Sherman Alexie - Reservation Blues

“Jeez,” said one of the Android brothers to the-man-who-was-probably-Lakota. “The end of the world is upside White Hawk’s head, enit?”

“The end of the world wasn’t supposed to start here. Not with me.”

The Tribal Police and Emergency Medical Technicians showed up an hour later. The Indian EMTs stuffed Victor, Junior, and White Hawk into the same ambulance and transported them to Spokane for medical attention. All three were unconscious and had concussions. Betty and Veronica were treated on the spot. Betty held a cold pack to her bruised back, while Veronica had two Kleenexes stuffed up her nostrils. She refused to let anybody take her anywhere.

“What the fuck are we doing here?” Veronica asked Betty.

“I don’t know,” Betty said.

The Tribal Police dispersed the crowd and then went into the Trading Post for lunch. Coffee and microwave chili.

The ambulance ride was an adventure. White Hawk woke up and tried to continue the fight, but the EMT with braids smacked him with an oxygen tank. Reservation emergency medical training covered a lot of situations. White Hawk was bleeding from two head wounds when they pulled into the hospital.

“What happened here?” the emergency room doctor asked the EMT with braids.

“Car wreck,” the EMT lied. He had his orders handed down directly from the Tribal Council. The Council always tried to keep white people’s laws off the reservation. White Hawk had violated his parole by fighting, but the Council was more interested in maintaining tribal sovereignty than in putting him back in a white jail. Besides, Victor and Junior were drunk, and drunk Indians usually had a way of avoiding serious injury. Above all, White Hawk was Dave WalksAlong’s nephew, and that counted for everything.

“Shit,” the doctor said. “Car wrecks are an Olympic sport for you Indians.”

“Bronze medals all around,” the EMT said. “These three lived.”

The nurses sterilized and bandaged the Spokanes, kept them overnight for observation, and ignored them until check-out.

“You guys weren’t in any car wreck,” the white doctor said to the three Spokanes before they were sent back to the reservation.

White Hawk was sentenced only to a few weeks in Tribal Jail. Junior and Victor moved into Thomas’s house the day after they returned to the reservation, because White Hawk’s buddies had ransacked their house and stole all the furniture.

“Men with concussions should not sleep on floors,” Victor said as he plopped down on the couch in Thomas’s house. Junior just lay down in the corner, holding his aching head.

Minutes after Junior and Victor returned from the hospital, Betty and Veronica packed up their bags and waited outside for a ride to Spokane. Thomas stood outside his house with the white women and considered moving, too. He didn’t want to live with his lead guitarist and drummer.

“Where the hell you two going?” Chess asked.

“Wherever,” Betty said.

“Listen,” Veronica said, “we just want a ride to Spokane. We’ll catch a Greyhound back home to Seattle. It’s nuts here.”

“Jeez,” Chess said, “I thought you wanted some of our wisdom.”

“We didn’t want it to be like this,” Veronica said. “How were we supposed to know? Everybody always spits on our shadows. What the hell does that mean? I mean, we’re walking down the street, minding our own business, and an old Indian woman spits on our shadows. What the hell is that?”

“What?” Chess asked. “Can’t you handle it? You want the good stuff of being Indian without all the bad stuff, enit? Well, a concussion is just as traditional as a sweatlodge.”

“This isn’t what we wanted.”

“What did you New Agers expect? You think magic is so easy to explain? You come running to the reservations, to all these places you’ve decided are sacred. Jeez, don’t you know every place is sacred? You want your sacred land in warm places with pretty views. You want the sacred places to be near malls and 7-Elevens, too.”

“You’re nuts,” Veronica said. “Just plain nuts. Almonds and cashews. Walnuts and pecans.”

“Okay, okay,” Thomas said. “That’s enough. I’ll give you a ride to town.”

Thomas, Betty, and Veronica packed up the van and headed off. Chess and Checkers stood in the yard and watched them go.

“I don’t know,” Checkers said. “Those two women could really sing.”

“What?” Chess asked.

“We should’ve kept them. They could really sing.”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about. Besides, you’re not even in the band anymore.”

“Well, I might have been. It would have been cool to have white women singing backup for us Indian women. It’s usually the other way around.”

“Yeah, maybe.”

Checkers and Chess went back inside the house to check on Junior and Victor, while Thomas drove the blue van down the driveway.

“Indian men with concussions should not get their own glasses of water,” Victor said as Chess and Checkers walked into the house.

“Indian men with concussions should not irritate Indian women with access to blunt objects,” Chess said.

The blue van rolled down the highway, past all the pine trees and rocks filled with graffiti, RUNNING BEAR LLOVES LITTLE WHITE DOVE. That van rolled past the HUD houses with generations of cars up on blocks, past Indian kids standing idly on the side of the road. Not hitchhiking, not going anywhere at all. Just standing there to watch traffic. One car every ten minutes or so.

“What is it about this place?” Betty asked and waved her arms around.

“What do you mean?” Thomas asked. “What place?”

“She wants to know what’s wrong with all of it,” Veronica said.

“Wrong with all of what?”

“This reservation, you Indians.”

Thomas smiled.

“There’s a whole bunch wrong with white people, too,” he said. “Ain’t nothing gone wrong on the reservation that hasn’t gone wrong everywhere else.”

Thomas drove off the reservation, through the wheat fields past Fairchild Air Force Base, and into Spokane. The Greyhound Station was, of course, in the worst section of town.

“You sure you’ll be all right here?” Thomas asked as Betty and Veronica climbed out of the van.

“What’s the difference between here and the reservation?”

“More pine trees on the reservation,” Thomas said.

Betty and Veronica walked into the bus station. Thomas was about to drive away when Betty stepped back out of the station. She waved. Thomas waved and drove home.

Coyote Springs spent most of their time in Thomas’s house over the next few weeks. They ventured out for food but were mostly greeted with hateful stares and silence. They didn’t go to church. Only a few people showed any support. Fights broke out between the supporters and enemies of Coyote Springs. After a while, the Trading Post refused to let Coyote Springs in the door because there had been so many fights. The Tribal Council even held an emergency meeting to discuss the situation.

“I move we excommunicate them from the Tribe,” Dave WalksAlong said. “They are creating an aura of violence in our community.”

The Tribe narrowly voted to keep Coyote Springs but deadlocked on the vote to kick Chess and Checkers off the reservation.

“They’re not even Spokanes,” WalksAlong argued. The Council was trying to break the tie when Lester FallsApart staggered into the meeting, cast his vote to keep Chess and Checkers, and passed out.

Chess and Checkers sat in the kitchen of Thomas’s house and chewed on wish sandwiches. Two slices of bread with only wishes in between.

“Jeez,” Chess said, “maybe we should go back to Arlee. They like us there. How come all the Indians like us, except the Indians from here?”