Reservation Blues

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1995

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Summary

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapters 1-2

Chapters 3-5

Chapters 6-8

Chapters 9-10

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

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Discussion Questions

Chapters 3-5 Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapter 3 Summary: "Indian Boy Love Song"

Coyote Springs plays their first show at the Tipi Pole Tavern on the Flathead Indian reservation. Victor and Junior get drunk and do not play very well. In the audience are two Flathead sisters named Chess and Checkers Warm Water. Thomas sings his song “Indian Boy Love Song” for Chess and invites her onstage to sing a duet.

After the show, Victor and Junior are passed out in the van, and the sisters invite Thomas to spend the night at their house instead of driving back. Chess tells Thomas about their childhood of extreme poverty on the reservation. Their father played the piano, and music was an important part of their childhood. After their baby brother died, their father began to drink and their mother left. As he listens to Chess talk, Thomas feels he has found someone else who tells stories the way that he does.

The next day, Thomas asks the girls to join the band. At first they are reluctant, given the way the show went the night before, but when they hear Victor play the guitar sober, they agree to join. Thomas buys a keyboard for them to play.

After a week of practicing, Coyote Springs plays another show at the Tipi Pole Tavern. This time, the show is a success. Afterwards, Thomas and the girls find Victor and Junior naked in the van with Betty and Veronica. Chess expresses her dislike of Indian men who chase white women.

The band returns to the Spokane Reservation, and Thomas and Chess become lovers. They play their first show off the reservation at a bar in Ellensburg, Washington. Thomas’s van breaks down on the way there and has to be repaired. On the way home, Thomas and Chess listen to the radio and are struck by the magical quality of the music.

Chapter 4 Summary: "Father and Farther"

The band returns to Thomas’s house, where they find an old man passed out drunk on the lawn. This turns out to be Thomas’s father, Samuel. Although Thomas has referred to his alcoholic father before, this is the first time he appears in the novel. They carry him inside and lay him on the table. Thomas and the girls sit around the table, singing and telling stories. Thomas tells the girls how his father was once a basketball champion.

The narration shifts to tell the story of a younger Samuel, who was pulled over in a car with his friend Lester FallsApart. Officer Wilson, a white policeman, challenges the two to a basketball game against six cops. Despite Samuel’s skill, the cops win through fouls and unfair play.

The narration begins to switch back and forth between recounting the actions of the past basketball game and the present night at Thomas’s house. The sisters remember growing up with their own alcoholic father and how much they enjoyed singing at their Catholic church. Victor dreams of his father, mother, and stepfather. In the dream, his stepfather takes his mother and abandons Victor, who runs after them through a nightmare of rooms filled with sinister robed figures. Junior dreams of his own childhood, of alcoholic parents and younger siblings who are now gone. Thomas tells the girls how his mother quit drinking after a party where his father had been particularly drunk and violent. He tells them that Junior’s parents died in car wreck driving home drunk from the party.

In the morning, Checkers and Vincent get into a fight, which turns into a fistfight between Thomas and Vincent. Thomas is about to kick Vincent out of the band when a FedEx envelope arrives asking the band to play a big show the next night in Seattle. They will be paid $1000. Checkers decides not to go with them and stays behind as the band drives to Seattle.

Chapter 5 Summary: "My God Has Dark Skin"

Coyote Springs arrives at a motel in Seattle. Thomas calls the theater where they will be performing and learns that the show is, in fact, a battle of the bands. The band will only get the money if they win. Since they do not have enough money for a hotel room, they sleep in the van.

In Spokane, Checkers visits the reservation’s Catholic church, where she talks to Father Arnold about her faith, her issues with Indian men, and her hatred and envy of white women. She breaks down crying, and though the priest can tell something larger is bothering her, she will not say what it is.

Asleep in the van, Junior dreams of General George Wright and General Sheridan, U.S. generals who fought and killed Indians, and of other white soldiers killing Indians and their horses. Chess asks Thomas if he is a Christian. He says that he is not, although he was baptized as a child. He shares his memory of the old Catholic priest burning books and records in a bonfire. Victor remembers being sent to Catholic summer camp as a child where a priest abused him. In Spokane, Checkers feels that she may be falling in love with Father Arnold.

The next day, the band goes to Pike Place Market. Victor talks to all the older, drunk Indians who are there. When it is time to leave for the show, the rest of the band cannot find Victor. Eventually, they locate him playing guitar with an old man who sings.

Back in Spokane, Checkers has a dream in which Father Arnold forces himself on her sexually.

At this point in the chapter, a transcript of a radio interview between Thomas and a radio DJ interrupts the narrative. During the interview, it is revealed that Coyote Springs has won the contest and that they have added Betty and Veronica as backup singers. Thomas also admits that he is in love with Chess.

In Spokane, Checkers goes to church and joins the choir. After Mass, Father Arnold has a dream in which a pair of missionaries admit to using cruel tricks to convert the Indians.

Coyote Springs drives back to Spokane. In the car, Chess and Thomas discuss religion, and Thomas agrees to go to church with Chess on Sunday.

Chapters 3-5 Analysis

As the novel progresses, the reader begins to notice its organization. Each chapter begins with the lyrics of a song, whose title gives the chapter its name. These titles often introduce a theme that runs through the chapter: for example, Chapter 4, “Father and Farther,” focuses heavily on the characters’ relationships with their fathers, while Chapter 5, “My God Has Dark Skin,” discusses religion. This method of organization highlights the literary structure of the book itself. Occasionally, it can pull the reader away from the world of the narrative and serve as a reminder that the book is, in fact, a work of fiction, a story much like the ones Thomas tells. Other details in the book also hint at the book’s existence as a constructed work of fiction. For example, the interview transcript between Thomas and the DJ changes from a believable conversation into a more psychological or literary examination of the characters’ motives.

Over these chapters, dreams begin to play an important role in the narrative. According to the old traditions, dreams can bring revelations and visions, and, though the characters do not necessarily believe that they are gaining wisdom from their dreams, they do pay close attention to them. These dreams are often nightmares inspired by events in the characters’ past, like when Junior dreams of his parents’ death in a car crash or Victor dreams of ominous, figures whose robes resemble that the priest who abused him. Frequently, the dreams feature people and events from history, like Generals Sheridan and Wright and the murder of Indians by the U.S. Army during the Indian Wars. In this way, dreams present a clear picture of the effect that past violence has on the present.

Religion is another important part of life of the reservation. Chapter 5addresses religion extensively, showing how it exerts both positive and negative force. Chess and Checkers are devoted Catholics. For the sisters, religion provided structure and comfort as their childhood home life crumbled. Going to church gave them the opportunity to sing in the choir and to align religion with the healing power of music. At the same time, however, religion is presented as one of the forces white men used to manipulate and control the American Indians. Father Arnold dreams of missionaries who get Indians to convert to Christianity by threatening them with smallpox. Thomas remembers the Catholic church on the reservation burning books deemed “subversive,” a move that further weakened the already limited educational resources available on the reservation. Victor, who was abused by a priest, is haunted by nightmares of robed white men forcibly cutting Indians’ hair.

Issues of gender relations and of relationships between Indian men and white women also begin to play an important part in the novel. Checkers has an especially complex relationship with men, and there are hints that she was sexually abused by her father. Both girls are upset by Victor’s and Junior’s relationships with Betty and Veronica. For Chess, it is an issue “of preservation” (Chapter 3). The few Indian men available are lost to white women, who fetishize the Indian lifestyle but will never truly understand it.