The Only Good Indians(79)
Shaney dribbles once, high by her right hip, and then turns around, giving Denorah her ass, backing her down already, which is what you do when you have a size advantage.
When you’re on the wrong end of that size game, though, then you can time it out, stab an arm in, slap the ball away.
Denorah gives ground like she’s falling for this, then, the next time Shaney goes for a bounce-against, the round of her back to Denorah’s chest, Denorah steps back—pulling the chair out, Coach calls it—comes around with her right hand, reaching in for that blur of orange leather.
Except Shaney wasn’t backing her down. She was baiting the trap.
What she does now is peel around the other way, her long legs giving her what feels like an illegal first step, and by the time she’s done with that step, throwing the ball ahead of her in a dribble she’ll have to chase down, Denorah’s already out of position, can just watch.
She’s never been spun on like this.
To make it worse, Shaney doesn’t just lay it in, either. She catches her dribble in both hands, rocks her elbow out hard to the right, and plants one high-top on the pole about chest-level and uses that to push higher, twisting in the air to come around the right side, having to guide the ball around the net on the way, like having to fight through the trees to get to the bucket.
She lays it in gentle with both hands, lands already jogging backward.
Fucking-A, Denorah knows her face has to be saying.
This might be a game.
THANKSGIVING CLASSIC
15–15, and Denorah isn’t having to run her flyaway hair out of her face anymore. Now it’s pasting to her skull with sweat.
She dribbles in hard to the left, Shaney bodying right up to her but not tangling their feet somehow, and stops, makes to rise up, getting Shaney’s long body into the air. It’s one of the only two strategies she’s found that are worth anything against this tall, slashy defender. Trick is, long bodies stretched out, they take longer to recoil back down, go a different direction.
Instead of letting her feet leave the ground, Denorah reels the ball back, both hands because Shaney will slap it out into the snow again, and leans over to the right, ducking ahead under Shaney’s already-coming-down arm.
Position, yes. When you’re outgunned, all you can do is whatever you have to for position. Not that there’s a ref to blow a whistle, but even a Crow knows that bringing an elbow down into the neck and shoulder of a player in the motion of shooting, that’s a do-over.
Now Denorah lets her feet leave the ground, still exploding forward under Shaney’s wingspan, and she teardrops the ball up and over, in, just enough soft touch, because this bullshit plywood backboard isn’t trustworthy, not for someone who hasn’t killed a thousand sundowns out here, the clock always ticking its last three seconds down.
“Cheap …” Shaney calls out, just generally.
“Sixteen,” Denorah says back, collecting the rebound before the ball can get slick in the snow.
She dribbles it slow back to the top edge of the court, bounces it across to Shaney, who, Denorah’s satisfied to see, is finally breathing hard as well, her mouth moving like she’s the kind of player who’s used to having a piece of gum in her mouth. Or used to chewing cud, ha.
“How long you been playing?” Shaney asks. “Your dad never said.”
“Was born on a court,” Denorah says, Shaney lowering the ball right to the concrete, rolling it slow between them, giving her time to crowd in.
“So this is what’s most important to you, right?” Shaney says. “Basketball? Matters more than anything to you?”
Denorah fixes Shaney in her eyes for a moment, like taking stock. “And you think you can take it away from me?” she finally says. “That you can break my pride before the game tonight? You a Blue Pony in disguise?”
“Home court advantage, little girl.”
“You’re far from home,” Denorah says, lowering into triple-threat, leading with her face. In practice, Coach will put a big hand on Denorah’s forehead while she slashes the ball back and forth and all around to pass, to shoot, to dribble. Now Shaney does the same thing, her rough palm right between Denorah’s eyebrows. It’s a violation, would be a foul in any game with a whistle, but, too, it slows the whole world down, lets Denorah sort of see this not from her triple-threat position, but from the side, in ledger art, like this battle between the two of them is so epic that it’s been painted on the side of a lodge, and inside that lodge, an old man with stubby-thin braids is recounting the story of that one time the Girl played a game for the whole tribe. How each dribble shook the ground so hard that over in the Park great mountainsides of snow were calving off, rumbling down, shaving the foothills of trees. How each time the ball arced up into the sky it was merging with the sun, so that when it came down it was a comet almost, cutting through that orange circle of a rim. How each juke was so convincing that the wind would come in to take that player’s place but then would get all scrunched up because the player was already back in that space, cutting the other way, her path as jagged and fast as a bolt of lightning.
This win isn’t just for pride, Denorah tells herself, in order to push harder, be faster, jump higher. It’s for her tribe, her people, it’s for every Blackfeet from before, and after. “You don’t win today,” she says, speaking right into Shaney’s wrist.