TALES FROM SPRINGDALE 
                             Death of an Indian 
                        Copyright 1993 by Dave Laird 

Amanda at her place behind the bar of the Crown Tavern, as she each and
every night excepting Friday and Saturday, selling beer, pull tabs, bootleg
cigarettes without a federal tax stamp and just about anything else that
wasn't nailed down. Each night, the arrogant mix of Indians, loggers,
traveling salesmen and farmers all queue up in front of the bar, coarsely
yelling at each other over the juke box, fighting among themselves and
leering at any female who happened to enter the bar hopefully, as if she
were the only woman within a hundred miles. 

Tonight, she is thankful that hardly anyone has come by to see her, for
today another her four sons died in a car wreck. It's just an occupational
hazard of being an Indian, she thinks wryly to herself, she lights another
cigarette, letting the smoke trickle lazily out her nostrils. It's just
another day, working for a few dollars, while the hazard of simple existence
lurks in the shadows all around her. She probably shouldn't even be here,
working, were it not for the fact that she desperately needs the money to
pay for her third son's casket. No damned funeral home would give credit to
an Indian, as she well knows. First was Willie, the oldest of her four sons.
Just prior to his death, things had taken a turn for the better in his life.

He had just gotten hired by the Bonneville Power Administration, their token
Indian, and when he finished his first week working at the dam, he drove
home all proud-chested and grinning in his hundred dollar suit to show off
to his younger brothers. 

"Let's go have a few beers, for old time's sake," he said, slapping his
brothers across their shoulders. "Play some pool, maybe meet some gals from
the Rez..."

He was there, and gone. It took the bunch of aging white men from the
Springdale Rural Fire Department, all dressed in fire helmets and bunker
coats, nearly four hours to cut him out of his new hopped-up car after he
had smacked head-on into a semi south of Springdale. Then there was Bobby.
Bobby the ne'er do well, Bobby the troublemaker. 

Her mom always said that if trouble were to walk into the room, it would
move clear through a crowd of raging drunken Indians without so much as
raising a hair the wrong way to get to Bobby. He just seemed to attract
trouble wherever he went. After his brother's funeral, Bobby swore would
never drink and drive again. Three months ago, Danny, Bobby and she had just
gone to the tribal Pow Wow celebrate, for despite his troublesome ways,
Bobby somehow managed get a job with a logging company down south, and would
be leaving with his pregnant wife for Oregon in a few days, but he wanted
see some of his old friends, who would be certain to not miss the dance.

She'd felt so proud, dancing between two such handsome young red men, at the
tribal Long House. Danny on her left, Bobby on her right, the three of them
were positively glowing as the old women of the tribe cried Naah nah, a sign
of great respect, as they danced by. It was like rippling water, the power
that flowed between the three of them. It was a time of great joy. That
evening, good fortune smiled on her, as she and Bobby won thirty dollars at
the stick game. 

In the meantime, Danny disappeared drinking with some friends who had a
bottle of whiskey. She wasn't worried about Danny, so much as she was about
Bobby, for whenever Bobby got drinking whiskey, he nearly always ended up in
jail, on one charge or another. About four in the morning, her mother and
Bobby came with tears and soft footsteps to tap on her door. 

Danny had just died in a car wreck, and Danny's wife, pregnant with what
would her first grandchild, was still in surgery in critical condition.
Ultimately, she had not only lost a son, a step-daughter and a grandson, as
well, since neither Danny's wife nor her unborne child survived. The sorrow
hung over her house, visible in the half-light of twilights for days and
days, and she could not speak to anyone of what she had seen.

Last night, the Tribal Chairman, Sonny Levett, came to her house, just after
sunset, when she was sitting in her front yard, getting ready to go to work.
Right away, she knew something bad was afoot, for Sonny was dressed in his
best suit, his face rigid, fixed, not unlike his usual jovial self. 

Now, within two months of Danny's funeral, Bobby too, was gone. He'd been
down to Rialto to see some friends, and when he didn't come home that night,
she'd assumed he had decided to stay overnight, rather than to drive over
the dangerous pass in the dark.

It had come full circle, she thought. Now I have no sons left, no one left
to grieve for, no one left to grieve for me. She lit another cigarette. As
the hour drew near when she would have to close the tavern down for yet
another night, she began to dread it, for when the tavern closed, there
would be nothing except the dance of mourning.

Fred Holter came in the door, half staggering from having already spent some
time down the street at the Reservation Tavern. "Hiya Fred. Y' want a beer?"
she asked laconically, already knowing his answer. 

As she slowly poured a perfect glass of beer, not too much foam, not too
little, either, she softly began her chant of mourning, standing in her mind
by the place where the water still rippled softly across the rocks, the only
place where all her sons were reunited with her. She sat Fred's beer in
front of him, her hand automatically extended for the money for the beer,
and as she patiently smiled at Fred, as he fumbled in his hip pocket for his
wallet, she began the steps, in her mind, of the dance of sorrow, for her
sons who awaited her.

Fred was too drunk to notice the tears in the corners of her eyes, or that
she want to the other end of the bar staring out the window into the dark
for a long, long time. 

[Note: It is estimated by the Washington State Patrol that last year over
120 current or past tribal members of the Spokane Band of Indians were
killed or critically injured in auto accidents where alcohol was involved.
Although this story you've just read is tragically true, the names were
changed. The remaining son, the last of five, has been arrested multiple
numbers of times in the past for drunk driving and has, himself, had several
close brushes with death while driving under the influence alcohol to and
from Springdale's bar row. Yet, because of its isolation and the lack of
local law enforcement support, the Washington State Liquor Control Board
does little to nothing about it.]

[Published in The Chewelah Independent on the day that I attended the
funeral for the real-life Amanda, who was killed by a drunk driver as she
turned into her lane near Ford, Washington.]