“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 wer
e 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.”
“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 stickgame, 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 re-tuned 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.
Reservation Blues Page 19