Sherman Alexie - Reservation Blues

The sisters joined in on the vocals after a bit; Chess pounded the keyboard hard, like her fingers were tiny hammers. She wanted to play it right but loved the noise of it all. Checkers pulled the ties from her hair and sang unbraided. Chess picked the ties up from the floor and somehow braided her hair with one hand. Both threw a way ya hi yo into the chorus of the song.

Coyote Springs created a tribal music that scared and excited the white people in the audience. That music might have chased away the pilgrims five hundred years ago. But if they were forced, Indians would have adopted the ancestors of a few whites, like Janis Joplin’s great-great-great-great-grandparents, and let them stay in the Americas.

The audience reached for Coyote Springs with brown and white hands that begged for more music, hope, and joy. Coyote Springs felt powerful, fell in love with the power, and courted it. Victor stood on the edge of the stage to play his guitar. Despite his clothes, the Indian and white women in the crowd screamed for him and waited outside after the show.

After the Tipi Pole Tavern finally closed at 4 A.M., Chess, Checkers, and Thomas sat inside and drank Pepsi, while Junior and Victor grabbed a few beers and disappeared.

“You sounded great tonight,” Thomas said to the sisters.

“We all sounded great,” Chess said.

“Jeez,” Checkers said. “Even Victor and Junior, enit?”

“We just got to keep them sober,” Chess said. “Victor’s the best guitar player I ever heard, when he’s sober.

“I’m tired,” Thomas said.

“Where’d Victor and Junior go anyway?” Chess asked.

“Outside,” Checkers said. “Probably getting drunk in the van.”

“Well,” Chess said, “I’m tired, too. Let’s get them and go home.”

Thomas and the sisters walked outside to the van. He opened the sliding door of the van and surprised Victor and Junior, who were literally buck naked and drunk. The two naked white women in the van were even drunker and scrambled for their clothes. Thomas just stood there and stared. It was Betty and Veronica.

“Shut the goddamn door!” Victor shouted.

“Jeez,” Junior said, reached out, and slid the door shut.

“Oh, man,” Checkers said. “That’s the last thing I wanted to see.”

“I think I’m going to get sick,” Chess said.

Thomas just walked away. Checkers looked at Chess, who shrugged her shoulders. Who knew why Thomas did anything? Chess followed him to a picnic bench behind the tavern. Checkers threw her arms up, walked back into the bar, and fell asleep on the pool table.

“I can’t believe they did that,” Chess said to Thomas. “We have to ride in that van.”

“Yeah, I know,” Thomas said.

Chess sat beside Thomas at the picnic table, took his hand, studied it for a minute. Beautiful hands, beautiful hands.

“Where’s Checkers?” Thomas asked.

“I don’t know. She’s probably beating the crap out of Junior and Victor.”

Chess and Thomas sat there quietly. Thomas thought about stories and songs, but Chess only thought about those white women in the van. She hated Indian men who chased after white women; she hated white women who chased after Indian men.

“You know,” she said. “I really don’t like that. I don’t like Junior and Victor hanging out with white women.”

“Why?” Thomas asked.

“I don’t know. I guess it’s about preservation, enit? Ain’t very many Indian men to go around. Even fewer good ones.”

Thomas nodded his head.

“And you know,” Chess said, “as traditional as it sounds, I think Indian men need Indian women. I think only Indian women can take care of Indian men. Jeez, we give birth to Indian men. We feed them. We hold them when they cry. Then they run off with white women. I’m sick of it.”

“Yeah,” Thomas said. “I never dated no white woman.”

“Thomas, you never dated nobody.”

They laughed.

“Seriously, I think Junior and Victor are traitors,” Chess said. “I really do. They keep running off with white women and pretty soon, ain’t no Indian women going to touch them. We Indian women talk to each other, you know? We have a network. They’re two of the last full-blood Indians on your reservation, enit? Jeez, Junior and Victor are betraying their DNA.”

“Well,” Thomas, a full-blood Spokane himself, said, “do you like me or my DNA?”

“I like you and your DNA.”

Thomas agreed with Chess, but he also knew about the shortage of love in the world. He wondered if people should celebrate love wherever it’s found, since it is so rare. He worried about the children of mixed-blood marriages. The half-breed kids at the reservation school suffered through worse beatings than Thomas ever did.

“I wonder what it’s like,” he said.

“Wonder about what?” Chess asked.

“What’s it like to be a half-breed kid? How do you think it feels to have a white mom or dad? It must be weird.”

“My grandmother was a little bit white,” Chess said.

“Really?” Thomas said. “What kind?”

“German, I guess. Achtung.”

“What was she like?”

“She hated to be Indian.” Chess said. “She didn’t look very Indian. That white blood really showed through. She left my grandfather, moved to Butte, and never told anybody she was Indian. She left her son on the reservation, too. Just left him, and they hardly ever heard from her again.”

Thomas shook his head, closed his eyes, and told a story:

“A long time ago, two boys lived on a reservation. One was an Indian named Beaver, and the other was a white boy named Wally. Both loved to fancydance, but the white boy danced a step fancier. When the white boy won contests, all the Indian boys beat him up. But Beaver never beat up on the white boy. No matter how many times he got beat up, that white boy kept dancing.”

Thomas opened his eyes, smiled, and shrugged his shoulders.

“Wally and Beaver were half-brothers, enit?” Chess asked.

“You got it.”

“What’s that mean?”

“Don’t know. Maybe it means drums make everyone feel like an Indian.”

From The Wellpinit Rawhide Press:

Coyote Springs Home

Coyote Springs, our own little rock band, returned to the reservation late last night, with the addition of two Flathead Indians, Chess and Checkers Warm Water. The two sisters reportedly sing vocals and play piano.

Lester FallsApart saw the familiar blue van pull in about 3 A.M., Standard Indian Time.

“They was going the speed limit,” said FallsApart.

Father Arnold of the Catholic Church called early this morning to offer a prayer of thanks that the band returned safely.

According to an anonymous source, Michael White Hawk, recently released from Walla Walla State Penitentiary, is unhappy with Coyote Springs.

“They think they’re hot [manure],” White Hawk was rumored to have said. “They play a few shows and they think they’re [gosh darn] stars. [Forget] them.”

Coyote Springs could not be reached for comment.

After they arrived back at the Spokane Indian Reservation, Chess fell into an uneasy sleep in Thomas’s bed with Checkers, while he lay on the floor. Junior and Victor slept in the blue van even though there was plenty of room in the house. Chess dreamed of a small Indian man on a pale horse. With an unpainted body and un-braided brown hair, the small Indian looked unimposing. Even as she dreamed, Chess knew the unpainted Indian in her dream was not Spokane or Flathead, but she had no idea what kind of Indian he was. The unpainted one was unhappy as he rode into a cavalry fort. Many other Indians greeted him. Some with pride, others with anger.

Come along, an angry Indian shouted loudly at the unpainted one, who dismounted, and walked to an office. A dozen Indians stood in the office while hundreds of other Indians gathered outside. The white soldiers kept rifles at the ready, while the Indians and white civilians gossiped nervously. The unpainted one waited. Soon, a white officer appeared and told the unpainted one it was too late for talk. They all needed to rest.