It would have made more sense. Or perhaps my friends should have realized that they shouldn't have left behind the FRICKING REASON FOR THEIR PROTEST!
And that thought just cracked me up.
It was like my friends had walked over the backs of baby seals in order to get to the
beach where they could protest against the slaughter of baby seals.
Okay, so maybe it wasn't that bad.
But it was sure funny.
"What are you laughing at?" Mrs. Jeremy asked me.
"I used to think the world was broken down by tribes," I said. "By black and white. By Indian and white. But I know that isn't true. The world is only broken into two tribes: The people who are assholes and the people who are not."
I walked out of the classroom and felt like dancing and singing.
It all gave me hope. It gave me a little bit of joy.
And I kept trying to find the little pieces of joy in my life. That's the only way I managed to make it through all of that death and change. I made a list of the people who had given me the most joy in my life:
1. Rowdy
2. My mother
3. My father
4. My grandmother
5. Eugene
6. Coach
7. Roger
8. Gordy
9. Penelope, even if she only partially loves me
I made a list of the musicians who had played the most joyous music:
1. Patsy Cline, my mother's favorite
2. Hank Williams, my father's favorite
3. Jimi Hendrix, my grandmother's favorite
4. Guns N' Roses, my big sister's favorite
5. White Stripes, my favorite
I made a list of my favorite foods:
1. pizza
2. chocolate pudding
3. peanut butter and jelly sandwiches
4. banana cream pie
5. fried chicken
6. mac & cheese
7. hamburgers
8. french fries
9. grapes
I made a list of my favorite books:
1. The Grapes of Wrath
2. Catcher in the Rye
3. Fat Kid Rules the World
4. Tangerine
5. Feed
6. Catalyst
7. Invisible Man
8. Fools Crow
9. Jar of Fools
I made a list of my favorite basketball players:
1. Dwayne Wade
2. Shane Battier
3. Steve Nash
4. Ray Allen
5. Adam Morrison
6. Julius Erving
7. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar
8. George Gervin
9. Mugsy Bogues
I kept making list after list of the things that made me feel joy. And I kept drawing
cartoons of the things that made me angry. I keep writing and rewriting, drawing and redrawing, and rethinking and revising and reediting. It became my grieving ceremony.
In Like a Lion
I'd never guessed I'd be a good basketball player.
I mean, I'd always loved ball, mostly because my father loved it so much, and because
Rowdy loved it even more, but I figured I'd always be one of those players who sat on the bench and cheered his bigger, faster, more talented teammates to victory and/or defeat.
But somehow or another, as the season went on, I became a freshman starter on a varsity basketball team. And, sure, all of my teammates were bigger and faster, but none of them could shoot like me.
I was the hired gunfighter.
Back on the rez, I was a decent player, I guess. A rebounder and a guy who could run up and down the floor without tripping. But something magical happened to me when I went to Reardan.
Overnight, I became a good player.
I suppose it had something to do with confidence. I mean, I'd always been the lowest
Indian on the reservation totem pole—I wasn't expected to be good so I wasn't. But in Reardan, my coach and the other players wanted me to be good. They needed me to be good. They
expected me to be good. And so I became good.
I wanted to live up to expectations.
I guess that's what it comes down to.
The power of expectations.
And as they expected more of me, I expected more of myself, and it just grew and grew
until I was scoring twelve points a game.
AS A FRESHMAN!
Coach was thinking I would be an all-state player in a few years. He was thinking maybe I'd play some small-college ball.
It was crazy.
How often does a reservation Indian kid hear that?
How often do you hear the words "Indian" and "college" in the same sentence?
Especially in my family. Especially in my tribe.
But don't think I'm getting stuck up or anything.
It's still absolutely scary to play ball, to compete, to try to win.
I throw up before every game.
Coach said he used to throw up before games.
"Kid," he said, "some people need to clear the pipes before they can play. I used to be a yucker. You're a yucker. Ain't nothing wrong with being a yucker."
So I asked Dad if he used to be a yucker.
"What's a yucker?" he asked.
"Somebody who throws up before basketball games," said.
"Why would you throw up?"
"Because I'm nervous."
"You mean, because you're scared?"
"Nervous, scared, same kind of things, aren't they?"
"Nervous means you want to play. Scared means you don't want to play."
All right, so Dad made it clear.
I was a nervous yucker in Reardan. Back in Wellpinit, I was a scared yucker.
Nobody else on my team was a yucker. Didn't matter one way or the other, I guess. We
were just a good team, period.
After losing our first game to Wellpinit, we won twelve in a row. We just killed people, winning by double figures every time. We beat our archrivals, Davenport, by thirty-three.
Townspeople were starting to compare us to the great Reardan teams of the past. People
were starting to compare some of our players to great players of the past.
Roger, our big man, was the new Joel Wetzel.
Jeff, our point guard, was the new Little Larry Soliday.
James, our small forward, was the new Keith Schulz.
But nobody talked about me that way. I guess it was hard to compare me to players from
the past. I wasn't from the town, not originally, so I would always be an outsider.
And no matter how good I was, I would always be an Indian. And some folks just found
it difficult to compare an Indian to a white guy. It wasn't racism, not exactly. It was, well, I don't know what it was.
I was something different, something new. I just hope that, twenty years in the future, they'd be comparing some kid to me:
"Yeah, you see that kid shoot, he reminds me so much of Arnold Spirit."
Maybe that will happen. I don't know. Can an Indian have a legacy in a white town? And
should a teenager be worry about his fricking legacy anyway?
Jeez, I must be an egomaniac.
Well, anyway, our record was 12 wins and 1 loss when we had our rematch with
Wellpinit.
They came to our gym, so I wasn't going to get burned the stake. In fact, my white fans were going to cheer for like I was some kind of crusading warrior:
Jeez, I felt like one of those Indian scouts who led the U.S. Cavalry against other Indians.
But that was okay, I guess. I wanted to win. I wanted revenge. I wasn't playing for the fans. I wasn't playing for the white people. I was playing to beat Rowdy.
Yep, I wanted to embarrass my best friend.
He'd turned into a stud on his team. He was only a freshman, too, but he was averaging
twenty-five points a game. I followed his progress in the sports section.
He'd led the Wellpinit Redskins to a 13-0 record. They were the number one-ranked
small school in the state. Wellpinit had never been ranked that high. And it was all because of Rowdy. We were ranked number two, so our game was a big deal. Especially for a small-school battle.