Reservation Blues: Chapter 3 Summary & Analysis

This chapter begins with a love song, and the reason becomes clear when Chess and Checkers Warm Water, Flathead Indian sisters, push their way to the front of the crowd. Checkers is possibly the most beautiful woman in all of Indian country, and prefers older men. Chess wears glasses, and she agrees with her sister when she says the band “ain’t too good,” but she thinks the lead singer, Thomas, is kind of cute. Chess and Checkers dance, even as the music deteriorates since Victor and Junior get drunk on free booze. The band takes a break, and Thomas discusses the Warm Water sisters with his band mates—he has fallen for Chess, and wants to sing her a song.

Victor confuses Thomas and Junior by talking about seeing white women, when there are none in the bar. He is very drunk. He has been an alcoholic since his father moved to Phoenix and gave Junior his first drink at his high school graduation. Junior had sworn never to drink because of his parents’ boozing, but he accepted the beer and drank it easily, crashing down loudly to earth. Thomas’s father, Samuel, is a quieter, more desperate drunk, who staggers around the reservation.

Victor’s guitar pulls him back on stage with Junior and Thomas, and Thomas announces that the next song is for Chess. He points at her in the crowd, and everyone chants her name. Thomas sings the love song over and over, and the crowd goes crazy, pushing Chess onstage, where she ends up singing a duet with Thomas, telling her sister that she is only falling for this maneuver “a little bit.”

A local review later pans the band, saying that it “made up in pure volume what it lacked in talent,” and noting that Victor and Junior were “drunk as skunks.” The night of the show, Chess and Checkers helped Thomas pack the gear, since Victor and Junior were passed out in the van. Thomas is entranced by the idea of Montana, which has always been the mythical home of Indians in his mind, and also by the beautiful Chess Warm Water. Chess doesn’t feel beautiful, but is comfortable with her appearance. She has dark, “Indian grandmother eyes that stayed clear and focused for generations,” and seems to have a sort of inner wisdom. Checkers is surprised that a suitor chose her sister over her, but doesn’t miss the attention as she sees Thomas’s awkward first attempt at courtship.

Chess invites Thomas back to their house to spend the night, and although he feels a bit shy about the offer, he agrees to come and drink a coffee before the long drive ahead. The lights in the Warm Water House are blazing, and Thomas asks if they live with their parents, but Checkers tells him their parents are gone. They leave Victor and Junior to sleep in the car, and Checkers goes to bed, so Chess and Thomas are alone in the kitchen. Thomas is shy, so he asks Chess about herself.

Chess tells Thomas that they grew up in a little shack in the hills with their parents, Luke and Linda Warm Water, and their baby brother Bobby. Bobby died one winter, sick and far from the reach of any doctor. Thomas reveals that his mother died when he was ten, and his father is a drunk. Chess tells him that her father used to play piano, when the trees were so cold they cracked like gunfire, and he taught her and Checkers how to sing. The night Bobby died, Luke went out into the snow to find help, knowing that none could be found, and Linda kissed his fingertips on the way outside.

Chess begins to cry, and takes a moment to herself in the bathroom. Thomas asks about Checkers, who is listening in the next room and crying a little herself. She remembers her father storming back in, cursing “like a defeated warrior,” and then screaming until colors flowed out of him. They buried Bobby in a grave Luke Warm Water dug over three days in the frozen ground. Then he began to drink, and the sisters spent most days outside in the woods, close enough to hear when their mother Linda played the mournful music on the piano, music that spread across the reservation like a rain of tears.

Thomas smiles at Chess when her story is finished—she is the first Indian he has found who tells stories like his. He decides to sleep on the couch, and savors the feeling of Chess’s toothbrush—he’s already in love. Chess covers him with a quilt her mother made, and tells him, when he asks, that her mother Linda died of cancer—a lie. Thomas says that his mother died of cancer, too. Chess kisses him on the cheek, a magical kiss, and says goodnight, but she cannot sleep and is haunted by memories. She remembers the good sounds of her parents’ lovemaking before Bobby died, and how they changed after, when Linda no longer consented to Luke’s advances, and, when he was drunk, he forced himself on her, roughly. Their fighting became intense, until Chess used to wish her parents would die so that she could learn to love them again in death.

One day Linda walked into the woods “like an old dog and found a hiding place to die.” Luke quit drinking, determined to find her, not believing she was dead—he convinced himself she had run away with another man. He brought Chess and Checkers small gifts whenever he returned from searching. One time, he brought each sister a Pepsi from Missoula. They buried them in the snow so they would be cold, but the bottles exploded, and Luke yelled at the sisters, shaking Checkers for ruining the special treat. Chess noticed the brown snow was sweet, though, and the sisters ate it in handfuls, and then held each other by the fire until their father returned.

Asleep, Thomas dreams of television and hunger, scrolling through black and white channels to find only images of white people with plentiful food. Finally he finds evidence of Indians, in a film where three cowboys confront the Sioux nation. They tell three Indians who dismount from their horses that they “come in friendship,” and then electrocute all three on the telegraph wire they are stringing up, so that the Sioux ride off in a panic. This reminds Thomas of the summer that Junior and Victor killed snakes by draping them over an electric fence, forcing Thomas to watch. Once Victor tried to make Thomas grab a dead rattlesnake, and, when he threw it at Victor, held it in his face and then threw it against the fence, where it danced in the electricity and came back to life, sending the boys scrambling.

The dream continues: now Thomas, Victor, and Junior are practicing, and Thomas says he hopes they don’t make it big, because it might ruin them. He holds Robert Johnson’s guitar in the dream, and plays it, feeling sweet pain, until Victor shouts at him. He then wakes up to find the real Victor above him, searching for the guitar—Thomas had brought it inside so that it didn’t get cold. Victor cooks an omelet, surprising everyone. Chess leaves the kitchen after Victor farts, and Thomas follows her. Victor and Junior are left alone with Checkers. They compliment her crudely, but she makes it clear that neither of them has a chance with her.

Thomas tells Chess that the band is better than they sounded last night, blaming Victor and Junior being drunk. He tells her he does not drink, and she smiles: this is a very important qualification in a potential mate. She has had many Indian boyfriends, each disappointing in his own way, and is prepared to be let down. Thomas, though, has no kids, does not drink, and has never been married. Pleased, Chess observes that Victor is a jerk with terrible clothes who bosses around the kindlier Junior. Thomas explains that Victor is broke—they all are, and that’s why the band exists. Chess and Checkers are poor too, fighting fires for the BIA (Bureau of Indian Affairs) in the summer to make money.

Struck with an idea, Thomas invites Chess and Checkers to join the band as singers. Chess is skeptical, unwilling to leave home. Victor objects to the idea, but when Thomas suggests they vote, Junior unexpectedly votes with Thomas. The sisters are still unconvinced, so they begin to play music. Victor resists, but the guitar speaks to him in a strange voice and he joins in, shredding on a solo so intensely that his hands blister and sparks cause a fire that Chess and Checkers, veteran firefighters, have to douse. They are dumbstruck, and sign on immediately.

The band stays with the Warm Water sisters for a week, rehearsing until their discord and disorder begins to meld into something worth hearing, and then they reach out to the owner of the Tipi Pole Tavern once again. The band rocks their return show, playing classics with a fervor that turns the songs into “tribal music that scared and excited the white people in the audience.” The audience goes wild, begging for more “music, hope, and joy.” After the show, Chess, Checkers, and Thomas find Victor and Junior naked and drunk in the back of the van with an equally naked Betty and Veronica.

Checkers goes to sleep on the pool table inside, while Chess and Thomas sit on a bench and talk. Chess tells Thomas that Victor and Junior hanging out with white women feels like a betrayal. The race needs to be preserved, but Indian men also need Indian women, she thinks. Thomas asks whether she likes him or just his DNA, and she tells him she likes both. Thomas agrees with what Chess is saying, but also feels that love should be celebrated wherever it’s found, and he feels bad for “half-breed” kids who are often mistreated even worse than he was. Chess admits that her grandmother was part German and hated being Indian, so much that she ran away from her family on the reservation.

Thomas responds with the story of two boys, an Indian named Beaver and a white boy named Wally. They both competed in fancydance contests, but whenever Wally won the Indian boys beat him up—all except Beaver. And Wally never stopped dancing. Chess correctly guesses that the two were half brothers. When she asks what the story means, Thomas says he doesn’t know, but maybe it means that “drums make everyone feel like an Indian.”

The Wellpinit paper reports that Coyote Springs has returned home with the addition of two Flathead sisters. The article quotes Michael White Hawk badmouthing the band. The band members are asleep throughout Thomas’s house. Chess dreams of a small unpainted Indian man on a pale horse, who rides alone and sad into a cavalry fort where many other Indians are waiting. He has come to negotiate, but pulls a knife when he sees bars on the windows of his room, and he is killed by an angry Indian and a white soldier’s bayonet. A tall Indian from the crowd carries the dying visitor to a lodge, where the Indians sing mourning songs. A doctor comes and goes. The man’s father arrives, and he and the tall Indian watch the unpainted man die.

Chess wakes up in the dark, frightened, and calls for Thomas, finding him in the kitchen working on a song. He tells her everything is okay, and she kisses him full on the mouth, so that he nearly falls over in his chair. They make love tenderly and awkwardly. Afterwards, they lie together and listen to a faint sound haunting the reservation air.

The band’s first non-reservation gig is at a cowboy bar in Ellensburg, Washington. To get there they drive the faded blue van, which is old enough that Victor says they should get a new rig. Thomas tells him they must respect their elders, but then the car breaks down. They push the van twenty miles, into Vantage, where a cop finds them. He asks them where they’re from, and goes to make a call. Victor and Junior discuss “taking him out,” but when he returns, the cop tells them his cousin is coming to tow them to the bar, Toadstools, where they will be playing. As he’s leaving, he asks who the lead singer is, and Thomas raises his hand. Junior says that if he finds any silver bullets lying around, he’s going to pass out.

The Ellensburg paper publishes a review of the show, calling Coyote Springs “professional” and praising their passion. The bar’s owner, Ernie Lively, is quoted saying that he was nervous about hiring Indians, but that it went well. The highlight was when “those Indians sang ‘Mommas, Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be Cowboys,’” and everyone sang along.

The van has been repaired by a mechanic now, and a few stories have been whispered into its engine by Thomas. They band members are driving back to the reservation, everyone asleep but Chess and Thomas, who listen to Hank Williams on the radio. The music rises up into the night, banging into the Big Dipper and bouncing off the moon, and it keeps howling “until Coyote Springs became echoes.” Thomas and Chess listen, and drive all the way home through the night.