Sherman Alexie - Reservation Blues

“Really?”

“Yeah. She always does that. She had a crush on the guy who delivered our mail back home. She stays away from young guys but always gets crushes on older guys, you know?”

They drove for a while in silence.

“You haven’t answered my question,” Chess said.

“Which question?” Thomas asked.

“Will you go to church with me Sunday?”

Thomas closed his eyes, searched for the answer, and opened them again.

“How can you go to a church that killed so many Indians?” Thomas asked.

“The church does have a lot to atone for,” Chess said.

“When’s that going to happen.”

“At the tipi flap to heaven, I guess.”

“I don’t know if I can wait that long. Besides, how do we know they’re going to pay for it? Maybe we got it all backwards and you get into heaven because of hate.”

“You have to have faith.”

“But what about Hitler and Ted Bundy? How do you explain George Bush and George Custer? If God were good, why would he create Rush Limbaugh?”

“Sometimes the devil is easier to believe in, enit?”

“Really. How do you explain all of that? How do you explain all of the murdered Indians?”

The van rolled on.

“How do you explain Gandhi and Mother Theresa?” Chess asked. “How do you explain Crazy Horse and Martin Luther King? There’s good and bad in the world. We all get to make the choice. That’s one of the mysteries of faith.”

“Now you sound like Agatha Christie,” Thomas said.

“Yeah, and it was God whodunnit.”

“Who done what?”

“God created all of this. I mean, how can you look at all of this, all this life, and not believe in God? Look at this reservation. It’s so pretty. Do you think the river and the trees are mistakes? Do you think everything is accidental?”

“No,” Thomas said, looked at his hands, at the reservation as it rushed by. He loved so much. He loved the way a honey bee circled a flower. Simple stuff, to be sure, but what magic. A flower impressed Thomas more than something like the Grand Coulee Dam. Once he’d stood on the dam for hours and stared at a nest some bird built atop an archway. Thomas looked into himself. He knew his stories came from beyond his body and mind, beyond his tiny soul.

Thomas closed his eyes and told Chess this story: “We were both at Wounded Knee when the Ghost Dancers were slaughtered. We were slaughtered at Wounded Knee. I know there were whole different tribes there, no Spokanes or Flatheads, but we were still somehow there. There was a part of every Indian bleeding in the snow. All those soldiers killed us in the name of God, enit? They shouted ‘Jesus Christ’ as they ran swords through our bellies. Can you feel the pain still, late at night, when you’re trying to sleep, when you’re praying to a God whose name was used to justify the slaughter?

“I can see you running like a shadow, just outside the body of an Indian woman who looks like you, until she was shot by an eighteen-year-old white kid from Missouri. He jumps off the horse, falls on her and you, the Indian, the shadow. He cuts and tears with his sword, his hands, his teeth. He ate you both up like he was a coyote. They all ate us like we were mice, rabbits, flightless birds. They ate us whole.”

Thomas opened his eyes and saw Chess was crying.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

“Don’t you understand that God didn’t kill any of us?” Chess asked. “Jesus didn’t kill any of us.”

“But they allowed it to happen, enit?”

“They didn’t allow it to happen. It just happened. Those soldiers made the choice. The government made the choice. That’s free will, Thomas. We all get to make the choice. But that don’t mean we all choose good.”

“But there’s so much evil in the world.”

“That’s why we have to believe in the good. Not every white person wants to kill Indians. You know most any white who joins up with Indians never wants to leave. It’s always been that way. Everybody wants to be an Indian.”

“That’s true,” a voice whispered from the back of the van.

“Who’s that?” Thomas and Chess asked.

“It’s me, Betty.”

“What’s true?” Chess asked, irritated at the interruption.

“White people want to be Indians. You all have things we don’t have. You live at peace with the earth. You are so wise.”

“You’ve never met Lester FallsApart, have you?” Chess asked. “You’ve never spent a few hours in the Powwow Tavern. I’ll show you wise and peaceful.”

“I’m sorry I said anything,” Betty said and remained quiet. The other white woman, Veronica, took Betty’s hand, squeezed it, and sent a question along her skin: What are we doing? Victor and Junior snored away.

“Like I was saying, everybody wants to be an Indian. But not everybody is an Indian. It’s an exclusive club. I certainly couldn’t be Irish. Why do all these white people think they can be Indian all of a sudden?”

Thomas smiled.

“You know,” he said, “I’ve always had a theory that you ain’t really Indian unless, at some point in your life, you didn’t want to be Indian.”

“Good theory,” Chess said. “I’m the one who told you that.”

“Oh,” he said.

The blue van crossed the Wellpinit city limit.

“Thomas,” Chess said, “you know there ain’t no such thing as an Indian atheist. And besides, how do you think Indians survived all the shit if there wasn’t a God who loved us? Why do you think you and me are together?”

“Because of love.”

“That’s what faith is. Love.”

Thomas was nervous, sweating. He closed his eyes, searched for another one of his stories, but came back to Chess’s words instead. He listened to her story.

“Okay,” Thomas said. “I’ll go to church with you. But I ain’t promising nothing.”

“Hey,” Chess said, “don’t make me any promises. I’m an Indian. I haven’t heard many promises I believed anyway.”

The blue van pulled into Thomas’s driveway. Checkers stood in a window. All the house lights blazed brightly in the reservation night. Junior and Victor rolled over in their sleep, only momentarily bothered by the lights and noise, while Betty and Veronica pretended to sleep. Chess jumped out of the van and ran for her sister. Thomas watched Chess and Checkers hug in his front yard. Then he closed his eyes and left them alone.

I KNOW A WOMAN, Indian in her bones

Who spends the powwow dancing all alone

She can be lonely, sometimes she can cry

And drop her sadness into the bread she fries

I know a woman, Indian in her eyes

Full-blood in her heart, full-blood when she cries

She can be afraid, sometimes she can shake

But her medicine will never let her break

chorus:

But she don’t want a warrior and she don’t want no brave

And she don’t want a renegade heading for an early grave

She don’t need no stolen horse, she don’t need no stolen heart

She don’t need no Indian man falling down and falling apart

I know a woman, Indian in her hands

Wanting me to sing, wanting me to dance

She’s out there waiting, no matter the weather

I’d walk through lightning just to give her a feather

(repeat chorus)

Robert Johnson sat in a rocking chair on Big Mom’s front porch. Big Mom’s rocking chair. He had no idea where she had gone. Big Mom was always walking away without warning.

“Robert,” Big Mom had said upon his arrival at her house, “you’re safe here. Ain’t nobody can take you away from this house.”