The Only Good Indians(52)

Swish, swish, swish.

The machine girl is on automatic, she’s locked and loaded, doesn’t even need to concentrate anymore. Fouling her in the act of shooting is the same as putting a pair of points up on the scoreboard for her team.

“Bring it,” Denorah says, lining up again.

The only thing she regrets about basketball, that baseball and football and even golf have over it, it’s that those players all get to wear war paint under their eyes.

What Coach tells them in the locker room before every game, it’s that their war paint is on the inside of their faces, it’s in how they hold their faces, it’s in how they look the other girls in the eye and don’t look away. Dribbling and passing and shooting are just the parts of the game that get recorded in the stats. There’s also who wants it worse.

To steel herself against the kind of bullshit Indian teams always get hurled at them when the game’s close, Denorah tries to inoculate herself with all the bullshit that the other side of the gym will be chanting.

It’s a good day to die.

I will fight no more forever.

The only good Indian is a dead Indian.

Kill the Indian, save the man.

Bury the hatchet.

Off the reservation.

Indian go home.

No Indians or dogs allowed.

Her sister heard them all in her day, perverted on spirit ribbons, usually illustrated, too. Shoe-polished on the windows of buses, the big one was always, Massacre the Indians!

Bring it, Denorah says in her head, and drops another through the net. If the only good Indian is a dead one, then she’s going to be the worst Indian ever.

Her promise to herself for tomorrow, win or lose, is to be back out here again right after the game, working on any shot she should have made but didn’t.

They don’t just give those scholarships away.

Denorah shags the rebound, jogs back to the line without stopping to spin, bank one in from the block. From what would be the block if she’d measured that out too, painted it.

Her dream is to somehow extend this pad of concrete, so there can be a three-point line.

Someday.

Not today.

Today it’s just free throws.

Swish, swish, a sound in the grass behind her but she can’t look, it’s probably just Mom, home early from work, and … rattle, bounce, clunk.

Denorah starts to spin around to whoever made her miss but reminds herself at the last moment that she made herself miss, that she let her concentration flag, that she didn’t follow through on the ritual.

“Hey, Finals Girl,” an unhilarious male voice calls out from behind her, moments after a truck engine’s been turned off.

Finals Girl.

It’s what her real dad calls her when she’s on the court, ever since she was his lucky charm when she was four and he was watching her in June, during the NBA finals.

She looks back with just her head.

He’s sitting in his truck, window down, one arm patting the side of the door like it’s a horse he’s riding, not a pickup he’s picked back through the grass with.

“The septic’s there,” Denorah says, nodding to the greasy grass by the scattered pipes he must have just driven on one side of or the other.

“That’s why I got four-wheel drive,” her dad says, pushing the shifter up into place. “The slop.”

He’s been drinking. She can tell from his eyes. They’re loose in his head, too happy for this early in an afternoon.

“Just wanted to wish you luck for tomorrow,” he says.

Denorah looks around for the ball, walks a beeline across to it.

“You’re not supposed to be here,” she says, and he’s already cutting her off by rolling his hand, saying, “Your new and important dad doesn’t think I’m a good influence, blah blah blah …”

Denorah toes up to the stripe, brings the left foot even, her back to him.

He won’t get out of his truck. Not when he might be needing to make a hasty exit.

“You’re going to kill them tomorrow night,” he says. “We’re doing a sweat tonight, to, you know. Like, help the team.”

His talking is good, Denorah’s telling herself. He’s like a whole crowd chanting, Indians go home.

Just noise.

Swish.

“That’s the ticket,” he says, patting his door again in token applause.

“You and who’s doing this sweat?” Denorah asks, chancing a look back to him while snabbing the ball from the tall grass.

“Cass,” her dad says, then, “you want to keep a song in your head when you’re shooting free throws, and always let go on the same beat. Old Indian trick.”

It makes Denorah do two extra dribbles, trying to keep music from playing in her ears.

Clunk.

“It’s okay, it’s okay,” her dad says.

Rebound, reset.

Was that nineteen out of twenty or nineteen out of twenty-one? Shit. Twenty-one, then. Losing count never counts in favor of.

“I think it’s Cassidy now,” Denorah says, just because.

“Little Miss Cross Guns,” her dad says back, which is what he calls her when she sounds like her mom to him.

“I see his new snag at Glacier Family Foods sometimes,” Denorah says, saying the store’s whole name because she likes the way it sounds.