The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven: Junior Polatkin’s Wild West Show Summary & Analysis

Junior Polatkin has recurring dreams of being a gunfighter named Sonny Six-Gun. In his dreams he speaks Spokane and guns down legends like Wild Bill Hickok and Billy the Kid. Junior is “the only Indian” at Gonzaga University in Spokane. It is a small Jesuit school, and “hardly any” of the students are from Spokane, let alone Washington State. It is early December, and Junior, seated in history class, stares at a “beautiful blond woman” in the front of the room. Her name is Lynn, and Junior, after hearing her speak up about “mythologizing the [Wild] West,” falls “nearly in love.” After class, Junior follows Lynn to the cafeteria. He stands to close to her, and she confronts him, asking “what the fuck [he] want[s.]” Junior grows tongue-tied, and stops following her.

A few weeks later, it is Christmas break, and Junior has stayed behind in the Gonzaga dorms, where he lives in solitude, checks his mail obsessively, and reads “a book a day.” He doesn’t want to return to the reservation “and endure the insults that would be continually hurled at him.” A few days after Christmas, Junior goes to the mailboxes and finds Lynn there. They formally introduce themselves, and go together to a nearby restaurant.

Lynn tells Junior that she notices he drinks a lot at parties. She asks him if it is “lonely” being the only Indian at the university. Junior is shocked by the personal nature of her questions, but “somehow or other trust[s] Lynn immediately.” Junior imagines that their ongoing, hours-long conversation is one out of a movie. Lynn and Junior flirt, leave the restaurant, and, outside, they kiss.

Junior imagines that he and Lynn are starring in a Western; they return to his dorm room, where they have sex. Lynn seems regretful almost immediately, afraid that she’s gotten pregnant and admitting that “she’d just wanted some company.” Lynn misses her next two periods, and then confronts Junior with the news that she is indeed pregnant. Not wanting to get married, have an abortion, or give the child up for adoption, Lynn decides to carry the child and keep it. She cries in Junior’s arms, and he cries too.

Lynn gives birth to a boy “with dark skin and blue eyes.” She names him Sean Casey, and he talks at one and reads at three. Junior, however, “only learn[s these] details through the mail, random phone calls, and timed visits.” Lynn’s parents “refuse” to acknowledge that their grandson has “Indian blood,” but Lynn reads the baby books about Indians and teaches him Spokane words. Junior drops out of school a year after Lynn leaves to have the baby. He calls Lynn to tell her and, though she begs him not to return to the reservation, he does anyway. As he walks down the highway, he “want[s] to imagine walking into the sunset, into a happy ending,” but he knows that “all along the road there [are] reservation drive-ins showing a new and painful sequel to the first act of his life.”