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.
“Now,” Samuel said, “that’s a foul.”
The Chief stood, touched his head where it hit the court, and found blood.
“That’s assaulting an officer,” he said. “Good for a year in Tribal Jail.”
“This is a game,” Samuel said. “It don’t count.”
“Everything counts.”
The Chief took the ball from Samuel, passed it to Phil Heavy Burden, took a pass right back, and popped a jumper.
TRIBAL COPS—9
SAMUEL & LESTER—5
“Game point, shitheads,” the Chief said. “You two best be getting ready for jail.”
“Fuck you,” Samuel said as he stole the ball, drove down the court, and went in for a two-handed, rattle-the-foundations, ratify-a-treaty, abolish-income-tax, close-the-uranium-mines monster dunk.
“That was for every one of you Indians like you Tribal Cops,” Samuel said. “That was for all those Indian scouts who helped the U.S. Cavalry. That was for Wounded Knee I and II. For Sand Creek. Hell, that was for both the Kennedys, Martin Luther King, and Malcolm X.”
“Yeah,” Lester said. “That was for Leonard Peltier, too.”
“And for Marilyn Monroe.”
“And for Jimi Hendrix.”
“Yeah, for Jimi.”
“What about Jim Morrison,” Wilson and William asked. White guys obsessed on Jim Morrison.
“You can have Jim Morrison,” Samuel said. “We’ll take the ball.”
Lester took the pass from Samuel, faked a pass back, dribbled once, and threw up a prayer that banked in. It was the first and last basket of Lester FallsApart’s basketball career.
TRIBAL COPS—9
SAMUEL & LESTER—7
Thomas, Chess, and Checkers never slept that night. They talked stories around the table where Samuel Builds-the-Fire snored. “Your mom died of cancer, enit?” Chess asked.
“Yeah, stomach cancer,” Thomas said.
“I’m sorry.”
“It ain’t your fault. She died a long time ago.”