A mistake.
Roger easily poked the ball away and raced down toward his basket.
Ashamed, I was frozen.
"What are you waiting for?" Coach asked me. "Play some D."
Awake, I ran after Roger, but he dunked it before I was even close.
"Go again," Coach said.
This time, Roger tried to dribble down the court. And I splayed defense. I crouched down low, spread my arms and legs high and wide, and gritted my teeth.
And then Roger ran me over. Just sent me sprawling.
He raced down and dunked it again while I lay still on the floor.
Coach walked over and looked down at me.
"What's your name, kid?" he asked.
"Arnold," I said.
"You're from the reservation?"
"Yes."
"Did you play basketball up there?"
"Yes. For the eighth-grade team."
Coach studied my face.
"I remember you," he said. "You were a good shooter."
"Yeah," I said.
Coach studied my face some more, as if he were searching for something.
"Roger is a big kid," he said.
"He's huge," I said.
"You want to take him on again? Or do you need a break?"
Ninety percent of me wanted to take the break. But I knew if I took that break I would
never make the team.
"I'll take him on again," I said.
Coach smiled.
"All right, Roger," he said. "Line up again."
I stood up again. Coach threw me the ball. And Roger came for me. He screamed and
laughed like a crazy man. He was having a great time. And he was trying to intimidate me.
He did intimidate me.
I dribbled with my right hand toward Roger, knowing that he was going to try to steal the ball.
If he stayed in front of me and reached for the ball with his left hand, then there was no way I could get past him. He was too big and strong, too immovable. But he reached for the ball with his right hand, and that put him a little off balance, so I spun-dribbled around him, did a 360, and raced down the court. He was right behind me. I thought I could outrun him, but he caught up to me and just blasted me. Just me skidding across the floor again. The ball went bouncing into the lands.
I should have stayed down.
But I didn't.
Instead, I jumped up, ran into the stands, grabbed the loose ball, and raced toward Roger standing beneath the basket.
I didn't even dribble.
I just ran like a fullback.
Roger crouched, ready to tackle me like he was a middle linebacker.
He screamed; I screamed.
And then I stopped short, about fifteen feet from the hoop, and made a pretty little jump shot.
Everybody in the gym yelled and clapped and stomped their feet.
Roger was mad at first, but then he smiled, grabbed the ball, and dribbled toward his
hoop.
He spun left, right, but I stayed with him.
He bumped me, pushed me, and elbowed me, but I stayed with him. He went up for a
layup and I fouled him. But I'd learned there are NO FOULS CALLED IN FULL-COURT ONE-
ON-ONE, so I grabbed the loose ball and raced for my end again.
But Coach blew the whistle.
"All right, all right, Arnold, Roger," Coach said. "That's good, that's good. Next two, next two."
I took my place at the back of the line and Roger stood next to me.
"Good job," he said and offered his fist.
I bumped his fist with mine. I was a warrior!
And that's when I knew I was going to make the team.
Heck, I ended up on the varsity. As a freshman. Coach said I was the best shooter who'd ever played for him. And I was going to be his secret weapon. I was going to be his Weapon of Mass Destruction.
Coach sure loved those military metaphors.
Two weeks later, we traveled up the road for our first game of the season. And our first game was against Wellpinit High School.
Yep.
It was like something out of Shakespeare.
The morning of the game, I'd woken up in my rez house, so my dad could drive me the
twenty-two miles to Reardan, so I could get on the team bus for the ride back to the reservation.
Crazy.
Do I have to tell you that I was absolutely sick with fear?
I vomited four times that day.
When our bus pulled into the high school parking lot, we were greeted by some rabid
elementary school kids. Some of I hose little dudes and dudettes were my cousins.
They pelted our bus with snowballs. And some of those snowballs were filled with rocks.
As we got off the bus and walked toward the gym, I could hear the crowd going crazy
inside.
They were chanting something.
I couldn't make it out.
And then I could.
The rez basketball fans were chanting, "Ar-nold sucks! Ar-lold sucks! Ar-nold sucks!"
They weren't calling me by my rez name, Junior. Nope, they were calling me by my
Reardan name.
I stopped.
Coach looked back at me.
"Are you okay?" he asked.
"No," I said.
"You don't have to play this one," he said.
"Yes, I do," I said.
Still, I probably would have turned around if I hadn't seen my mom and dad and grandma
waiting at the front door.
I know they'd been pitched just as much crap as I was. And there they were, ready to
catch more crap for me. Ready to walk through the crap with me.
Two tribal cops were also there.
I guess they were for security. For whose security, I don't know. But they walked with
our team, too.
So we walked through the front and into the loud gym.
Which immediately went silent.
Absolutely quiet.
My fellow tribal members saw me and they all stopped cheering, talking, and moving.
I think they stopped breathing.
And, then, as one, they all turned their backs on me.
It was a fricking awesome display of contempt.
I was impressed. So were my teammates.
Especially Roger.
He just looked at me and whistled.
I was mad.
If these dang Indians had been this organized when I went to school here, maybe I would have had more reasons to stay.
That thought made me laugh.
So I laughed.
And my laughter was the only sound in the gym.
And then I noticed that the only Indian who hadn't turned his back on me was Rowdy. He
was standing on the other end of the court. He passed a basketball around his back, around his back, around his back, like a clock. And he glared at me.
He wanted to play.
He didn't want to turn his back on me.
He wanted to kill me, face-to-face.
That made me laugh some more.
And then Coach started laughing with me.
And so did my teammates.
And we kept laughing as we walked into the locker room to get ready for the game.
Once inside the locker room, I almost passed out. I slumped against a locker. I felt dizzy and weak. And then I cried, and felt ashamed of my tears.
But Coach knew exactly what to say.
"It's okay," Coach said to me, but he was talking to the whole team. "If you care about something enough, it's going to make you cry. But you have to use it. Use your tears. Use your pain. Use your fear. Get mad, Arnold, get mad."
And so I got mad.
And I was still mad and crying when we ran out for warm-ups. And I was still mad when
the game started. I was on the bench. I didn't think I was going to play much. I was only a freshman.
But halfway through the first quarter, with the score tied at 10, Coach sent me in.
And as I ran onto the court, somebody in the crowd threw a quarter at me. AND HIT ME
IN THE FRICKING FOREHEAD!
They drew blood.
I was bleeding. So I couldn't play.
Bleeding and angry, I glared at the crowd.