“Now you sound like Agatha Christie,” Thomas said.
“Yeah, and it was God whodunnit.”
“Who done what?”
“God created all of this. I mean, how can you look at all of this, all this life, and not believe in God? Look at this reservation. It’s so pretty. Do you think the river and the trees are mistakes? Do you think everything is accidental?”
“No,” Thomas said, looked at his hands, at the reservation as it rushed by. He loved so much. He loved the way a honey bee circled a flower. Simple stuff, to be sure, but what magic. A flower impressed Thomas more than something like the Grand Coulee Dam. Once he’d stood on the dam for hours and stared at a nest some bird built atop an archway. Thomas looked into himself. He knew his stories came from beyond his body and mind, beyond his tiny soul.
Thomas closed his eyes and told Chess this story: “We were both at Wounded Knee when the Ghost Dancers were slaughtered. We were slaughtered at Wounded Knee. I know there were whole different tribes there, no Spokanes or Flatheads, but we were still somehow there. There was a part of every Indian bleeding in the snow. All those soldiers killed us in the name of God, enit? They shouted ‘Jesus Christ’ as they ran swords through our bellies. Can you feel the pain still, late at night, when you’re trying to sleep, when you’re praying to a God whose name was used to justify the slaughter?
“I can see you running like a shadow, just outside the body of an Indian woman who looks like you, until she was shot by an eighteen-year-old white kid from Missouri. He jumps off the horse, falls on her and you, the Indian, the shadow. He cuts and tears with his sword, his hands, his teeth. He ate you both up like he was a coyote. They all ate us like we were mice, rabbits, flightless birds. They ate us whole.”
Thomas opened his eyes and saw Chess was crying.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
“Don’t you understand that God didn’t kill any of us?” Chess asked. “Jesus didn’t kill any of us.”
“But they allowed it to happen, enit?”
“They didn’t allow it to happen. It just happened. Those soldiers made the choice. The government made the choice. That’s free will, Thomas. We all get to make the choice. But that don’t mean we all choose good.”
“But there’s so much evil in the world.”
“That’s why we have to believe in the good. Not every white person wants to kill Indians. You know most any white who joins up with Indians never wants to leave. It’s always been that way. Everybody wants to be an Indian.”
“That’s true,” a voice whispered from the back of the van.
“Who’s that?” Thomas and Chess asked.
“It’s me, Betty.”
“What’s true?” Chess asked, irritated at the interruption.
“White people want to be Indians. You all have things we don’t have. You live at peace with the earth. You are so wise.”
“You’ve never met Lester FallsApart, have you?” Chess asked. “You’ve never spent a few hours in the Powwow Tavern. I’ll show you wise and peaceful.”
“I’m sorry I said anything,” Betty said and remained quiet. The other white woman, Veronica, took Betty’s hand, squeezed it, and sent a question along her skin: What are we doing? Victor and Junior snored away.
“Like I was saying, everybody wants to be an Indian. But not everybody is an Indian. It’s an exclusive club. I certainly couldn’t be Irish. Why do all these white people think they can be Indian all of a sudden?”
Thomas smiled.
“You know,” he said, “I’ve always had a theory that you ain’t really Indian unless, at some point in your life, you didn’t want to be Indian.”
“Good theory,” Chess said. “I’m the one who told you that.”
“Oh,” he said.
The blue van crossed the Wellpinit city limit.
“Thomas,” Chess said, “you know there ain’t no such thing as an Indian atheist. And besides, how do you think Indians survived all the shit if there wasn’t a God who loved us? Why do you think you and me are together?”
“Because of love.”
“That’s what faith is. Love.”
Thomas was nervous, sweating. He closed his eyes, searched for another one of his stories, but came back to Chess’s words instead. He listened to her story.
“Okay,” Thomas said. “I’ll go to church with you. But I ain’t promising nothing.”
“Hey,” Chess said, “don’t make me any promises. I’m an Indian. I haven’t heard many promises I believed anyway.”
The blue van pulled into Thomas’s driveway. Checkers stood in a window. All the house lights blazed brightly in the reservation night. Junior and Victor rolled over in their sleep, only momentarily bothered by the lights and noise, while Betty and Veronica pretended to sleep. Chess jumped out of the van and ran for her sister. Thomas watched Chess and Checkers hug in his front yard. Then he closed his eyes and left them alone.
6. Falling Down and Falling Apart
I KNOW A WOMAN, Indian in her bones
Who spends the powwow dancing all alone
She can be lonely, sometimes she can cry
And drop her sadness into the bread she fries
I know a woman, Indian in her eyes
Full-blood in her heart, full-blood when she cries
She can be afraid, sometimes she can shake
But her medicine will never let her break
chorus:
But she don’t want a warrior and she don’t want no brave
And she don’t want a renegade heading for an early grave
She don’t need no stolen horse, she don’t need no stolen heart
She don’t need no Indian man falling down and falling apart
I know a woman, Indian in her hands
Wanting me to sing, wanting me to dance
She’s out there waiting, no matter the weather
I’d walk through lightning just to give her a feather
(repeat chorus)
Robert Johnson sat in a rocking chair on Big Mom’s front porch. Big Mom’s rocking chair. He had no idea where she had gone. Big Mom was always walking away without warning.
“Robert,” Big Mom had said upon his arrival at her house, “you’re safe here. Ain’t nobody can take you away from this house.”
But Johnson was still not comfortable in his safety. He dreamed of that guitar he had left in Thomas Builds-the-Fire’s blue van. He couldn’t decide if he had left it there on purpose. Certainly, he had tried to leave it behind before, on trains, in diners, on the roadside. He buried that guitar, he threw it in rivers, dropped it off tall buildings. But it always came back to him.
Sometimes, the guitar took weeks to find him. Those were glorious days. Johnson was free to wander and talk to anybody he wished. He never searched for the Gentleman’s eyes hidden behind a stranger’s face. The Gentleman was just a ghost, just a small animal dashing across the road. When that guitar was gone, Johnson had even considered falling in love. But the guitar would eventually find him. It always found him.
Johnson had to work the minimum jobs, washing dishes, sweeping floors, delivering pizzas, because he could never play music for money. Never again. And just when he began to allow himself hope, he would come home from his latest job to find that guitar, all shiny and new, on the bed in his cheap downtown apartment. Johnson had wept every time. He had considered burying himself, throwing himself into the river, jumping off a tall building. That guitar made him crazy. But he didn’t know what would be waiting on the other side. What if he woke up on the other side with that guitar wrapped in his arms? What if it weighed him down like an anchor as he sank to the bottom, a single chord echoing in his head over and over again?