“Hurry up!” Chess, age twelve, shouted at Checkers, who had just turned eleven. “We’re going to be late for church.”
The Warm Water sisters struggled into their best dresses, dingy from too many washes but still the best they owned, and hurried to Flathead Reservation Catholic Church.
“Father James says I get to sing the lead today,” Checkers said.
“Not if I get there first.”
Chess and Checkers pulled on their shoes and tiptoed into their dad’s room, which stank of whiskey and body odor. Luke Warm Water slept alone and dreamed of his missing wife.
“Hey, Dad,” Chess whispered. “We’re going to church. Is that okay?”
Luke snored.
“Good. I’m glad you agree. Do you want to come this time?”
Luke snored.
“I don’t think it’s a good idea, either. Maybe next time?”
Luke snored.
“Don’t get mad at me. Jeez. If you walked into church, everybody might die of shock.”
“Yeah,” Checkers said. “The whole roof might fall down.”
The sisters walked to the church, which was one of those simple buildings, four walls, a door, a crucifix, and twenty folding chairs. Those folding chairs were multidimensional. Set them up facing the front, and they served as pews. Circle them around a teacher in the middle, and you had Sunday School. Push them up to card tables, and you feasted on donated food. Fold those chairs, stack them in a corner, and you cleared a dance space. Folding chairs proved the existence of God.
Chess and Checkers helped with communion and sang in the church choir. The sisters were the choir, but they sang loud enough to shake the walls.
“The louder we get,” Father James preached, “the better God can hear us.”
Chess and Checkers believed Father James. They sang until their lungs ached. Chess opened her arms wide and looked toward heaven; Checkers opened her arms wide and looked at Father James. Both sisters were in love.
“Do you remember all those gospel songs we used to sing?” Chess asked her sister as they continued to brush Samuel Builds-the-Fire’s hair.
“I remember.”
Chess and Checkers kept singing as they brushed, while Samuel dreamed of beautiful Indian nuns.
“Lucky fuckers,” Chief Walks Along said and threw the ball back to Lester. Samuel cut behind Lester, took a handoff, shrugged off Wilson and William, and launched a thirty-foot jumper.
“For Crazy Horse,” Samuel said as he released the ball.
SAMUEL & LESTER—2
TRIBAL COPS—0
“That’s traveling,” WalksAlong said.
“No way,” Samuel said. “You can’t make that call.”
“I can make any call I want. I’m Chief.”
“Yeah, that’s the only way you’re going to stop me. With a pistol.”
Lester squared off with the other five cops, danced like a boxer, flicked a few harmless jabs at the Heavy Burden brothers, and sprained his wrist.
“Our ball,” Samuel said.
As Thomas stood outside and the Warm Waters brushed Samuel’s hair, Victor dreamed. In his dream, his stepfather was packing the car. Victor had sworn never to say his parents’ names again. But his stepfather, Harold, roared to life and threw Victor’s mother, Matilda, into the trunk beside the dead body of Victor’s real father, Emery. Victor struggled to leave the nightmare, the naming, but his mother’s cries pulled him back. Matilda held tightly to Emery’s body in the trunk.
Where you going? Victor asked Harold.
Away.
Let me get my stuff.
I’ve already packed your stuff. Your suitcase is in the house.
Where we going?
You ain’t going anywhere with us. You can go any damn place you please, but I don’t want no Indian kid hanging around us no more.
Harold slammed the trunk shut, and the force knocked Victor to the ground. By the time he had gotten to his feet, Harold was sitting in the driver’s seat, turning the ignition. The car whined and whined but would not start.
Wait for me, Victor called and ran to the driver’s window. He pounded on the glass while Harold turned the key again. Victor ran into the house to find his suitcase. He ran from room to room. When he finally found it stuffed under a bed, he heard the car start outside.
Wait for me, Victor shouted and ran outside, dropping his suitcase. He ran after his stepfather’s car, followed him down the road as far as he could. He galloped down the pavement, his suddenly long hair trailing in the wind. He ran until his body lathered with sweat. He ran until he fell on all fours.
When he stood again, his head was shaved bald. Huge white men in black robes milled around.
What happened to your hair? a black robe asked.
It’s gone.
No, it’s not, the black robe said. He took Victor’s hand and led him through all the other black robes. The black robe and Victor walked down flights of stairs.
Are you tired? the black robe asked.
Yes.
Do you want me to carry you?
No.
The black robe lifted him anyway and carried him on his shoulders. Victor felt the hard muscles through the black robe. He knew that man could crush him. But the black robe carried him to the bottom of the stairs and into a large room. Paintings adorned every wall.
Look here, the black robe said. This is my favorite one.
Victor looked at the painting. A battle scene. Two armies fighting. Guns, horses, men, flags, horses, smoke, blood, horses. Victor stared at the painting until he smelled blood and smoke.
Please, Victor said, let me down.
The black robe set him down. Victor rubbed his head, scratched his head, and looked at his hand. Blood.
I’m bleeding.
So you are, the black robe said, pulled out a handkerchief, and dabbed at Victor’s wounds. When the cloth was saturated, the black robe rolled it up into a little ball and swallowed it.
Here, the black robe said, I want to show you something.
The black robe held Victor’s hand and led him through a series of doors. Victor lost track of place and time. He closed his eyes and followed the black robe. He heard the black robe sing.
Here, the black robe said. We’re here.
Victor opened his eyes in a room filled with the stink of burning hair. Other black robes shoveled hair into burning barrels, furnaces, and open fires. Long, black hair.
Here we are, the black robe said. We made it.
Victor ran from the room. He ran past doors into strange rooms. He ran until he lost his breath and collapsed on the cold, hard floor of a barren room. He lay there for hours, until the floor grew warm, then grew grass. He dug his fingers and toes into the grass, the dirt. He dug until his fingers and toes bled with the effort. He dug because he had forgotten how to stand. He dug because his father, Emery, and mother, Matilda, waited on a better reservation at the center of the world.
Samuel dribbled the ball between his legs, between William and Wilson, who crashed into each other in their defensive effort, then breezed past Phil, Art, and Scott Heavy Burden, and jumped over WalksAlong for the bucket.
SAMUEL & LESTER—3
TRIBAL COPS—0
“That shot was for every time one of you assholes wrote somebody a traffic ticket on this reservation,” Samuel said. “I mean, how could you fine some Indian who doesn’t have enough money to feed his kids?”
“Yeah,” Lester said. “They wrote old Moses a ticket for failure to stop when there wasn’t another car on the reservation even working at the time. Moses had to pawn one of his eagle feathers to pay that fine. Never got it back either.”
“Fuck both of you,” the Chief said. “Quit talking smack and play ball.”
“Shit,” Samuel said. “I should be writing you all tickets for failing to stop me.”
Samuel gave the ball to Lester, who dribbled it to his left, off his feet, and into the hands of Officer Wilson. Enraged by
his turnover, Lester played tough defense by breathing on the officer with Thunderbird Wine breath. Wilson nearly threw up but recovered well enough to break Lester’s nose with an elbow and throw a nice pass to the Chief for an easy basket.
SAMUEL & LESTER—3
TRIBAL COPS—1
Lester kicked and screamed on the ground. The Tribal Police celebrated their first basket, while Samuel stood with hands on hips and knew it was the same old story.
“That was a foul,” Samuel said.
“We didn’t see nothing.”
As Victor, in one corner of the house, dreamed of black robes, Junior fell into his own dream in another corner. In his dream, Junior was in the back seat of his parents’ car outside the Powwow Tavern. Below freezing, so he shared a sleeping bag with his two brothers and two sisters. Junior struggled to remember his siblings’ names.
Run the heat for a little while, his siblings pleaded, because he had the car keys.
No, Junior said. Mom and Dad said I have to save gas. We just got enough to get home.
In his dream, Junior tried to remember his parents’ names, but they eluded him. Those names always eluded him, even in waking. In his dream, Junior’s siblings tried to wrestle the keys away, but he fought them off. They wrestled and argued until their parents staggered out of the bar.
Oh, good, his siblings said. We’re going home.
Junior’s parents knocked on the window; he rolled it down.
You warm? they asked.
Warm enough, Junior said and silenced his siblings with a mean look.
Here’s some food, mother-and-father said, and shoved potato chips and Pepsi through the open window into the arms of their children.
We’ll be out soon, okay? mother-and-father said.
Junior and his siblings watched their parents stagger back toward the bar. Mother-and-father turned and waved. Then they danced a clumsy two-step.
Jeez, Junior said in his dream. They love each other.
Mother-and-father wove their way back inside the bar, and Junior turned back to his siblings.
Make sure everybody gets enough, Junior said.
They ate their potato chips and Pepsi.
I’m bored, his siblings said after dinner, so Junior sang to them.
I’m bored, his siblings said again, and Junior started to cry. He cried as each of his siblings climbed out of the car and ran away on all fours. They ran into the darkness; hands and feet sparked on the pavement. They ran to other reservations and never returned. They ran to crack houses and lay down in the debris. They ran to tall buildings and jumped off. They joined the army and disappeared in the desert. Junior cried until his parents came out of the bar at closing time.
Where is everybody? mother-and-father asked.
Gone, gone, gone, gone.
Mother-and-father cried. Then they drove down the highway and looked for their children.
I don’t mean to say it’s all your fault, mother-and-father said. But it is all your fault.
They drove and drove. Mother-and-father sat behind the wheel and drank beer. When finished, they rolled down the window and threw the empty bottles into the dark. Junior heard them shatter against road signs. He saw the little explosions they made at impact. Impossible reds, impossible reds. He lost count of the bottles.
Ya-hey, Junior called out, but his parents pushed him back.
I don’t want to hurt you, mother-and-father said. But I might hurt you.
Junior leaned back, curled into a ball in the back seat. He heard the road sing under the wheels of the car. He heard his parents’ soft tears and quiet whispers. Then he noticed the car moving faster and faster, his parents’ tears and whispers growing into sobs and shouts.
Wait, Junior said, but the car suddenly rolled. Junior counted the revolutions: one, two, three, four, all the way to twenty. The car came to rest on its wheels, with Junior still tucked into a ball in the back seat. He listened to a faint song in the distance. He heard something dripping in the engine. He heard coughing.
Ya-hey, Junior said as he climbed out of the car and saw his mother-and-father completely still on the grass. He grabbed his parents by the arms and dragged them across the grass. It took hours. He dragged his parents up stairs and into a strange house. It took days. He dragged his parents into a bedroom and laid them down on the bed. It took years. He kneeled at the foot of the bed. He folded his hands to pray.
He opened his mouth, but nothing came out. He strained and strained, his vocal cords ached with the effort, but nothing came out. Then he heard music from the radio beside the bed. He turned up the volume until the walls and bed shook. His parents stared with fixed pupils. They danced on the bed. Their arms and legs kicked wildly, until their fingers locked, and they pulled each other back and forth, back and forth.
Chief WalksAlong hit two quick jumpshots over a seriously handicapped Lester FallsApart, who protected his broken nose with one hand. Officers William and Wilson made baskets, and Samuel ran ragged trying to defend himself against the entire world.
TRIBAL COPS—5
SAMUEL & LESTER—3
“Samuel,” the Chief asked, “don’t you sing pretty good? I might want to hear a few verses of ‘I Fought the Law and the Law Won’ after this game.”
“I don’t know that one. But I know how to sing ‘I Shot the Sheriff.’”
The Chief threw the ball to Art Heavy Burden, who missed a jumper, but the Chief followed the shot and put the rebound back in.
TRIBAL COPS—6
SAMUEL & LESTER—3
“That shot was for every time one of you drunk ass Indians told me I wasn’t real,” the Chief said. “That was for every time you little fuckers think pissing your pants is a ceremonial act.”
“Did you ever drink?” Thomas asked Chess after he came back inside the house. His father still snored on the table.
“No.”
“Not ever?”
“Neither of us ever drank,” Chess said.
“We were afraid of it,” Checkers said. “Even when we wanted to drink, we were too scared, enit?”
Thomas looked at his father on the table.
“Look what it did to my father,” he said.
Chess looked at Thomas, at his father, at both. She saw her father, Luke, in their faces. She missed her father, even after all he had done.
Checkers also saw her father in Samuel’s face, in Thomas’s eyes. She saw that warrior desperation and the need to be superhuman in the poverty of a reservation. She hated all of it.
I’m Super Indian Man, those pseudo-warriors always shouted on the reservation. Able to leap tall HUD houses in a single bound. Faster than a BIA pickup. Stronger than a block of commodity cheese. Checkers tried to ignore them, but the Indian men visited her dreams. Look at my big cowboy hat. Look at my big boots. Look at my big, big belt buckle. Those men, those ghosts, crawled into her bed at night, lifted her nightgown, and forced her legs apart. After they finished with her, those Indian men sat on the edge of the bed and cried. Ha-oh, ha-oh, ha-oh. I lost my cowboy hat. Somebody stole my boots. I pawned my belt buckle. No matter how bad she felt, those tears always moved her heart. She reached for the Indian men in her dreams and held them tightly. Her stomach turned, and she swallowed bile, but she held on.
“I hate this,” Thomas said. “I hate my father.”
“You don’t hate him,” Chess said. “You’re just upset.”
“I hate him,” Thomas said again and squeezed his hands into fists.
A few days earlier, Chess and Thomas had driven to Spokane for a cheap hamburger. They walked in downtown Spokane and stumbled onto a drunk couple arguing.
“Get the fuck away from me!” the drunk woman yelled at her drunk husband, who squeezed his hand into a fist like he meant to hit her.
Thomas and Chess flinched, then froze, transported back to all of those drunken arguments they’d witnessed and survived.
The drunk couple in downtown Spokane pulled at each other??
?s clothes and hearts, but they were white people. Chess and Thomas knew that white people hurt each other, too. Chess knew that white people felt pain just like Indians. Nerve endings, messages to the brain, reflexes. The doctor swung hammer against knee, and the world collapsed.
“You fucker!” the white woman yelled at her husband, who opened his hands and held them out to his wife. An offering. That hand would not strike her. He pleaded with his wife until she fell back into his arms. That white woman and man held each other while Chess and Thomas watched. A hundred strangers walked by and never noticed any of it.
After that, Chess and Thomas had sat in the van in a downtown parking lot. Thomas began to weep, deep ragged tears that rose along his rib cage, filled his mouth and nose, and exploded out.
“You don’t hate him,” Chess said to Thomas as Samuel Builds-the-Fire inhaled sharply and held his breath too long. They all waited for the next breath. When he finally exhaled loudly, it surprised him to be alive, and he smiled in his sleep.
Chess looked across Samuel’s body lying on that table, looked at Samuel’s son, and wanted a mirror. Here, she wanted to say to Thomas. You don’t look anything like your father. You’re much more handsome. Your hair is longer, and your hands are beautiful. But Thomas needed more than that. His father lay on the table, but it could have been any Indian man. It could have been a white man on the table.
“What’s going to happen to him?” Checkers asked.
“What’s going to happen to who?” Chess and Thomas asked her back.
Samuel made two beautiful moves and scored twice, but the Tribal Cops answered with two buckets of their own. The game broke down into a real war after that. Hard fouls on drives to the hoop, moving screens, kidney punches. The cops targeted Lester’s broken nose and drove Samuel into a basket support pole. Fresh wounds.
“That’s a foul!” Samuel yelled as he made a move on the Chief.
“You goddamn pussy.”
Samuel held the ball in his arms like a fullback and ran the Chief over.
“First down!” Lester yelled.