Then the music stopped. The reservation exhaled. Those blues created memories for the Spokanes, but they refused to claim them. Those blues lit up new road, but the Spokanes pulled out their old maps. Those blues churned up generations of anger and pain: car wrecks, suicides, murders. Those blues were ancient, aboriginal, indigenous.
In his bed, Thomas Builds-the-Fire had recognized Robert Johnson’s voice as those blues drifted down from Big Mom’s mountain. But Thomas also heard something hidden behind the words. He heard Robert Johnson’s grandmother singing backup. Thomas closed his eyes and saw that grandmother in some tattered cabin. No windows, blanket for a door, acrid smoke. Johnson’s grandmother was not alone in that cabin. Other black men, women, and children sang with her. The smell of sweat, blood, and cotton filled the room. Cotton, cotton. Those black people sang for their God; they sang with joy and sorrow. The white men in their big houses heard those songs and smiled. ‘Those niggers singin’ and dancin’ again,’ those white me thought. ‘Damn music don’t make sense.’
Thomas listened closely, but the other Spokanes slowly stretched their arms and legs, walked outside, and would not speak about any of it. They buried all of their pain and anger deep inside, and it festered, then blossomed, and the bloom grew quickly.
