Prologue
I’ll Be There
March 8, 2017
The boy and the old woman let the silence gather. He was used to her talking with her hands and cracking jokes over French toast. Now she was quiet and still, a hospital gown hanging off her shoulders. From the second-story window at Providence St. Patrick Hospital, in Missoula, Montana, Will Mesteth Jr. could see low clouds clinging to the timbered hillsides. Soon it would snow. He looked down to the parking lot. The bus was due any minute. When his t̓úpyeʔ eventually spoke, she told him to go, that she would be fine, the same thing he had heard his whole life: Don’t worry ’bout me. She always said she was tough enough to handle anything the world could offer, and he had no reason to doubt her. But there was something different about her stillness, and the space between her words. He felt weird. Frozen, almost.
In front of Sophie Cullooyah Stasso Haynes were two versions of her great-grandson. On the wall of her hospital room hung a poster of him in the air, moving toward a basketball rim in his red-and-white Arlee Warriors jersey, mouth agape, the memorial tattoo for his sínceʔ—his brother Yona—visible on his muscled left shoulder. Seated in front of the image was the child she raised, William Mesteth Jr. He was sixteen now, about five foot nine and solidly built, with the first wisps of reddish brown hair sticking out of his chin and the last of his baby fat clinging to his cheeks. His hair hung to his shoulders. She called him Willie.
He was a quiet kid. In class he didn’t say anything; girls thought he was shy, and teachers wondered what was wrong. His mother, Chasity, said he was just quiet. His father, a policeman whose name he took, worried his son had trained himself to disappear. With Sophie it was different. She had raised him from birth. Will and his t̓úpyeʔ talked about everything: hunting, the past, trucks, his siblings, his dreams. He called her “the most kindhearted person you’ll ever meet.” Other family members saw a different side of her. “Mean,” “strict,” and “o’nery”—those were the words more often used.
Will grew up on seventy acres of the Jocko River Valley in Arlee, Montana, near the southern end of the Flathead Indian Reservation. The property was a tribal allotment with horse pastures, a neat family cemetery, and multiple homes. Sophie lived near the entrance, in a warm wooden house where she raised Will. Chasity resided just up the way, in a newer modular home. Beyond that were places belonging to Sharon, Chasity’s mother and Will’s grandmother, and various aunties and uncles. Everyone just called it Haynesville, and there was little doubt as to who was in charge. Chasity was a teenage mother, so when Will arrived Sophie took him in. She spoiled him, giving him Cream of Wheat, pancakes, or burgers whenever he wanted. It was as though his arrival had given rise to some soft new hope. Later on, when he heard thumps in the house, he rushed to Sophie, knowing she had fallen. He helped her up, then she got back to whatever she had been doing. “Pretty tough woman,” he said.
Beeps and hushed voices filled the hospital. Along with Will’s yayá Sharon and aunties, Chasity sat in a nearby waiting room. She was thirty-two now, a working single mother of six with long hair, well-kept nails, and a cluster of tattooed stars descending from behind one ear. She wouldn’t interrupt. “When he comes,” said Chasity, “we let them have their time.” But the women in the waiting room all wanted Will to leave when the bus arrived to drive him to the state tournament, which was to take place over the next three days. In the past year, he had transformed from a failing student and potential dropout to a star shooting guard on a dominant team. People now put him on posters and talked about him in barbershops.
Down below, Broadway was busy, cars kicking slush to the side of the road. Beyond it, the Clark Fork River carried ice toward Idaho. In March, western Montana combines the cold of the Northern Rockies with the moisture of the Pacific Northwest. It’s a season of low skies, heavy snow, perilous roads, and radio announcements imploring basketball fans to drive safely. In Montana, March means frenzied travel over icy passes to high school tournaments. The bus was coming to pick up Will for the most consequential of them all.
In rural Montana, on the weekend of the state tournament, small towns evacuate, their residents filling arenas designed for rock bands and college teams. The Warriors competed in Class C, the division representing the state’s smallest schools, where basketball occupies emotional terrain somewhere between escape and religion. Arlee, Montana, has an estimated population of 641, if you choose to believe the US Census, which no one locally does. That weekend, Will was scheduled to play in front of a crowd approximately ten times that size in Bozeman, two hundred miles to the southeast. Despite years of high expectations, and despite the presence of one of the state’s most dynamic players, Will’s cousin Phillip Malatare, the Arlee Warriors had never won the state championship. Will’s addition had turned the team into something formidable, a pressing, blitzing group that outscored opponents in dizzying runs. Will’s sudden ascendance brought his family intense pride. Chasity filmed each contest on a smartphone, while Will’s father, Big Will, took his place by a large drum alongside the boy’s grandfather and uncles, singing before the team took the court.
Twenty-five miles north of Missoula, in Arlee, people made last-minute preparations, painting truck windows with the names of players and trying to book hotel rooms in Bozeman for the three-day tournament. For the Arlee Warriors, the pride of the Flathead Indian Reservation, state was not just a matter of boyish fun. The previous year, they had made it to the championship but lost. They’d entered this season hoping to avenge that disappointment, but by now, it had taken on an entirely different significance. To the Warriors’ coach, Zanen Pitts, a thirty-one-year-old rancher with a shock of reddish-blond hair, ruddy cheeks, and cutting blue eyes, the trip meant something so great it was almost ineffable. “This is your opportunity to relieve the pain,” he said, of the boys. “This is your guys’ calling.”
Two weeks earlier, on Wednesday, February 22, word of a death had rippled through the Jocko Valley. The deceased, Roberta Roullier Haynes, was an aunt of Will’s and a foster mother, with a kind smile and long auburn hair, who often organized community events. She and her husband, TJ, a tribal policeman, were close with many of the Warriors, and the boys grew up playing in their yard. The cause of death was suicide, but Will did not know that at first. His family initially kept it quiet. It was not the first such tragedy to strike Arlee that season. Since the fall, the community had been in the midst of what public health officials called a suicide cluster, a darkness that spasmodically took its toll. Roberta’s passing had been a jolt to the heart of the team. “She was family,” Will said. He had wondered if he should skip the next games, the divisional tournament preceding state, to be with his family. His cousin Phil, the Warriors’ electric point guard, was particularly close to Roberta; to him, she was “like an auntie.” When Phil’s parents shared the news, he padded downstairs in his socked feet and shut the door to his room, closing himself in among the basketball jerseys and tournament brackets. But that same afternoon, Phil was at the gym, preparing for all that was asked of him. For him, to miss a practice would have been impossible. “It was time to get down,” he said.
That weekend, the Warriors had blitzed their opponents. Over a three-game span, Will scored 49 points, Phil, 67. Then, on the Monday following the divisional tournament, and less than two weeks before state, there followed another death by suicide. The deceased was an uncle of a talented sophomore on the team named Lane Johnson. A wiry, shy kid who was all eyelashes, Lane missed practice that week. At practice, Zanen and the boys started calling out the names of those they were playing for. It was a wild, building feeling—“like cooking with jet fuel,” according to a senior named Ivory Brien. “We’re not just playing for ourselves, we’re playing for this community. And specific members of the community.” Phil’s father, John Malatare, told his son and nephews that when they played, they allowed people to briefly forget their worries. Lane Johnson returned to practice on Friday, March 3, to ensure his eligibility for state. “I knew,” he said of his uncle, “he wouldn’t want me to miss out.”
Only Will’s attendance was unassured. Just a few days before the team was to leave for Bozeman, Sophie suddenly lost the ability to form words. She was rushed to the hospital, where it was determined she’d suffered a mild stroke. Will disappeared from both the school and the team, planting himself in the recliner next to her hospital bed. Coach Pitts brought the poster of Will to cheer Sophie up. He assured Will that his t̓úpyeʔ would want him to play, as did Chasity, his yayá Sharon, his aunties, and Big Will. Will loved and trusted them. But they were not in the hospital room, just as they had not been there on the summer mornings when Will learned to shoot.
Back before anyone put Will on posters, Sophie drove him north from Haynesville on US 93. They’d pass through Arlee and go to the Bison Inn Cafe, at the head of Ravalli Curves, or farther up the hill to Old Timer Cafe in St. Ignatius, at the foot of the whitecapped Mission Mountains. They’d order French toast—he with sausage, she with bacon. They’d head back south toward Arlee in her white Buick, the Missions receding behind them, the Jocko River and the railroad off to the right. A little farther south and they’d emerge into the Jocko Valley, Schall Flats spreading beneath tawny hills. Out to the west, near the river and the railroad, was his grandpa Allen and grandma Kelly’s house. And in front of them, at the foot of the valley, was the place where the timber on a mountainside opened to reveal the shape of a heart. Not a Valentine’s heart but the kind that pumps.
They would find a court. Maybe the one the boys called the Battlefield, by the junior high, or the Lyles courts on Pow Wow Road, past the community center. Sophie sat in the car while Will hopped out with a ball and walked onto the blacktop underneath backboards that read IN MEMORY OF THOMAS LYLES, honoring a ballplayer who passed away young. Will curled his little body together, gathering energy, then flung himself upward, snapping his left wrist. The ball rose toward the rim. Most of the time it clanged off and he ran to retrieve it. But sometimes it ripped the net. Will imagined doing that at the state tournament to the sound of a thousand voices.
That day had now arrived, but he wasn’t sure he could go. The prospect of something happening to Sophie in his absence caused a discomfort that was almost physical. Down below, he saw the bus pull into the parking lot. The boys rode the silver travel rig with dual rear tires and, on the side, a spear piercing the word ARLEE. The windows were painted with their names: MALATARE BOLEN SCHALL FISHER. And he could see his name, too: MESTETH #3. He wanted to go with them. But he also kind of didn’t. The doubt that filled him was fresh and strange. Gray light filtered through the room, and Sophie smiled with arcing eyes. “I’ll be there,” she said. “I’ll be there.” That settled the matter. Will hugged her and walked to the bus. “My gramma’d never lie to me,” he said.
* * *
Three nights later, on Saturday, March 11, he looked up into the darkness and felt the eyes. Cameras lined the floor of Bozeman’s Brick Breeden Fieldhouse; above them, a human galaxy in red-and-white shirts extended to the top of the gym. Half of Flathead Nation, it seemed, had made the three-hour-plus commute. A dapper former Tribal Councilman held a homemade scorecard, as had been his practice since the 1980s. Nearly all of the members of the girls’ basketball team, the Scarlets, were in attendance. Chasity sat in the second deck with her five younger children, one of them wearing face paint on his forehead that read, simply, WILL. And in front of them, in the handicapped section, as promised, sat Sophie Haynes.
“Ladies and gennnnnnnntlemen!” boomed the announcer. “We are Montana Class C! We are one hundred and three schools strong! And this, this is our 2016–2017 Montana boys basketball state chhhhhhhampionshhhhhhhhip!”
The fans supporting their opponent, the Manhattan Christian Eagles, had a shorter commute, one of about twenty minutes. Manhattan Christian was a private school affiliated with the Christian Reformed Church in Churchill, an unincorporated community just twenty miles from Bozeman. The area was settled by Dutch farmers in the late nineteenth century, and some players had names that reflected that history. But the surrounding region was quickly changing, with out-of-state wealth coming for low taxes, a burgeoning tech industry in Bozeman, and Montana’s natural splendor. The man with the microphone introduced Manhattan Christian first. Then he said the word Arlee. The sound was strange, a live thing rumbling from the court to the top row. Will felt as if he had occupied someone else’s body. He took in the vastness of the crowd and stepped onto the floor.
Copyright © 2021 by Abraham Streep.
