Reservation Blues - Alexie Sherman (23 page)

Thomas shook his head, tried to wake up, but felt the
heat increase instead. He closed his eyes inside his dream, opened
them again, and found himself in a sweatlodge. Inside there, it was
too dark to see, but Thomas knew the smell and feel of a sweatlodge.
He could also sense the presence of others inside the lodge.

The next brother, please
,
a voice said out of the darkness.

Thomas knew he was supposed to pray next. He could
pray silently, and that would be respected. He could pray aloud,
scream and cry, and that would be understood. If he sang, his
brothers in the sweatlodge would sing with him.

Brothers
, Thomas said,
I
don't have any traditional songs. I don't even know gpl belong here.
I don't know if anybody belongs in here. People are listening to us
pray. They have come into the sweatlodge to steal from us. We have to
keep our songs private and hidden. There is somebody in here now who
would steal from us. I can smell him.

Somebody splashed water on the hot rocks in the
middle of the sweatlodge. Steam rose; quiet laughter drifted. Thomas
could barely breathe. He saw images of people just beyond his vision,
heard strange voices, felt the rustle of an animal beside him. That
animal brushed against Thomas and drew blood.

All my relations
, Thomas
cried out, and the door was opened.

Thomas
, a feral voice
cried out as Thomas escaped from the sweatlodge. He ran past the
campfire, heard the animal crashing through the underbrush behind
him. The smell, the smell. He tripped, fell for an immeasurable time,
and woke up suddenly in the Catholic Church in Wellpinit.

"Welcome back," Chess said to Thomas as he
opened his eyes."I didn't think Catholics were that boring."

Thomas shook his head, shrugged his shoulders.

"Peace," Chess said as she left the pew.

"Peace," Thomas said at her back.

"Peace be with you," an old Indian woman
said to Thomas, but he heard pleased to meet you.

"Pleased to meet you, too," he said.

The old woman looked puzzled, then smiled.

"You're that Builds-the-Fire, enit?" she
asked.

"
'Yeah."

"I'm glad to see you here. I'm glad you quit
that band. That rock and roll music is sinful."

Thomas nodded his head blankly.

"I can't tell you how happy we were to see that
Checkers in here last week. She was saved, she was saved. Now, you've
come and her sister, too. People were starting to talk, you know?"

The old Indian woman knelt in the pew. Thomas knelt,
with no idea where Chess had gone. Then he saw her with the Communion
wafers. Father Arnold worked quickly.

"This is the body, this is the blood. This is
the body, this is the blood. This is the body, this is the blood."

"What are people saying about us?" Thomas
asked the old woman.

"
The Christians don't like your devil's music.
The traditionals don't like your white man's music. The Tribal
Council don't like you're more famous than they are. Nobody likes
those white women with you. We spit in their shadows. We don't want
them here."

"But what about Father Arnold? He's white."

"He's a good white man. Those women in your band
are trouble."

"But everybody liked us before."

"Before you left the reservation, before you
left."

The old woman rose to receive Communion, and Thomas
followed her down the aisle. Checkers sang the Communion hymn
wonderfully. Thomas knew she had to rejoin the band. Coyote Springs
needed two Indian women, not two white women. If Checkers rejoined,
Betty and Veronica could be voted out by a majority. Thomas had felt
the change in the reservation air but ignored it. At the two
rehearsals they'd held since they returned from Seattle, only Lester
FallsApart had shown up.

"
But we still live here," Thomas said to
the old woman.

"But you left. Once is enough."

The old woman opened her mouth to take Communion;
Thomas offered his cupped hands. Father Arnold placed the wafer
gently in Thomas's hands.

"Amen," Thomas whispered, palmed the wafer,
and pretended to eat it. He walked back to his pew but discovered
that the old Indian woman had gone. He searched for some evidence of
her but found nothing. He knelt in the pew again, made a quick sign
of the cross. Then he ran outside, crumbled the wafer into pieces,
and let it fall to the earth. The reservation swallowed those pieces
hungrily. Not sure why he even took the Communion wafer in the first
place, Thomas felt the weight of God, the reservation, and all the
stories between.

* * *

Victor and Junior staggered into the Trading Post
just a few minutes after the Catholic Church bells rang for the
second time that morning. Both had been continually drunk since they
returned from Seattle, spending their $200 prize money quickly and
efficiently. They were rapidly depleting Betty's and Veronica's cash,
too. The-man-who-was-probably-Lakota watched Junior and Victor and
shook his head. He also noticed the two white women and offered them
a silent prayer.

"
Ladies and gentlemen!" Victor shouted.
"Elvis is dead. Long live me!"

Victor and Junior stumbled around the Trading Post
and searched for the beer cooler. Betty and Veronica gave up and
walked back outside.

"
What the hell are we doing here?" Veronica
asked Betty.

"I don't know."

The white women had left their car in a garage in
Seattle.

They knew the price to get out rose a little higher
with every hour that passed.

"The end of the world is near!" shouted
the-man-who-was-probably-Lakota.

"We know," Betty and Veronica said.

Inside the Trading Post, Michael White Hawk watched
Victor and Junior stumble up and down the aisles.

"Dose fuckers think they cool," White Hawk
said to a loaf of bread as Victor and Junior finally found the beer
cooler. They celebrated their discovery and pulled out a case of
cheap beer.

"Do we got enough?" Junior asked.

"Enough's enough," Victor said.

"What the hell's that mean?"

"Don't know."

Junior and Victor pooled their change and carried
their beer to the cashier.

"We got enough, enit?" Victor asked.

"No sales tax, remember?" Junior said.

They paid for their booze, made their way outside,
and shielded their eyes against the sudden sunlight. Michael White
Hawk followed them, took advantage of the opportunity, and knocked
the beer from Junior's and Victor's arms. A few cans split open and
beer fountained out.

"
Shit," Victor said."What's wrong with
you?"

"Fuckers!" White Hawk screamed. "Thinkin'
you better than us 'cause you fuckin' white women. You ain't shit."

"
I ain't shit?" Victor said. "You
ain't shit."

Junior picked up a beer can and popped it open.

"Jeez, Michael," Junior said and offered
him the can. "If you want a beer, just ask for one."

"Don't want shit from you," Michael said
and knocked the beer from Junior.

A crowd gathered suddenly, because people always
circle around a potential fight quickly. Betty and Veronica joined
the circle, frightened and excited.

"Make them stop," Betty shouted, but nobody
paid much attention to her.

"Come on," White Hawk said. "Goin'
kick your ass."

"
Fuck you," Junior and Victor harmonized.

White Hawk rushed them and knocked both to the
ground. He kicked and stomped on Junior and Victor, who were too
drunk to fight back. They just curled into fetal balls and waited for
it to end. The crowd cheered. A few rooted openly for White Hawk;
most celebrated the general violence of it all. Betty and Veronica
attacked White Hawk, clawed and punched, but he fought them off. He
threw Betty against the phone booth, he backhanded Veronica and broke
her nose. White Hawk was blind with rage. He might have beat the shit
out of everybody, but the-man-who-was-probably-Lakota stepped through
a gap in the crowd and cold-cocked him with a stray two-by-four.

"
Jeez," said one of the Android brothers to
the-man-who-was-probably-Lakota."The end of the world is upside
White Hawk's head, enit?"

"
The end of the world wasn't supposed to start
here. Not with me."

The Tribal Police and Emergency Medical Technicians
showed up an hour later. The Indian EMTs stuffed Victor, Junior, and
White Hawk into the same ambulance and transported them to Spokane
for medical attention. All three were unconscious and had
concussions. Betty and Veronica were treated on the spot. Betty held
a cold pack to her bruised back, while Veronica had two Kleenexes
stuffed up her nostrils. She refused to let anybody take her
anywhere.

"
What the fuck are we doing here?" Veronica
asked Betty.

"
I don't know," Betty said.

The Tribal Police dispersed the crowd and then went
into the Trading Post for lunch. Coffee and microwave chili.

The ambulance ride was an adventure. White Hawk woke
up and tried to continue the fight, but the EMT with braids smacked
him with an oxygen tank. Reservation emergency medical training
covered a lot of situations. White Hawk was bleeding from two head
wounds when they pulled into the hospital.

"
What happened here?" the emergency room
doctor asked the EMT with braids.

"Car wreck," the EMT lied. He had his
orders handed down directly from the Tribal Council. The Council
always tried to keep white people's laws off the reservation. White
Hawk had violated his parole by fighting, but the Council was more
interested in maintaining tribal sovereignty than in putting him back
in a white jail. Besides, Victor and Junior were drunk, and drunk
Indians usually had a way of avoiding serious injury. Above all,
White Hawk was Dave WalksAlong's nephew, and that counted for
everything.

"
Shit," the doctor said. "Car wrecks
are an Olympic sport for you Indians."

"Bronze medals all around," the EMT
said."These three lived."

The nurses sterilized and bandaged the Spokanes, kept
them overnight for observation, and ignored them until check-out.

"You guys weren't in any car wreck," the
white doctor said to the three Spokanes before they were sent back to
the reservation.

White Hawk was sentenced only to a few weeks in
Tribal jail. Junior and Victor moved into Thomas's house the day
after they returned to the reservation, because White Hawk's buddies
had ransacked their house and stole all the furniture.

"Men with concussions should not sleep on
floors, " Victor said as he plopped down on the couch in
Thomas's house. Junior just lay down in the corner, holding his
aching head. Minutes after Junior and Victor returned from the
hospital, Betty and Veronica packed up their bags and waited outside
for a ride to Spokane. Thomas stood outside his house with the white
women and considered moving, too. He didn't want to live with his
lead guitarist and drummer.

"
Where the hell you two going?" Chess
asked.

"Wherever, " Betty said.

"Listen," Veronica said, "we just want
a ride to Spokane. We'll catch a Greyhound back home to Seattle. It's
nuts here."

"
Jeez," Chess said, "I thought you
wanted some of our wisdom."

"
We didn't want it to be like this,"
Veronica said."How were we supposed to know? Everybody always
spits on our shadows. What the hell does that mean? I mean, we're
walking down the street, minding our own business, and an old Indian
woman spits on our shadows. What the hell is that?"

"What?" Chess asked."Can't you handle
it? You want the good stuff of being Indian without all the bad
stuff, enit? Well, a concussion is just as traditional as a
sweatlodge."

"This isn't what we wanted."

"What did you New Agers expect? You think magic
is so easy to explain? You come running to the reservations, to all
these places you've decided are sacred. Jeez, don't you know every
place is sacred? You want your sacred land in warm places with pretty
views. You want the sacred places to be near malls and 7-Elevens,
too."

"You're nuts," Veronica said."just
plain nuts. Almonds and cashews. Walnuts and pecans."

"Okay, okay," Thomas said."That's
enough. I'II give you a ride to town."

Thomas, Betty, and Veronica packed up the van and
headed off. Chess and Checkers stood in the yard and watched them go.
I don't know," Checkers said. "Those two women could really
sing."

"
What?" Chess asked.

"We should've kept them. They could really
sing."

"You don't know what you're talking about.
Besides, you're not even in the band anymore."