"Do we got enough?" Junior asked.
"Enough's enough," Victor said.
"What the hell's that mean?"
"Don't know."
Junior and Victor pooled their change and carried their beer to the cashier.
"We got enough, enit?" Victor asked.
"No sales tax, remember?" Junior said.
They paid for their booze, made their way outside, and shielded their eyes against the sudden sunlight. Michael White Hawk followed them, took advantage of the opportunity, and knocked the beer from Junior's and Victor's arms. A few cans split open and beer fountained out.
"Shit," Victor said."What's wrong with you?"
"Fuckers!" White Hawk screamed. "Thinkin' you better than us 'cause you fuckin' white women. You ain't shit."
"I ain't shit?" Victor said. "You ain't shit."
Junior picked up a beer can and popped it open.
"Jeez, Michael," Junior said and offered him the can. "If you want a beer, just ask for one."
"Don't want shit from you," Michael said and knocked the beer from Junior.
A crowd gathered suddenly, because people always circle around a potential fight quickly. Betty and Veronica joined the circle, frightened and excited.
"Make them stop," Betty shouted, but nobody paid much attention to her.
"Come on," White Hawk said. "Goin' kick your ass."
"Fuck you," Junior and Victor harmonized.
White Hawk rushed them and knocked both to the ground. He kicked and stomped on Junior and Victor, who were too drunk to fight back. They just curled into fetal balls and waited for it to end. The crowd cheered. A few rooted openly for White Hawk; most celebrated the general violence of it all. Betty and Veronica attacked White Hawk, clawed and punched, but he fought them off. He threw Betty against the phone booth, he backhanded Veronica and broke her nose. White Hawk was blind with rage. He might have beat the shit out of everybody, but the-man-who-was-probably-Lakota stepped through a gap in the crowd and cold-cocked him with a stray two-by-four.
"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'II 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 LOVES 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?"
"I'm not leaving," Checkers said and thought of Father Arnold."And besides, we don't have money to leave. What are we going to do when we get to Arlee?"
"We don't have much money left to live here."
The $1,000 prize money from the Battle of the Bands had disappeared. Thomas, Junior, and Victor had each received his monthly stipend of commodity food, but that wouldn't last long. Thomas called small record companies in Spokane, but they weren't interested in the band.
"Indians?" those record companies said. "You mean like drums and stuff? That howling kind of singing? We can't afford to make a record that ain't going to sell. Sorry."
He even called a few companies in Seattle, like Sub Pop. Sub Pop discovered Nirvana and a lot of other bands, but they never returned Thomas's phone calls. They just mailed form rejections. Black letters on white paper, just like commodity cans. U.S.D.A. PORK. SORRY WE ARE UNABLE TO USE THIS. JUST ADD WATER. WE DON'T LISTEN TO UNSOLICITED DEMOS. POWDERED MILK. THANK YOU FOR YOUR INTEREST. HEAT AND SERVE.
The taverns refused to hire Coyote Springs.
"We heard you was causing some trouble," the taverns said."We don't need any more trouble than we already got."
Coyote Springs shivered with fear.
"Shit, " Junior said as he ate another mouthful of commodity peanut butter, the only source of protein in reservation diets. Victor strummed his guitar a little; his fingers had long since calloused over. He barely felt the burning. Thomas snuck out of the house to make frantic calls at the pay phone outside the Trading Post. Chess and Checkers sat beside each other on the couch, holding hands. The television didn't work.
Coyote Springs might have sat there in Thomas's house for years, silent and still, until their shadows could have been used to tell the time. But that Cadillac rolled onto the reservation and changed everything. All the Spokanes saw it but just assumed it was the FBI, CIA, or Jehovah's Witnesses. That Cadillac pulled up in front of the Trading Post. The rear window rolled down.
"Hey, you," a voice called out from the Cadillac.
"Me?" the-man-who-was-probably-Lakota asked.
"Yeah, you. Do you know where we can find Coyote Springs?"
"Sure, you go down to the dirt road over there, turn left, follow that for a little while, then go right. Then left at Old Bessie's house. You'll recognize her house by the smell of her fry bread. Third best on the reservation. Then, right again."
"Wait, wait," the voice said."Why don't you just get in here and show us the way?"
"That's a nice car. But I can't fit in there," the-man-who-was-probably-Lakota said."I'll just run. Follow me."
"Okay, but this ain't our car anyway. We rented it and this goofy driver, too."
The-man-who-was-probably-Lakota shrugged his shoulders and ran down the road with the Cadillac in close pursuit.
"Can't we go any faster?" the voice yelled from the Cadillac.
"Sure," the-man-who-was-probably-Lakota said and picked up the pace. He ran past a few other cars, which forced the Cadillac to make daring passes. They raced by Old Bessie's house and then made a right.
"Damn, that fry bread does smell good, doesn't it?" one white man in the car said to another.
Thomas's house sat in a little depression beside the road. "That's where you'll find Coyote Springs," the-man-who-was-probably-Lakota said. He leaned down to look inside the car.
"You sure, Chief?" the voice asked.
"I'm sure. Did you know the end of the world is near?"
"We've been there and back, Chief."
The-man-who-was-probably-Lakota saw two pasty white men sitting in the back seat. They looked small inside the car, but the smell of cigar smoke and whiskey was huge. The driver was some skinny white guy in a cheap suit. Curious, the-man-who-was-probably-Lakota watched for a while, then ran back toward the Trading Post. He had work to do.
The driver stayed in the Cadillac, but the two other white men climbed out of the back of the Cadillac. Both were short and stocky, dark-haired, with moustaches that threatened to take over their faces. Those short white men walked to the front door and knocked. They knocked again. Thomas opened the door wide.
"Hello," the white men said. "We're Phil Sheridan and George Wright from Cavalry Records in New York City. We've come to talk to you about a recording contract."
* * *
From a fax transmitted from Wellpinit to Manhattan:
Dear Mr. Armstrong:
We just met with that Indian band we heard about. Coyote Springs. They played a little for us and quite frankly, we're impressed. The lead singer, Thomas Builds-the-Fire, is good, but his female singers, Chess and Checkers Warm Water, are outstanding. There may be a little dissension in the group because Checkers apparently quit the band earlier. She rejoined when we showed up. I think that shows ambition. Checkers is quite striking, beautiful, in fact, while Chess is pretty. Both would attract men, I think. Sort of that exotic animalistic woman thing.
We had the band play a few sets for us in their home, and we feel confident in their abilities. Builds-the-Fire plays a competent bass guitar, while Victor Joseph is really quite extraordinary on the lead guitar. He is original and powerful, a genuine talent. Junior Polatkin is only average on drums but is a very good-looking man. Very ethnically handsome. He should bring in the teenage girls, which will make up for the looks of Builds-the-Fire and Joseph. Builds-the-Fire is just sort of goofy looking, with Buddy Holly glasses and crooked teeth. Victor Joseph looks like a train ran him over in 1976. Perhaps we can focus on the grunge/punk angle for him.
Overall, this band looks and sounds Indian. They all have dark skin. Chess, Checkers, and Junior all have long hair. Thomas has a big nose, and Victor has many scars. We're looking at some genuine crossover appeal.
We can really dress this group up, give them war paint, feathers, etc., and really play up the Indian angle. I think this band could prove to be very lucrative for Cavalry Records.
We should fly the band out to New York to do a little studio work perhaps. To see what they can do outside their home environment.
Peace,
Phil Sheridan
George Wright
* * *
"Father Arnold," Checkers called, "are you in here?"
She searched the church but finally found Father cleaning graves out in the cemetery. He cleaned the graves of five generations of Spokane Indian Cath
olics.
"Hello there, Checkers."
"Hello, Father."
"I'm really sorry to hear about Victor and Junior. Are they okay?"
"Yeah, they just got their heads bumped a little. A few bruises here and there. Sore ribs. Might knock some sense into them."
"It might," Father Arnold said and laughed. He leaned against his rake. Checkers studied the rings on his lingers. A college ring, a gold ring. She wanted to kiss his hands.
"What about those two white women?"
"They left. I guess we were too Indian for them."
"Yeah, I know how that is."
Checkers looked around at all the graves. She didn't know anybody buried there.
"So," Father said, "I heard there was some fancy car out at Thomas's place."
"Yeah."
"And?"
"It was some record company guys from New York. They really liked us."
"And?"
"And I rejoined the band."
"Just like that?"
"Yeah, I'm sorry."
Father Arnold dropped the rake, took Checkers's hands. He squeezed her fingers a little, smiled at her. She tried to maintain eye contact but turned her head, ashamed.
"I'm really sorry," she said.
"Are you sure this is what you want?"
"No. But we need the money. We ain't got no money."
"Does everything have to be about money?"
"Of course it does. Only people with enough money ever ask that question anyway."
"There's a kind of freedom in poverty."
Thais a lie, Checkers thought and felt worse for contradicting a priest, her priest.
"Jesus didn't have any money," Father Arnold said.
"Yeah, but Jesus could turn one loaf of bread into a few thousand. I can't do that."
"You're right, Checkers. You're right."
Checkers looked down at the ground. She had not wanted to be right. She wanted Father Arnold to forbid, her to leave.
"I think we should pray for all of your safety," Father Arnold said.
"Okay," she said.
Both kneeled on the ground, still face to face, holding hands.
Reservation Blues - Alexie Sherman Page 16