The Only Good Indians(51)
But why?
Was Lewis going to hand-deliver it to Denny at the Game Office, say he’d done his penance, could he please please hunt on the reservation again?
You don’t have to ask, though, Gabe tells Lewis. You just have to not get caught.
The last ten years of his ban, which he guesses is short for banishment, he’s taken probably twice again as many elk as they popped that day. Well, enough that when he was stashing some of the meat in his dad’s freezer in the garage a few months ago—it was that little one-horn that had still been in velvet—he’d had to make room by cleaning all the old stuff frozen to the walls of that freezer.
The reservation dogs had eaten well that night.
Gabe had watched them until they were done, paper and all, and then nodded once to them because they owed him now, didn’t they?
They knew. They would remember.
“Tell me when trouble’s coming for me,” he’d said to them. “You’ll know.”
And then he’d laughed. Like now.
Gabe has to wait until he can wipe his smile away to drink the top off the fourth beer. He checks the time.
He’s just waiting until he’s sure where Denorah’ll be. Who he’ll call Den if he wants, and D if she’s on defense, Killer if she’s not.
He hooks the bottle in the fence alongside the others, just like it’s the old days, the four of them always together, and leaves a drink sloshing in it for the dead Indian hamsters. Halfway to the truck he turns back to the grave, undoes the black bandanna from his arm, and ties it into the fence as well, like a prayer he doesn’t know how to say with words. It’s about Lewis, though. And Ricky. And how they all used to be.
Easing back down the logging road in first, just riding the transmission, he crunches the clutch and brake in, leans over the dash to be sure he’s seeing what he’s seeing.
He has to set the parking brake, get out to be sure.
Elk tracks in the snow. A big cow, just walking up the road like following him up to see Ricky, but a heavy cow, too. Gabe points his trigger finger down into the hoofprint and wonders if it’s a small horse with elk feet, carrying a rider.
He stands, looks ahead for anything this ridiculous, but the road hooks back to the right almost immediately.
Still. This is a good sign, isn’t it? Strong medicine, like Neesh used to say? The sweat’s going to be good for the kid tonight. It’s going to be good for all of them.
Gabe climbs back into the truck, eases down the two-track, has his eyes on the road enough that he doesn’t catch the flash of black in the rearview mirror when a full-grown woman in a too-tight scrimmage jersey steps out of the trees, into the bed of the truck, her long black hair swirling in after her.
It’s where hunters carry the animals they shoot, isn’t it? It’s where they put you, ten years ago. Don’t smile too much about this, just work your way under the toolbox.
The night is almost here. It’s the one you’ve been waiting for.
OLD INDIAN TRICKS
It’s about form, yes, Coach is right about that, everybody knows that, but what Denorah’s big sister taught her, forwarding and rewinding through hours of tape, is that it’s also about using the exact same form every single time you step up to the stripe.
And that form, that ritual, it’s not just the second and a half or two seconds of your free throw, either.
It starts with how you toe up to the line. For Denorah it’s right foot first, right up to the paint, then backing off about a shoelace width because the point will get erased if your feet are illegal. If you’re a good shooter that’s not the end of anything, as you usually get a do-over in junior high, but if you missed and one of your tall girls hauled the rebound down, has position to slip it back in for an easy two, then, well, then you’ve screwed things up, haven’t you?
So, out at the pad of concrete at the back of her family’s two acres at the edge of town, where her new dad’s rigged up some floodlights for summer, where she had to measure out and paint the charity stripe herself, Denorah shoots and shoots and shoots, never mind that she can see her breath in the cold.
Eighty-six out of one hundred, then seventy-nine, which gets her breathing hard and mad, then an even ninety.
Because the scrimmage this week is Saturday night—tomorrow night—and there’s no practice the day before a game so everyone can have fresh legs and be mentally prepared, today is for free throws.
They’ve never been Denorah’s weak point, but she’s also never had a game where she swished every one. So there’s room for improvement. Like with Trace, her whole future might come to rest on making one point the easy way, with the whole gym thundering and crumbling around her, the floor beneath her shoes trembling, sweat pouring into her eyes.
Coach never has them do free throws at the front of practice, but the back, so they’ll know what it’s like to make themselves have good form when they’re exhausted, just want to fling the ball up there, say a prayer after it.
But Denorah needs fresh legs for tomorrow, so she’s compensating by trying to get a cool five hundred shots in before dark. Or to get five hundred either way, whether she gets to slope down to the house for dinner or ends up shooting right through it again.
Toe up to the line with the right foot, back off a touch for safety, then work the left up until it’s dead even with the right. Spin the ball back with the lines going from thumb to thumb and dribble twice, fast and hard with the right hand, using the whole shoulder, elbow straightening out each time. Catch it, look up to the rim, bend the knees, back straight, ass out, and push up with the front of the thighs, extend with the right arm, left hand just there to keep the rock steady, the calves pushing right at the end, when the middle finger of that right hand is gripping on to the rubber of the valve hole, imparting the perfect spin.