Sherman Alexie - Reservation Blues

Chess looked across Samuel’s body lying on that table, looked at Samuel’s son, and wanted a mirror. Here, she wanted to say to Thomas. You don’t look anything like your father. You’re much more handsome. Your hair is longer, and your hands are beautiful. But Thomas needed more than that. His father lay on the table, but it could have been any Indian man. It could have been a white man on the table.

“What’s going to happen to him?” Checkers asked.

“What’s going to happen to who?” Chess and Thomas asked her back.

Samuel made two beautiful moves and scored twice, but the Tribal Cops answered with two buckets of their own. The game broke down into a real war after that. Hard fouls on drives to the hoop, moving screens, kidney punches. The cops targeted Lester’s broken nose and drove Samuel into a basket support pole. Fresh wounds.

“That’s a foul!” Samuel yelled as he made a move on the Chief.

“You goddamn pussy.”

Samuel held the ball in his arms like a fullback and ran the Chief over.

“First down!” Lester yelled.

“Now,” Samuel said, “that’s a foul.”

The Chief stood, touched his head where it hit the court, and found blood.

“That’s assaulting an officer,” he said. “Good for a year in Tribal Jail.”

“This is a game,” Samuel said. “It don’t count.”

“Everything counts.”

The Chief took the ball from Samuel, passed it to Phil Heavy Burden, took a pass right back, and popped a jumper.

TRIBAL COPS—9

SAMUEL & LESTER—5

“Game point, shitheads,” the Chief said. “You two best be getting ready for jail.”

“Fuck you,” Samuel said as he stole the ball, drove down the court, and went in for a two-handed, rattle-the-foundations, ratify-a-treaty, abolish-income-tax, close-the-uranium-mines monster dunk.

“That was for every one of you Indians like you Tribal Cops,” Samuel said. “That was for all those Indian scouts who helped the U.S. Cavalry. That was for Wounded Knee I and II. For Sand Creek. Hell, that was for both the Kennedys, Martin Luther King, and Malcolm X.”

“Yeah,” Lester said. “That was for Leonard Peltier, too.”

“And for Marilyn Monroe.”

“And for Jimi Hendrix.”

“Yeah, for Jimi.”

“What about Jim Morrison,” Wilson and William asked. White guys obsessed on Jim Morrison.

“You can have Jim Morrison,” Samuel said. “We’ll take the ball.”

Lester took the pass from Samuel, faked a pass back, dribbled once, and threw up a prayer that banked in. It was the first and last basket of Lester FallsApart’s basketball career.

TRIBAL COPS—9

SAMUEL & LESTER—7

Thomas, Chess, and Checkers never slept that night. They talked stories around the table where Samuel Builds-the-Fire snored. “Your mom died of cancer, enit?” Chess asked.

“Yeah, stomach cancer,” Thomas said.

“I’m sorry.”

“It ain’t your fault. She died a long time ago.”

Checkers shivered at the thought of cancer. Cancer rose from the bodies of dead Indians and walked down the hallways of hospitals.

“Did she drink?” Chess asked.

“She did. But she quit. She was sober when she died.”

“Really? Quit just like that?”

“Cold as a turkey,” Thomas said. “She quit the morning after this really bad New Year’s Eve party at our house. This house.”

“What happened?”

“Dad got real drunk, kicked everybody out, and then took all the furniture out on the front lawn, and burned it.”

“Shit, you must have been scared.”

“Not too scared. It wasn’t that big a fire. I mean, we barely had any furniture. But then he threatened to burn down the house with all of us in it. So Mom threw me into the car, and we drove to her sister’s up in Colville. Her sister wasn’t home, so we sat in this all-night diner and waited. The sun came up, and we drove back here. Mom never drank again.”

“What happened then?”

“She kicked Dad out. Divorced him Indian style, enit? Then went to work for the Tribe as a driver. She drove the Senior Citizens’ van all over the countryside. Took the elders to every powwow. She got all traditional. Started dancing, singing, playing stickgame again.

“Jeez,” Checkers said. “That must have been some party, enit?”

“Yeah,” Thomas said. “Dad even hired a band.”

“A real band?”

“Kind of. It was just a couple of guys from the reservation. Louie and Merle. They played the blues. They were pretty good when they weren’t drunk.”

“Sounds like a couple guys we know.

“What else happened at the party?”

“Same old things,” Thomas said. “People got drunk. People fought. People got pregnant in the back rooms. A couple went to jail. One got his stomach pumped. Two died in a car wreck on the way home. And there was a partridge in a pear tree.”

“Who died?”

“Junior’s parents.”

“Jeez,” Chess said. “He must have been really young.”

“Yeah,” Thomas said. “He was the oldest, too. Had a bunch of brothers and sisters. Their auntie took them in and raised them. She died a few years ago.”

“What about Victor’s parents?”

“They’re all gone.”

“Jeez,” Checkers said. “Samuel is the only one who made it.”

Samuel rolled over on the table and coughed. He curled into a fetal position and mumbled something.

“Hard to believe, enit?”

“Yeah,” Thomas said. “The only things that will survive a nuclear war are cockroaches and my father.”

“Our father was crazy, too,” Chess said. “He’d come home all drunk and screaming. Be talking about how he was a radio man during World War II.”

“I thought all those radio men were Navajo,” Thomas said.

“They all were Navajo. And my dad was too young for the war anyway, but he kept saying it.”

“Man, you never hear about those Navajo radio guys, do you? They won the war. Those Germans and Japanese couldn’t figure that code out.”

“Yeah, just like that. Mom would tell him about all that, too. But my dad kept going on and on. He was a war hero, jumped out of airplanes. He killed Hitler.”

“Enit?” Thomas asked.

“Yeah,” Chess said. “Old Luke Warm Water told us he was the one who killed Hitler. Caught up to him in that bunker and made him drink poison.”

Thomas laughed.

“What’s so funny?”

“My dad always told me he was the one who killed Hitler. They must have been on that mission together.”

“Our fathers, the war heroes.”

Thomas thought about all the imagined and real wars their fathers fought. He thought about that New Year’s Eve party, all those parties that seemed to celebrate nothing at all. He remembered the two Indians who played the blues at that party, where Samuel burned the furniture on the front lawn. Two old Indian men played blues. In sunglasses. Big bellies. Big knuckles. Thomas tried to remember if they were any good. He searched his mind for some melody they played but heard nothing.

“You know,” Chess said. “I heard beer bottles breaking so much that I got used to it. I kind of miss them sometimes.”

Exhausted, Samuel took the ball out. His body ached. Once, pain had been a drug to him. He needed pain, but then it had just become pain. Just more weight on his body.

“It’s over,” the Chief said. “You don’t have nothing left.”

Art, Scott, and Phil Heavy Burden surrounded Lester and prevented him from moving. The Chief and the two white officers guarded Samuel.

“Fuck you twice,” Samuel said.

Samuel looked at Chief WalksAlong, at all the Tribal Cops, at Lester. He shifted the ball from his left hip to his right. He spun the ball in his hands, felt the leather against his fingertips, and closed his eyes.