Reservation Blues - Alexie Sherman (26 page)

"
Yeah, I am," Junior said. "And I'm
scared."

Big Mom reared her head back and laughed a
thunderstorm. Junior nearly pissed a rain shower in his shorts.

"
Don't be scared, Junior, " Big Mom said
and held out two huge drumsticks. "These are for you."

"I can't use those, I don't think I can even
lift them."

"
Take them. They're yours."

Junior reached for the sticks, hesitated, then
grabbed them quickly. They were too heavy at first, and they dropped
to the ground. But Junior reached down and pulled them up. Then he
smiled and pounded a little rhythm across the ground.

"
Beautiful," Big Mom said.

"Shit," Victor said. "She thinks she's
a medicine woman. She thinks she's Yoda and Junior is Luke Skywalker.
Use the force, Junior, use the force."

Big Mom ignored Victor.

"And you two are the sisters, Eunice and Gladys
Warm Water, " Big Mom said. "You're special women. Come
sweat with me."

"Eunice and Gladys?" Junior, Victor, and
Thomas asked.

Chess and Checkers ducked their heads, hid their
faces.

"
Eunice and Gladys?" Victor said again.
"Jeez, your parents must've been seduced by the dark side of the
force when they named you, enit?"

"Eunice?" Thomas asked Chess.

"Yeah, I'm Eunice," Chess whispered.

"Don't be ashamed," Big Mom said. Chess and
Checkers each took a hand, and Big Mom led them to the sweatlodge,
leaving the men of Coyote Springs to their fears and drumsticks.

* * *

From Checkers (Gladys) Warm Water'sJ ournals

I was so scared when I first saw Big Mom.
She was this huge woman with fingers as big as my arms, I think. I
kept thinking she could squash me like a bug. But then she called me
a special woman. It made me realize Big Mom is really a woman and we
could have a good talk.

She took Chess and me into the sweatlodge,
and I kept thinking that Big Mom was inside my head. I've always been
able to sort of read people's minds, been able to get into their
heads a little bit. Even Chess always told me I had a little bit of
magic. But there were always people, especially women, who had more
magic. I remember I was trying to read this old white lady's mind on
a bus ride to Missoula when she turned to me and said "Get out!"
Well, she really said it in her head. That old white lady threw me
out of her mind, and I had a headache for a week. But that was
nothing compared to Big Mom. I kept feeling like she could have made
commodity applesauce out of
my brain.

Anyway, we took a sweat together, and it was
great. Big Mom sang better than anybody I ever heard, even Aretha
Franklin. That steam in the lodge felt so good in my throat and
lungs. It made me feel like I could sing better. Chess said the steam
made her feel that way, too. And Thomas said we could sing better
after we came out of the sweatlodge with Big Mom. But I was also kind
of scared that Big Mom would know that I was in love with Father
Arnold. She might know that I kissed him and that he kissed me back.
I was scared of what she would think of me. How can an Indian woman
love any white man like that, and him being a priest besides? Big Mom
felt like she came from a whole different part of God than Father
Arnold did. Is that possible? Can God be broken into pieces like a
jigsaw puzzle? What if it's like one of those puzzles that Indian
kids buy at secondhand stores? You put it together and find out one
or two pieces are missing. I looked at Big Mom and thought that God
must be made up mostly of Indian and woman pieces. Then I looked at
Father Arnold and thought that God must be made up of white and man
pieces. I don't know what's true.

* * *

"
I'm hungry," Victor said as they all lay
on the floor in Big Mom's living room.

"
You're always hungry," Chess said.

"Wil1 you two be quiet, please?" Thomas
said. "Big Mom is still sleeping."

"Oh," Victor said, loudly. "I didn't
think God needed to sleep. I thought God was a twenty-four-hour
convenience store."

"She's not God," Thomas said.

"Oh, my," Victor said. "The perfect
Thomas admitting that Big Mom ain't God. That's blasphemy, enit?"

"
It's not blasphemy," Thomas said. "There
is no god but God."
"Well,"
Victor asked, "who is she then?"

The rest of Coyote Springs looked for the answer,
too.

"She's Just a part of God," Thomas said.
"We're all a part of God, enit? Big Mom is Just a bigger part of
God."

"Literally," Victor said.

"
She's going to teach us how to play better,"
Thomas said.

"She's going to teach us new chords and stuff."

"How?" Victor said. "She's Just some
old Indian woman."

Just then, Big Mom played the loneliest chord that
the band had ever heard. It drifted out of her bedroom, floated
across the room, and landed at the feet of Coyote Springs. It crawled
up their clothes and into their ears. Junior fainted.

"What in the hell was that?" Victor asked.

Big Mom walked out of the bedroom carrying a guitar
made of a 1965 Malibu and the blood of a child killed at Wounded Knee
in 1890.

"
Listen, " Thomas said.

Big Mom hit the chord again with more force, and it
knocked everybody to the ground. Everybody except Junior, who was
already passed out on the ground.

"
Please," Chess said, but she didn't know
if she wanted Big Mom to please, quit playing, or please, don't stop.
Big Mom hit that chord over and over, until Coyote Springs had
memorized its effects on their bodies. Junior had regained
consciousness long enough to remember his failures, before the force
of the music knocked him out again.

"Enough! " Victor shouted. "I can't
hear myself think!"

"There, " Big Mom said to Victor. "Have
you learned anything?"

"I've learned that a really big guitar makes a
really big noise."

"Is that all?"

"What do you want me to say? I keep waiting for
you to call me Grasshopper and ask me to snatch some goddamn pebble
from your hand."

Thomas stood up and reached for Big Mom's guitar.

"Patience," Big Mom said and pushed his
hand away.

"I can play that chord," Thomas said. "But
I need your guitar to do it."

"All Indians can play that ch0rd," Big Mom
said. "It's the chord created especially for us. But you have to
play it on your own instrument, Thomas. You couldn't even lift my
guitar."

"
What about Victor?" Thomas asked. "He's
got Robert Johnson's guitar. Why can't I have your guitar?"

"That guitar is different," Big Mom said.
"That guitar wanted Victor."

"Shit," Victor said. "This is all
starting to sound like a New Age convention. Where are the fucking
crystals? Well, I know who's got the fucking crystals. Jim Morrison's
got the fucking crystals, and he's dancing naked around the campfire
with a bunch of naked white people, singing and complaining that his
head feels Just like a toad."

"Please don't say that name, " Big Mom
said. "I'm so tired of that name. It's irritating how much I
have to hear that name."

"What?" Victor asked. "Which name? Jim
Morrison?"

"
Stop that," Big Mom said.

"Jim Morrison, " Victor said and laughed.
"Jim Morrison, Jim Morrison, Jim-fucking-Morrison."

Big Mom shook her head, walked out of the house, and
left Coyote Springs alone.

"You're such an asshole," Chess said.

"What's going on?" Junior asked as he
finally woke up.

"I know I can play that chord," Thomas
said.

"I kind of like the Doors," Checkers said.

"This is the end, my friends, this is the end,"
Victor said.

* * *

Victor wasn't the first Indian man to question Big
Morn's authority. In fact, many of the Indian men who were drawn to
Big Mom doubted her abilities. Indian men have started to believe
their own publicity and run around acting like the Indians in movies.

"Michael White Hawk," Big Mom said to the
toughest Spokane Indian man of the late twentieth century. "Don't
you understand that the musical instrument is not to be used in the
same way that a bow and arrow is? Music is supposed to heal."

"But, Big Ma," White Hawk said, "I'm a
warrior. I'm 'posed to fight."

"No, Michael, you're a saxophone player, and you
need to work on your reed technique."

Most times, the Indian men learned from Big Mom, but
Michael White Hawk never admitted his errors. White Hawk had actually
been something of a prodigy, an idiot savant, who could play the horn
even though he couldn't read or write.

"
I hate white men," White Hawk said. "I
smash my sax'phone on their heads."

"Michael," Big Mom said, "you run
around playing like you're a warrior. You're the first to tell an
Indian he's not being Indian enough. How do you know what that means?
You need to take care of your people. Smashing your guitar over the
head of a white man is just violence. And the white man has always
been better at violence anyway. They'll always be better than you at
violence."

"You don't know what you talkin' 'bout,"
White Hawk said. "You jus' a woman."

He left Big Mom's house after that and ended up in
Walla Walla State Penitentiary for smashing his saxophone over the
head of a cashier at a supermarket in Spokane.

"
He tryin' to cheat me for my carrots,"
White Hawk shouted as he was led away to prison.

"
When are Indians ever going to have heroes who
don't hurt people?" Big Mom asked her students. "Why do all
of our heroes have to carry guns? All Indian heroes have to be Indian
men, too. Why can't Indian women be heroes?"

Some of her Indian men students would get all pissed
off and leave. They suddenly saw Big Mom as a tiny grandmother
without teeth or a life. She shrank in their eyes, until she was just
some dried old apple sitting on a windowsill. In their minds, she
changed into a witch, bitter and angry.

I'll get you, my pretzy, Big Mom said in their heads,
although it didnlt sound like her at all. Andyour little dog, too,
because you goddamn Indian boys always got some dog following you
around. And those Indian men would never play their music right
again. You can still see them, standing by the drums at powwows,
trying to remember how to sing in the Indian way. You don't remember,
do you? asks the strange voice in their heads. Listen to me. I'll
teach you. They attempt to tap their feet in rhythm with the dancers
but can never quite get it.

Follow me
, that Wild voice
said.
I'll give you everything you want.
Everything. All the guitar players cut their fingers to shreds on
guitar strings. Let me fix those wounds for you. There, let me suck
the infection out. There, that's good, that's good.

"
Forgive us, save us
,"
said those repentant guitar players, with hands bandaged and
bloodied, when they crawled back to Big Mom.

"
I ain't Jesus. I ain't God," Big Mom said.
"I'm just a music teacher. "

"But look what you did to us."

"
I didn't do anything to you. You caused all
this. You made the choices."

"What can we do?"

"You can change your mind."

* * *

"I want you to play that chord again," Big
Mom said to Victor.

"
I can't play it anymore," Victor said.
"I'm tired. I want to go to sleep."

Coyote Springs had been practicing twelve hours a day
for nearly a week. They were exhausted but had improved greatly,
despite Victor's continual challenges of Big Mom's magic. There
wasn't enough room to rehearse in Big Mom's house, so she rigged up
some outside lights, which attracted mosquitos and moths.

"Play it again," Big Mom said.

"I can't. My fingers don't even work that way."

Robert Johnson watched from a distance, hidden in the
treeline. He held some scrub wood in his hands. It wasn't strong
wood. There was no way he could make a desk or a chair. That wood
wasn't even good enough to make a broomstick. But somehow Johnson
believed that his new guitar waited somewhere in that wood. Proud of
his discovery, he was still frightened by his old guitar. Victor's
guitar now. Johnson winced when Victor hit the chord.

"Play it," Big Mom said.

"Yeah," Thomas said. "Play it hard."

"Come on, Big Mom, Thomas," Chess said.
"We're all tired. Why don't we quit for the day?"

"
We'll quit when Big Mom says it's time to
quit," Thomas said. "Sheridan and Wright are coming to get
us in a couple days. And we just ain't good enough yet."