Free Reservation Blues - Alexie Sherman by Alexie Sherman Page A

wanted to be
older, to run away from home. She wanted to bury her parents beside
Backgammon, find a way to love them in death, because she forgot how
to love them in life.
    Then it was winter again, and Linda Warm Water walked
into the woods like an old dog and found a hiding place to die.
Checkers and Chess nearly fell back in love with their father that
winter. He quit drinking after his wife disappeared and spent most of
his time searching for her. He refused to believe she had dug a hole
and buried herself, or climbed into a den and lay down in the bones
of a long dead bear. Because he'd convinced himself that Linda ran
away with another man, Luke wandered all over Montana in search of
his unfaithful wife.
    Whenever he returned from his endless searches, Luke
brought his daughters little gifts: ribbons, scraps of material,
buttons, pages torn from magazines, even food, candy bars, and
bottles of Pepsi. One time, he brought the sisters each a Pepsi from
Missoula. Chess and Checkers buried those soft drinks in a snowbank
so they would be cold, cold. Luke sat at his piano then and played
for the first time since the baby died. The sisters ran inside and
sang with him. They sang for a long time.
    " Where are those Pepsis?" Luke asked his
daughters.
    "Outside," Chess said and knew they were in
trouble.
    The three rushed outside to the snowbank and
discovered the Pepsis had exploded from the cold. The snow was
stained brown with Pepsi. Luke grabbed Checkers by the arm and shook
her violently,
    " Goddamn it," he shouted, "you've
wasted it all!"
    He shook her harder, then let her go and ran away.
The sisters fell to their knees in the snow and wept.
    "I'm sorry," Checkers said. "The
Pepsi's gone. It's all my fault."
    ‘ "No, it's not," Chess said, scooped up a
handful of Pepsi-stained snow, and held it in front of her sister.
"Not everything's your fault."
    " What?" Checkers asked.
    "Look," Chess said. The snow was saturated
with Pepsi. Chess bit off a mouthful, tasted the cold, sweet, and
dark. Checkers buried both hands in the snowbank, away from the
broken glass, and shoved handful after handful of snow into her
mouth. The sisters drank that snow and Pepsi until their hands and
mouths were sticky and frozen. Soon, they went into the house to
build a fire and wait for their father's return. Checkers and Chess
lay down together by the stove and held onto each other. They held
on.
    ***
    As he slept in the Warm Waters' house, Thomas dreamed
about television and hunger. In his dream, he sat, all hungry and
lonely, in his house and wanted more. He turned on his little
black-and-white television to watch white people live. White people
owned everything: food, houses, clothes, children. Television
constantly reminded Thomas of all he never owned.
    For hours, Thomas searched the television for
evidence of Indians, clicked the remote control until his hands
ached. Once on channel four, he watched three cowboys string
telegraph wire across the Great Plains until confronted by the entire
Sioux Nation, all on horseback.
    We come in friendship , the
cowboys said to the Indians. In Thomas's dream, the Indians argued
among themselves, whooped like Indians always do in movies and
dreams, waved their bows and arrows wildly. Three Indian warriors
dismounted and grabbed hold of the telegraph wire.
    We come in friendship , the
cowboys said, cranked the generator, and electrocuted the three
Indians. Those three Indians danced crazily, unable to release the
wire, and the rest of the Sioux Nation rode off in a superstitious
panic.
    In his dream, Thomas watched it all happen on his
television until he suddenly returned to the summer when Victor and
Junior killed snakes by draping them over an electric fence. Watch
this, Victor said as he dropped a foot-long water snake onto the
fence. Thomas nearly choked on the smell.
    The electric fence belonged to a white family that
had homesteaded on the reservation a hundred years ago and never
left. All the