“That’s not what I mean. You know that’s not what I mean.”
Father Arnold searched his soul for the right words, the right prayer. He had always had them before. God, he had been sure of the answers. Self-deprecating and modest, he had still believed he was a great priest. He knew he was a great priest, in a quietly arrogant way. On some spiritual scoreboard in his head, he had kept count of the people he was saving.
Checkers had taken all that away. No. That wasn’t fair to Checkers. She didn’t love him any more than other parishioners had. Father Arnold had resisted advances before. It happened to priests often enough to warrant a few good-natured jokes in the seminary. But Checkers had truly shaken Father Arnold and his vows. He dreamed about her every night. In those dreams, she led him into a tipi, lay down with him on a robe, and touched him. Frightened and aroused, Father Arnold woke and prayed that his dreamcatcher would work. He prayed that his dreams of Checkers would be trapped in the dreamcatcher’s web.
“I dream about you,” Father Arnold said to Checkers.
“I dream about you, too.”
“No,” Arnold said. “I don’t want to dream about you. I’m a man of God. I belong to God.”
Checkers reached for Father Arnold, but he stood and stepped away. He had always loved how his flock kept a respectable distance away, coming closer only with his permission.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “But you need to leave. I need to leave.”
Father Arnold reached out to Checkers, reconsidered, and then quickly walked out of the church. Checkers didn’t follow him. She leaned back in the pew and stared at the crucifix nailed to the wall. Jesus nailed to the cross that’s nailed to the wall. She felt a sharp ache deep in her chest. She curled her knees up next to her breasts, wrapped her arms around her legs, and slowly rocked back and forth, back and forth.
On the day before Checkers made her escape to the Catholic Church, Victor Joseph sat alone on the couch. The rest of Coyote Springs was out on the front lawn, talking to the Tribal Cops. Victor had no use for Tribal Cops, even if they were supposedly protecting him. Victor stared at the space in the room where the television used to sit. Upon their arrival home, Coyote Springs had thrown out the television, which didn’t work anyway, three radios, and a pair of squeaky cowboy boots. They didn’t want to hear any kind of music. Victor stared at that space until he fell asleep.
In his dream, Victor sat alone in the house and heard a soft noise in the distance. At first, he thought it was the conversation outside, but the noise took shape and became a C chord, then a D, F, and G. He clapped his hands to his ears, but the music would not stop. He stood and looked out the window at his bandmates and the cops, but they just continued, oblivious to the music. He searched the house for the source. The two bedrooms were empty, as were the bathroom and kitchen. The music grew louder as Victor descended the stairs. In the unfinished basement, the blankets that served as walls swayed with the force of the chords.
Victor searched under the stairs, in the bedrooms, and still couldn’t find the source. He opened up the downstairs bathroom door and was knocked back by a vicious open chord. The guitar was leaning against the wall.
I think you left something behind in New York, said the guitar. Victor stepped inside the bathroom, shut the door behind him, and reached for it.
Take it easy there, the guitar said. You can have me back. You can take me and you can be anybody you want to be. You can have anything you want to have. But you have to trade me for it.
Trade what? Victor asked.
You have to give up what you love the most, said the guitar. What do you love the most? Who do you love the most?
Outside, while Victor dreamt, Junior Polatkin thought he heard his name called out. He looked at the Tribal Cops, who just continued to flirt with Chess and Checkers. The Warm Water sisters ignored the Tribal Cops and talked to each other. Thomas sat on an old tire swing. Junior heard his name again and recognized Victor’s voice. He looked toward the house, but he was the only one who heard it. Junior heard Victor whisper his name.
On the night before Victor Joseph dreamed about the guitar, Thomas Builds-the-Fire and Chess Warm Water lay awake in bed. Both assumed Checkers was fast asleep on the floor, but she listened to their whispered conversation.
“Thomas,” Chess said, “what are we going to do?”
“I don’t know,” Thomas said. “What do you want to do?”
“I want to go back to Arlee.”
Thomas didn’t say anything. He stared up at the stained ceiling. Water stains. He remembered the rain that had pounded his roof, seeped through the insulation, pooled in the crawlspace, and then dripped down onto the bed.
“I want to go back to Arlee,” Chess said again. “You said we could go back to Arlee.”
Thomas had agreed to go back to Arlee as Coyote Springs waited in Kennedy Airport in New York. He had never felt farther away, never felt more away than at that moment. He didn’t want to get on the plane for the flight home to Wellpinit. He wanted to get on a different plane and fly to someplace different, somewhere he had never even heard of. Some strange place with a strange name. He wanted to grab a map of the world, close his eyes, and spit. He would live wherever his spit landed on the map. Still, he knew he would probably spit on his own reservation, just a green-colored spot on the map.
“I’ll go wherever you want to go,” Thomas had said but still knew that every part of him was Spokane Indian.
“Good,” Chess had said, but she also saw the doubt in Thomas’s eyes. She knew what it felt like to leave her own reservation. She had felt something stretch inside her as that blue van pulled off the Flathead Reservation all those weeks ago. She had looked back and felt a sharp pain, like the tearing of tendon and ligament from bone. She had left her reservation because of that goddamn guitar, that sudden fire it had lit inside her. But that fire had consumed almost everything, and despite her years of firefighting experience, she had not been able to stop it. She had not dug fire lines, had not provided herself with a quick escape route. She loved the music, she loved Thomas, she loved the fire. But Thomas was all that she had left, and the Spokane Indian Reservation was threatening to keep him.
“Thomas,” she had said just before their flight number was called.
“What?” he asked.
She had taken his hand in hers, studied the way their fingers fit together, and almost wanted to stay there in the airport forever. She had almost wanted to stay suspended between here and there, between location and destination. She squeezed Thomas’s hand and waited.
“There’s nothing left here for us,” Chess said to Thomas in bed. “There’s nothing left here for you.”
“I know,” Thomas said. “But they’re my people. They’re my Tribe.”
“Of course. But the Flatheads are my people. And they ain’t threatening to kill us.”
“Not everybody wants to kill us. Nobody wants to kill us. They’re just talking. We just let them down.”
“Don’t make excuses for them. You don’t need to make excuses for them.”
Checkers rolled over on the floor. She knew her movement would make Thomas and Chess stop talking. She didn’t want to go back to the Flathead Reservation, and she didn’t want Chess to convince Thomas to move. Even if Chess and Thomas left, Checkers knew she would remain behind. Indians were always switching reservations anyway. For love, for money, to escape jail time. Checkers was still thinking of Father Arnold.