When he stood again, his head was shaved bald. Huge white men in black robes milled around.
What happened to your hair? a black robe asked.
It's gone.
No, it's not, the black robe said. He took Victor's hand and led him through all the other black robes. The black robe and Victor walked down flights of stairs.
Are you tired? the black robe asked.
Yes.
Doyou want me to carry you?
No.
The black robe lifted him anyway and carried him on his shoulders. Victor felt the hard muscles through the black robe. He knew that man could crush him. But the black robe carried him to the bottom of the stairs and into a large room. Paintings adorned every wall.
Look here, the black robe said. This is my favorite one.
Victor looked at the painting. A battle scene. Two armies fighting. Guns, horses, men, flags, horses, smoke, blood, horses. Victor stared at the painting until he smelled blood and smoke.
Please, Victor said, let me down.
The black robe set him down. Victor rubbed his head, scratched his head, and looked at his hand. Blood.
I'm bleeding.
So you are, the black robe said, pulled out a handkerchief, and dabbed at Victor's wounds. When the cloth was saturated, the black robe rolled it up into a little ball and swallowed it.
Here, the black robe said, I want to show you something.
The black robe held Victor's hand and led him through a series of doors. Victor lost track of place and time. He closed his eyes and followed the black robe. He heard the black robe sing. Here, the black robe said. We're here.
Victor opened his eyes in a room filled with the stink of burning hair. Other black robes shoveled hair into burning barrels, furnaces, and open fires. Long, black hair.
Here we are, the black robe said. We made it.
Victor ran from the room. He ran past doors into strange rooms. He ran until he lost his breath and collapsed on the cold, hard floor of a barren room. He lay there for hours, until the floor grew warm, then grew grass. He dug his fingers and toes into the grass, the dirt. He dug until his fingers and toes bled with the effort. He dug because he had forgotten how to stand. He dug because his father, Emery, and mother, Matilda, waited on a better reservation at the center of the world.
* * *
Samuel dribbled the ball between his legs, between William and Wilson, who crashed into each other in their defensive effort, then breezed past Phil, Art, and Scott Heavy Burden, and jumped over WalksAlong for the bucket.
SAMUEL & LESTER—3
TRIBAL COPS—0
"That shot was for every time one of you assholes wrote somebody a traffic ticket on this reservation," Samuel said. "I mean, how could you find some Indian who doesn't have enough money to feed his kids?"
"Yeah," Lester said. "They wrote old Moses a ticket for failure to stop when there wasn't another car on the reservation even working at the time. Moses had to pawn one of his eagle feathers to pay that fine. Never got it back either."
"Fuck both of you," the Chief said. "Quit talking smack and play ball."
"Shit," Samuel said. "I should be writing you all tickets for failing to stop me."
Samuel gave the ball to Lester, who dribbled it to his left, off his feet, and into the hands of Officer Wilson. Enraged by his turnover, Lester played tough defense by breathing on the officer with Thunderbird Wine breath. Wilson nearly threw up but recovered well enough to break Lester's nose with an elbow and throw a nice pass to the Chief for an easy basket.
SAMUEL & LESTER—3
TRIBAL COPS—l
Lester kicked and screamed on the ground. The Tribal Police celebrated their first basket, while Samuel stood with hands on hips and knew it was the same old story.
"That was a foul, " Samuel said.
"We didn't see nothing."
* * *
As Victor, in one corner of the house, dreamed of black robes, Junior fell into his own dream in another corner. In his dream, Junior was in the back seat of his parents' car outside the Powwow Tavern. Below freezing, so he shared a sleeping bag with his two brothers and two sisters. Junior struggled to remember his siblings' names.
Run the heat for a little while, his siblings pleaded, because he had the car keys.
No, Junior said. Mom and Dad said I have to save gas. We just got enough to get home.
In his dream, Junior tried to remember his parents' names, but they eluded him. Those names always eluded him, even in waking. In his dream, junior's siblings tried to wrestle the keys away, but he fought them off. They wrestled and argued until their parents staggered out of the bar.
Oh, good, his siblings said. We're going home.
Junior's parents knocked on the window; he rolled it down.
You warm? they asked.
Warm enough, Junior said and silenced his siblings with a mean look.
Here's some food, mother-and-father said, and shoved potato chips and Pepsi through the open window into the arms of their children.
We'll be out soon, okay? mother-and-father said.
Junior and his siblings watched their parents stagger back toward the bar. Mother-and-father turned and waved. Then they danced a clumsy two-step.
Jeez, junior said in his dream. They love each other.
Mother-and-father wove their way back inside the bar, and junior turned back to his siblings.
Make sure everybody gets enough, Junior said.
They ate their potato chips and Pepsi.
I'm bored, his siblings said after dinner, so Junior sang to them.
I'm bored, his siblings said again, and Junior started to cry.
He cried as each of his siblings climbed out of the car and ran away on all fours. They ran into the darkness; hands and feet sparked on the pavement. They ran to other reservations and never returned. They ran to crack houses and lay down in the debris. They ran to tall buildings and jumped off. They joined the army and disappeared in the desert. Junior cried until his parents came out of the bar at closing time.
Where is everybody? mother-and-father asked.
Gone, gone, gone, gone.
Mother-and-father cried. Then they drove down the highway and looked for their children.
I don't mean to say it's all your fault, mother-and-father said. But it is all your fault.
They drove and drove. Mother-and-father sat behind the wheel and drank beer. When finished, they rolled down the window and threw the empty bottles into the dark. Junior heard them shatter against road signs. He saw the little explosions they made at impact. Impossible reds, impossible reds. He lost count of the bottles.
Ya-hey, Junior called out, but his parents pushed him back.
I don't want to hurt you, mother-and-father said. But I might hurt you.
Junior leaned back, curled into a ball in the back seat. He heard the road sing under the wheels of the car. He heard his parents' soft tears and quiet whispers. Then he noticed the car moving faster and faster, his parents' tears and whispers growing into sobs and shouts.
Wait, Junior said, but the car suddenly rolled. Junior counted the revolutions; one, two, three, four, all the way to twenty. The car came to rest on its wheels, with Junior still tucked into a ball in the back seat. He listened to a faint song in the distance. He heard something dripping in the engine. He heard coughing.
Ya-hey, Junior said as he climbed out of the car and saw his mother-and-father completely still on the grass. He grabbed his parents by the arms and dragged them across the grass. It took hours. He dragged his parents up stairs and into a strange house. It took days. He dragged his parents into a bedroom and laid them down on the bed. It took years. He kneeled at the foot of the bed. He folded his hands to pray.
He opened his mouth, but nothing came out. He strained and strained, his vocal cords ached with the effort, but nothing came out. Then he heard music from the radio beside the bed. He turned up the volume until the walls and bed shook. His parents sta
red with fixed pupils. They danced on the bed. Their arms and legs kicked wildly, until their fingers locked, and they pulled each other back and forth, back and forth.
* * *
Chief WalksAlong hit two quick jumpshots over a seriously handicapped Lester FallsApart, who protected his broken nose with one hand. Officers William and Wilson made baskets, and Samuel ran ragged trying to defend himself against the entire world,
TRIBAL COPS—5
SAMUEL & LESTER——3
"Samuel," the Chief asked, "don't you sing pretty good? I might want to hear a few verses of ‘I Fought the Law and the Law Won' after this game?
"I don't know that one. But I know how to sing ‘I Shot the Sheriff.' "
The Chief threw the ball to Art Heavy Burden, who missed a jumper, but the Chief followed the shot and put the rebound back in.
TRIBAL COPS—6
SAMUEL & LESTER—3
"That shot was for every time one of you drunk ass Indians told me I wasn't real," the Chief said. "That was for every time you little fuckers think pissing your pants is a ceremonial act."
* * *
"Did you ever drink?" Thomas asked Chess after he came back inside the house. His father still snored on the table.
"No."
"Not ever?"
"Neither of us ever drank," Chess said.
"We were afraid of it," Checkers said. "Even when we wanted to drink, we were too scared, enit?"
Thomas looked at his father on the table.
"Look what it did to my father," he said.
Chess looked at Thomas, at his father, at both. She saw her father, Luke, in their faces. She missed her father, even after all he had done.
Checkers also saw her father in Samuel's face, in Thomas's eyes. She saw that warrior desperation and the need to be superhuman in the poverty of a reservation. She hated all of it. I'm Super Indian Man, those pseudo-warriors always shouted on the reservation. Able to leap tall HUD houses in a single bound. Faster than a BIA pickup. Stronger than a block of commodity cheese. Checkers tried to ignore them, but the Indian men visited her dreams. Look at my big cowboy hat. Look at my big boots. Look at my big, big belt buckle. Those men, those ghosts, crawled into her bed at night, lifted her nightgown, and forced her legs apart. After they finished with her, those Indian men sat on the edge of the bed and cried. Ha-oh, ha-oh, ha-oh. I lost my cowboy hat. Somebody stole my boots. I pawned my belt buckle. No matter how bad she felt, those tears always moved her heart. She reached for the Indian men in her dreams and held them tightly. Her stomach turned, and she swallowed bile, but she held on.
"I hate this, " Thomas said. "I hate my father."
"You don't hate him," Chess said. "You're just upset."
"I hate him," Thomas said again and squeezed his hands into fists.
A few days earlier, Chess and Thomas had driven to Spokane for a cheap hamburger. They walked in downtown Spokane and stumbled onto a drunk couple arguing.
"Get the fuck away from me!" the drunk woman yelled at her drunk husband, who squeezed his hand into a fist like he meant to hit her.
Thomas and Chess flinched, then froze, transported back to all of those drunken arguments they'd witnessed and survived. The drunk couple in downtown Spokane pulled at each other's clothes and hearts, but they were white people. Chess and Thomas knew that white people hurt each other, too. Chess knew that white people felt pain just like Indians. Nerve endings, messages to the brain, reflexes. The doctor swung hammer against knee, and the world collapsed.
"You fucker!" the white woman yelled at her husband, who opened his hands and held them out to his wife. An offering. That hand would not strike her. He pleaded with his wife until she fell back into his arms. That white woman and man held each other while Chess and Thomas watched. A hundred strangers walked by and never noticed any of it.
After that, Chess and Thomas had sat in the van in a downtown parking lot. Thomas began to weep, deep ragged tears that rose along his rib cage, filled his mouth and nose, and exploded out.
"You don't hate him," Chess said to Thomas as Samuel Builds-the-Fire inhaled sharply and held his breath too long. They all waited for the next breath. When he finally exhaled loudly, it surprised him to be alive, and he smiled in his sleep.
Chess looked across Samuel's body lying on that table, looked at Samuel's son, and wanted a mirror. Here, she wanted to say to Thomas. You don't look anything like your father. You're much more handsome. Your hair is longer, and your hands are beautiful. But Thomas needed more than that. His father lay on the table, but it could have been any Indian man. It could have been a white man on the table.
"What's going to happen to him?" Checkers asked.
"What's going to happen to who?" Chess and Thomas asked her back.
* * *
Samuel made two beautiful moves and scored twice, but the Tribal Cops answered with two buckets of their own. The game broke down into a real war after that. Hard fouls on drives to the hoop, moving screens, kidney punches. The cops targeted Lester's broken nose and drove Samuel into a basket support pole. Fresh wounds.
"That's a foul!" Samuel yelled as he made a move on the Chief.
"You goddamn pussy."
Samuel held the ball in his arms like a fullback and ran the Chief over.
"First down! " Lester yelled.
"Now," Samuel said, "that's a foul."
The Chief stood, touched his head where it hit the court, and found blood.
"That's assaulting an officer," he said. "Good for a year in Tribal Jail. "
"This is a game," Samuel said. "It don't count."
"Everything counts."
The Chief took the ball from Samuel, passed it to Phil Heavy Burden, took a pass right back, and popped a jumper.
TRIBAL COPS—9
SAMUEL & LESTER—7
"Game point, shitheads," the Chief said. "You two best be getting ready for jail."
"Fuck you," Samuel said as he stole the ball, drove down the court, and went in for a two-handed, rattle-the-foundations, ratify-a-treaty, abolish-income-tax, close-the-uranium-mines monster dunk.
"That was for every one of you Indians like you Tribal Cops," Samuel said. "That was for all those Indian scouts who helped the U.S. Cavalry. That was for Wounded Knee I and II. For Sand Creek. Hell, that was for both the Kennedys, Martin Luther King, and Malcolm X."
"Yeah, " Lester said. "That was for Leonard Peltier, too."
"And for Marilyn Monroe."
"And for Jimi Hendrix."
"Yeah, for Jimi."
"What about Jim Morrison," Wilson and William asked. White guys obsessed on Jim Morrison.
"You can have Jim Morrison," Samuel said. "We'll take the ball."
Lester took the pass from Samuel, faked a pass back, dribbled once, and threw up a prayer that banked in. It was the first and last basket of Lester FallsApart's basketball career.
TRIBAL COPS——9
SAMUEL & LESTER—7
* * *
Thomas, Chess, and Checkers never slept that night. They talked stories around the table where Samuel Builds-the-Fire snored.
"Your mom died of cancer, enit?" Chess asked.
"Yeah, stomach cancer," Thomas said.
"I'm sorry."
"It ain't your fault. She died a long time ago."
Checkers shivered at the thought of cancer. Cancer rose from the bodies of dead Indians and walked down the hallways of hospitals.
"Did she drink?" Chess asked.
"She did. But she quit. She was sober when she died."
"Really? Quit just like that?"
"Cold as a turkey," Thomas said. "She quit the morning after this really bad New Year's Eve party at our house. This house."
"What happened?"
"Dad got real drunk, kicked everybody out, and then took all the furniture out on the front lawn, and burned it."
"Shit, you must have been scared."
"Not too scared. It wasn't that big a fire. I mean, we barely had any
furniture. But then he threatened to burn down the house with all of us in it. So Mom threw me into the car, and we drove to her sister's up in Colville. Her sister wasn't home, so we sat in this all-night diner and waited. The sun came up, and we drove back here. Mom never drank again."
"What happened then?"
"She kicked Dad out. Divorced him Indian style, enit? Then went to work for the Tribe as a driver. She drove the Senior Citizens' van all over the countryside. Took the elders to every powwow. She got all traditional. Started dancing, singing, playing stickgame again."
"Jeez, " Checkers said. "That must have been some party, enit?"
"Yeah," Thomas said. "Dad even hired a band."
"A real band?"
"Kind of. It was just a couple of guys from the reservation. Louie and Merle. They played the blues. They were pretty good when they weren't drunk."
"Sounds like a couple guys we know."
"What else happened at the party?"
"Same old things," Thomas said. "People got drunk. People fought. People got pregnant in the back rooms. A couple went to jail. One got his stomach pumped. Two died in a car wreck on the way home. And there was a partridge in a pear tree."
"Who died?"
"]Junior's parents."
"Jeez," Chess said. "He must have been really young."
"Yeah," Thomas said. "He was the oldest, too. Had a bunch of brothers and sisters. Their auntie took them in and raised them. She died a few years ago."
"What about Victor's parents?"
"They're all gone."
"Jeez," Checkers said. "Samuel is the only one who made it."
Samuel rolled over on the table and coughed. He curled into a fetal position and mumbled something.
"Hard to believe, enit?"
"Yeah," Thomas said. "The only things that will survive a nuclear war are cockroaches and my father."
"Our father was crazy, too," Chess said. "He'd come home all drunk and screaming. Be talking about how he was a radio man during World War II."
"I thought all those radio men were Navajo," Thomas said.
"They all were Navajo. And my dad was too young for the war anyway, but he kept saying it."
"Man, you never hear about those Navajo radio guys, do you? They won the war. Those Germans and Japanese couldn't figure that code out."
Reservation Blues - Alexie Sherman Page 10