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.
Roman remembered when Michael Jordan had announced he was returning to basketball. There had been joy, pure unadulterated joy, in Jordan’s voice, in stark contrast to the grief and pain when he’d announced his retirement just a few short days after his father had been murdered by two teenage thugs. Roman recalled that one of those killers was a Lumbee Indian, a disturbing fact. But then again, it was Indian scouts who had helped white people kill Sitting Bull, Geronimo, and every other Indian warrior in the world.
I’m back.
After he’d returned to the NBA, Jordan had promptly led his Chicago Bulls to three more championships, the last coming on the final jump shot of Jordan’s career, before he’d retired again and left Roman no options other than to take up coaching grade-school basketball at the Spokane Indian Tribal School.
I’m back.
Sitting in front of his two televisions, holding the basketball in one hand, Roman ran his other hand through his greasy black hair, always too thick to properly braid, and then swallowed the last drink out of a two-liter Diet Pepsi bottle sitting on the coffee table.
Roman was forty years old and forty pounds overweight. He pulled his thick, heavy body from the couch and shuffled from the living room into the bathroom. He tugged his underwear down to his ankles and sat on the toilet for a long morning piss. He’d always been a gentleman and knew that a stand-up piss made a terrible mess, no matter the accuracy of the shooter.
Roman Gabriel Fury was named after an obscure professional football quarterback named Roman Gabriel—a man with his own kind of fury and the rumor of Indian blood—who’d toiled for the Los Angeles Rams in the early seventies. Young Roman had never seen the elder Roman play, not in person, not on television, though one photograph of the dark-haired quarterback had been framed and nailed to the wall above the Fury fireplace.
“Was he your favorite player?” young Roman had once asked his father, Edgar Fury, in an effort to understand why he’d chosen such an ornate moniker for his only child.
“No,” Edgar had said. “Just liked the name.”
“I don’t like it much.”
“Well, just be glad your name ain’t Namath Fury. Or Tarkenton Fury, for that matter. I could have named you after some old white boy quarterback.”
Partly because of his name and partly because of his own stubborn nature, Roman Fury had never played football. Instead, he’d played basketball until his palms bled, and read books, hundreds of books, thereby saving himself from a lifetime of reservation poverty.
Oh, to this day, he still loved the reservation—he lived there, after all—but there was a time when he’d wanted to travel, when he’d known that he belonged elsewhere. From the very beginning of his life, he’d dreamed of leaving, not because he needed to escape—though his journey certainly could have been viewed as a form of flight—but because he’d always known that his true and real mission lay somewhere outside the boundaries of the reservation. There were Indians who belonged on the reservation and there were Indians who belonged in the city, and then there were those rare few who could live successfully in either place. But Roman had always felt like he didn’t belong anywhere, like he couldn’t belong to any one place or any series of places. Though his tribe had never been nomadic, he’d been born with the need to visit cities—every city!—where no Spokane Indian had ever been before.
He’d shaken hands with two different Popes, waded in the Mediterranean Sea, and walked one hundred miles atop the Great Wall of China. After a solid and unspectacular college basketball career—his name had never been mentioned on ESPN’s SportsCenter—he’d played professionally in Norway, Italy, Japan, Des Moines, Russia, Hartford, Yugoslavia, Greece, Australia, Kamloops, British Columbia, Germany, France, Kalamazoo, and every other Spanish-speaking country in South America.
No habla Español. Indios de Norte Americanos.
Every autumn for ten years, Roman had attended NBA training camps—mostly for Eastern Conference teams because he had a great jump shot and slow feet—but he’d never even played in one exhibition game, let alone a regular-season contest, a feat that would have made him the first federally recognized Indian since Jim Thorpe to play professional basketball. But it had never happened, no matter how well he’d played in training camps. He’d been cut from fifteen different NBA teams in those ten years, and had always ended up as the second-best American player on third-rate international teams.
Then, one morning, after a particularly horrid game where he’d missed fifteen straight shots and turned the ball over seven times, he’d woken up in a Hilton Hotel in Madrid, Spain, with the sure knowledge that it was time to quit basketball for good and return to the reservation.
On the morning after the first snow, Grace Atwater could hear the television playing out in the living room, could hear the replay of Michael Jordan’s famous press conference.
I’m back.
Grace knew that her husband had fallen asleep out there again. He often fell asleep on the couch, leaving her alone in the bed. She didn’t mind. He snored loudly and usually stole the covers. She smiled at the thought of her sloppy husband. He’d once been thin and beautiful.
She was a Mohawk Indian from the island of Manhattan—her father had been an iron worker who’d help build most of the New York skyline—but she’d lived on the Spokane Indian Reservation for so many years, and had spent so much time with the Spokanes, that she’d realized she was more Spokane than anything else. She’d always understood that an Indian could be assimilated and disappear into white culture, but she’d discovered, too, that an India
n of one tribe could be swallowed whole by another tribe. She was Jonah; the Spokanes were the stomach, ribs, and teeth of the whale.
I’m back.
She taught fourth grade at the Spokane Tribal School, and loved her job, though it had convinced her never to have her own children. Sometimes, she wondered what she was missing, if her life was somehow incomplete because she didn’t see the reflection of her face in the face of a son or daughter. Maybe. That’s what mothers told her: Oh, you don’t know what you’re missing; it’s spiritual; I feel closer to the earth, to the creator of all things. Perhaps all of that was true—it must be true—but Grace also knew that mothering was work, was manual labor, and unpaid manual labor at that. She’d known too many women who’d vanished after childbirth; women whose hopes and fears had been pushed to the back of the family closet; women who’d magically been replaced by their children and their children’s desires. But what about the maternal instinct? Well, for eight hours a day, over the last eight years, within the four walls of a fourth-grade classroom, she’d loved one hundred and thirty-six Spokane Indian boys and girls, had loved them well and kept them safe, and had often been the only adult in their lives who’d never actively or inactively broken their hearts. How many nights had one of her former students shown up at her house and asked to be sheltered?
Still, Grace had never thought of herself as any kind of saint. More likely, she was just a good teacher; nothing wrong with that, but nothing uncommon or special about it either. She’d often wondered if she was doing everything she could to ensure the survival of the Spokanes, the Mohawks, of all Indian people. Maybe she should have given birth to a dozen indestructible Indian children, part-Mohawk, part-Spokane, and part-Kevlar. Most of her fellow Mohawks, and most members of every other tribe, were marrying white partners and conceiving fragile children. Grace knew how fractions worked; Indians were disappearing by halves. But then again, she was only half-Mohawk herself and lived three thousand miles away from her people. Her people—what an arrogant concept! They didn’t belong to her and she didn’t belong to them. She was friendly with only twenty other Mohawks, having learned long ago that she preferred the company of these Spokanes, as bitter and sarcastic as they could be. Hell, these Spokanes started fistfighting one another in first grade and only stopped punching and kicking with the arrivals of their first Social Security checks. Then those former brawlers suddenly became respected elders and clucked their tongues at the young and violent. She was convinced the Spokanes survived out of spite. After a nuclear war, the only things left standing would be Spokane Indians, cockroaches, farmers, and Michael Jordan.
I’m back.
Inside their small house, Grace listened as Roman stood from the couch and walked into the bathroom. He sat down to piss. She thought that Roman’s sit-down pisses were one of the most romantic and caring things that any man had ever done for any woman.
After the piss, Roman pulled up his underwear, climbed into a pair of sweatpants hanging from the shower rod, slipped his feet into Chuck Taylor basketball shoes, and stepped into the bedroom.
Grace pretended to be asleep in their big bed, warm and safe beneath seven generations of sheets, blankets, and quilts. She was a big woman with wide hips, thick legs, large breasts, and a soft stomach. She was deep brown and beautiful.
Still holding the basketball, Roman leaned close to Grace, his face just inches away from hers.
“There’s a strange woman in my bed,” said Roman.
“I know,” said Grace, without opening her eyes.
“What should I do about her?”
“Let her sleep.”
Roman touched the basketball to Grace’s cheek.
“Michael Jordan is coming back again,” he said.
“You can’t fool me,” said Grace. “I heard it. That was just a replay.”
“Yeah, but I wish he was coming back again. He should always come back.”
“Don’t let it give you any crazy ideas.”
Roman pulled the basketball away and leaned even closer to Grace. His lips were brushing against her ear.
“It snowed last night,” he whispered.
“I can smell it,” said Grace.
“What do you want for breakfast?”
“Make me some of your grandma’s salmon mush.”
Roman made the mush in the way he’d been taught to make it. Then he brought the mush, along with two slices of toast, a cup of coffee, and the morning newspaper, to Grace and watched her eat breakfast in bed.
Up until her death, Grandmother Fury had been the very last Spokane Indian who knew how to make salmon mush in the way that Spokane Indians had been making salmon mush for the last hundred years or so. In terms of the entire tribal history, salmon mush was a recent addition to the traditional cuisine—just as human beings were among the most recent life-forms on the whole planet—but salmon mush was a singular and vitally important addition. After all, Grandmother Fury’s own grandmother had served salmon mush to Chief Joseph just a few days before he led the Nez Perce on their heroic and ultimately failed thousand-mile flight from the Ninth Cavalry. Though he was captured and sent to the prison of some other tribe’s reservation, Joseph praised the salmon mush he’d eaten and often hinted that the strange combination of fish, oats, and milk was the primary reason why he’d nearly led his people into the wild freedom of Canada.
Nine decades later, on the Spokane Indian Reservation, Grandmother Fury said a prayer for Joseph and stirred a few more slices of smoked salmon into the pot of oats boiling on her woodstove. At that point, many cooks would have poured in the milk and brought it all back to the boil. But Grandmother Fury was cousin to salmon and knew their secrets. She poured the ice-cold milk over the boiling salmon and oats just a few seconds before serving. In that collision between heat and cold, between mammal and fish, between liquid and solid, there was so much magic that Grandmother Fury trembled as she set a bowl in front of her grandson and watched him eat.
“It’s good,” said Roman. He was eighteen years old and lovely in his grandmother’s eyes.
“But you haven’t even tasted it,” she said, in Spokane, the tribal language.
“Don’t have to,” said Roman in English. “I believe in your mush more than I believe in God.”
“You liar,” she said in Spokane and laughed.
“Yes,” he said in English. “But it’s a good lie.”
Grandmother and grandson sat in the small kitchen of her home—their home!—and found no need to speak to each other. Because they were Indians, they gave each other room to think, to invent the next lie, joke, story, compliment, or insult. He ate; she watched.
That afternoon, Roman was going to take the Colonial Aptitude Test, his college boards, and hoped to score high enough to get into college, any college. He was the first member of his extended family who’d even wanted to pursue higher education. In fact, there were only a couple of dozen Spokane Indians who’d ever graduated from any four-year university and only a few more than that who’d bothered to attend even the smallest community college.
A few small colleges had offered full basketball scholarships to Roman, but he’d turned them down. He wanted to attend the best school possible, whether he played basketball for them or not.
“You know,” Grandmother Fury said in rough English, in careful and clumsy syllables, after Roman had finished one bowl of mush and started in on another. “Those college tests, they’re not for Indians.”
Roman nodded his head. He knew the Colonial Aptitude Test was culturally biased, but he also knew the CAT was supposed to be culturally biased. The CAT was designed to exclude from college as many poor people as statistically possible. Despite the rumors of democracy and fairness, Roman knew, when it came to the CAT, that meritocracy was to college as fish was to bicycle. He knew the CAT was an act of war. As a result, Roman wasn’t approaching the test with intellect and imagination. He was going to attack it with all of the hatred and anger in his heart.
&n
bsp; “I’m afraid,” he said.
“Yes, I know,” she said in Spokane.
“I don’t want to be afraid.”
“Yes, I know,” she said in English.
With tears in his eyes and a salty taste at the back of his throat, Roman finished another bowl of salmon mush and asked for another.
“Yes,” said his grandmother. She said, “Yes.”
Three months later, Roman Gabriel Fury sat in the waiting room of the Colonial Aptitude Testing Service office in Spokane, Washington. He held two letters in his hands. One letter congratulated him on his exceptional CAT performance. The other letter requested his presence for a special meeting with the president of the Colonial Aptitude Testing Service.
Nervous and proud, Roman wondered if he was going to be given a special commendation, a reward for such a high score, unusually high for anybody, let alone an Indian boy who’d attended a reservation high school without chemistry, geometry, or foreign-language classes.
Sitting in the CAT office, in that small city named after his tribe, Roman wore his best suit, his only suit, a JCPenney special that his father had purchased for him four years earlier. Roman’s father was a poor and generous man who had given his son many things over the years, mostly inexpensive trinkets whose only value was emotional, but the JCPenney suit was expensive, perhaps the most expensive gift that Roman had ever received, certainly more valuable than being named after a professional quarterback who had some Indian blood, or the rumor of Indian blood. Young Roman had often wished his father had given him the name of the other professional Indian quarterback, Sonny Six Killer, the one who had demonstrable Indian blood. Roman Gabriel Fury often wished that his name was Sonny Six Killer Fury. With a name like that, Roman knew that he could have become a warrior.
“Mr. Furry,” said the CAT secretary, mispronouncing his name for the third time, adding an extra r that changed Roman from an angry Indian into a cute rodent. She sat behind a small desk. She’d worked for CAT for ten years. She’d never taken any of their tests.
The Toughest Indian in the World: Stories Page 15