Reservation Blues

by Sherman Alexie

  All you can do is breed the Indian out of your family, Chess said. All you can do is make sure your son marries a white woman and their children marry white people. The fractions will take over. Your half-blood son will have quarter-blood children and eight-blood grandchildren, and then they won’t be Indians anymore. They won’t hardly be Indian, and they can sleep better at night.

  Chess ran down that road toward the white woman and her half-Indian son, because she wanted to save them from the pain that other Indians would cause.

  Your son will be beaten because he’s a half-breed, Chess said. No matter what he does, he’ll never be Indian enough. Other Indians won’t accept him. Indians are like that.

  Chess wanted to save Indians from the pain that the white woman and her half-Indian son would cause.

  Don’t you see? Chess asked. Those quarter-blood and eighth-blood grandchildren will find out they’re Indian and torment the rest of us real Indians. They’ll come out to the reservation, come to our powwows, in their nice clothes and nice cars, and remind the real Indians how much we don’t have. Those quarter-bloods and eighth-bloods will get all the Indian jobs, all the Indian chances, because they look white. Because they’re safer.

  Chess wanted to say so much to the white woman and her half-Indian son. She closed her eyes, opened them again, and the white woman and her son were gone. They’d never been there.

  “What is it?” Thomas asked Chess. The rest of Coyote Springs, Big Mom, and Father Arnold had already begun the walk away from the cemetery. Lester FallsApart and the three dogs followed closely behind. Chess still stood at the graveside, staring into the distance.

  “Chess?” Thomas asked again. “What is it?”

  “Thomas,” Chess said and took his hand, “let’s get married. Let’s have kids.”

  Thomas was surprised. He couldn’t respond.

  “Really,” Chess said. “Let’s have lots of brown babies. I want my babies to look up and see two brown faces. That’s the best thing we can give them, enit? Two brown faces. Do you want to?”

  Thomas smiled.

  “Okay,” he said.

  Checkers went straight to bed when they returned to Thomas’s house after the burial. Thomas and Big Mom sat in the kitchen and talked about making lunch. Victor jumped in the blue van and drove away. Father Arnold stood alone outside on the front lawn, feeling unwelcome.

  “Checkers?” Chess asked her sister. “Are you okay?”

  “Yeah,” Checkers said. “I’m just tired. I haven’t been sleeping well.”

  “Those nightmares, enit? Does Sheridan keep coming back for you?”

  “It ain’t Sheridan anymore. It’s Dad who comes every night now.”

  “What?” Chess asked. Luke Warm Water rarely entered her dreams.

  “Yeah,” Checkers said. “He stands in the doorway of the bedroom. Just like he used to. He’s been drinking. I can smell him. He doesn’t say nothing. He just stands there in the doorway, holding his arms out to me. Then I wake up.”

  “Do you think it’s really him?” Chess asked.

  “Yeah, it’s him.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Because he’s crying the whole time.”

  The sisters sat for a long while in silence. They held hands; they cried.

  “We’re leaving soon, you know,” Chess said after a while. “Thomas and I are leaving for Spokane. Are you coming or not?”

  “What are we going to do about money?” Checkers asked.

  “I got a job. At the phone company. As an operator.

  “Enit?”

  “Enit. It’ll hold us over until you and Thomas find jobs.

  “Does Victor know?”

  “No.”

  “Does Big Mom know?”

  “Probably. You should tell Father Arnold.”

  “I don’t want to talk to him, “Checkers said. “I don’t care what he does.”

  A knock on the door.

  “Who is it?” Chess asked.

  “It’s me, Big Mom.”

  “Come in.”

  Big Mom stepped in, and Father Arnold was right behind her.

  “He wants to talk to you,” Big Mom said to Checkers. “Alone.”

  Checkers shook her head.

  “Okay,” Big Mom said. “How about if Chess stays?”

  Checkers looked at her sister. Chess nodded in the affirmative.

  “Good,” Big Mom said and left the room. “I’ve got some lunch to make.”

  Arnold closed the door, sat in a chair at the foot of the bed.

  “Hello,” he said.

  Checkers looked at Chess.

  “Hello,” Checkers said to Arnold.

  “How are you?” he asked. He looked scared.

  “I’m okay.”

  Arnold looked at Chess, then back at Checkers.

  “Can we talk?” he asked.

  “About what?” Checkers asked.

  “About us.”

  “Yeah, I guess so.”

  The three all looked uncomfortable, exchanged glances, stared at the floor, walls, and ceiling.

  “I’m sorry for everything,” Arnold said.

  “You should be.”

  “This is all my fault. I led you on.”

  “Well,” Checkers said, “none of that matters much now. We’re leaving the reservation. So you don’t have to worry about me. I’m leaving and you can stay.”

  “You’re leaving?” Arnold asked, feeling a combination of sadness and relief.

  “We’re moving to Spokane. Chess got a job as a telephone operator.”

  “When are you leaving?”

  “Soon,” Checkers said and reached under the bed. “And here’s a bottle of your Communion wine. I stole it because I was mad at you.”

  “Why’d you steal that?” Chess asked, shocked at her sister.

  “I was going to get drunk. But then Junior shot himself.”

  Arnold took the bottle. There was a long silence.

  “Do you forgive me?” Checkers asked Arnold.

  “Yes, do you forgive me?”

  “I don’t know. Am I allowed to?”

  “Yes, you’re allowed to.”

  “Well, then. I don’t think I do. Not yet. I mean, I still love you. I still feel that, you know? It ain’t like that changes. But I can still tell you to shove your God up your ass. But I don’t know if I mean it. I don’t know what I mean. I don’t know nothing, and you don’t know any more than I do.”

  Arnold didn’t say anything. He agreed with Checkers. He’d been just all of the other performers in the world. He’d wanted to be universally loved. He wasn’t all that different from Victor, Thomas, or even Junior. They all got onstage and wanted the audience to believe in them. They all wanted the audience to throw their room keys, panties, confessions, flowers, and songs onstage. They wanted the audience to trust them with all their secrets. But Victor, Thomas, and Junior had fallen apart in the face of all of that. Arnold had fallen apart, too. Junior could never be put back together again, but maybe the rest of them could.

  “Discipline,” Father Arnold said with much difficulty. It was only one word, but he needed to find the one word that would make Chess and Checkers understand. “I knew how to pray with discipline. I can do it again.”

  Chess and Checkers both understood but still felt suspicious. They’d grown up with priests and their churches. The sisters had loved them all. The sisters had loved to kneel in the pew and pray in exactly the way they’d been taught. For years, the sisters said those same prayers over and over, as if sheer repetition could guarantee results. As if their little prayers had a cumulative effect on God, adding one on top of another, until all of their prayers were as tall as a priest’s single prayer.

  “Checkers,” Father Arnold said, “I can’t believe you stole the Communion wine.”

  “Enit?” Checkers asked. “Not very original, was it?”

  “No,” Father said. “And that stuff is awful anyway. How did you ever think
you could drink it?”

  “Discipline,” Checkers said and laughed. Chess and Father Arnold laughed, too. But it was forced, awkward, as if everything depended on it.

  After Victor left Thomas’s house in the blue van, he drove around for a few hours before he finally parked at Turtle Lake. There was nobody else around. He turned on the radio and heard Freddy Fender.

  “Junior,” Victor said. “What the fuck did you do?”

  Victor closed his eyes and saw Junior sitting in the passenger seat when he opened them. Junior looked exactly like someone who had shot himself in the head with a rifle.

  “Happy reservation fucking Halloween,” Junior said, and Victor screamed, which made Junior scream, too. They traded screams for a while.

  “So,” Junior said after the screams had stopped, “are you happy to see me?”

  “Jesus,” Victor said. “What do you think this is? An American Werewolf in London? You’re supposed to be a ghost, not a piece of raw meat.

  “Ya-hey,” Junior said. “Good one.”

  “I don’t believe this,” Victor said and closed his eyes. He heard a rifle blast. He was shaking.

  “Are you going to miss me?”

  Victor opened his eyes and looked at Junior. He didn’t know what to feel.

  “I’m going to miss getting drunk with you,” Victor said.

  “Oh, yeah, enit? We had some good times, didn’t we?”

  Victor smiled. Junior pulled a silver flask out of his coat and offered it to Victor.

  “Hey, look,” Junior said, “somebody put this in my coffin during the wake. Was it you? Must be worth fifty bucks. Maybe you can hock it. I don’t really need it where I’m going.”

  Victor took the flask, opened it, and sniffed.

  “It’s whiskey,” Victor said. “It must’ve been Father Arnold. You know those priests.”

  “Sure. Take a drink.”

  “I don’t know, man. I’ve been thinking about going on the wagon.”

  “Since when?”

  “Since you killed yourself. I ain’t drunk any since then, you know?”

  Junior and Victor stared at the silver flask.

  “It’s pretty, enit?” Junior asked.

  “Yeah,” Victor said. “I wonder if Father Arnold really gave it to you.”

  “Maybe.”

  Victor was nervous. He’d never talked to the dead before. It felt like a first date.

  “This feels like a first date, enit?” Junior asked.

  “Yeah, it does.”

  “So,” Junior said, “am I going to get lucky?”

  Both laughed. There was silence. They laughed at the silence. There was more silence.

  “Why’d you do it?” Victor asked.

  “Do what?”

  “You know, shoot yourself. In the head.”

  “You know,” Junior said, “I heard some people talking at the Trading Post after I did it. They thought I couldn’t hear them. But I could. They said I didn’t mean to kill myself. That I was just looking for attention. Assholes.”

  “Some people sent you flowers, though, did you see?”

  “Yeah, the assholes.”

  Silence.

  “You know,” Junior said, “I really am going to miss getting drunk with you. Remember when we used to go out chasing white women? Before you got fat and ugly.”

  “Fat and ugly, my ass. Those white women loved me.”

  “Do you remember Betty and Veronica?”

  “Of course.”

  “Those two weren’t bad,” Junior said. “Maybe we should’ve held on to them.”

  “Yeah, maybe. Junior, why’d you do it?”

  “Do what?”

  “Kill yourself.”

  Junior looked away, watching the sunlight reflecting off Turtle Lake.

  “Because life is hard,” Junior said.

  “That’s it?”

  “That’s the whole story, folks. I wanted to be dead. Gone. No more.”

  “Why?”

  “Because when I closed my eyes like Thomas, I didn’t see a damn thing. Nothing. Zilch. No stories, no songs. Nothing.”

  Victor looked down at the silver flask of whiskey in his hands. He wanted to take a drink. He wanted that guitar back, still dreamed about it every night.

  “And,” Junior added, “because I didn’t want to be drunk no more.”

  Victor rolled down his window and threw the flask out into Turtle Lake. It sank quickly.

  “I don’t need that no more,” Victor said. “I’m going on the wagon.”

  “Here,” Junior said and handed Victor another flask. “You better throw this one out, too.” How many of these you got?”

  “A whole bunch. We better get to work.”

  “What are we going to do after this?” Victor asked.

  “Well, I’ve got other places to go. But I think you should go get yourself a goddamn job. I ain’t going to be around to take care of your sorry ass anymore.”

  Like some alcoholic magician, Junior pulled flask after flask from his clothes and handed them to Victor, who threw them out the window into Turtle Lake. Those silver flasks floated down through the lake rumored to have no bottom, rumored to be an extinct volcano, and came to rest miles below the surface.

  Big Mom lit the sage, and Chess, Checkers, and Thomas bathed themselves in the smoke. They pulled the smoke through their hair, over their legs and arms, into their open mouths.

  “Who do you want to pray for?” Big Mom asked.

  “Everybody.”

  Big Mom picked up a 45 record with her huge hands and gently placed it on the turntable. She placed needle to vinyl, and they all waited together for the music.

  Spokane Tribal Chairman David WalksAlong sat in his office, thinking about his nephew Michael White Hawk, when Victor came looking for a job. His nephew had been getting progressively worse, going from wandering around the football field in confused circles to drinking Sterno with the Android Brothers behind the Trading Post. All those half-crazy Sterno drunks talked some kind of gibberish to each other that only they understood. WalksAlong was wondering if he should just shoot his nephew in the head and end his misery, just like that Junior Polatkin ended his own misery.

  “What the fuck do you want?” WalksAlong asked Victor when he walked into the office, pushing open that warped door. Victor’d worked up all the courage in the world to come to WalksAlong.

  “They said you’re the one who decides who gets to work. I want a job,” Victor said. “Please.”

  “Look what you did to the reservation, and you want me to give you a job?”

  “I’m sorry about your nephew,” Victor said, but he wanted to tell WalksAlong that his nephew never had a chance.

  “Well,” WalksAlong said, “what the hell can you do?”

  Victor handed him a piece of paper.

  “What the hell is this?” WalksAlong asked.

  “It’s my résumé.”

  “Your résumé?” WalksAlong asked, in complete disbelief. “What do you think this is, Wall Street?”

  “I thought this was the way it worked,” Victor said. “Enit?”

  WalksAlong read the résumé, crumpled it up, and threw it at Victor.

  “Get the fuck out of here,” WalksAlong said.

  Victor picked his résumé off the floor, smoothed it out, then folded it neatly into a small square, and tucked it into his pocket. His hands were shaking.

  “Listen,” Victor said, his voice breaking. “I thought this was the way it worked.”

  WalksAlong turned his back. Victor tried to think of something to say, some words that would change all of this.

  “I want to drive the water truck,” Victor said. “Just like Junior used to. I want to be like Junior. It was his last wish.”

  WalksAlong didn’t respond, and Victor left the office, feeling something slip inside him. He stole five dollars from WalksAlong’s secretary’s purse and bought a six-pack of cheap beer at the Trading Post.

  �
�Fuck it, I can do it, too,” Victor whispered to himself and opened the first can. That little explosion of the beer can opening sounded exactly like a smaller, slower version of the explosion that Junior’s rifle made on the water tower.

  From The Wellpinit Rawhide Press:

  Father Arnold Leads Catholics to Championship

  Father Arnold scored 33 points Tuesday night, including the game-winning free throws with no time left on the clock, to lead the Catholic Church to a thrilling come-from-behind 111–110 win over the Assembly of God in the championship game of the Spokane Indian Christian Basketball Tournament.

  “I wasn’t sure those free throws were going in,” Father Arnold said, “but I sure prayed for them. Who knows? Maybe God was listening this time.”

  Randy Peone, minister of the Assembly of God, had no official comment about the game, but was reported to have said that Father Arnold had probably spent more time away from the church than with his church, and that explained all the time he had to practice.

  “He just didn’t play like a Catholic,” one spectator said. “Especially not like a Catholic priest.”

  “Hey,” responded Bessie, the oldest Catholic on the reservation, “what the hell do any of you know about being Catholic? You have no idea how hard it is.”

  A few days after Junior’s burial, while Chess and Checkers were taking a sweat with Big Mom, Thomas Builds-the-Fire heard a scratching on his roof. At first, he wondered which ghost had come to haunt him. But then he heard a knock on the back door.

  “Who is it?” Thomas asked. He was still worried about Michael White Hawk.

  “Package,” the voice said.

  Thomas opened the door just a bit and saw the FedEx guy standing on the back porch, with rappelling gear.

  “Jeez,” Thomas said. “It’s just you.”

  “Mr. Builds-the-Fire, I presume,” said the FedEx guy.

  “You know who I am.”

  “We can never be too sure. Sign here.”

  Thomas signed the form. The FedEx guy handed him a package and then climbed back onto the roof and scampered away. Thomas closed the door, took the package inside, and set it on the kitchen table. It was a small package, barely weighed anything at all. The return address said Cavalry Records. He didn’t want to open it and almost threw it in the garbage, but curiosity got the best of him. Inside, there was just a letter and a cassette tape.