Abe Streep - Brothers on Three: A True Story of Family, Resistance, and Hope on a Reservation in Montana

The author and publisher have provided this e-book to you for your personal use only. You may not make this e-book publicly available in any way. Copyright infringement is against the law. If you believe the copy of this e-book you are reading infringes on the authors copyright, please notify the publisher at: us.macmillanusa.com/piracy.

For my mother and father

And for Stephanie, who just knows

A different time will come, declared the mud.

DARCY MCNICKLE

After a while, however, I realized that they were saying a great deal, and that on questions of human behavior much that sounded old was so old that it was new again.

EUGENE KINKEAD

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 tpye eventually spoke, she told him to go, that she would be fine, the same thing he had heard his whole life: Dont 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 sncehis brother Yonavisible 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 didnt 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 tpye talked about everything: hunting, the past, trucks, his siblings, his dreams. He called her the most kindhearted person youll ever meet. Other family members saw a different side of her. Mean, strict, and onerythose 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, Chasitys mother and Wills 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 Wills yay 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 wouldnt 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. Its 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 states 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 states most dynamic players, Wills cousin Phillip Malatare, the Arlee Warriors had never won the state championship. Wills addition had turned the team into something formidable, a pressing, blitzing group that outscored opponents in dizzying runs. Wills sudden ascendance brought his family intense pride. Chasity filmed each contest on a smartphone, while Wills father, Big Will, took his place by a large drum alongside the boys 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. Theyd 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 Wills 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. Robertas 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 Phils 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.