Junior ran to the van, pulled out a hand drum, and beat out a rhythm. He surprised the sisters with his sudden talent. Thomas sang the first bar of a jazzed-up Carpenters song, while Victor stood sullenly with his guitar at his side. He wanted to resist all of it, but the guitar moved in his hands, whispered his name. Victor closed his eyes and found himself in a dark place.
Don’t play for them. Play for me, said a strange voice.
Victor opened his eyes and hit the first chord hard. Junior and Thomas let him play alone; Chess and Checkers stepped back. Victor grew extra fingers that roared up and down the fingerboard. He bent strings at impossible angles and hit a note so pure that the guitar sparked. The sparks jumped from the guitar to a sapling and started a fire. It was a good thing that Chess and Checkers had extensive firefighting experience, and they hurriedly doused the flames, but Victor continued to toss sparks. His hair stood on end, his shirt pitted with burn holes, and his hands blistered.
Victor raised his right arm high above the reservation and windmilled the last chord, which echoed for hours. He dropped the guitar, staggered back a few steps, then bowed.
“Jeez,” Chess and Checkers said after a long while. “Where do we sign up?”
Thomas, Junior, and Victor camped on the Flathead Reservation for a week after the Warm Waters joined the band, living meagerly on their shared money. The boys stayed at the sisters’ house, although Chess and Checkers objected to the smell, but all agreed the band needed to practice with its new members. Thomas even drove down into Missoula to buy a thirdhand synthesizer for Chess and Checkers to share.
“How much that cost you?” Victor asked him.
“Five bucks and a funny story,” Thomas told him.
Coyote Springs rehearsed for hours in the Warm Waters’ backyard. At first, they sounded awful, dissonant, discordant. Victor only occasionally replicated the stunning performance that convinced the sisters to join the band. Junior broke so many drumsticks that he switched to pine branches instead. Chess and Checkers sang better than Thomas, which made the distinction between backup and lead singers less sure. Thomas decided to share the lead. Still, Coyote Springs melded faster than any garage band in history.
“We should call that Tipi Pole Tavern guy,” Victor said. “I think we’re ready to rock.”
The owner of the Tipi Pole Tavern listened to the newest incarnation of Coyote Springs and agreed to hire them again. Coyote Springs packed their gear into the blue van and headed for the tavern.
“Ladies and braves,” the bartender announced. “It’s a great honor to welcome back that rocking band from the Spokane Indian Reservation, Coyote Springs.”
The crowd cheered.
“And it’s a special honor to introduce the two newest members of the band,” the bartender continued. “Two of our own Flathead Indians, Chess and Checkers Warm Water.”
Coyote Springs walked on stage with confidence. Thomas smiled as he stepped to the microphone.
“Hello, Arlee,” Thomas shouted, and the place went crazy. Victor counted off, and the band launched into its first song, a cover of an old KISS tune.
The sisters joined in on the vocals after a bit; Chess pounded the keyboard hard, like her fingers were tiny hammers. She wanted to play it right but loved the noise of it all. Checkers pulled the ties from her hair and sang unbraided. Chess picked the ties up from the floor and somehow braided her hair with one hand. Both threw a way ya hi yo into the chorus of the song.
Coyote Springs created a tribal music that scared and excited the white people in the audience. That music might have chased away the pilgrims five hundred years ago. But if they were forced, Indians would have adopted the ancestors of a few whites, like Janis Joplin’s great-great-great-great-grandparents, and let them stay in the Americas.
The audience reached for Coyote Springs with brown and white hands that begged for more music, hope, and joy. Coyote Springs felt powerful, fell in love with the power, and courted it. Victor stood on the edge of the stage to play his guitar. Despite his clothes, the Indian and white women in the crowd screamed for him and waited outside after the show.
After the Tipi Pole Tavern finally closed at 4 A.M., Chess, Checkers, and Thomas sat inside and drank Pepsi, while Junior and Victor grabbed a few beers and disappeared.
“You sounded great tonight,” Thomas said to the sisters.
“We all sounded great,” Chess said.
“Jeez,” Checkers said. “Even Victor and Junior, enit?”
“We just got to keep them sober,” Chess said. “Victor’s the best guitar player I ever heard, when he’s sober.
“I’m tired,” Thomas said.
“Where’d Victor and Junior go anyway?” Chess asked.
“Outside,” Checkers said. “Probably getting drunk in the van.”
“Well,” Chess said, “I’m tired, too. Let’s get them and go home.”
Thomas and the sisters walked outside to the van. He opened the sliding door of the van and surprised Victor and Junior, who were literally buck naked and drunk. The two naked white women in the van were even drunker and scrambled for their clothes. Thomas just stood there and stared. It was Betty and Veronica.
“Shut the goddamn door!” Victor shouted.
“Jeez,” Junior said, reached out, and slid the door shut.
“Oh, man,” Checkers said. “That’s the last thing I wanted to see.”
“I think I’m going to get sick,” Chess said.
Thomas just walked away. Checkers looked at Chess, who shrugged her shoulders. Who knew why Thomas did anything? Chess followed him to a picnic bench behind the tavern. Checkers threw her arms up, walked back into the bar, and fell asleep on the pool table.
“I can’t believe they did that,” Chess said to Thomas. “We have to ride in that van.”
“Yeah, I know,” Thomas said.
Chess sat beside Thomas at the picnic table, took his hand, studied it for a minute. Beautiful hands, beautiful hands.
“Where’s Checkers?” Thomas asked.
“I don’t know. She’s probably beating the crap out of Junior and Victor.”
Chess and Thomas sat there quietly. Thomas thought about stories and songs, but Chess only thought about those white women in the van. She hated Indian men who chased after white women; she hated white women who chased after Indian men.
“You know,” she said. “I really don’t like that. I don’t like Junior and Victor hanging out with white women.”
“Why?” Thomas asked.
“I don’t know. I guess it’s about preservation, enit? Ain’t very many Indian men to go around. Even fewer good ones.”
Thomas nodded his head.
“And you know,” Chess said, “as traditional as it sounds, I think Indian men need Indian women. I think only Indian women can take care of Indian men. Jeez, we give birth to Indian men. We feed them. We hold them when they cry. Then they run off with white women. I’m sick of it.”
“Yeah,” Thomas said. “I never dated no white woman.”
“Thomas, you never dated nobody.”
They laughed.
“Seriously, I think Junior and Victor are traitors,” Chess said. “I really do. They keep running off with white women and pretty soon, ain’t no Indian women going to touch them. We Indian women talk to each other, you know? We have a network. They’re two of the last full-blood Indians on your reservation, enit? Jeez, Junior and Victor are betraying their DNA.”
“Well,” Thomas, a full-blood Spokane himself, said, “do you like me or my DNA?”
“I like you and your DNA.”
Thomas agreed with Chess, but he also knew about the shortage of love in the world. He wondered if people should celebrate love wherever it’s found, since it is so rare. He worried about the children of mixed-blood marriages. The half-breed kids at the reservation school suffered through worse beatings than Thomas ever did.