Reservation Blues: A Novel by Sherman Alexie

Author:Sherman Alexie
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9781480457171
Publisher: Open Road Media
Published: 2013-10-15T04:00:00+00:00

6

Falling Down and Falling Apart

I KNOW A WOMAN, Indian in her bones

Who spends the powwow dancing all alone

She can be lonely, sometimes she can cry

And drop her sadness into the bread she fries

I know a woman, Indian in her eyes

Full-blood in her heart, full-blood when she cries

She can be afraid, sometimes she can shake

But her medicine will never let her break

chorus:

But she don’t want a warrior and she don’t want no brave

And she don’t want a renegade heading for an early grave

She don’t need no stolen horse, she don’t need no stolen heart

She don’t need no Indian man falling down and falling apart

I know a woman, Indian in her hands

Wanting me to sing, wanting me to dance

She’s out there waiting, no matter the weather

I’d walk through lightning just to give her a feather

(repeat chorus)

Robert Johnson sat in a rocking chair on Big Mom’s front porch. Big Mom’s rocking chair. He had no idea where she had gone. Big Mom was always walking away without warning.

“Robert,” Big Mom had said upon his arrival at her house, “you’re safe here. Ain’t nobody can take you away from this house.”

But Johnson was still not comfortable in his safety. He dreamed of that guitar he had left in Thomas Builds-the-Fire’s blue van. He couldn’t decide if he had left it there on purpose. Certainly, he had tried to leave it behind before, on trains, in diners, on the roadside. He buried that guitar, he threw it in rivers, dropped it off tall buildings. But it always came back to him.

Sometimes, the guitar took weeks to find him. Those were glorious days. Johnson was free to wander and talk to anybody he wished. He never searched for the Gentleman’s eyes hidden behind a stranger’s face. The Gentleman was just a ghost, just a small animal dashing across the road. When that guitar was gone, Johnson had even considered falling in love. But the guitar would eventually find him. It always found him.

Johnson had to work the minimum jobs, washing dishes, sweeping floors, delivering pizzas, because he could never play music for money. Never again. And just when he began to allow himself hope, he would come home from his latest job to find that guitar, all shiny and new, on the bed in his cheap downtown apartment. Johnson had wept every time. He had considered burying himself, throwing himself into the river, jumping off a tall building. That guitar made him crazy. But he didn’t know what would be waiting on the other side. What if he woke up on the other side with that guitar wrapped in his arms? What if it weighed him down like an anchor as he sank to the bottom, a single chord echoing in his head over and over again?

That guitar would never let Johnson go, until he left it in Thomas Builds-the-Fire’s blue van. Johnson felt free and guilty at the same time. The guitar would never let go of those Indians now. It held onto Victor even harder than it ever held Johnson.

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