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Sam, Red, Nok and Tex -- Scott M.X. Turner Their paths crossed all the time. During the season, after the season, at training camps and definitely, definitely during the hot-stove league and the rubber-chicken circuit. They made it a point, though, to always meet up during the big Sports Merchandising & Licensing Expo, where their designers, proponents and representatives -- their People -- knocked back a few drinks and exchanged old war stories and new worries. This year the confab was in New York. They liked New York. Some of the gang had been coming to New York since The Great War...the one before The Greater War. Those were their salad days and their golden years, and you can't say too many people lived those moments simultaneously. Of course, then came The Police Action and The Fucked-Up War, and by the time The Smart-Bomb Monarchy Restoration and The U.N.- Sanctioned Peacekeeping Efforts rolled around, times had gotten tougher for the four of them. And now in New York they gathered -- three injuns, as the one non-injun liked to call 'em, and one paleface, as the three injuns always shot back. Chief Wahoo Sam came from Cleveland; the Redskin, or Red, hailed from D.C.; Chief Nokahoma, a southern lad, called Atlanta home. And then there was Tex, originally from Dallas but for the last quarter-century comfortably ensconced in the suburbs...Irving, Texas, to be exact. Sam, Red and Nok liked outnumbering Tex. "Just like at Little Big Horn," they chortled. "Fellas," Tex replied curtly, "can you do me a big favor and don't fucking go there?" Their dive-of-choice was the Penn Terminal Bar & Grill, a dank, bleak, and neon-bathed hole. Just the way they liked it. The Penn Terminal Bar & Grill was a few blocks east of the Javits Center, the cavernous environs housing the Sports Merch Expo. Only the Javits Center could render sunlight artificial. Sam, Red, Nok and Tex were glad to get away from the atriums, suits, collectibles aficionados, gladhanders and wheeler-dealers, away from the cyclones of commerce based on their likenesses. That's what their careers had become -- a non-stop, 24-7 spiral of fake unity, empty inspiration, and most of all, the cold, callous commodification of their symbolism on truckoad after truckload of caps, shirts, pennants, and adverts the world over. Sam was the Old Guard, going back to before the last century. More precisely, to when the Cleveland Spiders decided to honor Louis Sockalexis, a naturally gifted and dead-drunk Penobscot from Maine, by changing their nickname to Indians. Sam never could say how much of the Sockalexis legend was fact, but he didn't figure it was much of an honor and less of a help, what with the Red Romeo dying penniless just a few years after being so honored. Since the Washington Redskins stingily never offered him a name, Red chose Red all by his lonesome. He was born during the Depression. Nok and Tex were the young'ins, both birthed in the '60s. In fact, Nok was already out of a job, the political do-gooders getting him cashiered out ten years back or so. "How come you keep comin' to these things?" Tex ribbed Nok. Tex was a good ol' boy, and as such, liked jerkin' everyone's chain. He started in on Nok, the easy mark given his less-than- spectacular demise. "They kicked your red ass outta Atlanta years ago." "That they did," Nok answered. "And red it was -- they got an actual Choctaw to play me. He did the damned war dance, whooped it up and ran around like an ass in his feathers." Red jumped in: "You had that teepee beyond the centerfield fence, I believe. Didn't that young man set your teepee on fire?" "Aw, Christ, don't fucking remind me, Red. The dude was plastered, and the Constitution reported it something like 'Today Chief Nokahoma tippled too much on the firewater and sent his humble teepee to the great hunting grounds.' Hardee-fucking-har- har." "Well," said Tex in that drawl they hated but knew wasn't Tex's fault, "that would do it. That was pretty much the end for you, right?" Nok just stared down at his glass. "Uh, right" Tex continued, now feeling bad for piling on Nok. "But you're still holdin' out, right pardner? You keep comin' back'n'comin' back..." Nok started crying in his beer, except it was tumbler of seltzer, him being the teetotaler of the crew. "...and we're glad to have you, right boys?!" Tex said, trying to cheer Nok up. "Yeah, right...glad to have ya...lookin' good," they blurted out. Nok lifted the tumbler, almost took a sip, and then slammed it on the table. "Ya wanna know why I keep comin' back?" Nok raised his voice. They were the only ones there in the dank bar, so no one shushed him. "One, to see you fellas. But two, I need the work, man! Lookit down there in Hotlanta...they got the Chop Shop, 50,000 white folks doin' that arm thing, they sellin' ten-buck foam tomahawks -- very respectful -- and they all goin' 'oh-oh-ohohohhhhh' like some damned war chant they learned in a John Wayne movie." "Which, by the way," Sam cut in, "they got from the Seminoles." "Seminole Nation?" Nok brightened. "No, you dumbass, the Florida State Seminoles," Sam replied. "Ain't hardly no Seminole Nation these days." Tex stayed clear of these blubberin' moments 'til he couldn't stand it anymore. "Ain't none of y'all's got a nation these days." They sat in silence for a few minutes. Tex was right...at least as far as most white people knew. "Well, anyway," said Nok, breaking the silence, "can't be choosy. Ain't much work for us these days." "Us mascots?" "No, man, everybody! On the rez, in the cities, everybody." Then Nok tapped his tumbler on the table and watched the lemon slice bob up and down in the hard fizzy bubbles. He looked up and fixed Sam and Red a dagger-throwing look. "Everybody," he sneered, "'cept you guys." Every year this happened -- Nok the Victim blaming Sam and Red for having a job, for selling out, for being the white man's stooges. "Like we're fucking Rockefellers, man" said Red wearily. "Like we get invited to the White House." "Well, you do if your team wins it all," Nok shot back. "Yeah, Sam," said the cowboy, spotting another opening, "you'll be in the Rose Garden in no time with that Cleveland franchise." "Fuck off, Tex." "ME fuck off?!" snarled Tex, escalating the tension. "President Clinton throws out the first pitch, Opening Day in Cleveland a few years ago. Tryin' to be Mr. Popularity, he wears an Indians cap. But," Tex drawled, sharpening the dagger for the final plunge, "does it have you on it?" "No" replied Sam, quietly. "I'm sorry, Sam, what was that?" "No! No, it wasn't me. It was one of them years they had just the letter C." "So you see my point, gentlemen." Tex concluded, pleased with himself. "Y'all don't count for shit when they too embarrased to have y'all around." "Yeah, but I'm still safe," Sam replied, like it was the most mundane thing on earth. "Those Jew brothers, the Jacobs, they think I'm a tribute to Native Americans everywhere." "Jew brothers?" Red was stunned. "Why you using a slur like that?" "Ain't no slur," Sam protested. "They're Jewish, ain't no way 'round that. Stuff that got done to us got done to them -- they had the death camps and we got the rez." The others were still suspicious of the slur. "Look," said Sam, exasperated, "all I'm sayin' is they oughta know better. Everyone oughta know better from somewhere back in their history." The mulled that for a minute, then Tex spoke up. "Them Jacobs boys said it was a tribute, a tribute to Native Americans everywhere." "You feel honored, Sam?" Red prodded. "Those goofy big teeth they stuck you with, that feel like an honor?" "Yep," Sam answered, "the bigger the fame, the more handsome the famous." "Nice quote, pardner." "Thank you, Tex." "You come up with that one yourself?" "I'll check the Bartlett's, but yes, I believe I did, Tex. And I thank you again." "Sir, it was my pleasure." "Wait a minute!" Red blurted, trying to steer back to the topic at hand. "You got red skin!" "Look who's talking, Mr. Washington Redskin. We all got red skin." "No, but you literally got red skin." "I agree, Slick," said Tex, doing his best to agree and egg-on the dispute at the same time. "I saw your color chip at the Sherwin-Williams, in there with crimson and ruby. It was purty...." "You're all correct," Sam confirmed. "My skin is a bright, glowing, unhealthy and wholly-inaccurate red. It's those Jacobs boys. They don't give a flying pus-filled fuck. And neither do those jack-ass fans." "Those jackass fans," Tex countered, "pay your salary and keep you out of the red. Er, so to speak." "I don't mind being a symbol or a mascot," Sam said with a weariness they'd long ago gotten used to. "I just hate them drawing me this way and saying I'm the Official Mascot of the Indians. I ain't from India. Are you?" Red and Nok shook their heads. Tex, as always, took the opportunity to play the white devil's advocate. "Seems to me you boys are talkin' out'a both sides of your mouths." "What are you sayin', Tex?" Sam inquired. "Plain as day, boys. You wanna be respected by white folks such as myself, but y'all wanna keep your jobs tap-dancin' for the fans. Now how can that be? Yer man at Stanford, he was what, an Indian? Where's he now?" "Gone," admitted Sam. "Replaced by the color Cardinal," added Nok. "And that's some dumb shit, the color Cardinal," remarked Red, an expert on colors of that stripe. "Right," Tex continued. "And yer man in New York City, at St. John's? Which, by the way, is run by the Catholics, so it ain't just the Jews, Sam." "The Redman," admitted Sam. "Also gone." "Now they're called the Red Storm," added Nok. "I bet Peltier loves that one," said Red. "So you boys do see my point," Tex concluded. "You want to have your maize and eat it too." They turned that over for a minute before Sam spoke up for all of them. "We see your point, Tex...a point with a dulled edge." Sam liked sounding sage, which he could get away with better at the ballpark than here at the Penn Terminal. Still, the others let it slide. "From the resistance of Crazy Horse through to the rebellion of AIM, all we've asked for is dignity and to share the earth. Why must we be depicted as bucktoothed dopes with bright red skin?" Red picked up on the theme. "What if it were the New York Hebes or the Washington Darkies? How would those people react?" "Damned straight," hollered Nok. "Even if they made us respectable, ain't no members of the Nations on these teams or ownin' 'em." "Y'all all the way down on the proverbial totem pole, ain't ya?" Tex chided. Sam, Red and Nok said nothing, so steamed were they. "Are you fellas done frothing with revolushunary fervor?" Tex looked them each in the eye, and each turned away rather than meet his gaze. "'Cause if you are, lemme ask y'all a simple question: what're you boys gonna do about it, then?" "We got activists," Sam jumped in, "who demonstrate and write letters, even some white people who understand." "We need the athletes who wear our images to come out against them," Red suggested. "Especially the Black and Latin athletes, since they too suffer the same indignities from the Great White Father." Nok pursed his lip bitterly at the notion that the athletes, Great White Father-indignity-suffering or not, would stand up to the bosses. Tex too snorted at the futility of getting white people to come clean on the Injun issue. "What would you do about it, Tex?" Sam ventured. "Me?" Tex asked as he got up, stretched, and threw a few twenties on the table. "Nothin'. Not a goddamed thing." "Why's that, man?" said Nok. "'Cause I don't got to, pardner." He pushed his white ten-gallon hat up on his forehead and headed for the door. "I don't got to," he continued, "'cause I'm the white man. And so are they. They don't mess with no dumbass drawings of me. They just slap a good ol' 'merican star on them boys' helmets and call it a day." |