“Yes, sir.”
“Can they play?” Armstrong asked the engineer, who just shrugged her shoulders and ran Coyote Springs through a sound check.
“Jeez,” Chess said, “that’s the big boss man, enit?”
“Yeah, it is,” Victor said. “And he’s going to sign me up for a solo career after he hears me play. He’s just going to send all you losers home.”
“Are you ready to run through a song?” asked the engineer.
“Damn right,” Victor said.
“Well, let’s go for it. Tape’s running,” said the engineer.
“What do you think we should play?” Thomas asked.
“How about ‘Urban Indian Blues’?” Chess asked.
“Makes sense, enit?” Checkers asked.
“Damn right,” Victor said.
“Okay,” Thomas said. “Count it off, Junior.”
The horses screamed.
“One, two, one, two, three, four.”
Coyote Springs dropped into a familiar rhythm together. Thomas, Chess, and Checkers sang well. Thomas strummed note by note on the bass; Chess and Checkers both played keyboards. Junior flailed away at the drums, lost a few beats here and there, but mostly kept up. But Coyote Springs needed Victor to rise, needed his lead guitar to define them. Victor knew how important he was. He closed his eyes and let the chords come to him.
At first, the music flowed as usual, like a stream of fire through his fingers and the strings. Victor remembered how much the music had hurt him before. That guitar had scarred his hands, yet he had mastered the pain. He thought he could have placed his calloused hands into any fire and never felt the burning. But then, as the song moved forward, bar by bar, his fingers slipped off the strings and frets. The guitar bucked in his hands, twisted away from his body. He felt a razor slice across his palms.
“Shit, shit!” Victor shouted.
“What’s the problem?” asked the engineer.
“Could we start over?” Victor asked.
Sheridan and Wright exchanged a worried look. Mr. Armstrong cleared his throat loudly.
“Whenever you want,” said the engineer. “Tape’s still rolling.”
“What’s wrong?” Thomas asked Victor.
“Nothing,” Victor said, wiped his hands on his pants, and left blood stains. The rest of Coyote Springs studied those blood stains as Junior counted off again.
“One, two, one, two, three, four.”
Checkers could not remember what she was supposed to play. She looked to her sister for help, but Chess’s hands stayed motionless a few inches above the keyboard. Thomas sang half of the first verse before he noticed he was singing alone.
“Hold up a sec,” said the engineer. “Where are the keyboards and vocals, ladies?”
“Are you okay?” Thomas asked the sisters.
Chess and Checkers shook their heads. Junior continued to pound the snare drum. Victor’s guitar kept writhing in his hands until it broke the straps and fell to the floor in a flurry of feedback.
The engineer let that feedback whine until Sheridan jumped to the intercom.
“What the hell’s going on?” Sheridan asked Coyote Springs.
Coyote Springs all stared down at Victor’s guitar.
“What the hell’s happening?” Sheridan asked everybody in the control booth.
“I don’t know,” said the engineer. “I think they’re just nervous. Give them another chance.”
Mr. Armstrong rose from his seat, adjusted his tie and jacket.
“They don’t have it,” Armstrong said.
“Don’t you think you’re being a little hasty, sir?” Wright asked.
“No, I don’t,” Armstrong said and left.
Coyote Springs was still staring at the guitar on the floor when the engineer spoke.
“Hey, that’s it, I guess.”
Coyote Springs looked up at the engineer, who looked pained behind the glass. Wright and Sheridan were arguing violently, silently. Coyote Springs watched the two Cavalry officers gesture wildly, argue for a few more minutes, and then storm out of the control booth.
“What the hell happened?” Chess asked after a long time.
“I don’t know,” the engineer said over the intercom. “I thought you were pretty good.”
“What the hell happened?” Chess asked Thomas. “I don’t know,” Thomas said.
From The Wellpinit Rawhide Press:
Local Skins May Lose Their Shirts
Our local rock band, Coyote Springs, left yesterday for a meeting with Cavalry Records in New York City. Although they’ve been the center of much controversy on the Spokane Indian Reservation, it seems that white people are still interested in the band.
“We’re going to be rock stars,” Victor Joseph said before the band left. “And we won’t have to come back to this reservation ever again. We’ll just leave all of you [jerks] to your [awful] lives.”
Lead singer Thomas Builds-the-Fire, however, was a little more guarded about the purpose of the meeting.
“It’s an audition,” he said. “They haven’t promised us anything. You tell everybody that. We ain’t been promised anything.”
Tribal Chairman David WalksAlong was even more pessimistic about the future of Coyote Springs.
“Listen,” he said over lunch at the Tribal Cafe. “Those Skins ain’t got a chance in New York City. I’ve been to New York City, and I know what it’s like. My grandfather always told me you can take a boy off the reservation, but you can’t take the reservation off the boy. Coyote Springs is done for. I’m happy about that.”
But the other members of Coyote Springs seemed to take all the controversy in stride.
“I just want to be good at something,” Junior Polatkin said. “I messed up at everything else. I’m not mad at anybody who talked bad about us. I just want them to like us.”
Chess and Checkers Warm Water simply gave the thumbs-up as they left the reservation, although some Spokanes thought it was a different finger they raised.
“Listen,” Polatkin added, “if we make it big, it just means we won’t have to eat commodity food anymore.”
Coyote Springs was still standing in the dark studio when Sheridan and Wright came back. The engineer had already left, so the two record company executives fiddled with the knobs and dials until they found the lights and power.
“Listen,” Sheridan said over the intercom. “I don’t know what happened to you. But Mr. Armstrong doesn’t want to have anything to do with you right now.
“What the fuck are you talking about?” Victor asked.
“Now, you listen closely,” Sheridan said. “My ass is on the line here, too. I brought you little shits here. You screwed me over. Now, I’m going to try and fix this. Mr. Armstrong can be a little bit emotional. Maybe he didn’t get his coffee or something this morning. Why don’t you just head over to your hotel and wait this out. We’ll fly you back to the reservation in the morning.”
“No fucking way!” Victor shouted. “We can’t go back there. Not like this.”
“Calm your ass down,” Sheridan said. “We’ll give Mr. Armstrong a couple months, and then we’ll try it again.”
“We don’t have a couple months,” Thomas whispered.
Wright slumped into a chair and wiped his face with a handkerchief just as Victor picked up his guitar and threw it across the studio. Chess and Checkers ducked. Junior continued to beat a quiet rhythm on the drum.
“Goddamn it,” Sheridan shouted over the intercom. “That’s fucking studio equipment.”
“Fuck you,” Victor shouted. “You’re studio equipment.
“Hey,” Sheridan said. “I’m trying to help you. I didn’t screw this up. I’m not the goddamn guitar player. Maybe you just aren’t ready. Maybe next time. But if you don’t calm down, I’ll call security.”
Victor kicked a music stand over, picked up a studio saxophone and threw it at Sheridan. Sheridan ducked behind the control panel, but the sax just rebounded off the glass and fell to the floor. Angry, Sheridan and Wright stormed into the studio.