“Thomas,” Victor yelled from the back. “I think it’s about time we picked up a new rig.”
Coyote Springs agreed with Victor, but Thomas wanted no part of it.
“This van is older than any of us,” Thomas said. “It has seen more than any of us. This van is our elder, and we should respect it. Besides, we have no money.”
Coyote Springs laughed, even Thomas, and kept laughing until something popped under the hood. The van shuddered and stopped in the middle of the freeway.
“Shit,” said Coyote Springs in unison.
A few cars honked at the five Indians pushing an old blue van down the road.
“Thomas,” Victor said. “We need a new rig.”
Coyote Springs pushed that blue van twenty miles down the road, across a bridge over the Columbia River, into a little town called Vantage. The band sprawled around the van in various positions and barely moved when the cop pulled up. That cop climbed out of his cruiser, pulled on a pair of those mirrored sunglasses that cops always wear.
“What seems to be the problem?” he asked.
“Our van broke down,” Thomas said.
The cop walked close to the van and looked inside.
“Is all of this your equipment?” the cop asked.
“Yes, sir,” Thomas said.
“Are you in a band or what?”
“Yeah,” Thomas said. “We’re Coyote Springs.”
The officer studied the band, tapped his foot a little, and took off his sunglasses.
“Where you guys from?” he asked.
“From Wellpinit. Up on the Spokane Indian Reservation.”
“How about you girls?”
“We’re Flathead Indians,” Chess said. “From Arlee, Montana.”
“Where you headed to?”
“Ellensburg,” Thomas answered. “We’re playing a bar called Toadstools.”
“I know that place. You sure you’re playing there?”
The cop waited briefly for an answer, then asked the band for identification. Thomas and the women pulled out their driver’s licenses. Junior offered his Spokane Tribal Driver’s License, and Victor lifted his shirt and revealed his own name tattooed on his chest.
“Are you serious about this tattoo?” the cop asked.
“Yeah,” Victor said.
“You all just wait here a second,” the cop said and walked back to his cruiser. He talked on his radio, while Coyote Springs counted the money for bail.
“We can take him,” Victor said. “He’s only one guy.”
“But he’s a big guy,” Junior said.
“Shut up,” Thomas said. “Here he comes.”
“Okay,” the cop said when he came back. “I called my cousin over in Ellensburg. He’s got a tow truck. He’s going to come over here and haul your butts to Toadstools.”
“Really?” Coyote Springs asked.
“Yeah, but it’ll cost you a hundred bucks. You got that?”
“Sure.”
“Well, you can pay my cousin directly, but you’re on your own after that.”
“Thanks, officer.”
“You’re welcome. By the way, what kind of music you play?”
“All kinds. The blues, mostly.”
“Well, good luck.”
The cop started to walk away, but stopped, turned back.
“Hey,” he said, “who’s the lead singer?”
Thomas raised his hand and smiled. The cop smiled back, put his sunglasses on, climbed into his cruiser, and left with a wave.
“Who the hell was that masked man?” Chess asked.
“I don’t know,” Junior said. “But if I find any silver bullets laying around here, I’m going to pass out.”
From The Ellensburg Tri-Weekly:
Indian Musicians Play More Than Drums
An all-Indian rock band from the Spokane Indian Reservation played for the cowboys in Toadstools Tavern last Saturday night, and nobody was injured.
Seriously, the band named Coyote Springs was very professional and played their music with passion and pride.
“They knew what they was doing,” said Toadstools owner Ernie Lively.
“I was kind of nervous about hiring Indians and all,” Lively added. “Worried they might not show up or maybe they’d stir up trouble.”
On the contrary, Coyote Springs served up a healthy dish of country music, spiced it with a little bit of rock, and even threw in a few old blues tunes for dessert.
“I think the highlight of the night was when those Indians sang ‘Mommas, Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be Cowboys.’ Everybody sang along with that one,” Lively said.
The blue van, repaired by an honest mechanic in Ellensburg and a few stories that Thomas whispered into the engine, traveled down the mostly empty freeway toward home. Coyote Springs rode in a silence interrupted only by the sudden rush of a passing truck or a name whispered by one of those sleeping. Thomas drove the van, and Chess kept him awake. Checkers, Junior, and Victor slept.
“Why you like freeway driving so much?” Chess asked. “But don’t close your eyes to tell me some story.”
“I don’t know.”
“What do you think?”
“There’s a lot of songs out here, I guess. I can hear them.”
“You want me to turn on the radio?” Chess asked.
“Yeah, but keep it low. We don’t want to wake the van up.”
“They all need a lot of beauty sleep, enit?”
Chess turned on the radio. The Black Lodge Singers still drummed away in the cassette player, but she popped that tape out and searched for a radio station. She twisted the tuner back and forth through a short history of American music until she happened upon Hank Williams.
Hank Williams is a goddamned Spokane Indian! Samuel Builds-the-Fire shouted in Thomas’s memory. Thomas smiled because so many people visited him in memories.
“Ya-hey,” Thomas said. “Leave it there.”
Chess played with the radio until Hank sang true and clear. Coyote Springs and Hank Williams continued down the freeway, past a lonely hitchhiker who heard the music through the open windows. The blue van swept by so quickly all he heard were a few isolated notes. But he heard enough to make everything weigh a little more, his shoes, his backpack, his dreams.
The music rose past the hitchhiker up into the sky, banged into the Big Dipper, and bounced off the bright moon. That’s exactly what happened. The music howled back into the blue van, kept howling until Coyote Springs became echoes. That’s exactly what happened.
“Thomas,” Chess said and wanted to explain what she heard.
“I know,” he said, wide awake, and slowly drove them all the way back home.
4. Father and Farther
SOMETIMES, FATHER, you and I
Are like a three-legged horse
Who can’t get across the finish line
No matter how hard he tries and tries and tries
And sometimes, father, you and I
Are like a warrior
Who can only paint half of his face
While the other half cries and cries and cries
chorus:
Now can I ask you, father
If you know how much farther we need to go?
And can I ask you, father
If you know how much farther we have to go?
Father and farther, father and farther, ’til we know
Father and farther, father and farther, ’til we know
Sometimes, father, you and I