Native Affairs

Je

He read her expression. “Don’t worry, paleface.

You’re looking at one tough Injun. My people survived massacres, disease, westward expansion, and the reservation system. The NFL isn’t going to do me in.”

Je

“I’ll give you a ride, and I’ll call my garage in Yardley to come and get it.”

“Will they come so far?”

He smiled grimly. “For me they will. I just spent a small fortune there on my wheels. They’d better not say no.”

He opened the passenger door of his car for Je

He arched an eyebrow at her, starting the car. “Type?”

Why did she always say the wrong thing? “Tribe, clan, I guess I don’t know the right word.”

“Blackfoot,” he said. “It’s part of the Algonquian nation.”

Ah, yes. She remembered that the sportswriters sometimes referred to him as the “Blackfoot Bullet.” Also the “Cawassa Comet.” They were very fond of tag lines.

“What does Cawassa mean?” she asked.

“It’s the town in Montana where I was born, on the reservation, about three miles northwest of Browning.”

“What language is that?”

“Pikuni. It’s a dialect of Ojibwa, spoken by the Blackfeet in that region, in the Northwest, and in Canada in the area of Lake Superior.”

“Ojibwa?”

He gri

Je

He put the sports car in gear and drove out of the lot “Don’t be silly. I’ll tell you anything you want to know. I just couldn’t resist teasing you a little. You get so rattled, like a fourth-grade genius who missed the last word in the spelling bee.”

Je

“Now, in answer to your last question, Ojibwa is the mother language of the Algonquian tribes; it’s more often called Ottawa or Chippewa.”

“Yes, I’ve heard those terms.”

“It’s rather like Castilian Spanish, with Pikuni the equivalent of an Andalusian variant They’re about as similar as modern Polish and Czech. I grew up speaking Pikuni, but I can follow a conversation in Ojibwa.”

“I see.”

“And ‘Ojibwa’ itself means ‘to roast until puckered up,’ which is a reference to the puckered seams on Blackfoot moccasins.”

“No kidding? What an odd way to get a name.”

He cast her a sidelong glance. “I hope you’re paying attention, because there’s going to be a test.”

Je

He asked whether she would like to go home, or back to the office, and regretfully she told him to take her to the office. She still had to try to get in touch with the last player who hadn’t signed his papers.

Lee asked her why she had come to practice that day, and she explained the situation.

“Give that stuff to me,” he said. “I’ll see that Roger signs it and returns it to your office on Monday.”

“Would you do that? It would be a big help. Otherwise I’ll be trying to track him down for the rest of the weekend.”

“No problem. Still want to go back to the office?”

“I’m afraid so. That wasn’t the only thing I have left to do.”

He nodded and took the turnoff for Philadelphia.

They were back to the Freedom’s offices too soon. Je

Lee pulled to a stop outside the building. “Here you are,” he said. “Back the same day.”

“I can’t thank you enough for your help. And I owe you the money you gave that boy from Tony’s Garage.”

“Forget it. It was my pleasure. I’ll have the mechanic at my garage get in touch with you about the repairs.”

“Fine. And thanks again.”

He tossed his fingers in a tiny salute and drove off. Je

* * * *

The Sunday of the benefit game for the Heart Fund was clear and cooler than it had been, a precursor of fall. Je

Dolores was waiting for her on the sidelines. “The first team is already in,” she said. “They’re going to start in a moment.”

“Good. I hope they never get around to me.”

“They will,” Dolores said cheerfully. “Tom said everybody will see some action, if only for a few minutes.”

“Great” Tom was an accountant in payroll, and he was managing the roster.

Je

She and Dolores watched the game for a while, sipping soft drinks and surveying the onlookers wandering around Westminster’s campus.

It wasn’t long before Tom was waving at Je

“Every year I tell him I don’t know how to play this game,” she muttered.

“And every year he ignores you,” Dolores responded. “I know, I know. Go on, it can’t be any worse than last time.”

The “last time” Je

Je

“On the next play,” he said, “I’m going to pass the ball to you.”

“Uh, I don’t think that’s such a good idea, Leo,” she said.

“Why not?”

“Because I don’t know what to do with it once I get it, that’s why not.”

He rubbed his eyes wearily with his thumb and forefinger. “Look, Jen, all you have to do is try to catch the ball, and then run as hard as you can in that direction,” he instructed, pointing toward the goalpost at the end of the field. “Everybody else knows what they have to do. So don’t worry about it, okay? Just grab it and try to cross the line at the end.”

Leo called for a huddle, in which various team members said things Je

She saw Lee, dressed in faded jeans and a white knit skivvy, watching her across the line of scrimmage. That didn’t make her feel any better.

Leo called out a series of numbers, and then faded back for the pass. Je

When it became obvious that he was throwing to her, players from the pro club materialized from nowhere, heading in her direction. Terrified, she looked up to see the ball hurtling through the air toward her.

How did anybody ever catch these things? They were an impossible shape. She grabbed for it, got her fingers on the edge, and then it squirted out of her hands. She leaped after it and managed to catch it. At that moment Lee caught her about the knees and tumbled her gently to the ground.