Sherman Alexie - Reservation Blues

From The Ellensburg Tri-Weekly:

Indian Musicians Play More Than Drums

An all-Indian rock band from the Spokane Indian Reservation played for the cowboys in Toadstools Tavern last Saturday night, and nobody was injured.

Seriously, the band named Coyote Springs was very professional and played their music with passion and pride.

“They knew what they was doing,” said Toadstools owner Ernie Lively.

“I was kind of nervous about hiring Indians and all,” Lively added. “Worried they might not show up or maybe they’d stir up trouble.”

On the contrary, Coyote Springs served up a healthy dish of country music, spiced it with a little bit of rock, and even threw in a few old blues tunes for dessert.

“I think the highlight of the night was when those Indians sang ‘Mommas, Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be Cowboys.’ Everybody sang along with that one,” Lively said.

The blue van, repaired by an honest mechanic in Ellensburg and a few stories that Thomas whispered into the engine, traveled down the mostly empty freeway toward home. Coyote Springs rode in a silence interrupted only by the sudden rush of a passing truck or a name whispered by one of those sleeping. Thomas drove the van, and Chess kept him awake. Checkers, Junior, and Victor slept.

“Why you like freeway driving so much?” Chess asked. “But don’t close your eyes to tell me some story.”

“I don’t know.”

“What do you think?”

“There’s a lot of songs out here, I guess. I can hear them.”

“You want me to turn on the radio?” Chess asked.

“Yeah, but keep it low. We don’t want to wake the van up.”

“They all need a lot of beauty sleep, enit?”

Chess turned on the radio. The Black Lodge Singers still drummed away in the cassette player, but she popped that tape out and searched for a radio station. She twisted the tuner back and forth through a short history of American music until she happened upon Hank Williams.

Hank Williams is a goddamned Spokane Indian! Samuel Builds-the-Fire shouted in Thomas’s memory. Thomas smiled because so many people visited him in memories.

“Ya-hey,” Thomas said. “Leave it there.”

Chess played with the radio until Hank sang true and clear. Coyote Springs and Hank Williams continued down the freeway, past a lonely hitchhiker who heard the music through the open windows. The blue van swept by so quickly all he heard were a few isolated notes. But he heard enough to make everything weigh a little more, his shoes, his backpack, his dreams.

The music rose past the hitchhiker up into the sky, banged into the Big Dipper, and bounced off the bright moon. That’s exactly what happened. The music howled back into the blue van, kept howling until Coyote Springs became echoes. That’s exactly what happened.

“Thomas,” Chess said and wanted to explain what she heard.

“I know,” he said, wide awake, and slowly drove them all the way back home.

SOMETIMES, FATHER, you and I

Are like a three-legged horse

Who can’t get across the finish line

No matter how hard he tries and tries and tries

And sometimes, father, you and I

Are like a warrior

Who can only paint half of his face

While the other half cries and cries and cries

chorus:

Now can I ask you, father

If you know how much farther we need to go?

And can I ask you, father

If you know how much farther we have to go?

Father and farther, father and farther, ’til we know

Father and farther, father and farther, ’til we know

Sometimes, father, you and I

Are like two old drunks

Who spend their whole lives in the bars

Swallowing down all those lies and lies and lies

Sometimes, father, you and I

Are like dirty ghosts

Who wear the same sheets every day

As one more piece of us just dies and dies and dies

(repeat chorus)

Sometimes, father, you and I

Are like a three-legged horse

Who can’t get across the finish line

No matter how hard he tries and tries and tries

Coyote Springs returned to the Spokane Indian Reservation without much fanfare. Thomas drove through the late night quiet, the kind of quiet that frightened visitors from the city. As he pulled up in his driveway, the rest of the band members woke up, and the van’s headlights illuminated the old Indian man passed out on the lawn.

“Who is that?” Victor asked. “Is it my dad or your dad?”

“It’s not your dad,” Junior said. “Your dad is dead.”

“Oh, yeah, enit?” Victor asked. “Well, whose dad is it?”

“It ain’t my dad,” Junior said. “He’s dead, too.”

Coyote Springs climbed out of the van, walked up to the man passed out on the lawn, and rolled him over.

“That’s your dad, enit?” Junior asked Thomas.

Thomas leaned down for a closer look.

“Yeah, that’s him,” Victor said. “That’s old Samuel.”

“Is he breathing?” Junior said.

“Yeah.”

“Well, then leave him there,” Victor said.

Thomas shook his father a little and said his name a few times. He had lost count of the number of times he’d saved his father, how many times he’d driven to some reservation tavern to pick up his dad, passed out in a back booth. Once a month, he bailed his father out of jail for drunk and disorderly behavior. That had become his father’s Indian name: Drunk and Disorderly.

“He’s way out of it,” Victor said.

“He’s out for the night,” Junior said.

Junior and Victor shrugged their shoulders, walked into Thomas’s house, and looked for somewhere to sleep. Decorated veterans of that war between fathers and sons, Junior and Victor knew the best defense was sleep. They saw too many drunks littering the grass of the reservation; they rolled the drunks over and stole their money. When they were under age, they slapped those drunks awake and pushed them into the Trading Post to buy beer. Now, when they saw Samuel Builds-the-Fire passed out on the lawn, they crawled into different corners of Thomas’s house and fell right to sleep.

“Ain’t they going to help?” Chess asked.

“It’s my father,” Thomas said. “I have to handle this myself.”

But Chess and Checkers helped Thomas carry his father into the house and lay him down on the kitchen table. The three sat in chairs around the table and stared at Samuel Builds-the-Fire, who breathed deep in his alcoholic stupor.

“I’m sorry, Thomas,” Chess and Checkers said.

“Yeah, me, too.”

Chess and Checkers were uncomfortable. They hated to see that old Indian man so helpless and hopeless; they hated to see the father’s features in his son’s face. It’s hard not to see a father’s life as prediction for his son’s.

“Our father was like this, too,” Chess said. “Just like this.”

“But he never drank at all until Backgammon died,” Checkers said.

“Where’s your dad now?” Thomas asked.

“He’s gone.”

The word gone echoed all over the reservation. The reservation was gone itself, just a shell of its former self, just a fragment of the whole. But the reservation still possessed power and rage, magic and loss, joys and jealousy. The reservation tugged at the lives of its Indians, stole from them in the middle of the night, watched impassively as the horses and salmon disappeared. But the reservation forgave, too. Sam Bone vanished between foot falls on the way to the Trading Post one summer day and reappeared years later to finish his walk. Thomas, Chess, and Checkers heard the word gone shake the foundation of the house.