The Only Good Indians(83)

She just gets her fingertips to that spinning-away leather, Shaney so close that her hair is coming around Denorah’s own face. Committing all of her weight and muscle and hope, cashing in every hour she’s spent sweating it out in practice, Denorah pulls that ball tight to her ribs, hands clamped hard to each side so it can’t be poked away, and turns on the ball of her left foot, her right shoe already coming up, and up.

She’s too close already, though. This court is so small. The burst of speed she needed to catch up with the ball, it’s left her already under the basket, where the only thing she can do is the first thing Shaney did to her: plant that right shoe as high up the utility pole as she can, wait for her weight to collect behind it. It gives her enough grip for the sole of her shoe to stick when she pushes off, when she forces her already-twisting body up into the air, the net scratchy against her face, her mouth open not in a scream but a war cry, her face full of Shaney’s hair because she’s right there, is coming up with Denorah, is going to slap this one down no matter how high Denorah climbs.

The only thing Denorah can do, her only hope, it’s to extend the ball as far from her body as possible now, around Shaney’s side where any defender would least expect it, meaning Denorah’s one-handing it now, has just enough grip to spin it up, kiss it soft off the other side of the board, and then she’s falling away, is falling for miles, back into legend.

The concrete jars her from tailbone to neck, leaves her spitting tongue blood and cheek gristle, but still she sees the ball slip through neat as anything, a pretty little reverse by a player who shouldn’t even have that kind of reach, that kind of vertical, that kind of English.

It’s about heart, though, Coach is always saying.

When Denorah smiles, she’s sure her teeth are red.

“Nineteen,” she says, chocking her face up like does Shaney have anything to say about that, and then she cringes away all at once, from … from—

From splinters in the air?

And sound. Her head is full of it.

A gunshot.

She looks up to where Shaney is glaring.

Cassidy’s camper.

No, the outhouse.

Victor Yellow Tail is wavering a few feet from it, the door open behind him, his whole front soaked in blood, a pistol flashing in his right hand.

What he just shot was the utility pole.

The backboard is raining more of its rotted wood down.

Shaney bares her teeth, her whole body quivering.

“I killed you,” she says across to Victor.

“Where’s my son!” Victor loud-whispers back—no throat to speak with—and loosely aims the pistol again, shoots.

This time the concrete in front of Shaney chips up. Her leg snaps back and away and Denorah can tell she wants to explode away from this spot, run and run, be miles away.

Now Victor’s falling to his knees with the effort of shooting, of screaming, of bleeding so much. But he’s still pointing that drooping pistol ahead of him.

Shaney turns her head to the side like he better not, but he pulls the trigger.

This shot catches her in the right shoulder, flings her off the court, into the frozen grass and snow.

Denorah stands, doesn’t know what to do.

Instead of just lying there and hurting, like would make sense, Shaney is flopping and writhing in the snow, screaming from the pain, the fingers of her left hand digging into her shoulder, and … and: no.

Her face.

Her head.

She arches back, her fingers deep in the meat and muscle of her shoulder, and her face is elongating from the strain.

Her cheeks and chin tear with a wet sound and the bones crunch, resettling.

At the end of it her long hair is blowing away from her, isn’t connected to her scalp anymore, and her face, it’s, she’s, her face is—

Not a horse, which is what Denorah thinks at first.

Not a horse, an elk.

Elk Head Woman.

Denorah falls away, stands again, knows only to run, to leave, to not be here for whatever’s next.

Where she runs is straight to Victor, the cop, the one with the gun.

She slides to her knees in front of him, grabs on to him, and his right hand falls across her back, the pistol hot at the base of her spine.

“Na-Na-Nate,” he manages to say.

“What is she?” Denorah says, crying, holding so tight on to his bloody shirt, but then with his left hand he guides her away from him, pushes her behind.

Elk Head Woman is standing, is walking this way, her ungainly head turned to the side to better see them with her right eye.

“Go,” Victor whispers to Denorah, “run,” and she does, on all fours mostly, and when Victor’s pistol fires again she falls ahead from just the massive cracking sound of it, and where she falls, it’s into the smoldering lodge.

It’s a pit of bodies.

The first she sees is a dog, mouth open, eyes staring at nothing.

She pushes away, trying to climb out, and then it’s Cassidy, his face caved in and half burned away.

Denorah screams, can’t breathe, can’t do anything.

The hair in her hand is, it’s—this is her dad.

She opens her mouth, doesn’t have any sound left.

Behind her and all around her then, Victor screams through his bloody throat from whatever Elk Head Woman is doing to him.

Denorah rolls around, sees just grey sky above her, and then her right palm finds an ember. She snaps her hand back, holds it to her chest, and, just working on automatic, on instinct, fights her way up from the lodge, her knees and clothes and all of her sticky with ash and gore.