The Lone Ranger's Black Veil

[Update: The story has been published in the Spring 2014 issue of The Yellow Medicine Review.]

The following is a short-short story I wrote awhile back but which has not found a publishing home.  But with the release of The Lone Ranger, I thought I would go ahead and give it a home here.  Honestly, it was written before I had heard Johnny Depp was working on the movie.  It was inspired after re-reading Nathaniel Hawthorne's short story "The Minister's Black Veil."  I have not posted anything recently on Depp's portrayal of Tonto because others have posted plenty, and I already made some comments on the issue after pictures from the set were first leaked: "Tonto Shops at J. Crow."  An interesting difference between my story and the film is Tonto's tribal affiliation.  The film has made Tonto a Comanche, but in the radio and TV series, Tonto was either Apache or Kiowa (sources differ on that).  The Apache and the Comanche were bitter enemies through much of the history of the Southwest, and my story hinges upon that.

The Lone Ranger’s Black Veil

LR is serious about the mask.  No one can touch it.  No one can ask about it.  I am the only other person who knows its story.  My name is Tonto – that’s not my real name, not my Apache name, just some stupid name he made up because he thought it sounded more heroic.  He is such a drama queen. 

And now he is lying on his deathbed – shot in the back – and still wearing his mask.  He has his gun out, keeping the doctor away because the doc wanted to remove the mask.  He’d rather die than be revealed.  Geesh.

His mask is not what everyone imagines, the one that makes him look like some stupid raccoon.  Don’t you think you could recognize someone if he was wearing that mask?  No one looks at a raccoon and wonders, “What is that?  Is that a dog?”

No, his mask is a piece of black gauze hanging over his face.  He can see through it, but you can’t clearly see his face beneath it.  And he never takes it off in front of anyone.  Not even me.  But I know its story.

The Texas Rangers were created to kill Indians, and they were good at it.  They were ordered West, to fight Comanches, and that is when I came looking for them.  But first they ran to East Texas and killed a bunch of Cherokees and the like who were farming, minding their own business, living in wood houses, wearing shirts and pants and dresses, going to church, not causing anyone any trouble.  Other than being Indian. 

When he saw the innocent people he had killed, he came to his senses and went crazy at the same time.  LR put on the black mask and killed the men in his unit.  That story of him being the only survivor of his unit after an ambush?  Just part of the myth.  That mask was a sign of his sinful nature.

“We all see the world through a veil of our own sins,” he told me many times.  He had the habit of sounding like a preacher.  “And I am here to remind people that we cannot escape that fact.  Nor can we escape the Lord’s justice.  That is why I have dedicated myself to hunting down bad men, bad men like myself.  For who knows their ways better than I?” 

“That’s great,” I told him just as often.  “There are plenty of bad men out in West Texas.  They’re called Comanches.”

But the only bad men who caught his eye looked like him.

On his deathbed now, with a gang of white folks trying to talk their way past his pistol and into his room, he keeps muttering, “Expiation.” 

I spent a lifetime wasting my energy, trying to get that old fool to do what he was originally so good at.  But I could never cajole, coax, or coyote him to West Texas.  What did I care about his redemption?  I wanted my revenge.  They killed my brother.  They kidnapped my young cousin.  Probably married her off to one of their own or sold her to some Mexicans.  They even took my dog.   They probably ate it.  I wanted him to come out West and kill some goddamned Comanches. 

Stupid white men.  You can’t count on them for nothing.

Chill out. It's just a snow penis.

Quick.  Think of a fertility symbol.

Did you think of something like this?

http://www.historiasiglo20.org

Or like this?

http://www.pathwaymedicine.com

 Rarely does someone think of something like this.

http://www.asianoffbeat.com

 

 

 

At least, it is rare in the United States that someone thinks of an erect penis as a fertility symbol.  It seems that the female breast dominates the imagination in this regard.  (For instance, when one blogger decided to depict herself as a fertility figure, she chose close-up images of her chest.)  This preference is interesting in that female breasts nurture new life, but they do not produce it.  That happens further south.  But you probably knew that.  However, the breast becomes iconic of the female, and the female becomes iconic of fertility -- to nearly the entire exclusion of the male.

Yet, an erect penis is pretty much necessary if a baby is to be produced -- unless we are talking about one conceived in a medical lab or in the Republic's vast cloning factory in Kamino.  Americans love cute and cuddly babies, don't they?  So why do so many of Americans seem so disgusted by penises?

That reaction is evident in this news story from Lafayette, Indiana, where someone's snow sculpture penis attracted the displeasure of the neighbors.  They even called the police.  You can see the television news report here.

A boy is interviewed on camera about how upset he was by what he saw.  This is strange, since, I assume, he has a penis.  Does he close his eyes when he bathes each day to save himself from the repulsive sight of his own naughty bits?

A woman is interviewed who says she would not want her two-year-old son to see the snow penis.  This is strange, too, since, I assume, as a mother she has some familiarity with a penis -- unless she visited Kamino recently.  So she seems to hate the sign of an erect penis when the thing it signifies was instrumental in creating the young child she seeks to protect from it.

I am not saying I advocate porn on our playgrounds.  I think images have their time and place.  But I don't think a snow penis is horrific.  I don't think the image of a penis should attract such strong revulsion.  The people in the news report seem genuinely disgusted.  The boy looks like he is about to cry. 

It seems America is conflicted about the penis.

I like to think Nathaniel Hawthorne could have anticipated this.  When I teach the American literature survey course at my school, I have the students read "The Maypole of Merry Mount" (1851).  In this story, Hawthorne re-imagines an actual encounter between two communities in New England: the Puritans we are so familiar with and the followers of Thomas Morton.  Morton was a free-thinker and fun-lover, whom the Puritans arrested on more than one occasion and shipped back to England.  In his short story, Hawthorne writes: "Jollity and gloom were contending for an empire."

The Puritans -- surprise -- represent "gloom."  He calls them "dismal wretches" who live to "hear sermons three hours long."  Morton's 17th century hippies represent "Jollity."  He calls them "mirthmakers of every sort."  Hawthorne's short story suggest the wrong side won.

The story ends with the Puritans invading a spring festival at Merry Mount and chopping down the Maypole.  Most students today do not know what a Maypole is, nor what it signifies.  It is a male fertility symbol.  It is at the heart of some springtime festivals in agrarian societies.  For the livestock to increase, the cows and sheep and pigs and goats need to be getting it on.  For human society to continue, the young couples need to be getting frisky too.  The Maypole dancing is a way to celebrate and encourage that procreation.  The rituals are like a dose of Viagra for Nature.

The theme for much of my survey course is "Who's Your Daddy?"  We read documents from American literature to better understand the evolution of American culture(s).  What came before us?  How are we similar to it?  How are we different?  If ideas are like DNA, what are the cultural genetics of American society?

Hawthorne was trying to understand how America had come to be what it was in 1851.  He saw it as a land dedicated to work, money, and severe morality -- to the detriment of happiness and love and more human pursuits.  The chopping down of the Maypole is the symbolic emasculation of the "mirthmakers."  Hawthorne is suggesting their beliefs were not passed on to the next generation because "gloom" had secured the "empire" of America.

At this point I switch gears with my students and shift into the present.  I ask them if American society is obsessed with sex.  They say yes.  Look at the movies.  Look at advertising.  Look at music videos.  Watch five minutes of Two and a Half Men.

If we are so obsessed with sex, I ask them, then why is the country also apparently afraid of the penis?   (Missy Elliott excepted.  I need to fit "Work It" into my class somehow.)  It seems some of that Puritan "gloom" has survived in the nation's cultural DNA.

Other cultures do not share this fear.  For proof of this I show the class images from the Festival of the Steel Phallus in Kawasaki, Japan (see the image above).  In the party, giant penises are paraded down the street.  People ride them.  People eat penis-shaped candy.  People wear penis-shaped hats.  Women who want to have a child visit the festival and straddle a metal penis to boost their babymakers.

The very thing the good people of Lafayette want removed, the good people of Kawasaki give a parade.  I think we could learn a few things from the Japanese.

I believe the Mirthmakers have rallied strongly since 1851 (see my posting on Jackass), but the Puritans are still in the game -- and they're not afraid to call the cops.