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“What is this?” Johnson asked.

“It’s yours,” Big Mom said.

Johnson held a cedar harmonica. He could feel a movement inside the wood, something familiar.

“Why this?” Johnson asked.

“You don’t need that guitar anymore,” Big Mom said. “You were supposed to be a harp player. You’re a good harp player. All by yourself, you can play a mean harp.”

“Thank you.”

“You’re welcome,” Big Mom said and walked down the mountain.

Father Arnold, wearing a t-shirt and jeans, had just loaded his last box into his yellow VW when Big Mom walked up to him.

“Holy cow,” Arnold said. “You scared me.”

“I’m sorry,” Big Mom said and then noticed the boxes. “So, you really are leaving then?”

“I have to,” Arnold said. “The Bishop reassigned me.”

“That’s not true.”

Father Arnold was ashamed. He pulled at the neck of his t-shirt.

“You’re right,” he said. “It’s because of Checkers.”

“Do you love her?”

“Yes. No. I mean, I love her. But it’s not like that.”

Father Arnold leaned heavily against the VW.

“Listen,” he said, “I don’t know what to do. I think about her. I dream about her. Sometimes I want to give it all up for her. But I don’t even know why. I haven’t known her very long. I mean, she’s beautiful and smart and funny. She’s got a tremendous faith. I just don’t know.”

“What are you supposed to know?” Big Mom asked.

“Everything, I guess. Don’t you know everything?”

“No, I’m just as scared as you are.”

“What am I supposed to do?”

Big Mom closed her eyes. She listened to the wind, the voices of the reservation. She heard the horses.

“I’m not sure,” Big Mom said. “But it’s up to you, no matter what, enit?”

Arnold nodded his head, pulled the car keys from his pocket, and looked down the road. Big Mom touched his arm, smiled, and then started to walk away.

“Wait,” Arnold said. “Where are you going?”

“Those kids need me,” Big Mom said. “They lost somebody, and they need help to say goodbye.”

Father Arnold swallowed hard. He ran his hand along his neck.

“Well,” Big Mom said, “are you coming or not?”

“I don’t know. I mean, what about Checkers? What about all of it? You’re not even Catholic, are you?”

“Listen,” Big Mom said, “you cover all the Christian stuff; I’ll do the traditional Indian stuff. We’ll make a great team.”

“Are you sure?”

“No, I’m not sure,” said Big Mom as she grabbed Father Arnold’s hand. “Come on.”

“But what about my collar, my cassock?” Arnold asked.

“You don’t need that stuff. That’s a very powerful t-shirt you have on.”

“Really?”

“Really,” Big Mom said and led the way toward Coyote Springs.

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Coyote Springs buried Junior in the Spokane Tribal Cemetery, in the same row with his mother and father. Big Mom and Father Arnold took turns leading the service, while Checkers, Chess, Victor, and Thomas stood at the graveside. Lester FallsApart and the three dogs kept a polite distance. No other Spokane Indians showed up.

Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.

Father Arnold finished the ceremony and asked if anybody had any final words for the dearly departed.

“Final words?” Chess asked. “I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to stop talking about this.”

The Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost howled. Lester tried to quiet them, but Big Mom had to walk over. She knelt down beside the dogs, whispered to them, and stroked their fur. The dogs whimpered and kissed Big Mom.

“What are their names?” Big Mom asked Lester and laughed when he told her.

“Well,” she said, “I think we should change their names. That isn’t exactly respectful.”

“Well,” Lester said, “they ain’t my dogs no more. I gave them to Coyote Springs.”

“Ya-hey,” Big Mom called out. “What are you going to name your dogs?”

Thomas looked at Chess.

“I don’t know,” Thomas said. “It’s not really up to us to decide. We’re going to let Victor have the dogs. We’ve got other plans.”

“How come I get the dogs?” Victor asked.

Big Mom wondered about Thomas’s and Chess’s plans but knew they had something to do with leaving the reservation.

“Is there anything anybody wants to say about the departed?” Father Arnold asked.

“Junior never hurt anybody, not on purpose,” Victor said and surprised everybody. He was lying, of course, but he wanted to make sense of Junior’s life.

“He hurt himself the most,” Big Mom said.

“He tried to be good,” Thomas said. “He tried really hard.”

Big Mom sang under her breath, a quiet little mourning song. Coyote Springs trembled with the music. They didn’t sing along.

“Did you know that Junior had a kid?” Victor asked.

Everybody on the Spokane Indian Reservation had heard the rumors, but nobody had known the truth except Junior. After Junior killed himself, Victor found that note in Junior’s wallet and learned the whole story. Lynn, the little romance, the abortion.

“Yeah, a half-breed little boy,” Victor lied, trying to make more significance out of his best friend’s life and death.

“How old is the kid?” Chess asked.

“Almost ten years old now. Named him Charles.”

“Wow,” Chess said. “Where did all this happen?”

“When Junior was in college,” Victor said. “In Oregon.”

“It was a white woman, enit?” Chess asked.

“Yeah, what about it?” Victor said and continued the lie, feeling the guilt that he was responsible for the suicide, that he’d sold his best friend’s life. “Her parents didn’t like it either. And sent that baby away. Junior never saw him. Just heard about him once in a while.”

Big Mom sang another mourning song, a little louder this time.

“Jeez,” Chess said. “Now I know why he never talked about it.”

Checkers whispered a prayer to herself.

Chess looked around the graveyard, at all the graves of Indians killed by white people’s cars, alcohol, uranium. All those Indians who had killed themselves. She saw the pine trees that surrounded the graveyard and the road that led back to the rest of the reservation. That road was dirt and gravel, had been a trail for a few centuries before. A few years from now, it would be paved, paid for by one more government grant. She looked down the road and thought she saw a car, a mirage shimmering in the distance, a blonde woman and a child standing beside the car, both dressed in black.

Look, Chess said and ran down the road toward the woman and child. She had so many questions.

Why did you love him, that broken Indian man? Chess asked the white woman. Why did you conceive him a son?

Chess wanted to tell the white woman that her child was always going to be halfway. He’s always going to be half Indian, she’d say, and that will make him half crazy. Half of him will always want to tear the other half apart. It’s war. Chess wanted to tell her that her baby was always going to be half Indian, no matter what she did to make it white.

All you can do is breed the Indian out of your family, Chess said. All you can do is make sure your son marries a white woman and their children marry white people. The fractions will take over. Your half-blood son will have quarter-blood children and eight-blood grandchildren, and then they won’t be Indians anymore. They won’t hardly be Indian, and they can sleep better at night.