Crazy Horse Malt Liquor

by Richard Cambridge

It's midnight out of Providence and I'm driving home with friends, heading north on 95 and running on empty.

Find a station but can't pull in. There's a bottle in the middle of the lane. We get out of the car to see what it is:

Crazy Horse Malt Liquor. Label has the face of an Indian. It makes no sense at all why they would do this.

I know of a man respected in the world community who speaks not in anger or in sorrow but in simple fact

when he says of the nations of the Earth, that when it comes to a moral conscience America is the backward child.

And he's not talking about the Indians.

Crazy Horse, a spiritual man, an example for his people--he never touched a drop.

Why don't they put the black, shining prince on the label of a bottle? Like Malcolm's Triple X

overproofed Sour Mash to stir up a little dutch courage for the next wave of the revolution.

Or a top-shelf I've-been-to-the-mountain Martin Luther King Port? A smooth, ease-me-down port–

a victory drink for kickin back after non-violent boycotts, peaceful demonstrations or sit-ins.

You think this is funny but I'm not laughing– this isn't a joke.

But Hey-- I've got the perfect bottle. Why not some wine named after the carpenter from Nazareth?

Say a Merlot– they're popular these days– called Jesus Red.

And I've got the perfect label: a little village scene with the blue sea of Galilee in the background;

a blood-red border entwined with thorns.

And the label would say, "Legend has it. . ." or, "The myth surrounding. . ." or, "The story goes. . ."

It was no legend, no myth, no story that saved me.

And in sweat lodges medicine men call on the spirit of Crazy Horse to bind up the wounds of the people.

–Richard Cambridge