Reservation Blues - Alexie Sherman (29 page)

‘
'Listen," he said over lunch at the
Tribal Cafe. "Those Skins ain't got a chance in New York City.
I've been to New York City, and I know what it's like. My grandfather
always told me you can take a boy off the reservation, but you can't
take the reservation off the boy. Coyote Springs is done for. I'm
happy about that."

But the other members of Coyote Springs
seemed to take all the controversy in stride.

"
I Just want to be good at something,"
Junior Polatkin said."I messed up at everything else. I'm not
mad at anybody who talked bad about us. I Just want
them
to like us. Chess and Checkers Warm Water simply gave the thumbs-up
as they left the reservation, although some Spokanes thought it was a
different finger they
raised.

"Listen," Polatkin added, if we
make it big, it Just means we won't have to eat commodity food
anymore."

* * *

Coyote Springs was still standing in the dark studio
when Sheridan and Wright came back. The engineer had already left, so
the two record company executives fiddled with the knobs and dials
until they found the lights and power.

"Listen," Sheridan said over the
intercom."I don't know what happened to you. But Mr. Armstrong
doesn't want to have anything to do with you right now."

"
What the fuck are you talking about?"
Victor asked.

"
Now, you listen closely," Sheridan
said."My ass is on the line here, too. I brought you little
shits here. You screwed me over. Now, I'm going to try and fix this.
Mr. Armstrong can be a little bit emotional. Maybe he didn't get his
coffee or something this morning. Why don't you just head over to
your hotel and wait this out. We'll fly you back to the reservation
in the morning."

"No fucking way!" Victor shouted."We
can't go back there. Not like this."

"Calm your ass down," Sheridan said. "We'll
give Mr. Armstrong a couple months, and then we'll try it again."

"We donlt have a couple months," Thomas
whispered.

Wright slumped into a chair and wiped his face with a
handkerchief just as Victor picked up his guitar and threw it across
the studio. Chess and Checkers ducked. Junior continued to beat a
quiet rhythm on the drum.

"Goddamn it," Sheridan shouted over the
intercom.

"That's fucking studio equipment."

"Fuck you," Victor shouted."You're
studio equipment."

"
Hey," Sheridan said."I'm trying to
help you. I didn't screw this up. I'm not the goddamn guitar player.
Maybe you just aren't ready. Maybe next time. But if you don't calm
down, I'll call security."

Victor kicked a music stand over, picked up a studio
saxophone and threw it at Sheridan. Sheridan ducked behind the
control panel, but the sax Just rebounded off the glass and fell to
the floor. Angry, Sheridan and Wright stormed into the studio.

"That's it," Sheridan said to Wright."I'm
out of here. I tried to help these goddamn Indians. But they don't
want help. They don't want anything."

"
I think they want the same things we do, "
Wright said.

Victor went after Sheridan and Wright then and might
have strangled them, but Thomas and Junior tackled him. They pinned
Victor to the floor as Sheridan looked down.

"Jesus," Sheridan said."It isn't that
bad. You got a free trip to New York. You aren't leaving until
tomorrow. You've got a whole night in Manhattan to yourselves. I'll
even treat you to a nice evening. Some dinner, dancing, the sights."

Sheridan pulled out his wallet and dropped a few
bills on the floor near Victor. Chess and Checkers quickly picked up
the money and threw it in Sheridan's face.

"That's it," Sheridan said."You're out
of here."

"Wait," Wright said, but the security
guards arrived quickly and roughly escorted Coyote Springs out of the
building.

Coyote Springs cried, but no crowd gathered to watch
them. Coyote Springs stood in the middle of the sidewalk, and
hundreds of people Just flowed impassively around them.

"What are we supposed to do?" Chess asked.

"Let's just go home," Thomas said. It was
all he knew to say."Big Mom will know what to do."

"She's Just an old woman," Victor
shouted."She ain't magic. And even if she was, she's a million
miles away. What the fuck can she do? Everything is a million miles
away. It's all lies, lies, lies. All the whites ever done was tell us
lies."

Victor roared against his whole life. If he could
have been hooked up to a power line, he would have lit up Times
Square. He had enough anger inside to guide every salmon over Grand
Coulee Dam. He wanted to steal a New York cop's horse and go on the
warpath. He wanted to scalp stockbrokers and kidnap supermodels. He
wanted to shoot flaming arrows into the Museum of Modern Art. He
wanted to lay siege to Radio City Music Hall. Victor wanted to win.
Victor wanted to get drunk.

"Let's get the fuck out of here," Victor
said to Junior, and they ran off into the crowd.

"Come back," Checkers shouted after them,
but they were already gone, swallowed by the river of people.

"I'm so scared," Chess said to Thomas and
moved into his arms.

"I am, too," Checkers said and held onto
Thomas and Chess.

Thomas felt his whole body shake.

If any New Yorkers had stopped to look, they would
have seen three Indians slow dancing, their hair swirling in the
wind. The whole scene could have been a postcard. WISH You WERE HERE.
It could have been on the cover of the New York Times Sunday
Magazine.

* * *

Chess, Checkers, and Thomas stood in the hotel lobby
with no idea what to do about Junior and Victor, who were getting
drunk somewhere in Manhattan. But there were thousands of bars,
taverns, lounges, and dives in New York. Thousands and thousands.
Victor and Junior could be anywhere.

"Jeez," Checkers said, "what are we
going to do?"

"I don't know," said Thomas, a reservation
storyteller without answers or stories.

"Well," Chess said, "we have to find
those two. It's dangerous here. Especially for them."

Thomas was truly frightened. He felt totally out of
control. He could only think about the instruments they left in the
studio.

"Our stuff," Thomas said.

"What stuff?" Chess asked.

"Our guitars and stuff. They're still in the
studio."

"Forget them, it's all over now, anyways. Can't
you feel it?"

Thomas touched his body and felt the absence, like
some unnamed part of him had been cut away.

"
What are we going to do?" Checkers
pleaded. She dropped into a chair and held her head between her
knees."I think I'm going to pass out."

Chess watched Thomas and Checkers collapse. She knew
Victor and Junior had to be found. There was no time for drama.
Victor and Junior, two small-town reservation hicks, were out drunk
somewhere in New York City. There were only a few ways to die on the
reservation but a few thousand new and exciting ways in Manhattan.
All of it felt like a  three-in-the-morning movie on television.
Some punks would kill Victor and Junior for their shoes and dump
their bodies in the Hudson River. And Kojak would never find them.

"Listen," Chess said, but Thomas and
Checkers stared off into space.

"Listen, goddamn it!" Chess shouted. Thomas
and Checkers looked at her."Thomas and I will grab a phonebook
and hit all the bars in this whole town. Checkers, you stay here in
case they come back. How does that sound?"

"That's crazy," Thomas said."There are
thousands of bars."

"I know it's crazy," Chess said."But
what else are we going to do? Who knows what Victor and Junior are
going to do? They might get themselves killed."

"Where do we start?"

"
With the A's," Chess said."And work
our way from there."

Chess hugged her sister; Checkers wouldn't let her
go. We've got to go," Chess said.

"Don't, " Checkers whispered.

Chess led her sister across the lobby and into the
elevator.

"Eleventh floor," Chess said to the
elevator man.

"
Yes, ma'am."

The elevator doors slid closed. Chess and Thomas left
the hotel with a few dozen pages of the phonebook.

* * *

Victor and Junior sat in a smoky lounge with a half
dozen empty glasses in front of them.

"
Fucking assholes," Victor shouted.

"Be quiet," Junior said."You'll get us
kicked out of here, too."

It was the fourth bar that Junior and Victor had been
in since they ran away from the rest of Coyote Springs. The bouncers
had tossed them out of the first bar for fighting. The second lounge
had closed early, and the third established a new dress code fifteen
minutes after Junior and Victor sat down. Still, these bars they
visited in New York City weren't all that different from the bars on
the reservation. A few tables and chairs, a few stools at the bar, a
television, and a pool table. The only difference between bars was
the program on the TV.

"Everybody's a liar," Victor whispered. He
laughed drunkenly and looked around the bar. The bartender stared at
Victor and mentally cut him off.

"Man," Victor said."Look at all the
beautiful white women in here."

Junior looked around the room. He saw beautiful white
women in the bar, had seen beautiful white women in all four bars
that night, and Victor had made sure to shout about it. There were
beautiful women of all colors in those bars and some plain white
ones, but Victor and Junior never seemed to notice the plain ones.

"
This city's filled up with beautiful white
women," Victor said and laughed his drunk laugh. Phlegm rattled
in his throat and spit fell from his mouth.

"
Victor," Junior said. "Why you like
white women so much?"

"Don't you know? Bucks prefer white tail."'

Junior didn't feel like laughing. He Just ate a
handful of peanuts and stared at the television. Victor babbled on
about nothing. The bartender cleared the glasses away from Junior's
and Victor's area. Victor ordered another beer, but Junior gave the
bartender a look that said
he don't need no
more
. The bartender gave Junior a look back
that said
I wasn't going to give him one
anyway
.

Junior knew that white women were trophies for Indian
boys. He always figured getting a white woman was like counting coup
or stealing horses, like the best kind of revenge against white men.

Hey
, Indian men said to
white men.
You may have kicked our ass in the
Indian wars, but we got your women
.

But that was too easy an explanation, and Junior knew
it.

He knew he loved to walk around with Betty and
Veronica. Especially on the reservation. He loved to have something
that other Indians didn't have. He'd had his first white woman back
when he was in college in Oregon.

Junior had met Lynn when he had spent a Christmas
break in the dorms; neither of them could afford to go home. All
during the break, Junior read books and stared out the window into
the snow. He watched cars pass by and wondered if white people were
happier than Indians.

They met each other while checking their mail the day
after Christmas.

"
So," Lynn had asked, "what's it like
being the only Indian here?"

"
It gets pretty lonely, I guess."

"
Do you drink much?"

"What do you mean?"

"
Well, I see you at parties. You seem to drink a
lot."

"
Yeah, maybe I do."

Lynn studied Junior"s face.

"
You know," she said, "you're very
pretty."

"You're pretty, too."

They walked around campus for hours, talking and
laughing. Then Lynn suddenly stopped and stared at Junior.

"
What?" he asked.

"
Listen, " she said and kissed him. Just
like that. Junior had never kissed a white woman before, so he used
his tongue a lot, and tried to find out if she tasted different than
an Indian woman.

"
Irish," said Lynn as she broke the
kiss."I'm Irish."

"
Who's Irish?" Victor asked Junior and
pulled him from his memories.

"What?" Junior asked.

"What the hell are you talking about?"

'"What do you mean?"

"You said you were Irish."

‘"
I didn't say that."

"Yeah, you did," Victor said."Where
the hell were you? On another planet?"

"Yeah," Junior said."On another
planet."