2004

“In the end, justice is whatever fits between lunch and adjournment. If the casserole’s hot and the conscience cold, the gavel always falls on time.” ~ The Clown

Fueled by money—real money—the tribe began the uphill battle to reinstate the 1942 championship. Relenting to tribal pressure, and in a rare nod to their culpability, the State High School Activities Association reluctantly put the issue on their spring agenda. There was scant notice elsewhere in the state save for a brief mention in the Bismarck paper’s sport section. “Our Red Brothers Are at It Again” the paragraph was titled, “Having been denied sixty years ago and no longer living on our revered Bottomlands, they went too long in bringing this forward again. No one cares about justice denied because it was buried long ago just like the members of the State High School Activities Association who made the initial ruling.” the editorial announced. “Let the dead be dead. They deserve their rest!”

The day of the meeting began like the very day when the High School Activities Association first ruled on the 1942 Elbowoods Warriors. The wind was raw and gusty with only the faintest hint of spring. Across the prairie, the sky was grey with scattered purple plumes. 

John Anderson in whose lap this Indian problem first plopped and who had been recently and mysteriously the first sportfishing fatality on as the new lake was acknowledged. His grandson, John Anderson III, was now the chairman. He was eager to get this matter behind him to move on to other weightier issues, including the planned luncheon complete with hot beef casserole, translucent green Jello salad that suspended baby carrots and other ghastly treats, and boiled potatoes. One must keep to one’s priorities even in the face of adversity.

The cloud of a food coma descended on the room with full force after lunch when the tribal lawyer, Johnny Jr., a graduate of the state university law school, began a recounting of the story of the Elbowoods Warriors six decades before. He spent time describing the injustices that the tribe had endured and how the Bottomlands had been illegally taken. His recitation was meticulous, providing those board members who were awake a quick history lesson of treaties broken, and promises denied. 

Turning to the matter at hand, he touched on the aging of the 1942 team and how those that were still living were now in their 80’s including his father among those in the audience who’d been the star and later coach. Nodding to his father, he told the board that contrary to what Whites thought about Indians in 1942—and while some unfortunate souls in North Dakota might still harbor prejudice—his father, Johnny Antelope Ears Sr., had the honesty to sit out the championship game. He also noted that Eric Bimdahl, the now retired bar owner from Lakota, and star of that town’s 1942 team, would also like to address the Association. In the audience, Mamzer He She, who himself was now nearly in his 90s rolled his eyes and guffawed loudly.

Eric stood to speak. “What I did was wrong those years ago. I was a kid. Those Indians would have won the game if I hadn’t had been sneaky.” The audience grew hushed. Sobbing, he continued “After we cheated them, me and Johnny Antelope found out we are half-brothers. I wish I knew that at the time.” Audible gasps in the audience brought several members out of their afternoon slumbers.

Mamzer He She shook his cane at the board and bellowed, “Get this Indian wannabe out of here!” The audience gasped louder now. The Bismarck Voice reporter scribbled furiously in the back row. 

“We know how lazy and drunk those Indians are. They tried to steal back their precious Bottomlands when I built the dam, but I stopped them then and we need to stop them now.” Spittle dotted his lips as his lifelong companion—autistic rage–took over. The webbing of his wheelchair seemed to vibrate and change color.

Johnny Antelope Sr. rose from his chair to quiet the crowd. “What Mamzer He She says is partially true.” The room grew silent. “We did want out Bottomlands back. We still do but we’re realistic and know that can’t happen. Our lives have been changed but we’re strong. We as a people have moved far beyond One Little, Two Little Indians.”

Those with a spiritual inclination could hear the quiet signing and rhythm from a faraway Hidatsa drum.

We fought the Ice Holes from Lakota. They lost.

We played hard. They cheated.

We demand what is ours.

The eagles fly with us.

Those lacking in the human department only heard the clinking of silverware and the spiriting away of the lunchtime dishes.

He She could only hear the blood rushing inside his aged cranium. He shook with rage, screaming, “Shut up. Shut up. Shut up! We can’t stand to hear how strong you are when you’re weak! I knew your daddy, Albert Antelope Ears! He was mean to me!” Across the room the judge’s ghost smiled and shrugged.

Outside the hermetically sealed windows, the wind had begun to gust harder. This wasn’t 1942 when wooden window sashes would rattle with every in breeze. These windows were quieter. They served their purpose. Behind them mortals were happily insensate to nature and eternity. The sky was now deep purple. Most board members had resuscitated themselves from their lunchtime lull. Some blood had even returned to some brains. The elbows propping sleepy heads slid off the tablecloths and several jaws, which had bounced off the slobber-covered conference table now assumed a more life-like countenance.

Smiling, Johnny Senior plunged ahead. “I sidelined myself in 1942. Honor is important. Liars aren’t.” Pointing to He She with his lips, he continued. “I have learned many things in my life and knowing that my half-brother and I shared a destiny in 1942 and that we share that destiny today,” he winked at Eric. “We can’t un-do what happened in 1942 or in 1952 when the dam was built, but we can right a sixty year wrong.”

“Unadulterated bullshit!” the color of He She’s cheeks now matched the purple sky. “There was nothing wrong in 1942 and even less so today. These Indians want us to feel sorry for them. We built them a dam and brought law and order to a bunch of ungrateful criminals and their supporters. I would remind the board that the Fort Laramie Treaty of 1851 was silent about basketball. There’s not a word in the whole damn document about sport. For you to try to make new laws where they don’t exist is a miscarriage of justice!”

Now fully awake, Chairman Anderson whispered into his microphone. “Mr. Hearsay, please allow others to speak. You’ve had your turn.”

“Thank you, Mr. Chair,” Johnny said. “I’m finished. Please do what’s right.”

Anderson turned to the board. “I would entertain a motion.”

After a long silence, the vice chair piped up, “I move that we recognize the cook for today’s lovely lunch. Some will say that I’m only doing this because she’s my mother. Some would say that I’m engaging in nepotism. But I love her and it’s important to give her the recognition that has so ungratefully been withheld for all these years. Wasn’t that green Jello something?” The motion was seconded and the vote unanimous.

“OK. That was good. Now, how about the Indian problem?” Anderson eyed his vice chair.

“Well, they obviously lack any sense of good nutrition, unlike my mother’s efforts to feed us real good. I mean, look, they’re all obese and what not. We heard a lot of testimony here today, some helpful and some not so helpful. I respect Indian treaties and it’s too bad that Indians always play the victim card. They get treated pretty well. Even better than us Whites. But we’ve got to get this meeting over with because we all got a long way to drive home. So, let’s give them their durned victim trophy and adjourn.” The motion passed unanimously and without a murmur. Banging the gavel with glee, Chairman Anderson, didn’t hear the simultaneous peal of thunder from an early spring storm.

No one noticed the incineration of He She’s wheelchair and its occupant vanishing in a purple cloud. He She never saw it coming. He never got to utter another insult from the shelter of his spectrum. Odin brushed back the tears of the Norse deity. Only Man began his song.

The mamzer is dead.

Silly explosions in his head.

He’ll go to the Mamzer Camp where there are no fathers, only bastards.

And bother our lands no more.

Epilogue, Rez Ball Gods

“Be ashamed to die until you have won some victory for humanity.” ~ Horace Mann

“High School Activities Association Gives Indians Their Victim Trophy,” the headline in the Bismarck paper blazed. The story underneath was a cherry-picked recap of the previous day’s board meeting, telling loyal readers that the Indians may have had a point but that fair and unbiased reporting, often referred to as “what about” reporting, required that cultural, Nordic norms be acknowledged, and, by golly, you know, sometimes life just sucked. Victims need not apply. 

The Fargo newspaper piled on, “Fort Laramie Treaty of 1851 Overturned by State Athletics Board!” the editorial began. “While we respect the hardships of the Indians when they were relocated from our beautiful, Nordic Bottomlands and while we would be the first to note any negative racial attitudes, if we had such problems, the abrogation of historic treaties is too egregious for us to ignore. The Indians may be entitled to the 1942 trophy, but they’re not entitled to revise our long history of taking good care of them. The Bottomlands belong to Scandinavians and, to a markedly lesser extent, the Germans who pioneered this state long before the arrival of Indians. Because of this, we have no shame in alerting our readers to this travesty.”

In the cosmic oven of Hell, Mamzer Hearsay read these words with glee. I had an impact on this state and its future he thought. Fort Berthold may have gotten its dumb basketball trophy, but I got vindicated. Everyone now understands that you can’t simply undo history because you want to. There are laws that must be respected. Unless, of course, you don’t like those laws. That’s why we have lawyers. If we didn’t have convenient enemies, like Indians and others to punch down on, there would be little purpose to life. Those mortals who are alert can still hear my words after a prairie windstorm, and with fitting apologies to the Clash’s hit from three decades previous he broke out in song, “I fucked those Indians, and they fucked me. I fought the law and I won!” 

The room in which it happened was cleared. Still the last scent of casserole wafted in the air. It was a verbal purgative. Odin sighed, “All that pettiness. All that earthly energy wasted. The hogs ruled the day. Nobody died.” Only Man grinned “Dammit, Only Man, you didn’t win!” The wind was working up to whistle through Odin’s greasy blonde braids. “Your people just made up a bunch of stuff about a treaty and got a bunch of hungry and fat Norwegians to agree!”

“Not so, Kemosabe!” Only Man was elated but his ancient bones were mourning. “We got a very small measure of justice by whatever means available to us after sixty years! Your ‘fat’ Norwegians were actually very helpful.”

What’s next up on your dance card, Sven? No more basketball games to rig any more right, Sven?” Only Man winked.

“My name ain’t Sven, dammit. It’s Odin, the best name a powerful god like me should have. Learn that or I’ll beat your skinny ass right here.”

The Clown saw blood. He could take no more mouth flapping from a middling god. No more snarky side remarks. Odin wouldn’t hear them anyway. No more curation of mortal and godly affairs.  No gentle nudges. “Get a goddamn grip, Odin. You are such a second-rate God. This isn’t Valhalla or any other cosmic party. This is real, raw, and so fucking unfinished, it makes your petty complaints look like a cow pie gurgling on the prairie.”

“There you are boss! Been plenty silent on your end. How’s the family?” Odin said absently as he surveyed his joke book.

Without warning, the Clown moved like a jagged lightning bolt, a shard of broken mirror clenched tight in his fist. He surged forward, jagged and savage, and drove it through Odin’s chest with primal force. Blood erupted, dark as ink, splattering across cracked bones and shattered myth. Odin’s roar choked into a gurgle as the mirror sliced through his armor of arrogance, splintering his divine mask. His blond braids turned almost pink with his own splattered blood. The room quaked, shards of mirror spinning wild, stars shattered into chaos. As the gates to Valhalla swung wide open and Odin gurgled his last words, “By yumpin’ jiminy that was too clownish!”

“Your myth is dead,” The Clown hooted. “Time that the Universe erased you. Time for a new tape.” As Odin’s body finally crumpled to the bloodied ground, a hoop snake rolled in through the fractured window, its scales dark as the void. The room was silent now—only the flickering shadows whispering of sacred lies shattered, of gods fallen, and for he who dared to wipe away godly falsehoods with his bare hands.

On the prairie the air cleared immediately. Meadowlarks sang joyously in the tall grass. The Clown reached down and picked up Odin’s blood-spattered joke book. He scanned the pages. Old Man waited for his cue.

“Well, then. Let me begin. Nineteen,” the Clown intoned.

“Ha, ha, ha. Sixty-one,” Only Man chuckled.

“I’ll go you one better: Fifty-two!”

“1942!”

The prairie grass remembered the year 1942 vividly. The World had shifted that year. Maybe not enough. Heaving under the wind and carrying the sage scent of justice earned, Crow Flies High Butte sighed. No more middling god beat downs. The all-time cosmic scorecard flickered its final tally: Scandinavians 2, Indians 99.