Sherman Alexie - Reservation Blues

“The woman in the front row.”

“That white woman?” Victor asked. Junior, completely confused, scanned the room again for any evidence of white women.

“No,” Thomas said, “the Indian woman. The one with glasses.”

“Why?” Victor asked. “Is Thomas trying to get laid?”

“I want to play ‘Indian Boy Love Song,’” Thomas said.

“Shit no,” Victor said. “We ain’t even practiced that one.”

“I don’t think so,” Junior said. “Ain’t no Indian wants to hear a slow song anyway.”

“Well, I’ll just go out there and do it myself.

“Jesus Christ,” Victor said as Thomas walked back onstage. “The little asshole’s already thinking about a solo career.”

“Well, let’s go,” Junior said. “We’re a band.”

Junior followed Thomas, but Victor stayed behind and made goofy eyes at a blond mirage near the back of the bar.

Victor had started to drink early in life, just after his real father moved to Phoenix, and he drank even harder after his stepfather moved into the house. Junior never drank until the night of his high school graduation. He’d sworn never to drink because of his parents’ boozing. Victor placed a beer gently in his hand, and Junior drained it without hesitation or question, crashing loudly, like a pumpkin that dropped off the World Trade Center and landed on the head of a stockbroker. Thomas’s father still drank quietly, never raising his voice once in all his life, just staggering around the reservation, usually covered in piss and shit.

“Come on, Victor,” Junior yelled from the stage. “Get up here.”

“Fuck you,” Victor said, but the guitar throbbed in his hands and pulled him to the stage.

“Thank you, thank you,” Thomas said as Coyote Springs reclaimed the stage amid a drunken ovation. “We’re going to slow things down a little now. I want to play this song for that Indian woman standing right here in front of me.”

Thomas pointed at Chess. The whole crowd, because they had known the Warm Water sisters all their lives, chanted her name.

“Well, Chess,” Thomas said, “this one is for you.”

Nerves and bar smoke cracked his voice, but Thomas sang loudly, shut the whole bar up, and even sobered up a few drunks. Thomas stunned all the Flatheads when he dared to serenade an Indian woman with his ragged voice. They figured he must be in love.

“You’re not going to fall for this?” Checkers asked her sister.

“Not completely,” Chess said. “Maybe just a little.”

Thomas got carried away, though, and warbled his song for Chess a few more times. He sang blues, country, and punk versions, even recited it like a poem. Once, he closed his eyes and told it like a story. The crowd went crazy and pushed Chess onstage in their frenzy.

“Can you sing?” Thomas asked her.

“Yeah,” she said.

“Let’s do it, then,” Thomas said.

The two launched into a duet. Chess felt like a Flathead Reservation Cher next to the Spokane Indian version of Sonny, but the music happened, clumsy and terrifying.

From The Western Montana Alternative Bi- Weekly :

Coyote Springs on Tipi, Crushes It Flat

A new band, dubbed Coyote Springs and hailing from the Spokane Indian Reservation in Washington State, took its first step toward musical oblivion the other night at the Tipi Pole Tavern on the Flathead Reservation.

Playing a mix of blues, rock, pop, gospel, rap, and a few unidentifiable musical forms, the band made up in pure volume what it lacked in talent. In fact, Coyote Springs seemed to take the term rock literally and landed hard on all of our eardrums before rolling out the door to their ugly blue tour van, all headed for destinations unknown. It didn’t help anything that two of the band members were drunk as skunks.

The highlight of the evening came when Chess Warm Water, a local Flathead Indian, was pushed onto the stage for a few duets with Coyote Springs’s lead singer, Thomas Builds-the-Fire. Warm Water has a voice exactly like her surname, which provided an interesting, if not altogether beautiful, contrast with Builds-the-Fire’s sparkless vocals.

The dictionary defines unforgettable as “incapable of being forgotten,” and Coyote Springs, all considerations aside, was certainly that. Unforgettable and maybe even a little forgivable.

After the show at the Tipi Pole, Chess and Checkers helped Coyote Springs pack away all their gear. Actually, Junior and Victor passed out in the back of the van, so Chess and Checkers did most of the work.

“So,” Thomas said, “how long you two lived out here?”

“Long enough,” Checkers said angrily, because she wanted to go home.

“Don’t pay her no mind,” Chess said. “We’ve lived here our whole lives.”

“You’re Flatheads, enit?” Thomas asked.

“Yeah,” Chess said. “And you guys are all Spokanes?”

“Yeah,” Thomas said and struggled to say more.

Montana filled Thomas’s mind. He used to think every Indian in the world lived in Montana. Now he had played guitar in Montana and sang duet with a beautiful Indian woman. Chess had never considered herself beautiful, but she liked her face well enough. She had broken her nose in a softball game in high school, which gave her face strange angles, and it had never looked quite right since. She didn’t believe that shit about a broken nose adding character to a face. Instead, her broken nose made her feel like her whole life tilted a few degrees from center. She never minded all that much, except that her glasses were continually slipping down her nose. She spent half of her time readjusting them. Still, she had dark, dark eyes that seemed even darker behind her glasses. They were Indian grandmother eyes that stayed clear and focused for generations.

“So,” Thomas said again, “is Chess your real name?”

“No.”

“What’s your real name?”

“I ain’t going to tell you,” Chess said. “You’d run off if you knew.”

“It can’t be that bad,” Thomas said.

Checkers watched, surprised that Thomas chose her sister. Checkers usually received all the attention, but she didn’t miss it this time. Thomas Builds-the-Fire looked especially goofy as he stumbled his way through the first stages of courtship.

They finished all the packing, even pretended to pack Junior and Victor into suitcases. The sisters stood with Thomas in the parking lot of the Tipi Pole Tavern. A few stragglers shouted lewd suggestions at Thomas, but he mostly ignored them.

“Well,” Thomas said, “I hope to see you again.”

“Maybe you’ll play here again,” Chess said.

“Maybe,” Thomas said.

Checkers sent a telepathic message to her sister: Invite him back to the house, you fool. You’ve got him snagged.

“Listen,” Chess said, “you want to come back to our house? I’ve got you snagged, fool.”

“You’ve got me what?” Thomas asked. He didn’t know what snag meant, although every other Indian on the planet understood that particular piece of reservation vocabulary: snag was noun and verb. A snag was a potential lover or the pursuit of a lover. Snagged meant you’d caught your new lover.

“I meant,” Chess corrected herself, “that you must be all dragged out. Why don’t you come back to the house?”

“What about them?” Thomas asked of Junior and Victor.

“They can sleep in the van,” Checkers said.

Thomas thought about the offer, but he felt a little shy and knew that Victor and Junior might be pissed if they woke up in the sisters’ yard. Though they always pretended to be the toughest Indian men in the world, they suffered terrible bouts of homesickness as soon as they crossed the Spokane Indian Reservation border.