"Damn right I'm a chicken," Victor said. "Because chickens don't fly."
"It'll be cool," Junior said. "Don't be scared."
"I ain't scared. I'm being smart."
Everybody looked to Thomas for help.
"Victor," Thomas said, "I brought an eagle feather for protection. You can have it."
"Get that Indian bullshit away from me!"
The crowd at the gate stared at Coyote Springs. They worried those loud dark-skinned people might be hijackers. Coyote Springs did their best not to look middle eastern.
"That ain't going to do nothing," Victor continued, in a lower volume. "It's just a feather. Hell, it fell off some damn eagle, so it obviously wasn't working anyway, enit?"
Victor was being as logical as a white man.
"You can't go to New York if you don't get on that plane," Chess said.
"Please, " Checkers said.
Victor stared out the terminal window at the plane. That plane Just looked too damn big to fly.
"All right, all right," Victor finally said. "I'll get on that goddamn plane, but I'm going to get wasted. And you're all going to buy me drinks."
"Okay, okay," said all the rest of Coyote Springs, happy for once to be codependents.
"Listen," Thomas said, "you can still have my eagle feather."
"I told you to get that thing away from me," Victor said.
"I don't believe in that shit."
Coyote Springs boarded the plane, waved to Wright and Sheridan as they walked back to the coach section. Victor started drinking immediately. He put down shot after shot, closed his eyes as the plane took off.
"Shit," Victor said after the plane reached cruising altitude, "that was easy."
Victor was drunk enough to forget about flying for a while, until the plane hit some nasty turbulence.
"Sorry, folks," the captain said over the intercom.
"We've run into some choppy air, and we're going to have to ask you to return to your seats and buckle yourselves in. This is going to be a bumpy ride."
The plane bounced up and down like crazy, and Victor went pale. The whole band turned white.
"Hey, Thomas," Victor slurred, "do you still got that eagle feather?"
"Sure," Thomas said and handed it to Victor, who held it tightly in his hand and whispered some inexpert prayer. The rest of Coyote Springs looked to Thomas for help, so he produced an eagle feather for each of them.
"Jeez, Thomas," Chess said, "I love you so much."
Thomas Just smiled and held tightly to his eagle feather. Chess and Checkers held hands, held their feathers. Junior put his feather in his mouth and bit down to prevent himself from calling out. Coyote Springs was flying to a place they had never been. They didn't know what would happen or how they would come back.
* * *
Meanwhile, the reservation remained behind. It never exactly longed for any Indian who left, for all those whose bodies were dragged quickly and quietly into the twentieth century while their souls were left behind somewhere in the nineteenth. But the reservation was there, had always been there, and would still be there, waiting for Coyote Springs's return from New York City. Every Indian, every leaf of grass, and every animal and insect waited collectively.
The old Indian women dipped wooden spoons into stews and stirred and stirred. The stews made of random vegetables and commodity food, of failed dreams and predictable tears. That was the only way to measure time, to wait. Those spoons moved in slow circles. Stir, stir. The reservation waited for Coyote Springs to fall into pieces, so they could be dropped into the old women's stews.
It waited for the end of the stickgarne, one chance to choose the hand holding the colored bone. Those old women always hid the colored bone in one hand and a plain bone in the other. Those old women smelled of stew and pine. If an Indian chose the correct hand, he won everything, he won all the sticks. If an Indian chose wrong, he never got to play again. Coyote Springs had only one dream, one chance to choose the correct hand.
8
Urban Indian Blues
I've been relocated and given a room
In a downtown hotel called The Tomb
And they gave me a job and cut my hair
I trip on rats when I climb the stairs
I get letters from my cousins on the rez
They wonder when they'll see me next
But I've got a job and a landlady
She calls me chief she calls me crazy
chorus:
I'm walking sidewalks miles from home, I'm walking streets alone
I'm walking in cheap old shoes, I've got the Urban Indian blues
I'm working for minimum, I'm working the maximum
I'm working in cheap old shoes, I've got the Urban Indian blues
I paint the ceilings, I paint the walls
I paint the floors and I paint the halls
That's my job and that's my boss there
He gave me the clothes that I wear
We drink a few in his favorite bar
We drink a few more in his car
He's a friend of the Indian, he says
He's been to the rez, he's been to the rez
(repeat chorus)
I'm saving money for the Greyhound
'Cause I want to be homeward bound
But the landlady raises the rent
The boss don't know where my check went
And the neighbors are lonely
And the neighbors are ghostly
And I watch my television
And I dream of the reservation
Inside the recording studio at Cavalry Records in New York City, Coyote Springs nervously retuned their already tuned instruments. Chess and Checkers sang scales. Junior tapped his foot to some rhythm he heard in his head. Victor stroked his guitar gently; the guitar purred.
"Are you folks ready yet?" asked a disembodied voice from the control booth.
"Who are you?" Victor asked.
"Just the engineer," said the voice.
"Where are you?"
"Right here, " said a young white woman in pressed denim shirt and blue jeans. She waved at Coyote Springs and grinned.
Phil Sheridan and George Wright sat behind the engineer.
They were just as nervous as Coyote Springs.
"What if Mr. Armstrong doesn't like them," Sheridan asked Wright. Thomas watched Sheridan and Wright talk, although he couldn't hear them through the glass.
"He'll like them," Wright said."He signed that duo from Seattle on just our word, right? He's got to like these guys. Indians are big these days. Way popular, right? Besides, these Indians are good. They're just plain good. They're artists. When was the last time we signed artists?"
"Shit, as if being good meant anything in this business. They don't need to be good. They just need to make money. I don't give a fuck if they're artists. Where are all the executives who signed artists? They're working at radio stations now, right?"
The engineer studied her soundboard. She flipped switches in patterns that would make the music sound exactly like she wanted it to sound.
"I'm Just going to tell Armstrong this was your idea," Sheridan said and laughed.
"Fuck you, too," Wright said.
Sheridan and Wright continued to reassure each other until Mr. Armstrong, the president and CEO of Cavalry Records, arrived.
"Mr. Armstrong," Sheridan and Wright said and stood.
"Where are the Indians?" Armstrong asked.
"Right there, " Sheridan said and pointed at the band.
"They look Indian," Armstrong said.
"Of course, sir."
Mr. Armstrong was a small man, barely over five feet, but he weighed three hundred pounds. The weight looked unnatural on him, though, like he had been padded to play a fat guy in a movie. His blond hair was pulled into a ponytail that hung down past his waist. He spoke in short sentences.
"Can they play?" Armstrong asked Sheridan and Wright.
"Yes, sir."
"Can they play?" Armstrong asked the engineer, who just shrugged her shoulders and ran Coyote Springs through a sound check.
"Jeez," Chess said, "that's the big boss man, enit?"
"Yeah, it is," Victor said."And he's going to sign me up for a solo career after he hears me play. He's Just going to send all you losers home."
"Are you ready to run through a song?" asked the engineer.
"Damn right," Victor said.
"Well, let's go for it. Tape's running," said the engineer.
"What do you think we should play?" Thomas asked.
"How about Urban Indian Blues?" Chess asked.
"Makes sense, enit?" Checkers asked.
"Damn right," Victor said.
"Okay," Thomas said."Count it off, Junior."
The horses screamed.
"One, two, one, two, three, four."
Coyote Springs dropped into a familiar rhythm together.
Thomas, Chess, and Checkers sang well. Thomas strummed note by note on the bass; Chess and Checkers both played keyboards. Junior flailed away at the drums, lost a few beats here and there, but mostly kept up. But Coyote Springs needed Victor to rise, needed his lead guitar to define them. Victor knew how important he was. He closed his eyes and let the chords come to him.
At first, the music flowed as usual, like a stream of fire through his frngers and the strings. Victor remembered how much the music had hurt him before. That guitar had scarred his hands, yet he had mastered the pain. He thought he could have placed his calloused hands into any Hre and never felt the burning. But then, as the song moved forward, bar by bar, his fingers slipped off the strings and frets. The guitar bucked in his hands, twisted away from his body. He felt a razor slice across his palms.
"Shit, shit!" Victor shouted.
"What's the problem?" asked the engineer.
"Could we start over?" Victor asked.
Sheridan and Wright exchanged a worried look. Mr. Armstrong cleared his throat loudly.
"Whenever you want," said the engineer."Tape's still rolling."
"What's wrong?" Thomas asked Victor.
"Nothing," Victor said, wiped his hands on his pants, and left blood stains. The rest of Coyote Springs studied those blood stains as Junior counted off again.
"One, two, one, two, three, four."
Checkers could not remember what she was supposed to play. She looked to her sister for help, but Chess's hands stayed motionless a few inches above the keyboard. Thomas sang half of the first verse before he noticed he was singing alone.
"Hold up a sec," said the engineer."Where are the keyboards and vocals, ladies?"
"Are you okay?" Thomas asked the sisters.
Chess and Checkers shook their heads. Junior continued to pound the snare drum. Victors guitar kept writhing in his hands until it broke the straps and fell to the floor in a flurry of feedback.
The engineer let that feedback whine until Sheridan jumped to the intercom.
"What the hell's going on?" Sheridan asked Coyote Springs.
Coyote Springs all stared down at Victor's guitar.
"What the hell's happening?" Sheridan asked everybody in the control booth.
"I don't know," said the engineer."I think they're just nervous. Give them another chance."
Mr. Armstrong rose from his seat, adjusted his tie and jacket.
"They don't have it," Armstrong said.
"Don't you think you're being a little hasty, sir?" Wright asked.
"No, I don't," Armstrong said and left.
Coyote Springs was still staring at the guitar on the floor when the engineer spoke.
"Hey, that's it, I guess."
Coyote Springs looked up at the engineer, who looked pained behind the glass. Wright and Sheridan were arguing violently, silently. Coyote Springs watched the two Cavalry officers gesture wildly, argue for a few more minutes, and then storm out of the control booth.
"What the hell happened?" Chess asked after a long time.
"I don't know," the engineer said over the intercom. "I thought you were pretty good."
"What the hell happened?" Chess asked Thomas.
"I don't know," Thomas said.
* * *
From The Wellpinit Rawhide Press:
Local Skins May Lose Their Shirts
Our local rock band, Coyote Springs, left yesterday for a meeting with Cavalry Records in New York City. Although they've been the center of much controversy on the Spokane Indian Reservation, it seems that white people are still interested in the band.
"We're going to be rock stars," Victor Joseph said before the band left. "And we won't have to come back to this reservation ever again. We'll just leave all of you [Jerks] to your [awful] lives."
Lead singer Thomas Builds-the-Fire, however, was a little more guarded about the purpose of the meeting.
"It's an audition," he said."They haven't promised us anything. You tell everybody that. We ain't been promised anything."
Tribal Chairman David WalksAlong was even more pessimistic about the future of Coyote Springs.
‘ 'Listen," he said over lunch at the Tribal Cafe. "Those Skins ain't got a chance in New York City. I've been to New York City, and I know what it's like. My grandfather always told me you can take a boy off the reservation, but you can't take the reservation off the boy. Coyote Springs is done for. I'm happy about that."
But the other members of Coyote Springs seemed to take all the controversy in stride.
"I Just want to be good at something," Junior Polatkin said."I messed up at everything else. I'm not mad at anybody who talked bad about us. I Just want
them to like us. Chess and Checkers Warm Water simply gave the thumbs-up as they left the reservation, although some Spokanes thought it was a different finger they
raised.
"Listen," Polatkin added, if we make it big, it Just means we won't have to eat commodity food anymore."
* * *
Coyote Springs was still standing in the dark studio when Sheridan and Wright came back. The engineer had already left, so the two record company executives fiddled with the knobs and dials until they found the lights and power.
"Listen," Sheridan said over the intercom."I don't know what happened to you. But Mr. Armstrong doesn't want to have anything to do with you right now."
"What the fuck are you talking about?" Victor asked.
"Now, you listen closely," Sheridan said."My ass is on the line here, too. I brought you little shits here. You screwed me over. Now, I'm going to try and fix this. Mr. Armstrong can be a little bit emotional. Maybe he didn't get his coffee or something this morning. Why don't you just head over to your hotel and wait this out. We'll fly you back to the reservation in the morning."
"No fucking way!" Victor shouted."We can't go back there. Not like this."
"Calm your ass down," Sheridan said. "We'll give Mr. Armstrong a couple months, and then we'll try it again."
"We donlt have a couple months," Thomas whispered.
Wright slumped into a chair and wiped his face with a handkerchief just as Victor picked up his guitar and threw it across the studio. Chess and Checkers ducked. Junior continued to beat a quiet rhythm on the drum.
"Goddamn it," Sheridan shouted over the intercom.
"That's fucking studio equipment."
"Fuck you," Victor shouted."You're studio equipment."
"Hey," Sheridan said."I'm trying to help you. I didn't screw this up. I'm not the goddamn guitar player. Maybe you just aren't ready. Maybe next time. But if you don't calm down, I'll call security."
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 t
hings 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.
Reservation Blues - Alexie Sherman Page 19