“Checkers,” Father Arnold said, “I’m so happy to see you again. And this must be your sister, Chess. And Thomas, of course. Welcome.”
Thomas waved weakly.
“Well,” Father Arnold said, “I’m so glad you’ve all come. I certainly hope you’re considering joining our little community. Maybe you’ll even sing in the choir?”
“Maybe,” Thomas said and looked to Chess and Checkers for help. Checkers stared at Father Arnold and failed to notice Thomas’s distress. Chess smiled back at Thomas and grabbed his hand. She held it tightly as they made their way into the church and found seats. Checkers went to the dressing room to change into her choir robe. Father Arnold shook hands up to the front of the church.
“Are you okay?” Chess asked.
Thomas nodded his head and pulled at the collar of his shirt. The church was hot, and he grew dizzier by the second. He nearly fainted as Father Arnold began the service. After all those years, Thomas still remembered the words to all the prayers and whispered along, more by habit than faith. Chess whispered beside him, and he loved the sound of their harmony.
“Lord, hear our prayer.”
Checkers sang loudly in the choir. Thomas watched her closely. She watched Father Arnold.
“You’re right about her,” Thomas whispered to Chess. “She’s nuts about him.”
“Enit?” Chess said. “I told you so.”
Thomas wished for a glass of water as Father Arnold began the homily. At first, Thomas followed the words, something about redemption, but his vision soon faded. He had never felt this way before. When he opened his eyes again, he was in a different, darker place.
Thomas, Father Arnold said, although Thomas knew the priest was still back in the church. Thomas, why are you here?
Thomas shook his head, tried to wake up, but felt the heat increase instead. He closed his eyes inside his dream, opened them again, and found himself in a sweatlodge. Inside there, it was too dark to see, but Thomas knew the smell and feel of a sweatlodge. He could also sense the presence of others inside the lodge.
The next brother, please, a voice said out of the darkness.
Thomas knew he was supposed to pray next. He could pray silently, and that would be respected. He could pray aloud, scream and cry, and that would be understood. If he sang, his brothers in the sweatlodge would sing with him.
Brothers, Thomas said, I don’t have any traditional songs. I don’t even know if I belong here. I don’t know if anybody belongs in here. People are listening to us pray. They have come into the sweatlodge to steal from us. We have to keep our songs private and hidden. There is somebody in here now who would steal from us. I can smell him.
Somebody splashed water on the hot rocks in the middle of the sweatlodge. Steam rose; quiet laughter drifted. Thomas could barely breathe. He saw images of people just beyond his vision, heard strange voices, felt the rustle of an animal beside him. That animal brushed against Thomas and drew blood.
All my relations, Thomas cried out, and the door was opened.
Thomas, a feral voice cried out as Thomas escaped from the sweatlodge. He ran past the campfire, heard the animal crashing through the underbrush behind him. The smell, the smell. He tripped, fell for an immeasurable time, and woke up suddenly in the Catholic Church in Wellpinit.
“Welcome back,” Chess said to Thomas as he opened his eyes. “I didn’t think Catholics were that boring.”
Thomas shook his head, shrugged his shoulders.
“Peace,” Chess said as she left the pew.
“Peace,” Thomas said at her back.
“Peace be with you,” an old Indian woman said to Thomas, but he heard pleased to meet you.
“Pleased to meet you, too,” he said.
The old woman looked puzzled, then smiled.
“You’re that Builds-the-Fire, enit?” she asked.
“Yeah.”
“I’m glad to see you here. I’m glad you quit that band. That rock and roll music is sinful.”
Thomas nodded his head blankly.
“I can’t tell you how happy we were to see that Checkers in here last week. She was saved, she was saved. Now, you’ve come and her sister, too. People were starting to talk, you know?”
The old Indian woman knelt in the pew. Thomas knelt, with no idea where Chess had gone. Then he saw her with the Communion wafers. Father Arnold worked quickly.
“This is the body, this is the blood. This is the body, this is the blood. This is the body, this is the blood.”
“What are people saying about us?” Thomas asked the old woman.
“The Christians don’t like your devil’s music. The traditionals don’t like your white man’s music. The Tribal Council don’t like you’re more famous than they are. Nobody likes those white women with you. We spit in their shadows. We don’t want them here.”
“But what about Father Arnold? He’s white.”
“He’s a good white man. Those women in your band are trouble.”
“But everybody liked us before.”
“Before you left the reservation, before you left.”
The old woman rose to receive Communion, and Thomas followed her down the aisle. Checkers sang the Communion hymn wonderfully. Thomas knew she had to rejoin the band. Coyote Springs needed two Indian women, not two white women. If Checkers rejoined, Betty and Veronica could be voted out by a majority. Thomas had felt the change in the reservation air but ignored it. At the two rehearsals they’d held since they returned from Seattle, only Lester FallsApart had shown up.
“But we still live here,” Thomas said to the old woman.
“But you left. Once is enough.”
The old woman opened her mouth to take Communion; Thomas offered his cupped hands. Father Arnold placed the wafer gently in Thomas’s hands.
“Amen,” Thomas whispered, palmed the wafer, and pretended to eat it. He walked back to his pew but discovered that the old Indian woman had gone. He searched for some evidence of her but found nothing. He knelt in the pew again, made a quick sign of the cross. Then he ran outside, crumbled the wafer into pieces, and let it fall to the earth. The reservation swallowed those pieces hungrily. Not sure why he even took the Communion wafer in the first place, Thomas felt the weight of God, the reservation, and all the stories between.
Victor and Junior staggered into the Trading Post just a few minutes after the Catholic Church bells rang for the second time that morning. Both had been continually drunk since they returned from Seattle, spending their $200 prize money quickly and efficiently. They were rapidly depleting Betty’s and Veronica’s cash, too. The-man-who-was-probably-Lakota watched Junior and Victor and shook his head. He also noticed the two white women and offered them a silent prayer.
“Ladies and gentlemen!” Victor shouted. “Elvis is dead. Long live me!”
Victor and Junior stumbled around the Trading Post and searched for the beer cooler. Betty and Veronica gave up and walked back outside.
“What the hell are we doing here?” Veronica asked Betty.
“I don’t know.”
The white women had left their car in a garage in Seattle. They knew the price to get out rose a little higher with every hour that passed.
“The end of the world is near!” shouted the-man-who-was-probably-Lakota.
“We know,” Betty and Veronica said.
Inside the Trading Post, Michael White Hawk watched Victor and Junior stumble up and down the aisles.
“Dose fuckers think they cool,” White Hawk said to a loaf of bread as Victor and Junior finally found the beer cooler. They celebrated their discovery and pulled out a case of cheap beer.
“Do we got enough?” Junior asked.
“Enough’s enough,” Victor said.
“What the hell’s that mean?”
“Don’t know.”
Junior and Victor pooled their change and carried their beer to the cashier.
“We got enough, enit?” Victor asked.
“
No sales tax, remember?” Junior said.
They paid for their booze, made their way outside, and shielded their eyes against the sudden sunlight. Michael White Hawk followed them, took advantage of the opportunity, and knocked the beer from Junior’s and Victor’s arms. A few cans split open and beer fountained out.
“Shit,” Victor said. “What’s wrong with you?”
“Fuckers!” White Hawk screamed. “Thinkin’ you better than us ’cause you fuckin’ white women. You ain’t shit.”
“I ain’t shit?” Victor said. “You ain’t shit.”
Junior picked up a beer can and popped it open.
“Jeez, Michael,” Junior said and offered him the can. “If you want a beer, just ask for one.”
“Don’t want shit from you,” Michael said and knocked the beer from Junior.
A crowd gathered suddenly, because people always circle around a potential fight quickly. Betty and Veronica joined the circle, frightened and excited.
“Make them stop,” Betty shouted, but nobody paid much attention to her.
“Come on,” White Hawk said. “Goin’ kick your ass.”
“Fuck you,” Junior and Victor harmonized.
White Hawk rushed them and knocked both to the ground. He kicked and stomped on Junior and Victor, who were too drunk to fight back. They just curled into fetal balls and waited for it to end. The crowd cheered. A few rooted openly for White Hawk; most celebrated the general violence of it all. Betty and Veronica attacked White Hawk, clawed and punched, but he fought them off. He threw Betty against the phone booth; he backhanded Veronica and broke her nose. White Hawk was blind with rage. He might have beat the shit out of everybody, but the-man-who-was-probably-Lakota stepped through a gap in the crowd and cold-cocked him with a stray two-by-four.
“Jeez,” said one of the Android brothers to the-man-who-was-probably-Lakota. “The end of the world is upside White Hawk’s head, enit?”
“The end of the world wasn’t supposed to start here. Not with me.”
The Tribal Police and Emergency Medical Technicians showed up an hour later. The Indian EMTs stuffed Victor, Junior, and White Hawk into the same ambulance and transported them to Spokane for medical attention. All three were unconscious and had concussions. Betty and Veronica were treated on the spot. Betty held a cold pack to her bruised back, while Veronica had two Kleenexes stuffed up her nostrils. She refused to let anybody take her anywhere.
“What the fuck are we doing here?” Veronica asked Betty.
“I don’t know,” Betty said.
The Tribal Police dispersed the crowd and then went into the Trading Post for lunch. Coffee and microwave chili.
The ambulance ride was an adventure. White Hawk woke up and tried to continue the fight, but the EMT with braids smacked him with an oxygen tank. Reservation emergency medical training covered a lot of situations. White Hawk was bleeding from two head wounds when they pulled into the hospital.
“What happened here?” the emergency room doctor asked the EMT with braids.
“Car wreck,” the EMT lied. He had his orders handed down directly from the Tribal Council. The Council always tried to keep white people’s laws off the reservation. White Hawk had violated his parole by fighting, but the Council was more interested in maintaining tribal sovereignty than in putting him back in a white jail. Besides, Victor and Junior were drunk, and drunk Indians usually had a way of avoiding serious injury. Above all, White Hawk was Dave WalksAlong’s nephew, and that counted for everything.
“Shit,” the doctor said. “Car wrecks are an Olympic sport for you Indians.”
“Bronze medals all around,” the EMT said. “These three lived.”
The nurses sterilized and bandaged the Spokanes, kept them overnight for observation, and ignored them until check-out.
“You guys weren’t in any car wreck,” the white doctor said to the three Spokanes before they were sent back to the reservation.
White Hawk was sentenced only to a few weeks in Tribal Jail. Junior and Victor moved into Thomas’s house the day after they returned to the reservation, because White Hawk’s buddies had ransacked their house and stole all the furniture.
“Men with concussions should not sleep on floors,” Victor said as he plopped down on the couch in Thomas’s house. Junior just lay down in the corner, holding his aching head.
Minutes after Junior and Victor returned from the hospital, Betty and Veronica packed up their bags and waited outside for a ride to Spokane. Thomas stood outside his house with the white women and considered moving, too. He didn’t want to live with his lead guitarist and drummer.
“Where the hell you two going?” Chess asked.
“Wherever,” Betty said.
“Listen,” Veronica said, “we just want a ride to Spokane. We’ll catch a Greyhound back home to Seattle. It’s nuts here.”
“Jeez,” Chess said, “I thought you wanted some of our wisdom.”
“We didn’t want it to be like this,” Veronica said. “How were we supposed to know? Everybody always spits on our shadows. What the hell does that mean? I mean, we’re walking down the street, minding our own business, and an old Indian woman spits on our shadows. What the hell is that?”
“What?” Chess asked. “Can’t you handle it? You want the good stuff of being Indian without all the bad stuff, enit? Well, a concussion is just as traditional as a sweatlodge.”
“This isn’t what we wanted.”
“What did you New Agers expect? You think magic is so easy to explain? You come running to the reservations, to all these places you’ve decided are sacred. Jeez, don’t you know every place is sacred? You want your sacred land in warm places with pretty views. You want the sacred places to be near malls and 7-Elevens, too.”
“You’re nuts,” Veronica said. “Just plain nuts. Almonds and cashews. Walnuts and pecans.”
“Okay, okay,” Thomas said. “That’s enough. I’ll give you a ride to town.”
Thomas, Betty, and Veronica packed up the van and headed off. Chess and Checkers stood in the yard and watched them go.
“I don’t know,” Checkers said. “Those two women could really sing.”
“What?” Chess asked.
“We should’ve kept them. They could really sing.”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about. Besides, you’re not even in the band anymore.”
“Well, I might have been. It would have been cool to have white women singing backup for us Indian women. It’s usually the other way around.”
“Yeah, maybe.”
Checkers and Chess went back inside the house to check on Junior and Victor, while Thomas drove the blue van down the driveway.
“Indian men with concussions should not get their own glasses of water,” Victor said as Chess and Checkers walked into the house.
“Indian men with concussions should not irritate Indian women with access to blunt objects,” Chess said.
The blue van rolled down the highway, past all the pine trees and rocks filled with graffiti, RUNNING BEAR LLOVES LITTLE WHITE DOVE. That van rolled past the HUD houses with generations of cars up on blocks, past Indian kids standing idly on the side of the road. Not hitchhiking, not going anywhere at all. Just standing there to watch traffic. One car every ten minutes or so.
“What is it about this place?” Betty asked and waved her arms around.
“What do you mean?” Thomas asked. “What place?”
“She wants to know what’s wrong with all of it,” Veronica said.
“Wrong with all of what?”
“This reservation, you Indians.”
Thomas smiled.
“There’s a whole bunch wrong with white people, too,” he said. “Ain’t nothing gone wrong on the reservation that hasn’t gone wrong everywhere else.”
Thomas drove off the reservation, through the wheat fields past Fairchild Air Force Base, and into Spokane. The Greyhound Station was, of course, in the worst section of town.
/> “You sure you’ll be all right here?” Thomas asked as Betty and Veronica climbed out of the van.
“What’s the difference between here and the reservation?”
“More pine trees on the reservation,” Thomas said.
Betty and Veronica walked into the bus station. Thomas was about to drive away when Betty stepped back out of the station. She waved. Thomas waved and drove home.
Coyote Springs spent most of their time in Thomas’s house over the next few weeks. They ventured out for food but were mostly greeted with hateful stares and silence. They didn’t go to church. Only a few people showed any support. Fights broke out between the supporters and enemies of Coyote Springs. After a while, the Trading Post refused to let Coyote Springs in the door because there had been so many fights. The Tribal Council even held an emergency meeting to discuss the situation.
“I move we excommunicate them from the Tribe,” Dave WalksAlong said. “They are creating an aura of violence in our community.”
The Tribe narrowly voted to keep Coyote Springs but deadlocked on the vote to kick Chess and Checkers off the reservation.
“They’re not even Spokanes,” WalksAlong argued. The Council was trying to break the tie when Lester FallsApart staggered into the meeting, cast his vote to keep Chess and Checkers, and passed out.
Chess and Checkers sat in the kitchen of Thomas’s house and chewed on wish sandwiches. Two slices of bread with only wishes in between.
“Jeez,” Chess said, “maybe we should go back to Arlee. They like us there. How come all the Indians like us, except the Indians from here?”
“I’m not leaving,” Checkers said and thought of Father Arnold. “And besides, we don’t have money to leave. What are we going to do when we get to Arlee?”
“We don’t have much money left to live here.”
The $1,000 prize money from the Battle of the Bands had disappeared. Thomas, Junior, and Victor had each received his monthly stipend of commodity food, but that wouldn’t last long. Thomas called small record companies in Spokane, but they weren’t interested in the band.
“Indians?” those record companies said. “You mean like drums and stuff? That howling kind of singing? We can’t afford to make a record that ain’t going to sell. Sorry.”