Reservation Blues: Chapter 10 Summary & Analysis

The song that begins this chapter is about the endless funerals of the reservation, and the way that drunkenness and suicide seem to be passed down through the generations. Few people cared enough to attend Junior’s wake, which took place in Thomas’s house on the kitchen table. A few sent flowers, and Simon drove backwards off the reservation, never to return, since Junior used his gun to commit suicide. Victor is angry with the reservation members, remembering how they watched as Junior did it. Lester FallsApart comes, and gives them three dogs: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost.

The dogs howl, and Big Mom hears them as she cries on her porch. Another of her students has died, and she feels a deep sadness—the bodies, of both musicians and horses, may finally have “been stacked too high inside her.” Robert Johnson tells her that they need her, and that she saved him. She gives him the cedar harmonica she carved, and walks down the mountain. She finds Father Arnold packing his bags, and asks him about Checkers. He tells her that he loves her, but is too scared and uncertain. Big Mom tells him that she is, too. She invites him to come and help mourn Junior, telling him that he can do the Catholic stuff, and she’ll do the traditional Indian things. He won’t need his collar or cassock, she says—he’s wearing a very powerful t-shirt.

They bury Junior in the Spokane Tribal cemetery, near his mother and father. Big Mom and Father Arnold take turns leading the service, while Checkers, Chess, Victor, and Thomas watch. Lester and the three dogs are also present. The dogs howl, only falling silent when Big Mom murmurs to them. Victor surprises everyone by speaking, saying that Junior never hurt anybody on purpose. Thomas says that he tried very hard to be good. Victor lies and tells everyone that Junior had a half-breed son. He had discovered Lynn’s note in Junior’s wallet after his death. Big Mom sings a mourning song, and Checkers whispers a prayer.

Chess looks around the graveyard at all the Indians “killed by white people’s cars, alcohol, uranium,” at all the suicides. She imagines a mirage of a blonde woman and child dressed in black. Chess runs toward them, asking why she loved Junior, “that broken Indian man,” wanting to explain that her son would always be half crazy, at war with himself. The only solution is to keep breeding away the Indian blood. The son will never be accepted by Indians, or by whites. Chess closes her eyes, and when she opens them, the mother and son have disappeared. Turning to Thomas, who is waiting for her, she tells him that they should get married, and that she wants kids. She wants to have brown babies who will look up and see two brown faces. Thomas smiles and says, “Okay.”

Checkers goes straight to bed after the funeral. Chess asks her if she’s still bothered by nightmares of Sheridan, and Checkers explains that now she is haunted by memories of their father Luke, who cries and stands in the doorway, drunk. Chess tells her she and Thomas are leaving for Spokane, and that she found a job as a phone operator. At this moment, Big Mom enters with Father Arnold, who wants to speak to Checkers.

Checkers refuses to speak to him alone, insisting that Chess stay with them. Arnold apologizes, but Checkers tells him it doesn’t matter, and that she is leaving with Chess. Checkers returns a bottle of communion wine that she had stolen before Junior shot himself. Checkers tells Arnold that she isn’t sure she can forgive him yet, and that he doesn’t know more than she does. Arnold agrees, knowing that he has been just like all other performers wanting to be loved and trusted. He says that, with discipline, perhaps he can be good again. Arnold tells Chess he can’t believe she stole the wine, and that he doesn’t know how she could have drank it anyway, since it tastes terrible. She responds, jokingly: “discipline,” and they all laugh awkwardly.

Victor drives to Turtle Lake and sits in the van. Junior appears to him with a rifle hole in his head and they both scream. Junior asks if Victor will miss him, and Victor says he will miss getting drunk with him. Junior offers him a silver flask of whiskey that someone left in his coffin. Victor hesitates, telling Junior that he’s been thinking about quitting—he hasn’t had a drink since the suicide. Victor asks why Junior shot himself. Junior dodges the question once to reminisce about Betty and Veronica, but then responds, “because life is hard.” He explains that when he closed his eyes like Thomas, he saw nothing—“no stories, no songs.” Victor throws the flask out the window and into the lake. Junior hands him another, telling him they better get to work, and they throw countless silver flasks into the lake.

Big Mom lights sage, and Chess, Checkers, and Thomas get ready to pray, for everybody, as Big Mom puts on a record. Victor goes to David WalksAlong looking for a job. WalksAlong is shocked to see him, after everything that Coyote Springs has done, but Victor humbly persists and hands over his résumé. WalksAlong reads it, crumples it up, and throws it at Victor. Victor picks it up and folds it neatly, his hands shaking. He tries once more, saying that he “thought this was the way it worked.” He says that he wants to drive the water truck like Junior did, but WalksAlong does not respond. Something seems to break inside of Victor, and he steals five dollars from the secretary’s purse and buys a six-pack of cheap beer. He pops the first can open with a sound that is exactly like a smaller version of the explosion of Junior’s rifle.

The local paper reports that Father Arnold led the Catholics to victory in the annual basketball tournament. A few days later, the crazy FedEx guy arrives with a package for Thomas addressed from Cavalry records. It contains a letter from Betty and Veronica, thanking Coyote Springs for their help, and also has a cassette recording of the first song on their debut CD. Thomas pauses and then puts it in, hearing an Indian drum, a warrior’s flute, a cedar flute, and then Betty and Veronica singing about Mother Earth and Father Sky. The chorus says “my hair is blonde/but I’m Indian in my bones.” Thomas ejects the cassette and stomps on it, then slices the tape into pieces. He runs around the house collecting photos, worried that someone will come to steal them next.

We then see Victor’s résumé, which is littered with misspellings. Coyote Springs is gone. Victor wanders around the reservation with the three dogs, while Thomas, Chess, and Checkers prepare to leave for Spokane. Thomas tells Chess he isn’t worried about saying goodbye to his dad, Samuel, since with his “Indian father radar” Samuel will eventually show up at their place in Spokane at three in the morning. They drive away, and Thomas feels a tightness in his chest. Down the road, they come across Big Mom, who hitches a ride to a community feast at the Longhouse and then convinces them to come inside with her, to eat and possibly to take a collection.

The group sits waiting for food for a long time, until Big Mom walks into the kitchen and discovers there is not enough fry bread. She tells the cook to take out the rest of the food and leave the fry bread to her. The cook is scared, remembering the last time there was a fry bread riot. The mob chants for fry bread, until Big Mom walks out with a huge bowl. She admits that there is only half as much fry bread as they need, and the crowd mills around, restless and combative. She explains that she can feed them all by ancient Indian secrets. Then she holds a piece of bread over her head and tears it in two. The crowd cheers.

Robert Johnson is walking through town when he sees the-man-who-was-probably-Lakota. They walk together toward the Longhouse. Thomas is amazed when Johnson arrives—he looks like a different person. Johnson tells them that he is planning to stay on the reservation, that he feels at home there, and that the people might need his music. As Chess, Checkers, and Thomas start to leave, Big Mom takes up a collection for them from the tribe. Some, like David WalksAlong, donate out of spite to get them off the reservation, while others give out of guilt, and a few from kindness. They file out to the parking lot and say their goodbyes, with Johnson playing chords on the harmonica while the man-who-was-probably-Lakota plays the drum and chants that “the end of the world is near.”

As they drive away in silence, Chess, Checkers, and Thomas think about the future. They finally admit that they are scared, and they hold their breath as they drive over the reservation border, but nothing disastrous happens. Suddenly the shadows beside the van take shape, and becoming running horses. Chess and Checkers roll down the windows and reach out to touch them, hot and wet. In a dream, the three of them sit with Big Mom at the powwow while she teaches the Spokane Indians a new song, the shadow horses’ song, the screaming “song of mourning that would become a song of celebration.” Big Mom plays a note on her horse-bone flute for every horse that died, and then for every Indian. In the van, Chess, Checkers, and Thomas sing together with the shadow horses: “we are alive, we’ll keep living.” They hold tightly to the horses’ manes outside the blue van and drive forward to the city, where new songs await.