Big as he was, Arnold was still graceful in his movements, in his hands when he touched his face listening to a good story. He was also the best basketball player in the reservation grade school. Uncle Moses sometimes walked to the playground just to watch Arnold play and wonder at the strange, often improbable gifts a person can receive.
We are all given something to compensate for what we have lost. Moses felt those words even though he did not say them.
Arnold arrived, breathing hard.
“Ya-hey, Little Man,” Uncle Moses said.
“Hello, Uncle,” Arnold replied, extending his hand in a half-shy, half-adult way, a child’s greeting, the affirmation of friendship.
“Where are the others?” Uncle Moses asked, taking Arnold’s hand in his own.
“There was a field trip,” Arnold answered. “All the others went to a baseball game in Spokane. I hid until they left.”
“Why?”
“Because I wanted to see you.”
Moses smiled at Arnold’s unplanned kindness. He held the child’s hand a little tighter and pulled him up close.
“Little Man,” he said. “You have done a good thing.”
Arnold smiled, pulled his hand away from Moses, and covered his smile, smiling even harder.
“Uncle Moses,” he said through his fingers. “Tell me a good story.”
Uncle Moses sat down in the story chair and told this very story.
THE FINISHING
My mother sits quietly, rips a seam, begins to hum a slow song through her skinny lips.
“What you singing?” I ask.
“I’m singing an it-is-a-good-day song.”
She smiles and I have to smile with her.
“Did you like the story?” I ask.
She keeps singing, sings a little louder and stronger as I take my Diet Pepsi outside and wait in the sun. It is warm, soon to be cold, but that’s in the future, maybe tomorrow, probably the next day and all the days after that. Today, now, I drink what I have, will eat what is left in the cupboard, while my mother finishes her quilt, piece by piece.
Believe me, there is just barely enough goodness in all of this.
THE FIRST ANNUAL ALL-INDIAN HORSESHOE PITCH AND BARBECUE
SOMEBODY FORGOT THE CHARCOAL; blame the BIA.
I’ve never heard any Indian play the piano until Victor bought a secondhand baby grand at a flea market and hauled it out to the reservation in the back of a BIA pickup. All that summer the piano collected spiders and warm rain, until it swelled like a good tumor. I asked him over and over, “Victor, when you going to play that thing?” He would smile, mumble some unintelligible prayer, and then whisper to me close, “There is a good day to die and there is a good day to play the piano.” Just before the barbecue Victor pushed the piano halfway across the reservation, up against a pine tree, flexed his muscles, cracked his knuckles, sat down at the keys, and pounded out Béla Bartók. In the long silence after Victor finished his piece, after the beautiful dissonance and implied survival, the Spokane Indians wept, stunned by this strange and familiar music.
“Well,” Lester FallsApart said. “It ain’t Hank Williams but I know what it means.”
Then Nadine said, “You can tell so much about a family by whether their piano is in or out of tune.”
There is something beautiful about the cool grass beneath a picnic table. I was there, almost asleep, when my love crawled under, wrapped her arms around me, and sang into my ear. Her breath sweet and damp with Kool-Aid and a hot dog, mustard but no catsup, please. The sunlight squeezed through spaces between wood, fell down knotholes, but just enough to warm my face.
There is something beautiful about an Indian boy with hair so black it collects the sunlight. His braids grow hot to the touch and his skin shines with reservation sweat. He is skinny and doesn’t know how to spit. In the foot race with other Indian boys he wins a blue ribbon, and in the wrestling match he wins a medallion with an eagle etched in cheap metal. There are photographs taken; I use them now as evidence of his smile.
There is something beautiful about broken glass and the tiny visions it creates. For instance, the glass from that shattered beer bottle told me there was a twenty-dollar bill hidden in the center of an ant pile. I buried my arms elbow-deep in the ants but all I found was a note that said Some people will believe in anything. And I laughed.
There is something beautiful about an ordinary carnival.
Simon won the horseshoe pitch with a double-ringer that was so perfect we all knew his grandchildren would still be telling the story, and Simon won the storytelling contest when he told us the salmon used to swim so thick in the Spokane River that an Indian could walk across the water on their backs.
“You don’t think Jesus Christ was walking on just faith?” he asked us all.
Simon won the coyote contest when he told us that basketball should be our new religion.
He said, “A ball bouncing on hardwood sounds like a drum.”
He said, “An all-star jacket makes you one of the Shirt Wearers.”
Simon won the one-on-one basketball tournament with a jump shot from one hundred years out.
“Do you think it’s any coincidence that basketball was invented just one year after the Ghost Dancers fell at Wounded Knee?” he asked me and you.
And then Seymour told Simon, “Winning all those contests makes you just about as famous as the world’s best xylophone player.”
All the Indians were running; they were running. There was no fear, no pain. It was the pleasure of bare foot inside tennis shoe; it was the pleasure of tennis shoe on red dirt.
That Skin with the long hair leaning against the pine tree, yes, that one, is in love with that other Skin sitting at the picnic table drinking a Pepsi. Neither has the words to describe this but they know how to dance, yes, they know how to dance.
Can you hear the dreams crackling like a campfire? Can you hear the dreams sweeping through the pine trees and tipis? Can you hear the dreams laughing in the sawdust? Can you hear the dreams shaking just a little bit as the day grows long? Can you hear the dreams putting on a good jacket that smells of fry bread and sweet smoke? Can you hear the dreams stay up late and talk so many stories?
And finally this, when the sun was falling down so beautiful we didn’t have time to give it a name, she held the child born of white mother and red father and said, “Both sides of this baby are beautiful.”
IMAGINING THE RESERVATION
We have to believe in the power of imagination
because it’s all we have, and ours is stronger
than theirs.
—Lawrence Thornton
IMAGINE CRAZY HORSE invented the atom bomb in 1876 and detonated it over Washington, D.C. Would the urban Indians still be sprawled around the one-room apartment in the cable television reservation? Imagine a loaf of bread could feed the entire tribe. Didn’t you know Jesus Christ was a Spokane Indian? Imagine Columbus landed in 1492 and some tribe or another drowned him in the ocean. Would Lester FallsApart still be shoplifting in the 7-11?
I am in the 7-11 of my dreams, surrounded by five hundred years of convenient lies. There are men here who take inventory, scan the aisles for minute changes, insist on small bills. Once, I worked the graveyard shift in a Seattle 7-11, until the night a man locked me in the cooler and stole all the money out of the cash register. But more than that, he took the dollar bill from my wallet, pulled the basketball shoes off my feet, and left me waiting for rescue between the expired milk and broken eggs. It was then I remembered the story of the hobo who hopped a train heading west, found himself locked in a refrigerator car, and froze to death. He was discovered when the train arrived at its final destination, his body ice cold, but the refrigerator car was never turned on, the temperature inside never dropped below fifty degrees. It happens that way: the body forgets the rhythm of survival.
Survival = Anger × Imagination. Imagination is the only weapon on the reservation.
The
reservation doesn’t sing anymore but the songs still hang in the air. Every molecule waits for a drumbeat; every element dreams lyrics. Today I am walking between water, two parts hydrogen, one part oxygen, and the energy expelled is named Forgiveness.
The Indian child hears my voice on the telephone and he knows what color shirt I’m wearing. A few days or years ago, my brother and I took him to the bar and he read all of our futures by touching hands. He told me the twenty-dollar bill hidden in my shoe would change my life. Imagine, he said. But we all laughed, old Moses even spit his false teeth into the air, but the Indian child touched another hand, another, and another, until he touched every Skin. Who do you think you are? Seymour asked the Indian child. You ain’t some medicine man come back to change our lives. But the Indian child told Seymour his missing daughter was in community college in San Francisco and his missing wedding ring was in a can of commodity beef high up in his kitchen. The Indian child told Lester his heart was buried at the base of a pine tree behind the Trading Post. The Indian child told me to break every mirror in my house and tape the pieces to my body. I followed his vision and the Indian child laughed and laughed when he saw me, reflecting every last word of the story.
What do you believe in? Does every Indian depend on Hollywood for a twentieth-century vision? Listen: when I was young, living on the reservation, eating potatoes every day of my life, I imagined the potatoes grew larger, filled my stomach, reversed the emptiness. My sisters saved up a few quarters and bought food coloring. For weeks we ate red potatoes, green potatoes, blue potatoes. In the dark, “The Tonight Show” on the television, my father and I telling stories about the food we wanted most. We imagined oranges, Pepsi-Cola, chocolate, deer jerky. We imagined the salt on our skin could change the world.
July 4th and all is hell. Adrian, I am waiting for someone to tell the truth. Today I am celebrating the Indian boy who blew his fingers off when an M80 exploded in his hand. But thank God for miracles, he has a thumb left to oppose his future. I am celebrating Tony Swaggard, sleeping in the basement with two thousand dollars’ worth of fireworks when some spark of flame or history touched it all off. Driving home, I heard the explosion and thought it was a new story born. But, Adrian, it’s the same old story, whispered past the same false teeth. How can we imagine a new language when the language of the enemy keeps our dismembered tongues tied to his belt? How can we imagine a new alphabet when the old jumps off billboards down into our stomachs? Adrian, what did you say? I want to rasp into sober cryptology and say something dynamic but tonight is my laundry night. How do we imagine a new life when a pocketful of quarters weighs our possibilities down?
There are so many possibilities in the reservation 7-11, so many methods of survival. Imagine every Skin on the reservation is the new lead guitarist for the Rolling Stones, on the cover of a rock-and-roll magazine. Imagine forgiveness is sold 2 for 1. Imagine every Indian is a video game with braids. Do you believe laughter can save us? All I know is that I count coyotes to help me sleep. Didn’t you know? Imagination is the politics of dreams; imagination turns every word into a bottle rocket. Adrian, imagine every day is Independence Day and save us from traveling the river changed; save us from hitchhiking the long road home. Imagine an escape. Imagine that your own shadow on the wall is a perfect door. Imagine a song stronger than penicillin. Imagine a spring with water that mends broken bones. Imagine a drum which wraps itself around your heart. Imagine a story that puts wood in the fireplace.
THE APPROXIMATE SIZE OF MY FAVORITE TUMOR
AFTER THE ARGUMENT THAT I had lost but pretended to win, I stormed out of the HUD house, jumped into the car, and prepared to drive off in victory, which was also known as defeat. But I realized that I hadn’t grabbed my keys. At that kind of moment, a person begins to realize how he can be fooled by his own games. And at that kind of moment, a person begins to formulate a new game to compensate for the failure of the first.
“Honey, I’m home,” I yelled as I walked back into the house.
My wife ignored me, gave me a momentary stoic look that impressed me with its resemblance to generations of television Indians.
“Oh, what is that?” I asked. “Your Tonto face?”
She flipped me off, shook her head, and disappeared into the bedroom.
“Honey,” I called after her. “Didn’t you miss me? I’ve been gone so long and it’s good to be back home. Where I belong.”
I could hear dresser drawers open and close.
“And look at the kids,” I said as I patted the heads of imagined children. “They’ve grown so much. And they have your eyes.”
She walked out of the bedroom in her favorite ribbon shirt, hair wrapped in her best ties, and wearing a pair of come-here boots. You know, the kind with the curled toe that looks like a finger gesturing Come here, cowboy, come on over here. But those boots weren’t meant for me: I’m an Indian.
“Honey,” I asked. “I just get back from the war and you’re leaving already? No kiss for the returning hero?”
She pretended to ignore me, which I enjoyed. But then she pulled out her car keys, checked herself in the mirror, and headed for the door. I jumped in front of her, knowing she meant to begin her own war. That scared the shit out of me.
“Hey,” I said. “I was just kidding, honey. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean anything. I’ll do whatever you want me to.”
She pushed me aside, adjusted her dreams, pulled on her braids for a jumpstart, and walked out the door. I followed her and stood on the porch as she jumped into the car and started it up.
“I’m going dancing,” she said and drove off into the sunset, or at least she drove down the tribal highway toward the Powwow Tavern.
“But what am I going to feed the kids?” I asked and walked back into the house to feed myself and my illusions.
After a dinner of macaroni and commodity cheese, I put on my best shirt, a new pair of blue jeans, and set out to hitchhike down the tribal highway. The sun had gone down already so I decided that I was riding off toward the great unknown, which was actually the same Powwow Tavern where my love had escaped to an hour earlier.
As I stood on the highway with my big, brown, and beautiful thumb showing me the way, Simon pulled up in his pickup, stopped, opened the passenger door, and whooped.
“Shit,” he yelled. “If it ain’t little Jimmy One-Horse! Where you going, cousin, and how fast do you need to get there?”
I hesitated at the offer of a ride. Simon was world famous, at least famous on the Spokane Indian Reservation, for driving backward. He always obeyed posted speed limits, traffic signals and signs, even minute suggestions. But he drove in reverse, using the rearview mirror as his guide. But what could I do? I trusted the man, and when you trust a man you also have to trust his horse.
“I’m headed for the Powwow Tavern,” I said and climbed into Simon’s rig. “And I need to be there before my wife finds herself a dance partner.”
“Shit,” Simon said. “Why didn’t you say something sooner? We’ll be there before she hears the first note of the first goddamned song.”
Simon jammed the car into his only gear, reverse, and roared down the highway. I wanted to hang my head out the window like a dog, let my braids flap like a tongue in the wind, but good manners prevented me from taking the liberty. Still, it was so tempting. Always was.
“So, little Jimmy Sixteen-and-One-Half-Horses,” Simon asked me after a bit. “What did you do to make your wife take off this time?”
“Well,” I said. “I told her the truth, Simon. I told her I got cancer everywhere inside me.”
Simon slammed on the brakes and brought the pickup sliding to a quick but decidedly cinematic stop.
“That ain’t nothing to joke about,” he yelled.
“Ain’t joking about the cancer,” I said. “But I started joking about dying and that pissed her off.”
“What’d you say?”
“Well, I told her the doctor showed me my X-rays and my favorite tum
or was just about the size of a baseball, shaped like one, too. Even had stitch marks.”
“You’re full of shit.”
“No, really. I told her to call me Babe Ruth. Or Roger Maris. Maybe even Hank Aaron ’cause there must have been about 755 damn tumors inside me. Then, I told her I was going to Cooperstown and sit right down in the lobby of the Hall of Fame. Make myself a new exhibit, you know? Pin my X-rays to my chest and point out the tumors. What a dedicated baseball fan! What a sacrifice for the national pastime!”
“You’re an asshole, little Jimmy Zero-Horses.”
“I know, I know,” I said as Simon got the pickup rolling again, down the highway toward an uncertain future, which was, as usual, simply called the Powwow Tavern.
We rode the rest of the way in silence. That is to say that neither of us had anything at all to say. But I could hear Simon breathing and I’m sure he could hear me, too. And once, he coughed.
“There you go, cousin,” he said finally as he stopped his pickup in front of the Powwow Tavern. “I hope it all works out, you know?”
I shook his hand, offered him a few exaggerated gifts, made a couple promises that he knew were just promises, and waved wildly as he drove off, backwards, and away from the rest of my life. Then I walked into the tavern, shook my body like a dog shaking off water. I’ve always wanted to walk into a bar that way.
“Where the hell is Suzy Boyd?” I asked.
“Right here, asshole,” Suzy answered quickly and succinctly.
“Okay, Suzy,” I asked. “Where the hell is my wife?”
“Right here, asshole,” my wife answered quickly and succinctly. Then she paused a second before she added, “And quit calling me your wife. It makes me sound like I’m a fucking bowling ball or something.”
“Okay, okay, Norma,” I said and sat down beside her. I ordered a Diet Pepsi for me and a pitcher of beer for the next table. There was no one sitting at the next table. It was just something I always did. Someone would come along and drink it.