by Tim Tingle
“How long will he remain in the hospital?” Coach asked.
“He should stay in intensive care for several more days. And I might add, I am giving you this medical information because Mrs. Blanton asked me to. Otherwise, it would be for family only.”
“We appreciate it, Doctor,” Coach said, shaking his hand for all of us. “We feel like family.”
Lloyd soon stepped through the doors, with his arms wrapped around himself and his head down. “He’s gonna make it,” he said, without looking up. “My dad will live to see me play another game.”
We encircled him, as if the game were tonight, as if we were about to dash to the court for the opening tip-off.
“Next game,” Lloyd said, “let’s win one for my dad, Iti Chukma. He has earned his name, and he just did something I’ll never forget. He told me he loved me.”
Lloyd looked up at us with watery eyes.
“He never did that before.”
About the Author
Tim Tingle is an Oklahoma Choctaw and an award-winning author and storyteller. Every Labor Day, Tingle performs a Choctaw story before the Chief’s State of the Nation Address, a gathering that attracts over ninety thousand tribal members and friends.
In June 2011, Tingle spoke at the Library of Congress and presented his first performance at the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC. From 2011 to 2016, he was a featured author and storyteller at Choctaw Days, a celebration at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian honoring the Oklahoma Choctaws.
Tingle’s great-great-grandfather, John Carnes, walked the Trail of Tears in 1835. In 1992, Tim retraced the Trail to Choctaw homelands in Mississippi and began recording stories of tribal elders. His first book, Walking the Choctaw Road, was the outcome. His first children’s book, Crossing Bok Chitto, garnered over twenty state and national awards and was an Editor’s Choice in the New York Times Book Review. Danny Blackgoat: Navajo Prisoner, Tim’s first PathFinders novel, was an American Indian Youth Literature Awards Honor Book in 2014.