Reservation Blues

7. Big Mom

THERE’S A GRANDMOTHER TALKING to me

There’s a grandmother talking to you

There’s a grandmother singing for me

There’s a grandmother singing for you

And if you stop and listen

You might hear what you been missing

And if you stop and listen

You might hear what you been missing

And I hear Big Mom

Telling me another story

And I hear Big Mom

Singing me another song

And she says

I’ll be coming back

I’ll be coming back

I’ll be coming back for you

I’ll be coming back

I’ll be coming back

I’ll be coming back for you

I’ll always come back for you

(repeat)

Coyote Springs carried two guitars, a drum set, and a keyboard up the hill toward Big Mom’s house. She lived in a blue house on the top of Wellpinit Mountain. She was a Spokane Indian with a little bit of Flathead blood thrown in for good measure. But she was more than that. She was a part of every tribe.

There were a million stories about Big Mom. But no matter how many stories were told, some Indians still refused to believe in her. Even though she lived on the reservation, some Spokanes still doubted her. Junior and Victor once saw Big Mom walk across Benjamin Pond but quickly erased it from memory. Junior and Victor had limited skills, but they were damn good at denial.

“Who the hell is Big Mom?” Victor had asked.

“You know who she is,” Thomas said. “You’re just pretending you don’t know about her. You’re just scared.”

“I ain’t scared of nothing. Especially somebody named Big Mom. What the hell does that mean anyway?”

“She’s powerful medicine,” Thomas said. “The most powerful medicine. I can’t believe she called for us.”

“Oh,” Victor said, “don’t tell me she’s some medicine woman or something. That’s all a bunch of crap. It don’t work.”

“Big Mom works.”

“And besides, why did she address that letter to Thomas. We’re a band, you know?”

“Because he’s the lead singer,” answered everybody else.

“We have to go there,” Thomas said.

“When?” Chess asked.

“Right now,” Thomas said. “Everybody grab an instrument and follow me.”

“Wait a second,” Checkers said. “Can’t I say goodbye to Father Arnold?”

“Father Arnold can wait,” Thomas said.

“Now,” Victor asked again as Coyote Springs climbed up the hill. “Who the hell is this Big Mom?”

“I told you. Big Mom can help us, and she’s helped us before,” Thomas said. “That’s all you need to know.”

Coyote Springs walked the rest of the way in silence. They all thought about the help they needed and heard the word faith echo in the trees. They all heard the same music in their heads.

“This is spooky shit,” Victor said.

“Way spooky,” Junior said.

There were stories about Big Mom that stretched back more than a hundred years. There were a hundred stories about every day of Big Mom’s life.

“Ya-hey,” Indians whispered to each other at powwows, at basketball games, at education conferences. “Did you know Big Mom taught Elvis to sing?”

“No way,” said the incredulous.

“What? You don’t believe me? Well, then. Listen to this.”

Indians all over the country would play a scratched record of Elvis, Diana Ross, Chuck Berry, and strain to hear the name Big Mom hidden in the mix.

“Didn’t you hear it? Elvis whispers Thank you, Big Mom just as the last note of the song fades.”

“Yeah, maybe I heard it. But maybe Elvis was singing to his own momma. He really did love his momma.”

But the faithful played record after record and heard singer after singer thank Big Mom for her help. Those thanks were barely audible, of course, but they were there.

Big Mom was a musical genius. She was the teacher of all those great musicians who shaped the twentieth century. There were photographs, they said, of Les Paul leaving Big Mom’s house with the original blueprint for the electric guitar. There were home movies, they said, of Big Mom choreographing the Andrews Sisters’ latest dance steps. There were even cheap recordings, they said, of Big Mom teaching Paul McCartney how to sing “Yesterday.”

Musicians from all over the world traveled to Big Mom’s house in the hope she would teach them how to play. Like any good teacher, Big Mom was very selective with her students. She never answered the door when the live Jim Morrison came knocking. She won’t even answer the door when the dead Jim Morrison comes knocking now.

Still, Big Mom had her heart broken by many of her students who couldn’t cope with the incredible gifts she had given them. Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Elvis. They all drank so much and self-destructed so successfully that Big Mom made them honorary members of the Spokane Tribe.

Late at night, Big Mom’s mourning song echoed all over the reservation. The faithful opened their eyes and took it in, knowing that another of her students had fallen. The unbelieving shut their doors and windows and complained about the birds howling in the trees. But those birds weren’t howling. They all stood quietly, listening to Big Mom, too. She didn’t teach just humans how to sing. When those birds heard her mourning song, they also wondered which of their tribe had fallen.

“Who is that?” Chess and Checkers asked as Coyote Springs crested a rise and saw a huge woman standing in the doorway of a blue house.

“That’s Big Mom,” Thomas said.

Big Mom was over six feet tall and had braids that hung down past her knees. Her braids themselves were taller than any of the members of Coyote Springs and probably weighed more, too. She had a grandmother face, lined and crossed with deep wrinkles. But her eyes were young, so young that the rest of her face almost looked like a mask. Big Mom filled up the doorway of that blue house. She wasn’t obese at all, just thick and heavy.

“Ya-hey,” Big Mom called out to them, and her voice shook the ground.

“Did we take some bad acid?” Victor asked Junior.

“I hope so,” Junior said.

Big Mom walked across her yard to greet the band. She wore a full-length beaded buckskin outfit.

“You’re the lead singer,” Big Mom said, “Thomas Builds-the-Fire.”

“Yes, I am,” Thomas said. “Where’s Robert Johnson?”

“He’s away in the trees, looking for some good wood. He’s going to build himself a new guitar.”

“What about his old guitar?” Thomas asked.

“That guitar is Victor’s responsibility now,” Big Mom said. “I just wanted to see it. I just wanted Victor to know he gets to make choices. He can play the guitar or not. I don’t think he should, but I won’t take it away. If you want, I can throw it away, Victor.”

“Shit,” Victor said. “I’d like to see you try and take this guitar away.”

That guitar nuzzled Victor’s neck. Big Mom watched it carefully.

“And you’re all going to play for some record company?” Big Mom asked.

“Yeah, we are. How did you know that anyway?”

“Ancient Indian magic.”

“Shit,” Victor said. “Everybody on the reservation knows about it by now. Ain’t no magic in that.”

“Well,” Big Mom said, “I guess you’re right. But gossip can be a form of magic. Enit, Victor?”

“I don’t believe in magic.”

“Victor,” Big Mom said, “you should forgive that priest who hurt you when you were little. That will give you power over him, you know? Forgiveness is magic, too.”

“What are you talking about?” Victor asked, but he knew. He still felt the priest’s hands on his body after all those years.

“That poor man hasn’t even forgiven himself yet,” Big Mom said. “He’s in an old-age home in California. He just cries all day long.”

Victor couldn’t talk. He was frozen with the thought of that priest’s life. He had prayed for his death for years, had even wanted to kill him, but never once considered forgiveness.

“And you’re Junior Polatkin,” Big Mom said.

“Yeah, I am,” Junior said. “And I’m scared.”

Big Mom reared her head back and laughed a thunderstorm. Junior nearly pissed a rain shower in his shorts.

“Don’t be scared, Junior,” Big Mom said and held out two huge drumsticks. “These are for you.”

“I can’t use those, I don’t think I can even lift them.”

“Take them. They’re yours.”

Junior reached for the sticks, hesitated, then grabbed them quickly. They were too heavy at first, and they dropped to the ground. But Junior reached down and pulled them up. Then he smiled and pounded a little rhythm across the ground.

“Beautiful,” Big Mom said.

“Shit,” Victor said. “She thinks she’s a medicine woman. She thinks she’s Yoda and Junior is Luke Skywalker. Use the force, Junior, use the force.”

Big Mom ignored Victor.

“And you two are the sisters, Eunice and Gladys Warm Water,” Big Mom said. “You’re special women. Come sweat with me.”

“Eunice and Gladys?” Junior, Victor, and Thomas asked.

Chess and Checkers ducked their heads, hid their faces.

“Eunice and Gladys?” Victor said again. “Jeez, your parents must’ve been seduced by the dark side of the force when they named you, enit?”

“Eunice?” Thomas asked Chess.

“Yeah, I’m Eunice,” Chess whispered.

“Don’t be ashamed,” Big Mom said. Chess and Checkers each took a hand, and Big Mom led them to the sweatlodge, leaving the men of Coyote Springs to their fears and drumsticks.

From Checkers (Gladys) Warm Water’s journal:

I was so scared when I first saw Big Mom. She was this huge woman with fingers as big as my arms, I think. I kept thinking she could squash me like a bug. But then she called me a special woman. It made me realize Big Mom is really a woman and we could have a good talk.

She took Chess and me into the sweatlodge, and I kept thinking that Big Mom was inside my head. I’ve always been able to sort of read people’s minds, been able to get into their heads a little bit. Even Chess always told me I had a little bit of magic. But there were always people, especially women, who had more magic. I remember I was trying to read this old white lady’s mind on a bus ride to Missoula when she turned to me and said “Get out!” Well, she really said it in her head. That old white lady threw me out of her mind, and I had a headache for a week. But that was nothing compared to Big Mom. I kept feeling like she could have made commodity applesauce out of my brain.

Anyway, we took a sweat together, and it was great. Big Mom sang better than anybody I ever heard, even Aretha Franklin. That steam in the lodge felt so good in my throat and lungs. It made me feel like I could sing better. Chess said the steam made her feel that way, too. And Thomas said we could sing better after we came out of the sweatlodge with Big Mom.

But I was also kind of scared that Big Mom would know that I was in love with Father Arnold. She might know that I kissed him and that he kissed me back. I was scared of what she would think of me. How can an Indian woman love any white man like that, and him being a priest besides? Big Mom felt like she came from a whole different part of God than Father Arnold did. Is that possible? Can God be broken into pieces like a jigsaw puzzle? What if it’s like one of those puzzles that Indian kids buy at secondhand stores? You put it together and find out one or two pieces are missing.

I looked at Big Mom and thought that God must be made up mostly of Indian and woman pieces. Then I looked at Father Arnold and thought that God must be made up of white and man pieces. I don’t know what’s true.

“I’m hungry,” Victor said as they all lay on the floor in Big Mom’s living room.

“You’re always hungry,” Chess said.

“Will you two be quiet, please?” Thomas said. “Big Mom is still sleeping.”

“Oh,” Victor said, loudly. “I didn’t think God needed to sleep. I thought God was a twenty-four-hour convenience store.”

“She’s not God,” Thomas said.

“Oh, my,” Victor said. “The perfect Thomas admitting that Big Mom ain’t God. That’s blasphemy, enit?”

“It’s not blasphemy,” Thomas said. “There is no god but God.”

“Well,” Victor asked, “who is she then?”

The rest of Coyote Springs looked for the answer, too.

“She’s just a part of God,” Thomas said. “We’re all a part of God, enit? Big Mom is just a bigger part of God.”

“Literally,” Victor said.

“She’s going to teach us how to play better,” Thomas said. “She’s going to teach us new chords and stuff.”

“How?” Victor said. “She’s just some old Indian woman.”

Just then, Big Mom played the loneliest chord that the band had ever heard. It drifted out of her bedroom, floated across the room, and landed at the feet of Coyote Springs. It crawled up their clothes and into their ears. Junior fainted.

“What in the hell was that?” Victor asked.

Big Mom walked out of the bedroom carrying a guitar made of a 1965 Malibu and the blood of a child killed at Wounded Knee in 1890.

“Listen,” Thomas said.

Big Mom hit the chord again with more force, and it knocked everybody to the ground. Everybody except Junior, who was already passed out on the ground.

“Please,” Chess said, but she didn’t know if she wanted Big Mom to please, quit playing, or please, don’t stop.

Big Mom hit that chord over and over, until Coyote Springs had memorized its effects on their bodies. Junior had regained consciousness long enough to remember his failures, before the force of the music knocked him out again.

“Enough!” Victor shouted. “I can’t hear myself think!”

“There,” Big Mom said to Victor. “Have you learned anything?”

“I’ve learned that a really big guitar makes a really big noise.”

“Is that all?”

“What do you want me to say? I keep waiting for you to call me Grasshopper and ask me to snatch some goddamn pebble from your hand.”

Thomas stood up and reached for Big Mom’s guitar.

“Patience,” Big Mom said and pushed his hand away.

“I can play that chord,” Thomas said. “But I need your guitar to do it.”

“All Indians can play that chord,” Big Mom said. “It’s the chord created especially for us. But you have to play it on your own instrument, Thomas. You couldn’t even lift my guitar.”

“What about Victor?” Thomas asked. “He’s got Robert Johnson’s guitar. Why can’t I have your guitar?”

“That guitar is different,” Big Mom said. “That guitar wanted Victor.”

“Shit,” Victor said. “This is all starting to sound like a New Age convention. Where are the fucking crystals? Well, I know who’s got the fucking crystals. Jim Morrison’s got the fucking crystals, and he’s dancing naked around the campfire with a bunch of naked white people, singing and complaining that his head feels just like a toad.”

“Please don’t say that name,” Big Mom said. “I’m so tired of that name. It’s irritating how much I have to hear that name.

“What?” Victor asked. “Which name? Jim Morrison?”

“Stop that,” Big Mom said.

“Jim Morrison,” Victor said and laughed. “Jim Morrison, Jim Morrison, Jim-fucking-Morrison.”

Big Mom shook her head, walked out of the house, and left Coyote Springs alone.

“You’re such an asshole,” Chess said.

“What’s going on?” Junior asked as he finally woke up.

“I know I can play that chord,” Thomas said.

“I kind of like the Doors,” Checkers said.

“This is the end, my friends, this is the end,” Victor said.

Victor wasn’t the first Indian man to question Big Mom’s authority. In fact, many of the Indian men who were drawn to Big Mom doubted her abilities. Indian men have started to believe their own publicity and run around acting like the Indians in movies.

“Michael White Hawk,” Big Mom said to the toughest Spokane Indian man of the late twentieth century. “Don’t you understand that the musical instrument is not to be used in the same way that a bow and arrow is? Music is supposed to heal.”

“But, Big Ma,” White Hawk said, “I’m a warrior. I’m ’posed to fight.”

“No, Michael, you’re a saxophone player, and you need to work on your reed technique.”

Most times, the Indian men learned from Big Mom, but Michael White Hawk never admitted his errors. White Hawk had actually been something of a prodigy, an idiot savant, who could play the horn even though he couldn’t read or write.

“I hate white men,” White Hawk said. “I smash my sax’-phone on their heads.

“Michael,” Big Mom said, “you run around playing like you’re a warrior. You’re the first to tell an Indian he’s not being Indian enough. How do you know what that means? You need to take care of your people. Smashing your guitar over the head of a white man is just violence. And the white man has always been better at violence anyway. They’ll always be better than you at violence.”

“You don’t know what you talkin’ ’bout,” White Hawk said. “You jus’ a woman.”

He left Big Mom’s house after that and ended up in Walla Walla State Penitentiary for smashing his saxophone over the head of a cashier at a supermarket in Spokane.

“He tryin’ to cheat me for my carrots,” White Hawk shouted as he was led away to prison.

“When are Indians ever going to have heroes who don’t hurt people?” Big Mom asked her students. “Why do all of our heroes have to carry guns? All Indian heroes have to be Indian men, too. Why can’t Indian women be heroes?”

Some of her Indian men students would get all pissed off and leave. They suddenly saw Big Mom as a tiny grandmother without teeth or a life. She shrank in their eyes, until she was just some dried old apple sitting on a windowsill. In their minds, she changed into a witch, bitter and angry.

I’ll get you, my pretty, Big Mom said in their heads, although it didn’t sound like her at all. And your little dog, too, because you goddamn Indian boys always got some dog following you around.

And those Indian men would never play their music right again. You can still see them, standing by the drums at powwows, trying to remember how to sing in the Indian way. You don’t remember, do you? asks the strange voice in their heads. Listen to me. I’ll teach you. They attempt to tap their feet in rhythm with the dancers but can never quite get it.

Follow me, that wild voice said. I’ll give you everything you want. Everything.

All the guitar players cut their fingers to shreds on guitar strings.

Let me fix those wounds for you. There, let me suck the infection out. There, that’s good, that’s good.

“Forgive us, save us,” said those repentant guitar players, with hands bandaged and bloodied, when they crawled back to Big Mom.

“I ain’t Jesus. I ain’t God,” Big Mom said. “I’m just a music teacher.”

“But look what you did to us.”

“I didn’t do anything to you. You caused all this. You made the choices.”

“What can we do?”

“You can change your mind.”

“I want you to play that chord again,” Big Mom said to Victor.

“I can’t play it anymore,” Victor said. “I’m tired. I want to go to sleep.”

Coyote Springs had been practicing twelve hours a day for nearly a week. They were exhausted but had improved greatly, despite Victor’s continual challenges of Big Mom’s magic. There wasn’t enough room to rehearse in Big Mom’s house, so she rigged up some outside lights, which attracted mosquitos and moths.

“Play it again,” Big Mom said.

“I can’t. My fingers don’t even work that way.”

Robert Johnson watched from a distance, hidden in the treeline. He held some scrub wood in his hands. It wasn’t strong wood. There was no way he could make a desk or a chair. That wood wasn’t even good enough to make a broomstick. But somehow Johnson believed that his new guitar waited somewhere in that wood. Proud of his discovery, he was still frightened by his old guitar. Victor’s guitar now. Johnson winced when Victor hit the chord.

“Play it,” Big Mom said.

“Yeah,” Thomas said. “Play it hard.”

“Come on, Big Mom, Thomas,” Chess said. “We’re all tired. Why don’t we quit for the day?”

“We’ll quit when Big Mom says it’s time to quit,” Thomas said. “Sheridan and Wright are coming to get us in a couple days. And we just ain’t good enough yet.”

“Jeez,” Victor said. “You sound like we’re in some goddamn reservation coming-of-age movie. Who the fuck you think you are? Billy Jack? Who’s writing your dialogue?”

Big Mom looked at Thomas as Victor tried once again to play the chord she had requested.

“Will you play that chord again, please?” Big Mom asked again. “Just a few more times, and then we’ll all go to sleep.”

Victor flipped Thomas off. He needed a drink. He had been up on that goddamn mountain for a week without a drink. He was starting to see snakes crawling around. There were snakes up there, but Victor saw a few too many. Victor breathed deep, flexed his tired hands, and hit the chord a few more times. The rest of the band joined in, and they ran off a respectable version of a new song.

Thomas and Chess whispered in their sleeping bag. After everyone else had fallen asleep, they stayed up to talk.

“I’m scared,” Thomas said.

“Scared of what?”

“I’m scared to be good. I’m scared to be bad. This band could make us rock stars. It could kill us.”

“Shit, Thomas. That would scare anybody.”

Thomas closed his eyes and told this story: “Coyote Springs opens a show for Aerosmith at Madison Square Garden. We get up on stage and start to play. At first, the crowd chants for Aerosmith, heckles us, but gradually we win them over. By the time our set is over, the crowd is chanting our name. Coyote Springs. Coyote Springs, Coyote Springs. They chant over and over. They keep chanting our name when Aerosmith comes out. They boo Aerosmith until we come back out. For the rest of our lives, all we can hear are our names, chanted over and over, until we are deaf to everything else.”

Thomas opened his eyes and stared into the dark.

“Listen, Chess,” Thomas said, “I’ve spent my whole life being ignored. I’m used to it. If people want to hear us now, come to hear us play, come to listen. Just think how many will come if we get famous.”

Chess was just as scared as Thomas, maybe more so. She was scared of the band, scared of Victor and Junior, and of Thomas, too. All her life, she had been measured by men. Her father, her priest, her lovers, her employers, her God. Men decided where she would go, how she would talk, even what clothes she was supposed to wear. Now they decided how and where she was supposed to sing. Now, even sweet, gentle Thomas covered her with his shadow. Even in his dreams and stories, Thomas covered her. She sang his songs; she played his music. She played for Phil Sheridan and George Wright and hoped for their approval. And Thomas still there with his shadow. Chess didn’t know whether she should run from that shadow or curl up inside it. She wanted to do both.

“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 were 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.