Sherman Alexie - Reservation Blues

Junior ignored him.

“Come on,” Victor said. “Let’s go.”

“I’ve got work to do,” Junior said. “I need to finish. It’s my job.”

Junior climbed into the water truck. Victor sighed deeply and climbed in, too. They’d had this same conversation for years. Simon waved from the front porch and then ran over to the truck. He stood on the running board and leaned into the truck.

“Hey,” Simon said, “did you see that black man the other day?”

Junior nodded.

“What do you think?”

“I think it’s bullshit,” Victor said.

“What do you think?” Simon asked Junior, who just shrugged his shoulders and cleared his throat.

“Yeah,” Simon said, shrugging his shoulders and clearing his throat. “It’s just like that, enit? That’s what I’ve been thinking, too. Just like that. You know, the whole reservation’s been talking. People think that Thomas is goofy.”

“He is goofy,” Victor said. “Now, get down. We’re heading out. Got work to do.”

Simon stepped off the running board.

“See you,” Junior said.

Simon waved again.

“Hey,” Victor said, “how come you don’t walk backwards like you drive?”

“Because I’d bump into things.”

“Oh,” Victor said, “that makes a whole lot of sense. You keep in touch, okay? We’ll do lunch.”

“Can’t,” Simon said. “I’m going out of town. Headed to the coast to visit my relatives. Won’t be back for a while.”

Junior smiled at the thought of Simon hurtling backwards down Interstate 90, passing hundreds of cars, and pulling gracefully into rest stops.

“Send us a postcard,” Victor said.

“You take care,” Junior said.

“Jeez,” Victor said as they pulled away, “that man is crazy.”

“He’s fine. He’s fine.”

“Whatever you say. Aren’t you thirsty?”

Junior looked at his best friend.

“We’ve got five more houses to do. Then we can go to the tavern.”

“Cool. You’re buying, enit?”

“Yeah, I’m buying.”

While Junior and Victor got drunk in the tavern and Thomas slept, Robert Johnson’s guitar fixed itself. He had left it outside by the smokehouse because he planned to burn it as firewood. It had held together long enough for the Patsy Cline song but completely fell apart before he got it home. He planned on smoking some salmon anyway and figured the smoke from the burning guitar would make salmon taste like the blues. But the guitar came together overnight and waited for Thomas, who walked outside with salmon in his hands.

“Thomas,” the guitar said. It sounded almost like Robert Johnson but resonated with a deeper tone, some other kind of music. Thomas wasn’t surprised that the guitar sounded almost like Robert Johnson.

“Good morning,” Thomas said. “How you feeling this morning?”

“Little sore, little tired.”

“I know what you mean, enit?”

Thomas tried to hide the salmon behind his back, but the guitar saw it.

“We’re plannin’ on burnin’ me up?” the guitar asked.

“Yeah,” Thomas said. He could not lie.

The guitar laughed.

“That’s all right,” the guitar said. “You eat your fish. I’ll just play some blues right here.”

The guitar played itself while Thomas smoked the salmon. Before she died, Thomas’s mother, Susan, had draped the salmon across a bare mattress frame, threw the frame over the fire, and smoked it that way. Thomas didn’t have the courage to do that, so he cooked salmon in the old smokehouse that Samuel, his father, had built years ago. Susan died of cancer when Thomas was ten years old; Samuel had been drunk since the day after his wife’s wake.

“The blues always make us remember,” the guitar said.

“They do, enit?” Thomas said.

“What do the blues make you remember?”

“My mom used to sing,” Thomas said. “Her voice sounded like a flute when she was happy, but more like glass breaking when she was in pain.”

Thomas remembered how she used to hold him late at night, rocking him into sleep with stories and songs. Sometimes she sang traditional Spokane Indian songs. Other times, she sang Broadway show tunes or Catholic hymns, which were quite similar.

“Was she pretty?” the guitar asked.

“Beautiful, I guess.”

Thomas and the guitar sat in silence for a long time, remained quiet until the salmon was cooked. King salmon. Thomas ate it quickly, barely stopping to wipe his face and fingers clean.

“Can you play me a sad song?” Thomas asked.

The guitar played the same song for hours while Thomas sat by the fire. That guitar sounded like Robert Johnson, like a cedar flute, like glass breaking in the distance. Thomas closed his eyes, listened closely, and wondered if Victor and Junior heard the song.

“They hear me,” the guitar said. “Those two hear me good.”

Victor and Junior were passed out in the water truck on an old logging road. After they’d delivered water to the West End, they spent a long night in the Powwow Tavern and ended up here. The guitar’s song drifted through the truck’s open windows, fell down on the two Indians, and worked its way into their skins. They both tried to push the music away from their hangover dreams.

“They be comin’ soon,” the guitar said.

“Why?” Thomas asked.

“Y’all need to play songs for your people. They need you. Those two boys need you.”

“What you talking about?” Thomas asked.

“The music. Y’all need the music.”

Thomas thought he needed more money than music. Music seemed to be a luxury most days. He’d received some life insurance money when his mom died, but that was almost gone, and nobody on the reservation ever hired him to work. Still, Thomas heard music in everything, even in money.

“Maybe you and me should go on the road,” Thomas said.

“On the road, on the road,” the guitar said. “We takin’ those two with us. We startin’ up a band.”

“Those guys ain’t going to play with me,” Thomas said. “They don’t even like me.”

The guitar played on and ignored Thomas’s doubts. Music rose above the reservation, made its way into the clouds, and rained down. The reservation arched its back, opened its mouth, and drank deep because the music tasted so familiar. Thomas felt the movement, the shudder that passed through tree and stone, asphalt and aluminum. The music kept falling down, falling down.

After the tavern had closed, Junior and Victor climbed into the water truck and passed out. They spent many nights asleep in parking lots. During this night, they dreamed of their families.

Junior dreamed of his two brothers, two sisters, mother and father. They all stood at a bus stop in Spokane, the white city just a few miles from the reservation, waiting to go downtown. Pawn shops and secondhand stores. The world was beautiful sometimes.

Junior’s father had owned a couple hundred acres of wheat that he rented out to a white farmer. Every harvest, Junior’s father made enough money for a family vacation in Spokane. They stayed at the Park Lane Motel, ate Kmart submarine sandwiches, and watched bad karate movies at the Trent Drive-In.

Junior dreamed of his parents’ funeral in the Spokane Indian Longhouse. His siblings, who had long since dispersed to other reservations and cities, couldn’t afford to come back for the funeral. None of his siblings had enough money to mourn properly.

Victor dreamed of his stepfather, a short, stocky white man, red-headed and so pale that veins flowed through his skin like rivers on a map. Victor’s mother and stepfather had met in a cowboy bar in Spokane when Victor was nine years old, a few weeks after his real father had moved to Phoenix, Arizona. His mother and stepfather had two-stepped to Hank Williams all night long and fell in love.