On the Spokane Indian Reservation, with the coming of that first snow, the Cold Springs Singers sang 49s until every Indian was startled awake and sang along. They all sang because they understood what it meant to be Indian and dead and alive and still bright with faith and hope:
Basketball, basketball.
Way, ya, hi, yo, way, ya, hi, yo.
Give me the ball, give me the ball.
Way, ya, hi, yo, way, ya, hi, yo.
And let me shoot, and let me shoot.
Way, ya, hi, yo, way, ya, hi, yo.
And win the game, and win the game.
Way, ya, hi, yo, way, ya, hi, yo.
And then she’ll love me, then she’ll love me.
Way, ya, hi, yo, way, ya, hi, yo.
Forever and ever, forever and ever.
First snow was a good time for most Indians, even the ghosts, and especially the Indians and ghosts of Indians who possessed a good sense of rhythm and irony. After all, it took a special kind of courage for an Indian to look out a window into the deep snow and see anything special in that vast whiteness.
On that night, in that reservation whiteness, the falsetto voices of the Cold Springs Singers drifted down from their mountain onto an outdoor basketball court covered with two feet of new snow. On that court, a Spokane Indian named Roman Gabriel Fury ran fast breaks with the ghosts of his mother and father, seven cousins, nine dead dogs, and his maternal and paternal grandparents. He was the best basketball player his reservation had ever known, though he was older now and no longer a magician. He was the only Fury left alive in the world, but he was not alone. He had his basketball, his ghosts, and an Indian woman named Grace Atwater asleep at home.
Roman Gabriel Fury lived with Grace Atwater in a shotgun shack set down like a lighthouse in a small field about five miles north of Wellpinit, the only town on the Spokane Indian Reservation. Outside the shack, a mammoth satellite dish rose from the snow like the gray sail of a landlocked ship. Of course, unlike most others, that metal sail was covered with reservation bumper stickers and tribal graffiti:
Custer had it coming!
Proud to be a Spokane Indian
E = MC2
Fry bread power!
American Indians for Nixon
Roman had no idea who’d plastered the Nixon sticker on his dish — Indians were capable of the most self-destructive behavior — but Roman had never removed it because he believed wholeheartedly in free expression. Roman’s entire political philosophy revolved around the basic tenet that a person, any person, had only enough energy at any given time to believe in three things.
“Choose your three,” Roman was often fond of pontificating. “And stick with them.”
Roman himself believed in free expression, Grace Atwater, and basketball. Neither a Republican nor a Democrat, Roman had always voted for the candidate who looked like he or she could hit a twenty-foot jump shot with three seconds left on the clock and the home team down by one. Therefore, he was very excited that Bill Bradley, former Princeton All-American and New York Knick, was running for President of the United States.
“Finally, a worthy candidate,” Roman had said during Bradley’s first press conference.
“Come on,” Grace had said. “You can’t vote for a guy with a jump shot that ugly. And besides, you grew up in a matriarchy. You should vote for a woman.”
“If there’s a woman out there with a jump shot,” Roman had replied, “who believes in the socialization of medicine and education, then I will not only vote for her, but I will also devote my life to her administration.”
“Well, then, I guess that means I’m running for president,” she’d said.
“Now, wouldn’t that surprise the hell out of them? I expect to see your announcement on television soon.”
“I will begin my press conference by announcing that yes, I have smoked pot, and yes, I have had sex, lots of sex. In fact, I will introduce the seven men and one woman I have slept with and let them answer all the questions regarding my campaign and political philosophies.”
“You will be a hero to all women and men.”
“That’s the power of television.”
Roman had bought the satellite dish, spending most of the money he’d won by hitting a trifecta at Playfair Race Track in Spokane, because he’d wanted to enrich his life by partaking in the free expression of sitcom writers and shopping-channel salespeople, and because he wanted to provide Grace with a source of entertainment, education, and dozens of episodes of Bonanza, featuring the talents of her favorite actor, Dan “Hoss” Blocker, and because he wanted to watch every single college and professional basketball game ever played.
Though he rarely played seriously anymore, preferring to shoot baskets all by himself, he still loved the game and all of its details. For Roman, the beauty of a perfect pick-and-roll by the Utah Jazz’s John Stockton and Karl Malone was matched only by the beauty of a perfect pick-and-roll by John and Michelle Sirois, the best brother and sister nine-year-old hoopsters on the Spokane Indian Reservation.
Roman knew that basketball was the most democratic sport. All you needed to play was something that resembled a ball and something else that approximated the shape of a basket.
These days, Roman himself resembled a basketball and hoop. But he didn’t mind so much. Half of the Indians on the rez were fat and they all got laid by skinny and fat people alike. Standards of beauty were much more egalitarian on the rez, and Roman was an egalitarian man.
On the morning after the first snow, Roman slept on the couch in the living room. Across the room, a twelve-inch black-and-white television was balanced on top of a twenty-seven-inch color television. The small television had a great picture but no sound, while the large one had great sound and terrible reception. Roman called his televisions the Lone Ranger and Tonto, though he never told anybody which television was which. That morning, as the first snow drifted against the door, both televisions replayed a classic press conference from a few years earlier:
Michael Jordan, wearing a custom-tailored
Armani suit, stands at a podium in some beautiful hotel in downtown Chicago. His ebony skin reflects dozens of flashbulbs. He leans close to the porcupine of microphones rising from the podium. He smiles. Yesterday, he was playing minor league baseball, swinging at and missing curve balls by at least two feet. Today, the room is as silent as a Catholic Church on a Tuesday afternoon in July. Jordan licks his lips, takes a breath, drawing out the moment, ever the showman, ever the competitor, and says, “I’m back.”
Still asleep on the couch, holding a basketball like a lover in his arms, Roman was wrapped up like a two-hundred-and-eighty-pound butterfly in a Pendleton-blanket cocoon. He wore a huge white T-shirt and a pair of boxer shorts. He heard those words. He heard “I’m back,” and he stirred in his sleep.
I’m back.
Still holding the basketball, Roman sat up with a bolt and stared at the television. For just a brief moment, he wondered if Jordan was coming back for the second time but then Roman came to his senses.
I’m back.