Reservation Blues - Alexie Sherman (15 page)

Ya-hey,
Junior said as he
climbed out of the car and saw his mother-and-father completely still
on the grass. He grabbed his parents by the arms and dragged them
across the grass. It took hours. He dragged his parents up stairs and
into a strange house. It took days. He dragged his parents into a
bedroom and laid them down on the bed. It took years. He kneeled at
the foot of the bed. He folded his hands to pray.

He opened his mouth, but nothing came out. He
strained and strained, his vocal cords ached with the effort, but
nothing came out. Then he heard music from the radio beside the bed.
He turned up the volume until the walls and bed shook. His parents
stared with fixed pupils. They danced on the bed. Their arms and legs
kicked wildly, until their fingers locked, and they pulled each other
back and forth, back and forth.

* * *

Chief WalksAlong hit two quick jumpshots over a
seriously handicapped Lester FallsApart, who protected his broken
nose with one hand. Officers William and Wilson made baskets, and
Samuel ran ragged trying to defend himself against the entire world,

TRIBAL COPS—5
SAMUEL &
LESTER——3

"Samuel," the Chief asked, "don't you
sing pretty good? I might want to hear a few verses of ‘I Fought
the Law and the Law Won' after this game?

"
I don't know that one. But I know how to sing
‘I Shot the Sheriff.' "

The Chief threw the ball to Art Heavy Burden, who
missed a jumper, but the Chief followed the shot and put the rebound
back in.

TRIBAL COPS—6
SAMUEL &
LESTER—3

"That shot was for every time one of you drunk
ass Indians told me I wasn't real," the Chief said. "That
was for every time you little fuckers think pissing your pants is a
ceremonial act."

* * *

"Did you ever drink?" Thomas asked Chess
after he came back inside the house. His father still snored on the
table.

"
No."

"Not ever?"

"
Neither of us ever drank," Chess said.

"We were afraid of it," Checkers said.
"Even when we wanted to drink, we were too scared, enit?"

Thomas looked at his father on the table.

"Look what it did to my father," he said.

Chess looked at Thomas, at his father, at both. She
saw her father, Luke, in their faces. She missed her father, even
after all he had done.

Checkers also saw her father in Samuel's face, in
Thomas's eyes. She saw that warrior desperation and the need to be
superhuman in the poverty of a reservation. She hated all of it.
I'm
Super Indian Man
, those pseudo-warriors
always shouted on the reservation.
Able to
leap tall HUD houses in a single bound. Faster than a BIA pickup.
Stronger than a block of commodity cheese.
Checkers tried to ignore them, but the Indian men visited her dreams.
Look at my big cowboy hat. Look at my big boots.
Look
at my big, big belt buckle.
Those men, those
ghosts, crawled into her bed at night, lifted her nightgown, and
forced her legs apart. After they finished with her, those Indian men
sat on the edge of the bed and cried.
Ha-oh,
ha-oh, ha-oh. I lost my cowboy hat. Somebody stole my boots. I pawned
my belt buckle.
No matter how bad she felt,
those tears always moved her heart. She reached for the Indian men in
her dreams and held them tightly. Her stomach turned, and she
swallowed bile, but she held on.

"I hate this, " Thomas said. "I hate
my father."

"You don't hate him," Chess said. "You're
just upset."

"I hate him," Thomas said again and
squeezed his hands into fists.

A few days earlier, Chess and Thomas had driven to
Spokane for a cheap hamburger. They walked in downtown Spokane and
stumbled onto a drunk couple arguing.

"Get the fuck away from me!" the drunk
woman yelled at her drunk husband, who squeezed his hand into a fist
like he meant to hit her.

Thomas and Chess flinched, then froze, transported
back to all of those drunken arguments they'd witnessed and survived.
The drunk couple in downtown Spokane pulled at each other's clothes
and hearts, but they were white people. Chess and Thomas knew that
white people hurt each other, too. Chess knew that white people felt
pain just like Indians. Nerve endings, messages to the brain,
reflexes. The doctor swung hammer against knee, and the world
collapsed.

"
You fucker!" the white woman yelled at her
husband, who opened his hands and held them out to his wife. An
offering. That hand would not strike her. He pleaded with his wife
until she fell back into his arms. That white woman and man held each
other while Chess and Thomas watched. A hundred strangers walked by
and never noticed any of it.

After that, Chess and Thomas had sat in the van in a
downtown parking lot. Thomas began to weep, deep ragged tears that
rose along his rib cage, filled his mouth and nose, and exploded out.
 

"You don't hate him," Chess said to Thomas
as Samuel Builds-the-Fire inhaled sharply and held his breath too
long. They all waited for the next breath. When he finally exhaled
loudly, it surprised him to be alive, and he smiled in his sleep.

Chess looked across Samuel's body lying on that
table, looked at Samuel's son, and wanted a mirror. Here, she wanted
to say to Thomas.
You don't look anything like
your father. You're much more handsome. Your hair is longer, and your
hands are beautiful.
But Thomas needed more
than that. His father lay on the table, but it could have been any
Indian man. It could have been a white man on the table.

"
What's going to happen to him?" Checkers
asked.

"What's going to happen to who?" Chess and
Thomas asked her back.

* * *

Samuel made two beautiful moves and scored twice, but
the Tribal Cops answered with two buckets of their own. The game
broke down into a real war after that. Hard fouls on drives to the
hoop, moving screens, kidney punches. The cops targeted Lester's
broken nose and drove Samuel into a basket support pole. Fresh
wounds.

"That's a foul!" Samuel yelled as he made a
move on the Chief.

"You goddamn pussy."

Samuel held the ball in his arms like a fullback and
ran the Chief over.

"
First down! " Lester yelled.

"
Now," Samuel said, "that's a foul."

The Chief stood, touched his head where it hit the
court, and found blood.

"
That's assaulting an officer," he said.
"Good for a year in Tribal Jail. "

"
This is a game," Samuel said. "It
don't count."

"
Everything counts."

The Chief took the ball from Samuel, passed it to
Phil Heavy Burden, took a pass right back, and popped a jumper.

TRIBAL COPS—9
SAMUEL &
LESTER—7

"Game point, shitheads," the Chief said.
"You two best be getting ready for jail."

"Fuck you," Samuel said as he stole the
ball, drove down the court, and went in for a two-handed,
rattle-the-foundations, ratify-a-treaty, abolish-income-tax,
close-the-uranium-mines monster dunk.

"That was for every one of you Indians like you
Tribal Cops," Samuel said. "That was for all those Indian
scouts who helped the U.S. Cavalry. That was for Wounded Knee I and
II. For Sand Creek. Hell, that was for both the Kennedys, Martin
Luther King, and Malcolm X."

"
Yeah, " Lester said. "That was for
Leonard Peltier, too."

"
And for Marilyn Monroe."

"And for Jimi Hendrix."

"
Yeah, for Jimi."

"
What about Jim Morrison," Wilson and
William asked. White guys obsessed on Jim Morrison.

"You can have Jim Morrison," Samuel said.
"We'll take the ball."

Lester took the pass from Samuel, faked a pass back,
dribbled once, and threw up a prayer that banked in. It was the first
and last basket of Lester FallsApart's basketball career.

TRIBAL COPS——9
SAMUEL &
LESTER—7

* * *

Thomas, Chess, and Checkers never slept that night.
They talked stories around the table where Samuel Builds-the-Fire
snored.

"Your mom died of cancer, enit?" Chess
asked.

"
Yeah, stomach cancer," Thomas said.

"I'm sorry."

"It ain't your fault. She died a long time ago."

Checkers shivered at the thought of cancer. Cancer
rose from the bodies of dead Indians and walked down the hallways of
hospitals.

"
Did she drink?" Chess asked.

"She did. But she quit. She was sober when she
died."

"Really? Quit just like that?"

"Cold as a turkey," Thomas said. "She
quit the morning after this really bad New Year's Eve party at our
house. This house."

"
What happened?"

"
Dad got real drunk, kicked everybody out, and
then took all the furniture out on the front lawn, and burned it."

"Shit, you must have been scared."

"Not too scared. It wasn't that big a fire. I
mean, we barely had any furniture. But then he threatened to burn
down the house with all of us in it. So Mom threw me into the car,
and we drove to her sister's up in Colville. Her sister wasn't home,
so we sat in this all-night diner and waited. The sun came up, and we
drove back here. Mom never drank again."

"What happened then?"

"
She kicked Dad out. Divorced him Indian style,
enit? Then went to work for the Tribe as a driver. She drove the
Senior Citizens' van all over the countryside. Took the elders to
every powwow. She got all traditional. Started dancing, singing,
playing stickgame again."

"
Jeez, " Checkers said. "That must
have been some party, enit?"

"
Yeah," Thomas said. "Dad even hired a
band."

"A real band?"

"
Kind of. It was just a couple of guys from the
reservation. Louie and Merle. They played the blues. They were pretty
good when they weren't drunk."

"Sounds like a couple guys we know."

"What else happened at the party?"

"Same old things," Thomas said. "People
got drunk. People fought. People got pregnant in the back rooms. A
couple went to jail. One got his stomach pumped. Two died in a car
wreck on the way home. And there was a partridge in a pear tree."

"
Who died?"

"]Junior's parents."

"Jeez," Chess said. "He must have been
really young."

"Yeah," Thomas said. "He was the
oldest, too. Had a bunch of brothers and sisters. Their auntie took
them in and raised them. She died a few years ago."

"
What about Victor's parents?"

"
They're all gone."

"Jeez," Checkers said. "Samuel is the
only one who made it."

Samuel rolled over on the table and coughed. He
curled into a fetal position and mumbled something.

"Hard to believe, enit?"

"Yeah," Thomas said. "The only things
that will survive a nuclear war are cockroaches and my father."

"Our father was crazy, too," Chess said.
"He'd come home all drunk and screaming. Be talking about how he
was a radio man during World War II."

"
I thought all those radio men were Navajo,"
Thomas said.

"
They all were Navajo. And my dad was too young
for the war anyway, but he kept saying it."

"
Man, you never hear about those Navajo radio
guys, do you? They won the war. Those Germans and Japanese couldn't
figure that code out."

"
Yeah, just like that. Mom would tell him about
all that, too. But my dad kept going on and on. He was a war hero,
jumped out of airplanes. He killed Hitler."

"
Enit?" Thomas asked.

"Yeah," Chess said. "Old Luke Warm
Water told us he was the one who killed Hitler. Caught up to him in
that bunker and made him drink poison."

Thomas laughed.

"What's so funny?"

"My dad always told me he was the one who killed
Hitler. They must have been on that mission together."

"Our fathers, the war heroes."

Thomas thought about all the imagined and real wars
their fathers fought. He thought about that New Year's Eve party, all
those parties that seemed to celebrate nothing at all. He remembered
the two Indians who played the blues at that party, where Samuel
burned the furniture on the front lawn. Two old Indian men played
blues. In sunglasses. Big bellies. Big knuckles. Thomas tried to
remember if they were any good. He searched his mind for some melody
they played but heard nothing.

"
You know," Chess said. "I heard beer
bottles breaking so much that I got used to it. I kind of miss them
sometimes."