcom development teams. We have a lot of work out here.”

  I was figuring it out. Sonny must have asked them to pay my way out here, and they must have thought I would be helpful keeping Sonny in line. They were trying to use me. Just like Senior Hubbard.

  “Lunch,” said Harley.

  We went to the studio commissary and sat down at a huge round table in the corner. I tried to stay cool and keep up with the conversation, but there were just too many pretty people wandering about, some of whom I had seen on TV.

  “Think of The Chief as a bridge,” said the first Gary. “He’s as hip to the ways of the white government as to tribal, uh, the Nation’s leadership. He’s kind of a policeman on the Res.”

  “So he could carry a gun?” I asked.

  Harley winked. “You are smart.”

  “A chief would never carry a gun,” I said.

  From the way they looked at each other, I could tell they didn’t think I was so smart anymore. I said, “Maybe he could be the chief’s son, and there’s, like, conflict between the old ways and the new. There’s controversy over garbage disposal, or gambling—big political issues on the Res these days. He wants to work with the white man, but the old chief doesn’t trust anybody who isn’t an Indian.”

  “Interesting,” said Harley, but I could tell he was losing interest.

  “It’s critical,” said the first Gary, “that the lead character be an authority figure, tough and competent, although also accessible, vulnerable, with a sense of humor.”

  I said, “He’d be a fun chief.”

  “Sarcasm is out,” said Franny.

  While the waitress took our orders and flirted with Harley, I tried to make eye contact with Sonny. But his eyes were glazed. Nobody was home. When I ordered the grilled chicken salad, he said he’d have the same thing. He didn’t like grilled chicken salad.

  They forgot about us for a while and talked among themselves about some other pilot, a dramatic hour about a rock group that solves crimes between gigs. They were considering Dung Beetle. It was just like boxing: You try to tie up all the rising talent, and you don’t really care who makes it so long as you have a piece of the winner.

  We were almost done eating when I filled a silent moment. “What about the heavyweight title?” I said. “Sonny’s still a boxer.”

  “He’s more than a boxer,” said Harley. “He’s a role model. He has the chance to do something really positive here. Educate America.”

  Sonny cleared his throat. “We’ve been educating you for five hundred years and you keep flunking the course.”

  They all laughed, a little too hard. It was like Sonny’s Shakespeare crack. When you least expected it, he came up with a big one. I gave him the Running Braves fist. He shook his head.

  We went back to the cottage, and there was more talk and a promise to get together again when there was a script, and then some other guys came for a meeting and we climbed back into the limo.

  “What did you think?” I asked.

  Sonny shrugged. “More bull artists. Let’s see what they come up with.”

  We went back to the hotel, and Sonny went to sleep. I walked around the suite, watched TV, went downstairs, bought papers and magazines, hung around the pool, thought about trying to pick up a great-looking girl I saw and felt relieved when some studly guy sat down on her chaise. She wouldn’t have been interested anyway. I went back upstairs and fell asleep.

  Sonny woke me up around ten, and we went to a party. I thought drugs were over in Hollywood, but people kept disappearing and coming back. I didn’t do any drugs; I felt responsible to keep a clear head for Sonny. I don’t think Sonny did any either, at least not while I was watching. But who knows? I ate a lot of food and looked down the dresses of a lot of women who let me do it because I was a friend of Sonny’s, and I talked to a very tall guy who used to play for the Lakers. I couldn’t remember his name and it seemed insulting to ask.

  We slept until two P.M., and went down for breakfast by the hotel pool. We stretched out in the sun and read the papers. Sonny spotted an article about himself. “Everybody’s got an idea who I should be.”

  “Who should you be?”

  “Don’t ask me. I’m the only one doesn’t know.”

  He dove into the pool. When he got out, I said, “Come on back with me. Get into shape. A tune-up fight, then the champ.”

  “I’m under suspension.”

  “No big deal. Dad says they’ll have a hearing and announce that they’re fining you, but they’ll never collect it because boxing’s in trouble. T
hey need a star. Nobody’s interested in Junior or the Wall. You could be the youngest heavyweight champion of all time.”

  “You got it all figured out.” He sounded angry. “That’s why you came out.”

  “You invited me, remember?”

  “Maybe I just don’t want to get punched around anymore for nothing, keep getting robbed, going nowhere.”

  “This is nowhere.”

  “So go home.”

  “Maybe I will. Watch you chiefing it on TV.”

  “This Indian stuff. My dad was a white man from Minnesota.”

  “So wear lumberjack clothes on those dumb talk shows.”

  He got up and walked away.

  That night I stayed in the hotel while Sonny went to a party at Harley’s beach house. I couldn’t sleep, trying to decide to stay or go home. He needed me. But I was just a third second.

  I had a couple of weeks before school started again, and the weather was a lot better here than in the northeast. It wasn’t a bad life if I could keep my mouth shut. Probably couldn’t for too long. Maybe I should try, for Sonny’s sake.

  Then I thought about what Alfred had said before the Atlantic City fight. Keep the door open. Did that mean I should stay?

  But Alfred also said I had to keep my own thing going. School, writing. Now I understood what he meant: I could only be a real friend to Sonny if I wasn’t dependent on him, if it didn’t matter what he did because I was strong in what I did.

  I didn’t need him to box for me to write. And we both had to come back off the floor. I suddenly wished I had brought my laptop. I wanted to get it all down.

  Before dawn I went for a swim, which didn’t help me make up my mind. When I got back to the room, there was an urgent message to call Robin.

  They’d shot Jake.

  25

  I FOUND SONNY SPRAWLED on a pile of cushions next to Harley’s pool. He looked dead. I thought about rolling him into the pool as a wake-up call, but if he went down, I might never get him up again. So I walked him around the pool, around and around, until the sun came up. He was leaning on me at first, then staggering and groaning.