Sherman Alexie - Reservation Blues

Victor kicked a music stand over, picked up a studio saxophone and threw it at Sheridan. Sheridan ducked behind the control panel, but the sax just rebounded off the glass and fell to the floor. Angry, Sheridan and Wright stormed into the studio.

“That’s it,” Sheridan said to Wright. “I’m out of here. I tried to help these goddamn Indians. But they don’t want help. They don’t want anything.”

“I think they want the same things we do,” Wright said.

Victor went after Sheridan and Wright then and might have strangled them, but Thomas and Junior tackled him. They pinned Victor to the floor as Sheridan looked down.

“Jesus,” Sheridan said. “It isn’t that bad. You got a free trip to New York. You aren’t leaving until tomorrow. You’ve got a whole night in Manhattan to yourselves. I’ll even treat you to a nice evening. Some dinner, dancing, the sights.”

Sheridan pulled out his wallet and dropped a few bills on the floor near Victor. Chess and Checkers quickly picked up the money and threw it in Sheridan’s face.

“That’s it,” Sheridan said. “You’re out of here.”

“Wait,” Wright said, but the security guards arrived quickly and roughly escorted Coyote Springs out of the building. Coyote Springs cried, but no crowd gathered to watch them. Coyote Springs stood in the middle of the sidewalk, and hundreds of people just flowed impassively around them.

“What are we supposed to do?” Chess asked.

“Let’s just go home,” Thomas said. It was all he knew to say. “Big Mom will know what to do.”

“She’s just an old woman,” Victor shouted. “She ain’t magic. And even if she was, she’s a million miles away. What the fuck can she do? Everything is a million miles away. It’s all lies, lies, lies. All the whites ever done was tell us lies.”

Victor roared against his whole life. If he could have been hooked up to a power line, he would have lit up Times Square. He had enough anger inside to guide every salmon over Grand Coulee Dam. He wanted to steal a New York cop’s horse and go on the warpath. He wanted to scalp stockbrokers and kidnap supermodels. He wanted to shoot flaming arrows into the Museum of Modern Art. He wanted to lay siege to Radio City Music Hall. Victor wanted to win. Victor wanted to get drunk.

“Let’s get the fuck out of here,” Victor said to Junior, and they ran off into the crowd.

“Come back,” Checkers shouted after them, but they were already gone, swallowed by the river of people.

“I’m so scared,” Chess said to Thomas and moved into his arms.

“I am, too,” Checkers said and held onto Thomas and Chess.

Thomas felt his whole body shake.

If any New Yorkers had stopped to look, they would have seen three Indians slow dancing, their hair swirling in the wind. The whole scene could have been a postcard, WISH YOU WERE HERE. It could have been on the cover of the New York Times Sunday Magazine.

Chess, Checkers, and Thomas stood in the hotel lobby with no idea what to do about Junior and Victor, who were getting drunk somewhere in Manhattan. But there were thousands of bars, taverns, lounges, and dives in New York. Thousands and thousands. Victor and Junior could be anywhere.

“Jeez,” Checkers said, “what are we going to do?”

“I don’t know,” said Thomas, a reservation storyteller without answers or stories.

“Well,” Chess said, “we have to find those two. It’s dangerous here. Especially for them.”

Thomas was truly frightened. He felt totally out of control. He could only think about the instruments they left in the studio.

“Our stuff,” Thomas said.

“What stuff?” Chess asked.

“Our guitars and stuff. They’re still in the studio.”

“Forget them, it’s all over now, anyways. Can’t you feel it?”

Thomas touched his body and felt the absence, like some unnamed part of him had been cut away.

“What are we going to do?” Checkers pleaded. She dropped into a chair and held her head between her knees. “I think I’m going to pass out.”

Chess watched Thomas and Checkers collapse. She knew Victor and Junior had to be found. There was no time for drama. Victor and Junior, two small-town reservation hicks, were out drunk somewhere in New York City. There were only a few ways to the on the reservation but a few thousand new and exciting ways in Manhattan. All of it felt like a three-in-the-morning movie on television. Some punks would kill Victor and Junior for their shoes and dump their bodies in the Hudson River. And Kojak would never find them.

“Listen,” Chess said, but Thomas and Checkers stared off into space.

“Listen, goddamn it!” Chess shouted. Thomas and Checkers looked at her. “Thomas and I will grab a phonebook and hit all the bars in this whole town. Checkers, you stay here in case they come back. How does that sound?”

“That’s crazy,” Thomas said. “There are thousands of bars.”

“I know it’s crazy,” Chess said. “But what else are we going to do? Who knows what Victor and Junior are going to do? They might get themselves killed.”

“Where do we start?”

“With the A’s,” Chess said. “And work our way from there.”

Chess hugged her sister; Checkers wouldn’t let her go.

“I’ve got to go,” Chess said.

“Don’t,” Checkers whispered.

Chess led her sister across the lobby and into the elevator.

“Eleventh floor,” Chess said to the elevator man.

“Yes, ma’am.”

The elevator doors slid closed. Chess and Thomas left the hotel with a few dozen pages of the phonebook.

Victor and Junior sat in a smoky lounge with a half dozen empty glasses in front of them.

“Fucking assholes,” Victor shouted.

“Be quiet,” Junior said. “You’ll get us kicked out of here, too.”

It was the fourth bar that Junior and Victor had been in since they ran away from the rest of Coyote Springs. The bouncers had tossed them out of the first bar for fighting. The second lounge had closed early, and the third established a new dress code fifteen minutes after Junior and Victor sat down. Still, these bars they visited in New York City weren’t all that different from the bars on the reservation. A few tables and chairs, a few stools at the bar, a television, and a pool table. The only difference between bars was the program on the TV.

“Everybody’s a liar,” Victor whispered. He laughed drunkenly and looked around the bar. The bartender stared at Victor and mentally cut him off.

“Man,” Victor said. “Look at all the beautiful white women in here.”

Junior looked around the room. He saw beautiful white women in the bar, had seen beautiful white women in all four bars that night, and Victor had made sure to shout about it. There were beautiful women of all colors in those bars and some plain white ones, but Victor and Junior never seemed to notice the plain ones.

“This city’s filled up with beautiful white women,” Victor said and laughed his drunk laugh. Phlegm rattled in his throat and spit fell from his mouth.

“Victor,” Junior said. “Why you like white women so much?”

“Don’t you know? Bucks prefer white tail.”

Junior didn’t feel like laughing. He just ate a handful of peanuts and stared at the television. Victor babbled on about nothing. The bartender cleared the glasses away from Junior’s and Victor’s area. Victor ordered another beer, but Junior gave the bartender a look that said He don’t need no more. The bartender gave Junior a look back that said I wasn’t going to give him one anyway.

Junior knew that white women were trophies for Indian boys. He always figured getting a white woman was like counting coup or stealing horses, like the best kind of revenge against white men.