Reservation Blues - Alexie Sherman (12 page)

"Shit," said Coyote Springs in unison.

A few cars honked at the five Indians pushing an old
blue van down the road.

"Thomas," Victor said. "We need a new
rig."

Coyote Springs pushed that blue van twenty miles down
the road, across a bridge over the Columbia River, into a little town
called Vantage. The band sprawled around the van in various positions
and barely moved when the cop pulled up. That cop climbed out of his
cruiser, pulled on a pair of those mirrored sunglasses that cops
always wear.

"What seems to be the problem?'° he asked.

"Our van broke down," Thomas said.

The cop walked close t the van and looked inside.

"Is all of this your equipment?" the cop
asked.

"
Yes, sir," Thomas said.

"
Are you in a band or what?"

"Yeah," Thomas said. "We're Coyote
Springs?

The officer studied the band, tapped his foot a
little, and took off his sunglasses.

"Where you guys from?" he asked.

"From Wellpinit. Up on the Spokane Indian
Reservation."

"
How about you girls?"

"We're Flathead Indians," Chess said. "From
Arlee, Montana."

"Where you headed to?"

"
Ellensburg," Thomas answered. "We're
playing a bar called Toadstools."

"I know that place. You sure you're playing
there?"

The cop waited briefly for an answer, then asked the
band for identification. Thomas and the women pulled out their
driver's licenses. Junior offered his Spokane Tribal Driver's
License, and Victor lifted his shirt and revealed his own name
tattooed on his chest.

"Are you serious about this tattoo?" the
cop asked.

"
Yeah," Victor said.

"
You all just wait here a second," the cop
said and walked back to his cruiser. He talked on his radio, while
Coyote Springs counted the money for bail.

"We can take him," Victor said. "He's
only one guy."

"But he's a big guy," Junior said.

"Shut up," Thomas said. "Here he
comes."

"Okay," the cop said when he came back. "I
called my cousin over in Ellensburg. He's got a tow truck. He's going
to come over here and haul your butts to Toadstools."

"Really?" Coyote Springs asked.

"
Yeah, but it'll cost you a hundred bucks. You
got that?"

"Sure."

"Well, you can pay my cousin directly, but
you're on your own after that."

"Thanks, officer."

"You're welcome. By the way, what kind of music
you play?"

"All kinds. The blues, mostly."

"Well, good luck."
The
cop started to walk away, but stopped, turned back.

"Hey," he said, "who's the lead
singer?"

Thomas raised his hand and smiled. The cop smiled
back, put his sunglasses on, climbed into his cruiser, and left with
a wave.

"Who the hell was that masked man?" Chess
asked.

"I don't know," junior said. "But if I
find any silver bullets laying around here, l'm going to pass out."

* * *

From
The Ellensburg
Tri-Weekly
:

Indian Musicians Play More Than Drums
An all-Indian rock band from the Spokane Indian
Reservation played for the cowboys in Toadstools
Tavern last Saturday night, and nobody was injured.
Seriously, the band named Coyote Springs was very
professional and played their music with passion
and pride.

"They knew what they was doing,"
said Toadstools
owner Ernie Lively.

"I was kind of nervous about hiring
Indians and all,"
Lively added. "Worried
they might not show up or
maybe they'd stir
up trouble."

On the contrary, Coyote Springs served up a
healthy
dish of country music, spiced it with
a little bit of rock,
and even threw in a few
old blues tunes for dessert.

"I think the highlight of the night was
when those
Indians sang ‘Mommas, Don't Let
Your Babies Grow
Up to Be Cowboys.' Everybody
sang along with
that one," Lively said.

* * *

The blue van, repaired by an honest mechanic in
Ellensburg and a few stories that Thomas whispered into the engine,
traveled down the mostly empty freeway toward home. Coyote Springs
rode in a silence interrupted only by the sudden rush of a passing
truck or a name whispered by one of those sleeping. Thomas drove the
van, and Chess kept him awake. Checkers, Junior, and Victor slept.

"Why you like freeway driving so much?"
Chess asked. "But don't close your eyes to tell me some story."

"I don't know."

"
What do you think?"

"
There's a lot of songs out here, I guess. I can
hear them."

"You want me to turn on the radio?" Chess
asked.

"
Yeah, but keep it low. We don't want to wake
the van up."

"
They all need a lot of beauty sleep, enit?"

Chess turned on the radio. The Black Lodge Singers
still drummed away in the cassette player, but she popped that tape
out and searched for a radio station. She twisted the tuner back and
forth through a short history of American music until she happened
upon Hank Williams.

Hank Williams is a goddamned Spokane Indian! Samuel
Builds-the-Fire shouted in Thomas's memory. Thomas smiled because so
many people visited him in memories.

"
Ya-hey," Thomas said. "Leave it
there."

Chess played with the radio until Hank sang true and
clear. Coyote Springs and Hank Williams continued down the freeway,
past a lonely hitchhiker who heard the music through the open
windows. The blue van swept by so quickly all he heard were a few
isolated notes. But he heard enough to make everything weigh a little
more, his shoes, his backpack, his dreams.

The music rose past the hitchhiker up into the sky,
banged into the Big Dipper, and bounced off the bright moon. That's
exactly what happened. The music howled back into the blue van, kept
howling until Coyote Springs became echoes. That's exactly what
happened.

"Thomas," Chess said and wanted to explain
what she heard.

"I know," he said, wide awake, and slowly
drove them all the way back home.
 

4

Father and Farther

Sometimes, father, you and I  
Are like a three-legged horse
Who
can't get across the finish line
No matter
how hard he tries and tries and tries
And
sometimes, father, you and I  
Are
like a warrior
Who can only paint half of his
face
While the other half cries and cries and
cries

chorus:
Now can I
ask you, father    
If
you know how much farther we need to go?  
And
can I ask you, father
If you know how much
farther we have to go?

Father and farther, father and farther, 'til
we know
Father and farther, father and
farther, 'til we know
Sometimes, father, you
and I
Are like two old drunks
Who
spend their whole lives in the bars
Swallowing
down all those lies and lies and lies
Sometimes,
father, you and I
Are like dirty ghosts    
Who wear the same sheets every day
As
one more piece of us just dies and dies and dies

(repeat chorus)
Sometimes,
father, you and I 
Are like a
three-legged horse
Who can't get across the
finish line
No matter how hard he tries and
tries and tries

Coyote Springs returned to the Spokane Indian
Reservation without much fanfare. Thomas drove through the late night
quiet, the kind of quiet that frightened visitors from the city. As
he pulled up in his driveway, the rest of the band members woke up,
and the van's headlights illuminated the old Indian man passed out on
the lawn.

"Who is that?" Victor asked. "Is it my
dad or your dad?"

"It's not your dad," Junior said. "Your
dad is dead."

"Oh, yeah, enit?" Victor asked. "Well,
whose dad is it?"

"It ain't my dad," Junior said. "He's
dead, too."

Coyote Springs climbed out of the van, walked up to
the man passed out on the lawn, and rolled him over.

"That's your dad, enit?" Junior asked
Thomas.

Thomas leaned down for a closer look.

"
Yeah, that's him," Victor said. "That's
old Samuel."

"Is he breathing?" Junior said.

"Yeah."

"
Well, then leave him there, " Victor said.

Thomas shook his father a little and said his name a
few times. He had lost count of the number of times he'd saved his
father, how many times he'd driven to some reservation tavern to pick
up his dad, passed out in a back booth. Once a month, he bailed his
father out of jail for drunk and disorderly behavior. That had become
his father's Indian name: Drunk and Disorderly.

"
He's way out of it," Victor said.

"He's out for the night," Junior said.

Junior and Victor shrugged their shoulders, walked
into Thomas's house, and looked for somewhere to sleep. Decorated
veterans of that war between fathers and sons, Junior and Victor knew
the best defense was sleep. They saw too many drunks littering the
grass of the reservation; they rolled the drunks over and stole their
money. When they were under age, they slapped those drunks awake and
pushed them into the Trading Post to buy beer. Now, when they saw
Samuel Builds-the-Fire passed out on the lawn, they crawled into
different corners of Thomas's house and fell right to sleep.

"Ain't they going to help?" Chess asked.

"It's my father," Thomas said. "I have
to handle this myself."

But Chess and Checkers helped Thomas carry his father
into the house and lay him down on the kitchen table. The three sat
in chairs around the table and stared at Samuel Builds-the-Fire, who
breathed deep in his alcoholic stupor.

"I'm sorry, Thomas," Chess and Checkers
said.

"Yeah, me, too."

Chess and Checkers were uncomfortable. They hated to
see that old Indian man so helpless and hopeless; they hated to see
the father's features in his son's face. It's hard not to see a
father's life as prediction for his son's.

"Our father was like this, too," Chess
said. "just like this."

"But he never drank at all until Backgammon
died," Checkers said.

"
Where's your dad now?" Thomas asked.

"
He's gone."

The word gone echoed all over the reservation. The
reservation was gone itself, just a shell of its former self, just a
fragment of the whole. But the reservation still possessed power and
rage, magic and loss, joys and jealousy. The reservation tugged at
the lives of its Indians, stole from them in the middle of the night,
watched impassively as the horses and salmon disappeared. But the
reservation forgave, too. Sam Bone vanished between foot falls on the
way to the Trading Post one summer day and reappeared years later to
finish his walk. Thomas, Chess, and Checkers heard the word
gone
shake the foundation of the house.

"Where's he gone to?" Thomas asked.

"
He's just gone," Checkers said. "He's
AWOL. He's MIA."

The secondhand furniture in Thomas's house moved an
inch to the west.

"It wasn't always this way," Thomas said
and touched his father's hand. "It wasn't always this way."

Samuel slept on the table while Thomas closed his
eyes and told the story:

"Way back when, my father was an active
alcoholic only about three months of every year. He was a binge
drinker, you know? Completely drunk for three days straight, a week,
a month, then he jumped back on the wagon again. Sober, he was a good
man, a good father, so all the drinking had to be forgiven, enit?

"My father was Washington State High School
Basketball Player of the Year in l956. Even the white people knew how
good that Indian boy played. He was just a little guy too, about
five-foot-six and a hundred and fifty pounds, hair in a crewcut, and
big old Indian ears sticking out. Walter Cronkite came out to the
reservation and interviewed him. Cronkite stood on the free-throw
line and shouted questions at my father, who dribbled from corner to
corner and hit jumpshots.