The Only Good Indians by Jones Stephen Graham

Author:Jones, Stephen Graham
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Gallery / Saga Press
Published: 2020-07-12T16:00:00+00:00

FOUR THE OLD WAY

Standing up at Ricky’s grave behind the old lodge, sharing an after-lunch beer with him, tipping a bit out for Cheeto, too, what the hell, it’s not giving alcohol to minors if the minor’s in the ground, Gabe is still thinking about the basketball girl he saw not wearing a jacket, walking in the snow by the school.

What he’s talked himself into is that it couldn’t have been Denorah. Den’s tight-laced like her mom, wouldn’t be walking around with her hair just flying around her head like some Indian demon. And it had been school hours anyway, right? One rule about sports that Gabe’s pretty sure still holds, it’s that truancies mean you can’t play. A one-for-one kind of system, each truancy keeping you on the bench for a game, even though there’s so many more school days than there are games. It’s what Gabe blames for never being the basketball star he’s sure he could have been.

He shakes his head no again, that it couldn’t have been her. That he’s not a bad dad for not having stopped to get her warm, hike her up to wherever she was going. Just, what that means, he supposes, it’s that she was some other baller, out in shorts in the cold. Meaning he’s just not a good Indian.

But bullshit to that, too.

Gabe cashes his beer and hooks the neck of the bottle into one of the chicken-wire squares of the Boss Ribs family fence.

What if Den’s having some big war with Trina, though, right? They are alike, Denorah’s like a little clone of the girl Gabe knocked up fourteen years ago—fifteen, really—but that little clone, she’s got some Cross Guns in her veins, too. What this means, Gabe knows, it’s that she’s going to reach an age where she’ll want to take the world in her teeth and shake until she tears a hunk of something off for herself. And then, whether it’s good or bad, whether it’s a scholarship or a five-year bid in state or two kids in as many years, she’ll sit in the corner by herself and chew it down, dare anybody to say this isn’t exactly what she wanted.

She’s going to be like him, he knows. She’s got that in her. She didn’t get that smile of hers from Trina, anyway. Gabe’s seen it when she plays, in spite of the restraining order. The order’s not about staying five hundred feet away from Denorah, or even from Trina, though he kind of self-imposes that one for purposes of self-preservation, it’s about not coming to any more home basketball games. Because of boisterousness, which is just cheering. Because of fighting, which wasn’t his fault. Because of public intoxication, which was only that one time.

With the right jacket and hat and sunglasses, though, he can still slip in with the visitors, so long as he doesn’t draw attention to himself. He’s pretty sure Victor, the tribal cop slipping him cash for the sweat tonight, has

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