"There, " Big Mom said to Victor. "Have you learned anything?"
"I've learned that a really big guitar makes a really big noise."
"Is that all?"
"What do you want me to say? I keep waiting for you to call me Grasshopper and ask me to snatch some goddamn pebble from your hand."
Thomas stood up and reached for Big Mom's guitar.
"Patience," Big Mom said and pushed his hand away.
"I can play that chord," Thomas said. "But I need your guitar to do it."
"All Indians can play that ch0rd," Big Mom said. "It's the chord created especially for us. But you have to play it on your own instrument, Thomas. You couldn't even lift my guitar."
"What about Victor?" Thomas asked. "He's got Robert Johnson's guitar. Why can't I have your guitar?"
"That guitar is different," Big Mom said. "That guitar wanted Victor."
"Shit," Victor said. "This is all starting to sound like a New Age convention. Where are the fucking crystals? Well, I know who's got the fucking crystals. Jim Morrison's got the fucking crystals, and he's dancing naked around the campfire with a bunch of naked white people, singing and complaining that his head feels Just like a toad."
"Please don't say that name, " Big Mom said. "I'm so tired of that name. It's irritating how much I have to hear that name."
"What?" Victor asked. "Which name? Jim Morrison?"
"Stop that," Big Mom said.
"Jim Morrison, " Victor said and laughed. "Jim Morrison, Jim Morrison, Jim-fucking-Morrison."
Big Mom shook her head, walked out of the house, and left Coyote Springs alone.
"You're such an asshole," Chess said.
"What's going on?" Junior asked as he finally woke up.
"I know I can play that chord," Thomas said.
"I kind of like the Doors," Checkers said.
"This is the end, my friends, this is the end," Victor said.
* * *
Victor wasn't the first Indian man to question Big Morn's authority. In fact, many of the Indian men who were drawn to Big Mom doubted her abilities. Indian men have started to believe their own publicity and run around acting like the Indians in movies.
"Michael White Hawk," Big Mom said to the toughest Spokane Indian man of the late twentieth century. "Don't you understand that the musical instrument is not to be used in the same way that a bow and arrow is? Music is supposed to heal."
"But, Big Ma," White Hawk said, "I'm a warrior. I'm 'posed to fight."
"No, Michael, you're a saxophone player, and you need to work on your reed technique."
Most times, the Indian men learned from Big Mom, but Michael White Hawk never admitted his errors. White Hawk had actually been something of a prodigy, an idiot savant, who could play the horn even though he couldn't read or write.
"I hate white men," White Hawk said. "I smash my sax'phone on their heads."
"Michael," Big Mom said, "you run around playing like you're a warrior. You're the first to tell an Indian he's not being Indian enough. How do you know what that means? You need to take care of your people. Smashing your guitar over the head of a white man is just violence. And the white man has always been better at violence anyway. They'll always be better than you at violence."
"You don't know what you talkin' 'bout," White Hawk said. "You jus' a woman."
He left Big Mom's house after that and ended up in Walla Walla State Penitentiary for smashing his saxophone over the head of a cashier at a supermarket in Spokane.
"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 pretzy, Big Mom said in their heads, although it didnlt sound like her at all. Andyour 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 S
prings. 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.
"I think you're as good as you're going to get," Big Mom said. "You have to leave for New York tomorrow, enit?"
"Don't you know?" Victor asked. "I thought you knew everything."
"I know you're a Jerk," Big Mom said and surprised everybody.
"Ya-hey," Chess said. "Good one, Big Mom."
The band ran through a few more songs before they packed everything up. Thomas wanted to practice even more, right up until they had to leave, but the rest of the band quickly vetoed that idea. Even Big Mom had had enough.
"But we're not good enough yet,"' Thomas said.
"Thomas," Chess said, "this is as good as we're going to get. Even you think we're pretty good. You said so yourself. "
"Pretty good ain't good enough," Thomas said.
"It's going to have to be."
"But it ain't. We have to come back as heroes. They won't let us back on this reservation if we ain't heroes. Unless we're rock stars. We already left once, and all the Spokanes hate us for it. Shit, Michael White Hawk wants to kill all of us. Dave Walks-Along wants to kick us completely out of the Tribe. What if we screw up in New York and every Indian everywhere hates us? What if they won't let us on any reservation in the country?"
Coyote Springs and Big Mom stared at Thomas. He stared back.
"Don't look at me like that," Thomas said. "We need more help. We need Robert Johnson. We need him. Where is he, Big Mom?"
"He's out there right now," Big Mom said and pointed with her lips toward the treeline. "Watching us."
Thomas scanned the pine for any signs of Johnson.
"Robert Johnson! " Thomas shouted. "We need you!"
Johnson cowered behind a pine tree, covered his ears with his hands, and cried. He wanted to help; he wanted to take back that guitar. Coyote Springs was messing with things they didn't understand. Big Mom couldn't teach them everything. Big Mom couldn't stop them if they were going to sign their lives away. Johnson wondered briefly if he should build his new guitar quickly, hop on the plane with Coyote Springs, and play music with them. A black man and Five Indians. It had to work, didn't it? But all Robert Johnson could do was burrow a little deeper into himself.
"He can't help you," Big Mom said. "He's still trying to help himself. "
"I mean," Thomas shouted at everybody, "look at all of us! What are any of us going to do if this doesn't work? Robert Johnson's hiding in the woods. What are you going to do, Victor? You and Junior will end up drunk in the Powwow Tavern. You'll go back to ignoring me or beating the crap out of me. Checkers will join some convent. And what happens to us, Chess? What happens if people don't listen?"
Chess took Thomas's hands in hers, and the silence wrapped around them like a familiar quilt.
* * *
From a note left by Junior:
Dear Big Mom,
I Just wanted to thank you for your drumsticks and for teaching us how to play better. I know you're probably mad at Victor. He can be a Jerk but he's a good guy, too. He's always taken
care of me.
I was kind of small and sick when I was little. But I was really smart, too. Nobody liked me, except Victor. He was my bodyguard. If anybody beat me up then Victor would get even for me. He taught me how to fight, too. Once, a bunch of Colville Indians beat me up at a powwow. Victor spent the rest of the powwow finding and fighting all those guys. He beat them up one by one. Really kicked the crap out of them. He was nine years old. He didn't even drink at all during that powwow. He Just wanted to get me revenge. Victor's tough that way.
It seems like Victor's always been there for me. After his real dad left and my dad died, we hung out a lot. We took turns being the dad, I guess. Sometimes all we had was each other. I know we both picked on Thomas too much but we didn't really mean it. We never really hurt him too much. I never wanted to really hurt anybody. So I hope you ain't too mad at Victor. He was the one who came and got me when I flunked out of college. Victor just borrowed money and his uncle's car and drove to Oregon and got me. He even bought me a hamburger and fries at Dick's. We just sat there at a picnic table outside Dick's and ate. We didn't talk much. Just passed the ketchup back and forth.
You know, I get mad at Victor all the time, but I remember that he's been good to me, too. He's Just a kid sometimes, even though he's a grown-up man. Anyway, I hope you have a good life and I hope we get to see you again. Wish us luck in New York.
Sincerely,
Junior Polatkin
* * *
Big Mom watched Coyote Springs walk down her mountain. She had watched many of her students, her children, walk down that mountain. She was never sure what would happen to them. They could become the major musical voice of their generation, of many generations, but they could also fade into obscurity. Her students also fell apart, and were found in so many pieces they could never be put back together again.
"What's going to happen to us?" Chess asked Big Mom just before Coyote Springs left.
"I don't know," Big Mom said. "It's not up to me."
"You sound like a reservation fortune cookie sometimes," Victor said. "You know, you open up a can of commodity peanut butter,
and there's Big Mom's latest piece of wisdom."
"Listen," Big Mom said. "Maybe you'll go out there and get famous. I've had plenty of students get famous, really famous. I've had students invent stuff I never would have thought of, like Jazz and rap. I've seen it all. But I ain't had many students who ended up happy, you know? So what do you want me to say? It's up to you. You make your choices."
Coyote Springs looked at Big Mom. They sort of felt like baby turtles left to crawl from birth nest to ocean all by themselves, while predators of all varieties came to be part of the baby turtle beach buffet. They sort of felt like Indian children of Indian parents.
"Thank you, Big Mom," Chess and Checkers said, and Big Mom took them in her arms. Thomas hugged Big Mom; Junior managed a shy smile and wave. Then everybody turned to Victor.
"What?" Victor said. "What do you want? I ain't going to say I had a great time. I ain't going to say you were a tough teacher, Big Mom, and I know we had our differences, but aw shucks, I love you anyway. I was a great guitar player when I came in here and I'm a great guitar player as I walk out. You taught me a few new tricks. That's it."
"Well," Big Mom said, "that may be all I taught you. But you should still thank me for it."
"Fine," Victor said. "Thank you."
"You be careful with that guitar," Big Mom said.
Coyote Springs walked down the hill. Big Mom watched them, for years it seemed, watched them over and over. She watched them walk into Wellpinit, meet up with Sheridan and Wright. She watched them all climb into a limousine and drive off the reservation and arrive suddenly at the Spokane International Airport.
* * *
Coyote Springs waited in the Spokane International Airport for their flight. Wright and Sheridan had already boarded because they were in first class. The flight attendant called for their rows, and Coyote Springs made their way toward the gate.
"Wait a second, " Victor said, suddenly understanding that he was getting on an airplane. "I ain't flying in that fucking thing."
"Been in a little bit of denial, enit?" Chess asked him.
Victor refused to board the plane.
"Come on, you chicken," Chess said. "Get on the plane."
Reservation Blues - Alexie Sherman Page 18