Reservation Blues

by Sherman Alexie

  4

  Father and Farther

  SOMETIMES, FATHER, you and I

  Are like a three-legged horse

  Who can’t get across the finish line

  No matter how hard he tries and tries and tries

  And sometimes, father, you and I

  Are like a warrior

  Who can only paint half of his face

  While the other half cries and cries and cries

  chorus:

  Now can I ask you, father

  If you know how much farther we need to go?

  And can I ask you, father

  If you know how much farther we have to go?

  Father and farther, father and farther, ’til we know

  Father and farther, father and farther, ’til we know

  Sometimes, father, you and I

  Are like two old drunks

  Who spend their whole lives in the bars

  Swallowing down all those lies and lies and lies

  Sometimes, father, you and I

  Are like dirty ghosts

  Who wear the same sheets every day

  As one more piece of us just dies and dies and dies

  (repeat chorus)

  Sometimes, father, you and I

  Are like a three-legged horse

  Who can’t get across the finish line

  No matter how hard he tries and tries and tries

  Coyote Springs returned to the Spokane Indian Reservation without much fanfare. Thomas drove through the late night quiet, the kind of quiet that frightened visitors from the city. As he pulled up in his driveway, the rest of the band members woke up, and the van’s headlights illuminated the old Indian man passed out on the lawn.

  “Who is that?” Victor asked. “Is it my dad or your dad?”

  “It’s not your dad,” Junior said. “Your dad is dead.”

  “Oh, yeah, enit?” Victor asked. “Well, whose dad is it?”

  “It ain’t my dad,” Junior said. “He’s dead, too.”

  Coyote Springs climbed out of the van, walked up to the man passed out on the lawn, and rolled him over.

  “That’s your dad, enit?” Junior asked Thomas.

  Thomas leaned down for a closer look.

  “Yeah, that’s him,” Victor said. “That’s old Samuel.”

  “Is he breathing?” Junior said.

  “Yeah.”

  “Well, then leave him there,” Victor said.

  Thomas shook his father a little and said his name a few times. He had lost count of the number of times he’d saved his father, how many times he’d driven to some reservation tavern to pick up his dad, passed out in a back booth. Once a month, he bailed his father out of jail for drunk and disorderly behavior. That had become his father’s Indian name: Drunk and Disorderly.

  “He’s way out of it,” Victor said.

  “He’s out for the night,” Junior said.

  Junior and Victor shrugged their shoulders, walked into Thomas’s house, and looked for somewhere to sleep. Decorated veterans of that war between fathers and sons, Junior and Victor knew the best defense was sleep. They saw too many drunks littering the grass of the reservation; they rolled the drunks over and stole their money. When they were under age, they slapped those drunks awake and pushed them into the Trading Post to buy beer. Now, when they saw Samuel Builds-the-Fire passed out on the lawn, they crawled into different corners of Thomas’s house and fell right to sleep.

  “Ain’t they going to help?” Chess asked.

  “It’s my father,” Thomas said. “I have to handle this myself.”

  But Chess and Checkers helped Thomas carry his father into the house and lay him down on the kitchen table. The three sat in chairs around the table and stared at Samuel Builds-the-Fire, who breathed deep in his alcoholic stupor.

  “I’m sorry, Thomas,” Chess and Checkers said.

  “Yeah, me, too.”

  Chess and Checkers were uncomfortable. They hated to see that old Indian man so helpless and hopeless; they hated to see the father’s features in his son’s face. It’s hard not to see a father’s life as prediction for his son’s.

  “Our father was like this, too,” Chess said. “Just like this.”

  “But he never drank at all until Backgammon died,” Checkers said.

  “Where’s your dad now?” Thomas asked.

  “He’s gone.”

  The word gone echoed all over the reservation. The reservation was gone itself, just a shell of its former self, just a fragment of the whole. But the reservation still possessed power and rage, magic and loss, joys and jealousy. The reservation tugged at the lives of its Indians, stole from them in the middle of the night, watched impassively as the horses and salmon disappeared. But the reservation forgave, too. Sam Bone vanished between foot falls on the way to the Trading Post one summer day and reappeared years later to finish his walk. Thomas, Chess, and Checkers heard the word gone shake the foundation of the house.

  “Where’s he gone to?” Thomas asked.

  “He’s just gone,” Checkers said. “He’s AWOL. He’s MIA.”

  The secondhand furniture in Thomas’s house moved an inch to the west.

  “It wasn’t always this way,” Thomas said and touched his father’s hand. “It wasn’t always this way.

  Samuel slept on the table while Thomas closed his eyes and told the story:

  “Way back when, my father was an active alcoholic only about three months of every year. He was a binge drinker, you know? Completely drunk for three days straight, a week, a month, then he jumped back on the wagon again. Sober, he was a good man, a good father, so all the drinking had to be forgiven, enit?

  “My father was Washington State High School Basketball Player of the Year in 1956. Even the white people knew how good that Indian boy played. He was just a little guy too, about five-foot-six and a hundred and fifty pounds, hair in a crewcut, and big old Indian ears sticking out. Walter Cronkite came out to the reservation and interviewed him. Cronkite stood on the free-throw line and shouted questions at my father, who dribbled from corner to corner and hit jumpshots.

  “He was such a good basketball player that all the Spokanes wanted him to be more. When any Indian shows the slightest hint of talent in any direction, the rest of the tribe starts expecting Jesus. Sometimes they’ll stop a reservation hero in the middle of the street, look into his eyes, and ask him to change a can of sardines into a river of salmon.

  “But my father lived up to those expectations, you know? Game after game, he defined himself. He wasn’t like some tired old sports hero, some little white kid, some Wonder-bread boy. Think about it. Take the basketball in your hands, fake left, fake right, look your defender in the eyes to let him know he won’t be stopping you. Take the ball to the rim, the hoop, the goal, the basket, that circle that meant everything in an Indian boy’s life.

  “My father wasn’t any different. After his basketball days were over, he didn’t have much else. If he could’ve held a basketball in his arms when he cut down trees for the BIA, maybe my father would’ve kept that job. If he could have drank his own sweat after a basketball game and got drunk off the effort, maybe he would’ve stayed away from the real booze.”

  Thomas opened his eyes and looked at his father, lying still on the kitchen table. A wake for a live man. Thomas tried to smile for the sisters. Checkers looked at the overweight Indian man on the table, saw the dirt under his fingernails, the clogged pores, the darkness around his eyes and at the elbows and knees.

  “I would’ve never thought he played basketball,” Chess said.

  “Me, neither,” Checkers said.

  Thomas looked at his father again, studied him, and touched Samuel’s big belly.

  “Did you ever play?” Chess asked.

  “No,” Thomas said.

  “Why not?”

  “Well, even Moses only parted the Red Sea once. There are things you just can’t do twice.”

  “Sometimes,” Checkers said, “I
hate being Indian.”

  “Ain’t that the true test?” Chess asked. “You ain’t really Indian unless there was some point in your life that you didn’t want to be.”

  “Enit,” Thomas said.

  “You know,” Chess said, “like when you’re walking downtown or something, and you see some drunk Indian passed out on the sidewalk.”

  Thomas looked at his father.

  “Oh,” Chess said. “I didn’t mean your father.”

  “That’s okay,” Thomas said. “I have been walking in downtown Spokane and stumbled over my father passed out on the sidewalk.”

  “Yeah,” Checkers said. “And I hate it when some Indian comes begging for money. Calling me sister or cousin. What am I supposed to do? I ain’t got much money myself. So I give it to them anyway. Then I feel bad for doing it, because I know they’re going to drink it all up.”

  Checkers was always afraid of those Indian men who wandered the streets. She always thought they looked like brown-skinned zombies. Samuel Builds-the-Fire looked like a zombie on the kitchen table. Those Indian zombies lived in Missoula when she was little. Once a month, the whole Warm Water family traveled from their little shack on the reservation to pick up supplies in Missoula. Those drunk zombies always followed the family from store to store.

  Still, Checkers remembered how quiet and polite some of those zombies were, just as quiet as Samuel passed out on the table. In Missoula they stood on street corners, wrapped in old quilts, and held their hands out without saying a word. Just stood there and waited.

  Once, Checkers watched a white man spit into a zombie’s open hand. Just spit in his palm. The zombie wiped his hand clean on his pants and offered it again. Then the white man spit again. Checkers saw all that happen. After the white man walked away, she ran up to the zombie and gave him a piece of candy, her last piece of candy.

  Thank you, the zombie said. He unwrapped the candy, popped it in his mouth, and smiled.

  “What are we supposed to do?” Chess asked Thomas, as Checkers remembered her zombies. “What should we do for your father?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Samuel groaned in his sleep, raised his hands in a defensive position.

  “Listen,” Thomas said, “do you want something to drink?”

  Thomas gave them all a glass of commodity grape juice. It was very sweet, almost too sweet. Thomas loved sugar.

  “Our cousins are drinking this stuff mixed with rubbing alcohol at home,” Chess said.

  “Really?” Thomas said. The creativity of alcoholics constantly surprised him.

  “Yeah, they call it a Rubbie Dubbie.”

  “Drinking that will kill them.”

  “I think that’s the idea.”

  Thomas, Chess, and Checkers stayed quiet for a long time. After a while, Chess and Checkers started to sing a Flathead song of mourning. For a wake, for a wake. Samuel was still alive, but Thomas sang along without hesitation. That mourning song was B-7 on every reservation jukebox.

  After the song, Thomas stood and walked away from the table where his father lay flat as a paper plate. He walked outside while the women stayed inside. They understood. Once outside, Thomas cried. Not because he needed to be alone; not because he was afraid to cry in front of women. He just wanted his tears to be individual, not tribal. Those tribal tears collected and fermented in huge BIA barrels. Then the BIA poured those tears into beer and Pepsi cans and distributed them back onto the reservation. Thomas wanted his tears to be selfish and fresh.

  “Hello,” he said to the night sky. He wanted to say the first word of a prayer or a joke. A prayer and a joke often sound alike on the reservation.

  “Help,” he said to the ground. He knew the words to a million songs: Indian, European, African, Mexican, Asian. He sang “Stairway to Heaven” in four different languages but never knew where that staircase stood. He sang the same Indian songs continually but never sang them correctly. He wanted to make his guitar sound like a waterfall, like a spear striking salmon, but his guitar only sounded like a guitar. He wanted the songs, the stories, to save everybody.

  “Father,” he said to the crickets, who carried their own songs to worry about.

  Just minutes, days, years, maybe a generation out of high school, Samuel Builds-the-Fire, Jr., raced down the reservation road in his Chevy. He stopped to pick up Lester FallsApart, who hitchhiked with no particular destination in mind.

  “Ya-hey,” Samuel said. “Where you going, Lester?”

  “Same place you are. Now.”

  “Good enough.”

  Samuel dropped the car into gear and roared down the highway.

  “I hear you’re getting married to that Susan,” Lester said.

  “Enit.”

  “You want to have kids.

  “There’s already one on the way.”

  “Congratulations,” Lester said and slapped Samuel hard on the back. Surprised, Samuel swerved across the center line, which caused Spokane Tribal Police Officer Wilson to suddenly appear. Officer Wilson was a white man who hated to live on the reservation. He claimed a little bit of Indian blood and had used it to get the job but seemed to forget that whenever he handcuffed another Indian. He read Tom Clancy novels, drank hot tea year round, and always fell asleep in his chair. At one A.M. every morning, he woke up from the chair, brushed his teeth, and then fell into bed. The years rushed by him.

  “Shit,” Lester said. “It’s the cops.”

  “Shit. You’re right.”

  Samuel pulled over. Wilson stepped out of his car, walked up to the driver’s window, and shone his flashlight inside the Chevy.

  “You two been drinking?”

  “I’ve been drinking since I was five,” Lester said. “Kindergarten is hard on a man.”

  “I’ll pretend you didn’t say that,” Wilson said.

  “And we’ll pretend you’re a real Indian,” Samuel said.

  Wilson reached inside the Chevy, grabbed Samuel by the collar, and grinned hard into his face. Officer Wilson was a big man.

  “Better watch your mouth,” Wilson said. “Or I’ll have to hurt those precious hands of yours. I wonder how you’d play ball after that.”

  “He’d still kick your ass,” Lester said.

  “Shit,” Wilson said. “Let’s go for it right now. Let’s go over to the courts and go one on one. Hell, I’ll call up Officer William and we’ll play two on two.”

  “Two of you ain’t going to be near enough,” Samuel said. “Lester and me will take on all six of you fake bastards. Full court to ten by ones. Make it. Take it.”

  “No shit, enit?” Lester asked. “How’s that fucking treaty for you, officer?”

  “You’re on,” Wilson said, and got on his radio to round up his teammates.

  “Shit,” said Lester, who never played basketball on purpose. “What are you doing?”

  “Don’t worry about it,” Samuel said. “Just give me the ball and get out of the way.”

  Samuel and Lester arrived at the basketball courts behind the Tribal School a few moments after the entire Spokane Tribal Police Department. Wilson and William were the big white men. Certifiably one-quarter Spokane Indian, William had made the varsity basketball team in junior college. The brothers Plato, Socrates, and Aristotle Heavy Burden were the forwards. Everybody on the reservation called them Phil, Scott, and Art. The Tribal Police Chief, David WalksAlong, tied up his shoes and stretched his back. He would later be elected Tribal Chairman, but on that night, he played point guard.

  “You take it out first,” WalksAlong said and threw the ball hard at Samuel’s chest.

  “You better take it out,” Samuel said and threw the ball back. “It’s the only time you’ll touch it.”

  The Chief faked a pass to his right and passed left, but Samuel stole the ball and dribbled downcourt for the slam.

  SAMUEL & LESTER—1

  TRIBAL COPS—0

  Thomas stood outside while Chess and Checkers jealously watched Samuel Bu
ilds-the-Fire sleep. The sisters really needed to sleep but knew those Stick Indians might haunt Thomas if he stayed up alone.

  “What should we do?” Chess asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  “I don’t know, either.”

  “I know you’re falling in love, enit?”

  “With Samuel?” Chess asked. “No way.”

  “You know who I’m talking about.”

  “Maybe I am. Maybe I ain’t. I mean, he’s got a lot going for him. He’s got a job, he’s sober, he’s got his own teeth.”

  “Yeah,” Checkers said. “Remember the one I dated? Barney?”

  Chess remembered that Checkers always chased the older Indian men and never even looked at the young bucks. Checkers dated Indian men old enough to be her father. Once she went after Barney Pipe, a Blood Indian old enough to be her grandfather. “Jeez,” Chess had said after she first met the old man, “I know we’re supposed to respect our elders, but this is getting carried away.” Barney liked to take out his false teeth while dancing and usually dropped them in the front pocket of his shirt. One night, old Barney pulled Checkers really close during a slow dance, and his false teeth bit her.

  “Do you remember Barney’s false teeth?” Chess asked.

  “Damn right, I remember. I still have a scar. Biggest hickey I ever got,” Checkers said. “Samuel’s about the same age as Barney, enit?”

  “Enit.”

  “Man, Barney had a house, a car, and three pairs of cowboy boots.”

  Samuel Builds-the-Fire wore a ragged pair of Kmart tennis shoes. The laces had been broken and retied a few times over.

  “Indians would be a lot better off,” Chess said, “if we took care of our feet.”

  “Yeah,” Checkers said. “And those cavalry soldiers would’ve been much nicer if the government had given them boots that fit. Ain’t nothing worse than a soldier with an ingrown toenail.”

  “Samuel would be all right if he’d gotten a good pair of hiking boots when he was little.”

  Chess tried to fix Samuel’s hair with her fingers. Then she took out her brush and went to work. Samuel breathed deeply in his sleep. Chess hummed a song as she brushed; Checkers pulled out her brush and sang along. The song, an old gospel hymn, reminded the sisters of the Catholic Church on the Flathead Reservation. Their hands stayed in Samuel’s hair, but their minds traveled back over twenty years.