“Thomas,” Chess said after a long silence. “Are you still awake?”
“Yeah.”
“We don’t have to go to Arlee. I mean, I really want to go home. But mostly, I just want to leave here. I don’t want to be here anymore.”
“Where would we go?”
“I don’t know. Anywhere but here. Maybe we should go west. All the white people did and look what they got.”
“What’s west of here?”
“Everything’s west of here, Thomas. Everything. We could move to Spokane. Is that west enough?”
Spokane, a mostly white city, sat on the banks of the Spokane River. Spokane the city was named after the Tribe that had been forcibly removed from the river. Spokane was only sixty miles from the reservation, but Thomas figured it was no closer than the moon.
There was nobody waiting for Coyote Springs in the Spokane International Airport when they deboarded the plane. They had crossed three time zones and still had no idea how they worked.
“It’s like fucking time travel,” Victor said.
Coyote Springs had waited at the baggage carousel until all the passengers had picked up their luggage. All except Victor. All the other passengers on the plane had been greeted by family and friends who took the luggage from their hands. All the other passengers had already left the airport. Coyote Springs waited for Victor’s bag.
“Shit,” Victor said. “What happened?”
Coyote Springs was just about to abandon the bag when a guitar case slid down onto the carousel. The rest of Coyote Springs took a quick step back, but Victor reached for it and grabbed the handle. He pulled the guitar case off the carousel and turned back toward the rest of the band.
“It’s my guitar,” Victor said. “It’s my guitar, goddamn it. We can start over. We can get the band going again. We don’t need those fucking guys in New York City. We can do it ourselves.”
A young white man with a white shirt and dirty jeans came running back into the baggage area. He was in a panic but relaxed visibly when he saw Victor holding the guitar case.
“Oh, God,” said the white man. “I can’t believe I almost forgot it.”
Coyote Springs looked at him blankly. He stared back.
“That’s mine,” the white man said and pointed at the guitar case. “I almost forgot it.”
Victor pulled the guitar up close to his body.
“That’s mine,” the man repeated. “That’s my name there on the side.”
Coyote Springs looked at the black guitar case with “Dakota” written in white paint.
“Your name ain’t really Dakota, is it?” Chess asked.
“Yeah, my dad is way into the Indian thing. He’s part Indian from his grandmother. She was a full-blood Cherokee.”
“If he was Cherokee,” Chess said, “then why did he name you Dakota?”
“What do you mean?”
“Cherokee and Dakota are two different tribes, you know?”
“I don’t understand what you’re trying to say.”
Coyote Springs took a deep breath, exhaled.
“You ain’t supposed to name yourself after a whole damn tribe,” Victor finally said. “Especially if it ain’t your tribe to begin with.”
“Well,” said the white man, “it’s my name. And that’s my guitar.”
Victor had known the guitar inside the case wasn’t his. He had only wanted to be close to any guitar.
“Here,” Victor said. “Take the damn thing.”
The white man took the guitar from Victor and walked away. Coyote Springs watched him. Then he turned back after a few steps.
“You know,” he said, “you act like I’m stealing something from you. This is my guitar. This is my name. I didn’t steal anything.”
Chess and Thomas finally agreed to leave the Spokane Indian Reservation for anywhere else. There was no doubt that Checkers would come with them, but she lay on the floor, fuming. She didn’t want to leave. She was still angry when she fell asleep. After Thomas had fallen asleep too, Chess climbed out of bed and walked quietly into the kitchen. She sat at the table with an empty cup. She kept bringing the cup to her lips, forgetting it contained nothing.
She rubbed her eyes, brought the cup to her lips again, set it back. She cleared her throat, thought about the cup again, and then the sun rose so suddenly that she barely had time to react.
“Good morning,” Thomas said when he walked into the kitchen. “You’re up early.”
Checkers shuffled in a few minutes later, while Victor and Junior slept on. Those two found it was easier to just sleep, rather than wake up and face the day.
“Morning,” Checkers mumbled. She poured powdered commodity milk into a plastic jug and added water. She stirred and stirred. She stirred for ten minutes, because that powdered milk refused to mix completely. No matter how long an Indian stirred her commodity milk, it always came out with those lumps of coagulated powder. There was nothing worse. Those lumps were like bombs, moist on the outside with an inner core of dry powdered milk. An Indian would take a big swig of milk, and one of those coagulated powder bombs would drop into her mouth and explode when she bit it. She’d be coughing little puffs of powdered milk for an hour.
“Do you want some breakfast?” Checkers asked Chess and Thomas. Neither of them was very excited about the milk, but they had to have something for breakfast.
“Okay,” Chess and Thomas said.
Checkers poured milk into their cups and into a cup of her own. The three sat at the kitchen table, took small sips, then a big drink, and coughed white powder until Victor and Junior could not sleep through the noise.
The day before Chess and Thomas decided to leave the Spokane Indian Reservation for good, Robert Johnson sat on the porch at Big Mom’s house while she sat in her rocking chair. Johnson’s vision had improved tremendously during his time on the reservation. Back in his youth in Mississippi, he saw everything blurred. White spots clouded one eye. His sister bought him glasses when he was ten years old, but he never wore them much. But now he could see the entire Spokane Indian Reservation when he looked down Wellpinit Mountain. He watched Michael White Hawk march dumbly around the softball diamond. From home to first base, second, third, and back to home.
“Home,” White Hawk whispered to himself. Then he marched around the bases again.
“What’s wrong wit’ him?” Johnson asked Big Mom.
“Same thing that’s wrong with most people,” Big Mom said. “He’s living his life doing the same thing all day long. He’s just more obvious about it.”
“What d’y’all mean?”
“Well, think about it. Most people wake up, have breakfast, go to work, come home, eat dinner, watch television, and then go to sleep. Five days a week. Then they go see a movie, go to church, go to the beach on weekends. Then Monday morning comes, and they’re back to work. Then they die. White Hawk’s just doing the same thing on a different level. He’s a genius. It’s performance art.”
“Well, I guess. You pos’tive ’bout that? Maybe he just got hisself knocked too hard on the head. Like a fighter. I seen how fighters end up gettin’ slugged too much.”
“Maybe.”
“You ain’t serious ’bout that, are you?”
“Maybe.”
Robert Johnson and Big Mom sat for hours in silence. Big Mom thought about the young Michael White Hawk, who had come to get help with his saxophone. She remembered that version of White Hawk, who had nearly believed in Big Mom once, before he went to prison for assaulting that grocery store cashier. But Johnson had never known that White Hawk. Johnson watched him walk circles around the softball diamond. Home, first, second, third, home again.
“It happens that way,” Johnson whispered. “It really does happen that way.”