Reservation Blues - Alexie Sherman (32 page)

"Would you like some headphones?" the
attendant had asked Checkers during the flight home from Manhattan.
Checkers just shook her head. The rest of Coyote Springs refused the
headphones, too.

Checkers sat next to the window, Chess in the middle,
and Thomas in the aisle seat. Junior and Victor sat directly across
the aisle, one on either side of an empty seat. It was the only empty
seat on the plane.

Coyote Springs didn't have much to say on the way
home. They all drank their complimentary Pepsis and ate their roasted
peanuts. Junior and Victor didn't order any booze. They didn't have
the money. They might not have drank anyway, even if given the
chance. After they returned home, both just sipped at tall glasses of
ice water

"Thomas and I had a talk," Chess whispered
to Checkers somewhere over Iowa."We're going to move back to
Arlee. We want you to come with us."

"Why Arlee?" Checkers asked.

"
What do you mean? Those are our people. We
don't have anywhere else to go anyway."

"We can go anywhere. We can stay on the Spokane
Reservation."

"
Jeez, Checkers. Will you get your head out of
your ass? They don't want us there anymore."

"How do you know that?" Checkers
asked."Besides, it's only that White Hawk causing all the
trouble. The people at the church still like me."

"
They only liked you because you quit the band,"
Chess said."And all you're worried about is Father Arnold
anyway."

The plane bounced through rough air, but Coyote
Springs barely noticed. Junior looked out his window and wondered how
he would feel if the plane lost power and began the long dive to the
ground. The oxygen masks would drop from the ceiling while the flight
attendants rushed from row to row, speaking in calm and practiced
tones.

Remove your eyewear. Remove all Jewelry. Make sure
the aisles are clear. Buckle yourself in tightly. We're going to make
it. We're going to make it. Don't panic. Panic is your enemy. Don't
feel guily that you left college in the middle if an English class.
During a boring discussion about the proper way to write an essay.
Remember that you had no idea she was going to get an abortion. It's
not your fault. You didn't want the baby either. Not really. Not
until she didn't want you anymore. Not until she didn't want some
halfbreed baby. Not until you thought about how much her parents
hated you. How they deserved a halfbreed grandchild. How would they
explain it to their friends? Please, breathe slowly. Hold on to the
hand of the person next to you at impact. Don't let them go. Don't
let them go even when the flames roll through the cabin and melt you
into your seat. She had no other choice. She had no other choice. Our
pilot has thousands of hours of flying experience. The whole crew has
been trained to deal with these emergencies. No matter what happens,
the coroners will be able to identify you fom your dental records.
Indian Health Service keeps excellent records. And if you do survive
the impact, survive the flames and the toxic smoke, then you will
hear music. A cedar flute perhaps. Follow that music. Even though you
don't deserve it. Follow that thin music.

Junior closed his eyes and listened for the music. He
didn't hear anything. He looked over at Victor, who was fighting back
tears. Chess, Checkers, and Thomas could not have seen Victor from
where they sat. Nobody could have known exactly why he was in
mourning. The rest of Coyote Springs might have assumed it was
because he had lost his chance to be a rock star. But he mourned for
the loss of that guitar. Junior watched his best friend mourn, but he
wanted to reach across the seat, touch Victor's arms, and point out
the exits.

"You can't leave," Checkers said to Father
Arnold."You can't leave me, us, alone."

"The Bishop will send another priest, "
Father Arnold said.

"They won't have any other option. They can't
leave the community alone. I'm sure the new priest will be here soon.
They can arrange for a few visitors to conduct the services until he
arrives."

"That's not what I mean. You know that's not
what I mean."

Father Arnold searched his soul for the right words,
the right prayer. He had always had them before. God, he had been
sure of the answers. Self-deprecating and modest, he had still
believed he was a great priest. He knew he was a great priest, in a
quietly arrogant way. On some spiritual scoreboard in his head, he
had kept count of the people he was saving.

Checkers had taken all that away. No. That wasn't
fair to Checkers. She didn't love him any more than other
parishioners had. Father Arnold had resisted advances before. It
happened to priests often enough to warrant a few good-natured jokes
in the seminary. But Checkers had truly shaken Father Arnold and his
vows. He dreamed about her every night. In those dreams, she led him
into a tipi, lay down with him on a robe, and touched him. Frightened
and aroused, Father Arnold woke and prayed that his dreamcatcher
would work. He prayed that his dreams of Checkers would be trapped in
the dreamcatcher's web.

"
I dream about you," Father Arnold said to
Checkers.

"
I dream about you, too."

"
No," Arnold said. "I don't want to
dream about you. I'm a man of God. I belong to God."

Checkers reached for Father Arnold, but he stood and
stepped away. He had always loved how his flock kept a respectable
distance away, coming closer only with his permission.

"I'm sorry," he said."But you need to
leave. I need to leave."

Father Arnold reached out to Checkers, reconsidered,
and then quickly walked out of the church. Checkers didn't follow
him. She leaned back in the pew and stared at the crucifix nailed to
the wall. Jesus nailed to the cross that's nailed to the wall. She
felt a sharp ache deep in her chest. She curled her knees up next to
her breasts, wrapped her arms around her legs, and slowly rocked back
and forth, back and forth.

* * *

On the day before Checkers made her escape to the
Catholic Church, Victor Joseph sat alone on the couch. The rest of
Coyote Springs was out on the front lawn, talking to the Tribal Cops.
Victor had no use for Tribal Cops, even if they were supposedly
protecting him. Victor stared at the space in the room where the
television used to sit. Upon their arrival home, Coyote Springs had
thrown out the television, which didn't work anyway, three radios,
and a pair of squeaky cowboy boots. They didn't want to hear any kind
of music. Victor stared at that space until he fell asleep. In his
dream, Victor sat alone in the house and heard a soft noise in the
distance. At first, he thought it was the conversation outside, but
the noise took shape and became a C chord, then a D, F, and G. He
clapped his hands to his ears, but the music would not stop. He stood
and looked out the window at his bandmates and the cops, but they
Just continued, oblivious to the music. He searched the house for the
source. The two bedrooms were empty, as were the bathroom and
kitchen. The music grew louder as Victor descended the stairs. In the
unfinished basement, the blankets that served as walls swayed with
the force of the chords. Victor searched under the stairs, in the
bedrooms, and still couldn't find the source. He opened up the
downstairs bathroom door and was knocked back by a vicious open
chord. The guitar was leaning against the wall.

I
think you left something
behind in New York
, said the guitar. Victor
stepped inside the bathroom, shut the door behind him, and reached
for it.

Take it easy there, the guitar said. You can have
me back. You can take me and you can be anybody you want to be. You
can have anything you want to have. But you have to trade me for it.

Trade what?
Victor asked.

You have to give up what you love the most, said
the guitar. What do you love the most? Who do you love the most?

Outside, while Victor dreamt, Junior Polatkin thought
he heard his name called out. He looked at the Tribal Cops, who just
continued to flirt with Chess and Checkers. The Warm Water sisters
ignored the Tribal Cops and talked to each other. Thomas sat on an
old tire swing. Junior heard his name again and recognized Victor's
voice. He looked toward the house, but he was the only one who heard
it. Junior heard Victor whisper his name.

* * *

On the night before Victor Joseph dreamed about the
guitar, Thomas Builds-the-Fire and Chess Warm Water lay awake in bed.
Both assumed Checkers was fast asleep on the floor, but she listened
to their whispered conversation.

"Thomas," Chess said, "what are we
going to do?"

"I don't know," Thomas said."What do
you want to do?"

"I want to go back to Arlee."

Thomas didn't say anything. He stared up at the
stained ceiling. Water stains. He remembered the rain that had
pounded his roof, seeped through the insulation, pooled in the
crawlspace, and then dripped down onto the bed.

"I want to go back to Arlee," Chess said
again."You said we could go back to Arlee."

Thomas had agreed to go back to Arlee as Coyote
Springs waited in Kennedy Airport in New York. He had never felt
farther away, never felt more away than at that moment. He didn't
want to get on the plane for the flight home to Wellpinit. He wanted
to get on a different plane and fly to someplace different, somewhere
he had never even heard of. Some strange place with a strange name.
He wanted to grab a map of the world, close his eyes, and spit. He
would live wherever his spit landed on the map. Still, he knew he
would probably spit on his own reservation, Just a green-colored spot
on the map.

"
I'll go wherever you want to go," Thomas
had said but still knew that every part of him was Spokane Indian.

"Good," Chess had said, but she also saw
the doubt in Thomas's eyes. She knew what it felt like to leave her
own reservation. She had felt something stretch inside her as that
blue van pulled off the Flathead Reservation all those weeks ago. She
had looked back and felt a sharp pain, like the tearing of tendon and
ligament from bone. She had left her reservation because of that
goddamn guitar, that sudden fire it had lit inside her. But that fire
had consumed almost everything, and despite her years of firefighting
experience, she had not been able to stop it. She had not dug fire
lines, had not provided herself with a quick escape route. She loved
the music, she loved Thomas, she loved the fire. But Thomas was all
that she had left, and the Spokane Indian Reservation was threatening
to keep him.

"
Thomas, " she had said just before their
flight number was called.

"What?" he asked.

She had taken his hand in hers, studied the way their
fingers fit together, and almost wanted to stay there in the airport
forever. She had almost wanted to stay suspended between here and
there, between location and destination. She squeezed Thomas's hand
and waited.

"There's nothing left here for us," Chess
said to Thomas in bed. "There's nothing left here for you."

"
I know," Thomas said."But they're my
people. They're my Tribe."

"Of course. But the Flatheads are my people. And
they ain't threatening to kill us."

"
Not everybody wants to kill us. Nobody wants to
kill us. They're Just talking. We Just let them down."

"Don't make excuses for them. You don't need to
make excuses for them."

Checkers rolled over on the floor. She knew her
movement would make Thomas and Chess stop talking. She didn't want to
go back to the Flathead Reservation, and she didn't want Chess to
convince Thomas to move. Even if Chess and Thomas left, Checkers knew
she would remain behind. Indians were always switching reservations
anyway. For love, for money, to escape jail time. Checkers was still
thinking of Father Arnold.

"
Thomas," Chess said after a long
silence."Are you still awake?"

"Yeah."

"We don't have to go to Arlee. I mean, I really
want to go home. But mostly, I just want to leave here. I don't want
to be here anymore."

"Where would we go?"

"
I don't know. Anywhere but here. Maybe we
should go west. All the white people did and look what they got."

"
What's west of here?"

"Everything's west of here, Thomas. Everything.
We could move to Spokane. Is that west enough?"

Spokane, a mostly white city, sat on the banks of the
Spokane River. Spokane the city was named after the Tribe that had
been forcibly removed from the river. Spokane was only sixty miles
from the reservation, but Thomas figured it was no closer than the
moon.

There was nobody waiting for Coyote Springs in the
Spokane International Airport when they deboarded the plane. They had
crossed three time zones and still had no idea how they worked.

"It's like fucking time travel," Victor
said.

Coyote Springs had waited at the baggage carousel
until all the passengers had picked up their luggage. All except
Victor. All the other passengers on the plane had been greeted by
family and friends who took the luggage from their hands. All the
other passengers had already left the airport. Coyote Springs waited
for Victor's bag.