Sherman Alexie - Reservation Blues

“He tryin’ to cheat me for my carrots,” White Hawk shouted as he was led away to prison.

“When are Indians ever going to have heroes who don’t hurt people?” Big Mom asked her students. “Why do all of our heroes have to carry guns? All Indian heroes have to be Indian men, too. Why can’t Indian women be heroes?”

Some of her Indian men students would get all pissed off and leave. They suddenly saw Big Mom as a tiny grandmother without teeth or a life. She shrank in their eyes, until she was just some dried old apple sitting on a windowsill. In their minds, she changed into a witch, bitter and angry.

I’ll get you, my pretty, Big Mom said in their heads, although it didn’t sound like her at all. And your little dog, too, because you goddamn Indian boys always got some dog following you around.

And those Indian men would never play their music right again. You can still see them, standing by the drums at powwows, trying to remember how to sing in the Indian way. You don’t remember, do you? asks the strange voice in their heads. Listen to me. I’ll teach you. They attempt to tap their feet in rhythm with the dancers but can never quite get it.

Follow me, that wild voice said. I’ll give you everything you want. Everything.

All the guitar players cut their fingers to shreds on guitar strings.

Let me fix those wounds for you. There, let me suck the infection out. There, that’s good, that’s good.

“Forgive us, save us,” said those repentant guitar players, with hands bandaged and bloodied, when they crawled back to Big Mom.

“I ain’t Jesus. I ain’t God,” Big Mom said. “I’m just a music teacher.”

“But look what you did to us.”

“I didn’t do anything to you. You caused all this. You made the choices.”

“What can we do?”

“You can change your mind.”

“I want you to play that chord again,” Big Mom said to Victor.

“I can’t play it anymore,” Victor said. “I’m tired. I want to go to sleep.”

Coyote Springs had been practicing twelve hours a day for nearly a week. They were exhausted but had improved greatly, despite Victor’s continual challenges of Big Mom’s magic. There wasn’t enough room to rehearse in Big Mom’s house, so she rigged up some outside lights, which attracted mosquitos and moths.

“Play it again,” Big Mom said.

“I can’t. My fingers don’t even work that way.”

Robert Johnson watched from a distance, hidden in the treeline. He held some scrub wood in his hands. It wasn’t strong wood. There was no way he could make a desk or a chair. That wood wasn’t even good enough to make a broomstick. But somehow Johnson believed that his new guitar waited somewhere in that wood. Proud of his discovery, he was still frightened by his old guitar. Victor’s guitar now. Johnson winced when Victor hit the chord.

“Play it,” Big Mom said.

“Yeah,” Thomas said. “Play it hard.”

“Come on, Big Mom, Thomas,” Chess said. “We’re all tired. Why don’t we quit for the day?”

“We’ll quit when Big Mom says it’s time to quit,” Thomas said. “Sheridan and Wright are coming to get us in a couple days. And we just ain’t good enough yet.”

“Jeez,” Victor said. “You sound like we’re in some goddamn reservation coming-of-age movie. Who the fuck you think you are? Billy Jack? Who’s writing your dialogue?”

Big Mom looked at Thomas as Victor tried once again to play the chord she had requested.

“Will you play that chord again, please?” Big Mom asked again. “Just a few more times, and then we’ll all go to sleep.”

Victor flipped Thomas off. He needed a drink. He had been up on that goddamn mountain for a week without a drink. He was starting to see snakes crawling around. There were snakes up there, but Victor saw a few too many. Victor breathed deep, flexed his tired hands, and hit the chord a few more times. The rest of the band joined in, and they ran off a respectable version of a new song.

Thomas and Chess whispered in their sleeping bag. After everyone else had fallen asleep, they stayed up to talk.

“I’m scared,” Thomas said.

“Scared of what?”

“I’m scared to be good. I’m scared to be bad. This band could make us rock stars. It could kill us.”

“Shit, Thomas. That would scare anybody.”

Thomas closed his eyes and told this story: “Coyote Springs opens a show for Aerosmith at Madison Square Garden. We get up on stage and start to play. At first, the crowd chants for Aerosmith, heckles us, but gradually we win them over. By the time our set is over, the crowd is chanting our name. Coyote Springs. Coyote Springs, Coyote Springs. They chant over and over. They keep chanting our name when Aerosmith comes out. They boo Aerosmith until we come back out. For the rest of our lives, all we can hear are our names, chanted over and over, until we are deaf to everything else.”

Thomas opened his eyes and stared into the dark.

“Listen, Chess,” Thomas said, “I’ve spent my whole life being ignored. I’m used to it. If people want to hear us now, come to hear us play, come to listen. Just think how many will come if we get famous.”

Chess was just as scared as Thomas, maybe more so. She was scared of the band, scared of Victor and Junior, and of Thomas, too. All her life, she had been measured by men. Her father, her priest, her lovers, her employers, her God. Men decided where she would go, how she would talk, even what clothes she was supposed to wear. Now they decided how and where she was supposed to sing. Now, even sweet, gentle Thomas covered her with his shadow. Even in his dreams and stories, Thomas covered her. She sang his songs; she played his music. She played for Phil Sheridan and George Wright and hoped for their approval. And Thomas still there with his shadow. Chess didn’t know whether she should run from that shadow or curl up inside it. She wanted to do both.

“I get scared, Thomas,” Chess said. “When I’m up there singing, and I look out at the crowd, sometimes I see a thousand different lovers. All those men. It’s not like I love all of them like I love you. I don’t. And I know they don’t love me like you do. But I still feel all this pressure from them. Sometimes I feel like I have to be everybody’s perfect lover and I ain’t nobody’s perfect nothing.”

“So what are we supposed to do?” Thomas asked.

“Sing songs and tell stories. That’s all we can do.”

Thomas thought back to all those stories he had told. He had whispered his stories into the ears of drunks passed out behind the Trading Post. He had written his stories down on paper and mailed them to congressmen and game show hosts. He had climbed up trees and told his stories to bird eggs. He had always shared his stories with a passive audience and complained that nobody actively listened.

“Thomas,” Chess said, “if you don’t want to be famous and have your stories heard, then why’d you start the band up?”

“I heard voices,” Thomas said. “I guess I heard voices. I mean, I’m sort of a liar, enit? I like the attention. I want strangers to love me. I don’t even know why. But I want all kinds of strangers to love me.”

The Indian horses screamed.

Big Mom sat in her favorite chair on the porch while Coyote Springs rehearsed for the last time in her yard.

“You know,” Big Mom said, “this is the first time I’ve ever actually worked with a whole band. I mean, Benny Goodman eventually brought most of his band up here, but that was one at a time.”

Coyote Springs played an entirely original set of music now. Thomas still wrote most of the lyrics, but the whole band shaped the songs.