Silence.
“Are you there?” Father Arnold asked, his favorite prayer.
“Father Arnold,” the Bishop said, “I know it’s never easy ministering to such a people as the Indians. They are a lost people, God knows. But they need you out there. We need you out there.”
“Please.”
“Father, we have no one to send out there. We have a shortage of priests as it is. Let alone priests to serve the Indian reservations. Father John has to serve three separate reservations, did you know? He has to drive from reservation to reservation for services. No matter the weather. Did you know that, Father?”
“No, I didn’t.”
“If Father John can serve three communities, I think you can serve just one.”
“Yes.”
“For better or worse, you and those Indians are stuck together. Do you understand?”
“Yes.”
“Well, perhaps you need some more time in study. More prayer. Ask for strength and guidance. Quit worrying so much about the basketball out there and worry more about your commitment to God.”
“Yes.”
“Well, then. Is there anything else?”
“No,” Father Arnold lied.
“Okay, then. I’ll talk to you soon.”
Dial tone.
Father Arnold felt the connection break, hung up the phone, and opened the phone booth. He couldn’t face Checkers again. He was ashamed and had to leave the reservation, no matter what the Bishop said.
“I’m leaving,” Father Arnold said. “I’m leaving.”
“The end of the world is near! It’s near! The end of the world is near!”
On the day after Coyote Springs returned to the reservation, just a day before Father Arnold decided to leave the Catholic Church entirely, Betty and Veronica sat in Cavalry Records’s recording studio in Manhattan.
Betty and Veronica had already heard the story of Coyote Springs’s disaster in the studio and weren’t all that surprised. The white women had been truly shocked when Wright and Sheridan showed up at their very first show in Seattle.
What a coincidence, Veronica had said to Sheridan. I can’t believe you’re going to sign Coyote Springs. We just left them. Did they tell you about us? Is that how you heard about us?
No, Coyote Springs doesn’t know anything about this, Sheridan had said. And we’d like to keep it that way. A little bird landed on my shoulder and told me about you. Told me to bring you to New York City. What do you think?
“These the girls from Seattle?” Armstrong asked Wright and Sheridan in the control booth. Betty and Veronica shifted nervously on their stools in the studio.
“Yes, sir, they are,” Sheridan said. “We think you’re going to love them. They have a unique sound. Sort of a folk sound.”
“Folk doesn’t sell shit.”
“Yes, sir, folk hasn’t been much of a seller for us,” Sheridan said. “But I think these girls might change all of that.”
“What do you think?” Armstrong asked Wright.
“They’re talented,” Wright said. He felt sick.
“You said those Indians were talented, too,” Armstrong said.
“Listen,” Sheridan said to Armstrong, “these two women here are part Indian.”
“What do you mean?” Armstrong asked.
“I mean, they had some grandmothers or something that were Indian. Really. We can still sell that Indian idea. We don’t need any goddamn just-off-the-reservation Indians. We can, use these women. They’ve been on the reservations. They even played a few gigs with Coyote Springs. Don’t you see? These women have got the Indian experience down. They really understand what it means to be Indian. They’ve been there.”
“Explain.”
“Can’t you see the possibilities? We dress them up a little. Get them into the tanning booth. Darken them up a bit. Maybe a little plastic surgery on those cheekbones. Get them a little higher, you know? Dye their hair black. Then we’d have Indians. People want to hear Indians.”
“What do you think?” Armstrong asked Wright. “I don’t have to have anything to do with it,” Wright said and left the room.
Wright walked out of Cavalry Records and hailed a cab. The driver was an old white woman. She had beautiful blue eyes.
“Where you going?” asked the driver.
“I just want to get home,” Wright said.
The driver laughed and took Wright to a cemetery in Sacramento, California.
“How much I owe you?” Wright asked when he climbed out of the cab.
“You don’t owe me anything,” the woman said. “Just go on home now. Just go on home.”
The cab pulled away. Wright watched it disappear in the distance, then he walked through the cemetery to a large monument. He studied the monument, remembering the ship that went down in the Pacific and the water rushing into his lungs. He read the monument:
Gen. George Wright, U.S.A.
and his wife
died
July 30, 1865
Lovely and pleasant in their lives,
and in their death they
were not divided
“Margaret,” Wright said as he lay down on top of his grave. “I’m home. I’m home. I’m so sorry. I’m home.”
Margaret Wright rose wetly from her place and took her husband in her arms. She patted his head as he wept and remembered all those horses who had screamed in that field so long ago. He remembered shooting that last colt while Big Mom watched from the rise.
“I was the one,” Wright said to his wife. “I was the one. I was the one who killed them all. I gave the orders.”
The horses screamed in his head.
“Shh,” Margaret whispered. “It’s okay. I forgive you.”
Wright closed his eyes and saw the colt standing still in that field. He remembered that he had taken a pistol from a private.
This is how it’s done, he had said as he dismounted from his own horse. He pressed the pistol between the colt’s eyes, pulled the trigger, and watched it fall.
“Oh, God,” Wright sobbed to his wife on their graves. The grief rushed into his lungs. “I’m a killer. I’m a killer.”
“You’ve come home,” Margaret whispered. “You’re home now.”
Betty and Veronica watched Armstrong and Sheridan talking in the control booth.
“What do you think they’re talking about?” Betty asked.
“The assholes are probably wondering how our asses will look on MTV,” Veronica said.
“Hey, girls,” Sheridan said over the intercom.
“Yeah,” Betty and Veronica said.
“Could you come in here?”
Betty and Veronica set their guitars down, walked into the control booth.
“Listen,” Sheridan said, “Mr. Armstrong and I have been talking about your potential. Well, you see, there’s a market for a certain kind of music these days. It’s a kind of music we think you can play, given your heritage. But there’s a whole lot of marketing we have to do. We have to fine tune your image.”
“What do you mean?” Veronica asked. “What’s our heritage?”
“Well,” Sheridan said, “there’s been an upswing in the economic popularity of Indians lately. I mean, there’s a lot of demographics and audience surveys and that other scientific shit. But I leave that to the boys upstairs. What I’m talking about here is pure musical talent. That’s you. Pure musical talent shaped and guided by me. Well, I mean, under the direction of Mr. Armstrong, certainly.”
Veronica looked at Betty.
“Now,” Veronica said, “what the hell are you talking about?”
“Well,” Sheridan said, “our company, Cavalry Records, has an economic need for a viable Indian band. As you know, Coyote Springs self-destructed. We were thinking we needed a more reliable kind of Indian. Basically, we need Indians such as yourselves.”