Reservation Blues - Alexie Sherman (5 page)

Arnold was twenty-eight, buying a Big Mac at a
McDonald's, when the call came to him. He'd always been a Catholic,
alternating between devotion and laziness, but had never thought of
himself as a priest. He had always believed, had always been taught,
that priests were extraordinary men, nearly heroic. He had never been
anything but ordinary. An ordinarily handsome man, with ordinary
intelligence and an ordinary car, he'd graduated college with a 3.l
G,P.A. in English. Surely not the makings of a Catholic priest. Even
now, when he talked about his calling in that McDonald's, he was
embarrassed by how ordinary it all seemed. He had just picked up his
order when he heard the voice.

At first, he thought the cashier was talking to him,
but the cashier was busy with another customer. The voice didn't say
anything exactly. It was just a voice, a series of words, or sounds.
He was never quite sure about the voice, but he knew there was no
music, no harps, no sudden shaft of light, no shift of the earth. He
found a table, ate his Big Mac, and then walked across the street to
the Catholic church.

"Hello," he had said to the priest there.
"My name is Robert Arnold. I want to be a priest. But I'm not a
virgin. Can you help me?"

"
You don't have to be a virgin," the priest
had said. "You just have to be celibate from now on."

"Well, okay, " Arnold said. "But I
really hope you're right about this celibacy thing, you know?"

He had quickly gone through seminary, assisted at a
few churches, and then was shipped to the Spokane Indian Reservation
when the residing priest died.

"Father," the bishop had said to him just
before he left for the reservation. "We need you out there. You
have youth, a robust faith that is needed to reach these Indians. We
have tried discipline. We have tried strength. But they need
something different. Someone like you."

Father Arnold had never been too concerned about the
vagueness of his assignment. He was never sure how faith could be
robust and often worried that his prayers were too thin, stretched to
the point of breaking. Still, he knew he was a good priest and could
deliver a homily with the best of them. Sometimes it was almost like
being a lead singer again, onstage, with the audience hanging on his
every word. As a lead singer, as a priest, he could change the shape
of the world just by changing the shape of a phrase.

"A-men," Father Arnold often whispered to
himself, practicing different pronunciations of the word. "Ah-men.
Ay-yyyy-men. Uh-man."

Arnold came to the reservation in his yellow VW van,
expecting tipis and buffalo, since he had never been told otherwise.
He was genuinely shocked when the Indians in his congregation spoke
English.

"Buffalo?" asked Bessie, the oldest
Catholic on the reservation. "What do you mean, buffalo? You
really thought there were going to be buffalo here?"

"
Yes," he said, "I was looking forward
to it."

"Oh, Pather," Bessie said and laughed.
"There weren't any buffalo here to begin with. We're a salmon
tribe. At least, we were a salmon tribe before they put those dams on
the river. "

"
What about the buffalo? I mean, Indians were
always hunting buffalo on television."

"
It was those dang Sioux Indians. Those Sioux
always get to be on television. They get everything."

Arnold's Indian education was quick and brutal. He
heard much laughter.

"
Father Arnold, we're not laughing with you,
we're laughing at you."

He was impressed by the Spokanes' ability to laugh.
He'd never thought of Indians as being funny. What did they have to
laugh about? Poverty, suicide, alcoholism? Father Arnold learned to
laugh at most everything, which strangely made him feel closer to
God. However, he was most impressed by the Spokanes' physical beauty.
Perhaps it was because he had spent most of his life surrounded by
white people and had grown used to their features.

The Spokanes were exotic. Perhaps it was because of
the Indians' tremendous faith. But Father Arnold thought the Spokanes
were uniformly beautiful. When members of other Indian tribes visited
the Spokane Reservation, he began to believe that every Indian in the
country was beautiful.

It's their eyes,
he
finally decided.
Those Indians have the most y
amazing eyes. Truly amazing.

* * *

David WalksAlong, the Spokane Tribal Council
Chairman, showed up at the band's rehearsal a few times. He was a
tall, light-skinned Indian with brown eyes and a round face. He'd
been a great basketball player in his youth, a slashing, brutal point
guard who looked almost like an old-time Indian warrior. But he spent
most of his time playing golf now and had grown fat in the belly and
thighs. WalksAlong had long, dark, beautiful hair twenty years ago
but had cut it shorter and shorter as it grew more gray.

"Kind of loud, enit?" WalksAlong asked
Thomas after a particularly intense set.

"What'd you say?" asked Thomas. His ears
were ringing.

"I said you're disturbing the peace!"

"Yeah," Thomas shouted. "We're a
three-piece band!"

"No, I said you're too loud!"

"Yeah," Thomas agreed. "It is a pretty
good crowd!"

WalksAlong was visibly angry.

"
Listen," the Chairman said, "you
better quit fucking with me! You're just like your asshole father!"

"Really?" Thomas asked. "You really
think we're rocking? You think my father will like us, too?"

WalksAlong jabbed Thomas's chest with a thick finger.

"You might think you're funny! " he shouted
loud enough for Thomas to understand him, "but I can shut you
down anytime I want to! I just have to give the word!" He
stormed off, but Thomas just shrugged his shoulders. David WalksAlong
had never cared rnuch about the Builds-the-Fire family. He always
thought the Builds-the-Fires talked too much. And Thomas's father,
Samuel, had been a better basketball player than WalksAlong. Not a
lot better but enough to make all the Indian women chase him after
the games, while WalksAlong walked home alone.

"What was that all about?" Junior asked
Thomas.

"I don't know," Thomas shouted. "I
don't think he likes us."

"Bullshit," Victor shouted. "He just
doesn't like you. He ain't never liked you. "

WalksAlong walked back to the Spokane Tribal
Headquarters, cussing to himself all the way. He stormed through the
front door, ignored his secretary's attempts at conversation, and
used his whole body to push open his office door. The contractor had
used cheap, warped wood for the door, and it was nearly impassable on
warm days.

"
H'llo, Uncle,"' said Michael White Hawk.

"Shit," Walks/Along said, surprised. "What
the hell are you doing here? Why didn't you call me?"

"Jus' got out," White Hawk said. "Walked
here."

Michael White Hawk had been in Walla Walla State
Penitentiary for two years. He was a huge man before he went to jail,
but hours of weightlifting had turned him into a monster.

"
Jeez, Nephew," WalksAlong said. "You
been shooting up steroids or what?"

"
Pumped iron, you know?"

White Hawk had been in the same class as Victor and
Junior but didn't graduate from high school. He dropped out in eighth
grade, unable to read and write. He could sign his name, but he did
that purely by rote.

"Man," WalksAlong said and hugged his
nephew. "It's good to have you back. It's really good."

WalksAlong had raised his nephew since he was a
toddler. Michael's mother had died of cirrhosis when he was just two
years old, and he'd never even known his father. Michael was
conceived during some anonymous three-in-the-morning powwow encounter
in South Dakota. His mother's drinking had done obvious damage to
Michael in the womb. He had those vaguely Asian eyes and the flat
face that alcohol babies always had on reservations. But he'd grown
large and muscular despite the alcohol's effects. Even in grade
school, he'd been as big as most men and terrorized his classmates.
He bullied even older kids past the point of reason. He once shoved a
pencil up a seventh grader's nose. That kid was in the hospital for a
month and then moved to another reservation to live with some
cousins. They'd sent White Hawk to a boys' school near Spokane. But
he beat the crap out of a few delinquent white boys, so they sent him
back to the reservation.

"Uncle," White Hawk said and hugged
WalksAlong too hard.

"Oh," WalksAlong said. "Take it easy.
You're going to bust my ribs."

White Hawk did not ease up, however, hugging his
uncle with all he had. WalksAlong was about to pass out when White
Hawk finally let him go.

"
Uncle, Uncle! Look what I fuckin' got in
prison!"

White Hawk took off his t-shirt to show his uncle the
dozen tattoos he had received in prison. There were dragons, bears,
feathers, and naked women. There was a naked Indian woman with braids
on his back and a naked Indian woman with unbraided hair on his
stomach. The tattoos were incredibly crude, little more than scars
with ink imbedded in them. WalksAlong was amazed by how much pain his
nephew must have gone through.

"How was it in there?" WalksAlong asked.

"Okay," White Hawk said. "How come you
di'nt come y 'n see me?"

WalksAlong had driven to Walla Walla many times in
the two years his nephew had been in prison, but he never once went
inside. He sat in his car in the prison parking lot and smoked
cigarettes.

"I didn't want to see you in there,"
WalksAlong said. "You didn't belong in there."

"Uncle, it hurt in here."

White Hawk pointed to his chest, pressed his finger
against a horse tattoo. WalksAlong had not seen his nephew cry in
years, although White Hawk had screamed his way through childhood.
But White Hawk didn't cry. He just pointed to his chest.

"Jeez," WalksAlong said, "we have to
celebrate. Let me call the other Councilmen."

Old Jerry, Buck, and Paula, the other Councilmen,
hastily declined the offer when they heard that Michael White Hawk
was home. David WalksAlong's secretary, Kim, had already been on the
phone with her sister, Arlene, and the gossip soon spread all over
the reservation. Michael White Hawk was home. The news made it to
Irene's Grocery.

‘"
White Hawk is home," whispered one
Indian to another.

"
No shit? White Hawk is home?"

Lester FallsApart staggered up to Thomas after a
song.

"Thomas!" Lester shouted. "White Hawk
is home!"

Thomas looked back at Junior and Victor. Junior
cleared his throat loudly. Victor shrugged his shoulders but felt
something drop in his stomach. They barely made it through the next
song and then went home, disappointing the crowd.

* * *

White strangers had begun to arrive on the Spokane
Indian Reservation to listen to this all-Indian rock and blues band.
A lot of those New Agers showed up with their crystals, expecting to
hear some ancient Indian wisdom and got a good dose of Sex Pistols
covers instead. In emulation of all their rock heroes, who destroyed
hotel rooms with style and wit, Victor and junior trashed their own
HUD house. Both lived together in a tiny HUD house with faulty wiring
and no indoor plumbing. They slept in the house only when there was
no other alternative.

One evening, after a long rehearsal, Victor decided
he was the Beatles.

"
I'm McCartney and Lennon all rolled up into
one," Victor said. "Thomas is George. And junior, you get
to be Ringo."

"Shit,"  Junior said, "how come I
have to be Ringo?"

"
If the Ringo fits, " Victor said, "then
wear it."

Thomas knew it was just the beginning but was already
frightened by how much Victor and Junior had improved. Victor,
especially. He played that guitar like a crazy man, and chords and
riffs and notes jumped out of that thing like fancydancers. If you
looked close enough, you saw the music rising off the strings and
frets.

Two white women, Betty and Veronica, had somehow
found their way to the reservation and showed up at every rehearsal.
They even parked their car outside Irene"s Grocery and set up
camp. Betty slept in the front seat and Veronica slept in the back.
Both had long blonde hair and wore too much Indian jewelry. Turquoise
rings, silver feather earrings, beaded necklaces. They always
appeared in sundresses with matching Birkenstocks.

"Jeez," said one Spokane woman to another,
"those New Age princesses like Indian men, enit?"

"Enit, but they don't know what they're getting
into, do they?"

Betty and Veronica always stood in the front row and
sang along with the band. They had great voices, which could be heard
even through the noise that the band created. After the band had quit
for the night, Betty and Veronica often entertained the stragglers by
playing a few songs themselves. Both played guitar, and they sang
duet on their own songs: