poetry friday

OK: This is a longish poem, but don't let that throw you. It's easy to read, especially out loud. I also think it's funny, which never hurts. And something about it (I'm not sure what) has stuck with me ever since I first read it about ten years ago.

Tonto

He didn't know why he nursed the white man back to
life instead of lifting his hair because a Texan's
scalp is supposed to look particularly good hanging from
a lodge-pole. But Tonto was tired of living alone,

tired of coming home to a couple of curs, a deer-burger
and a bag of buffalo chips, so he dragged the guy off
to one side and fixed him up as well as he could. For
days the lawman lay between life and death while the Indian

sponged his white, spare body and watched. As the firelight
played on those alabaster cheeks, Tonto thought his new
friend was as beautiful as 100 squaws and before he knew
it he was head over heels in love. When his buddy got well

he didn't want to run away to Mexico like Tonto planned.
For some reason he wanted to give aid to the oppressed every-
where and call himself the Lone Ranger. Tonto told him how
they could live on 35ç a day but it just seemed to push them

farther apart, and he had about talked himself into
going it alone when the Lone Ranger came out in his new mask
and tight white pants. He blew the red man's mind; every
night for weeks his head had been full of albinos cavorting

in fantastic costumes and all of a sudden his dreams came
true. After that he didn't have any choice, he followed the
Lone Ranger everywhere. At night they slept side by side on
the prairie and Tonto burned with desire from dusk til dawn;

he lived for that moment at the end of each humanitarian
escapade where they crept away unnoticed, for at that time
the white man always touched his burnished arm and he never
washed the spot. Furthermore Tonto had a plan. Secretly

he was trying to improve himself in order to be worthy of a man
with such great personal beauty, so he sent away for books
and read them in secret. In only a few months he built an
amazing vocabulary; and when he practiced his pronunciation

in the resonant badlands and would hear his words bounce back,
often he would weep at his own eloquence. By the time the Ghost
Mt. case came up Tonto figured he was ready. Sure enough, he
solved the murder before the Lone Ranger could figure out who

was dead. Then he climbed onto a wagon and delivered such an
impassioned address on crime prevention that the sheriff actually
bought him a drink and invited him around to the house for dinner.
Not long after that on their way to new adventures the Lone Ranger

turned in his saddle, "Tonto," he said, "It's about that Ghost
Mt. business. It don't look good for a dumb redskin to show
up a white man like that. Now I don't know where you picked
up all that horseshit about community spirit and what-not but

I want you to forget it. Think of the partnership, if nothing
else. We need each other, buddyroo. And remember white is
white and red is red, kiddo." So Tonto went back to his little
words but that last sentence stuck in his mind. He thought about

it for awhile then burned his books and went down to a near-by
creek. There he scrubbed his copper skin with such loathing that
he was all scars for weeks. When the white man finally noticed
he said, "What's up injun? Cut yourself shavin', Yuk. Yuk."

Tonto just looked into those beautiful blue eyes and shook
his head. And because he could not say I Love You he
said the silliest thing that he could think of. "Ugh," he
muttered to his black and white horse, "Get um up, Scout."


by Ronald Koertge