55 pages • 1 hour read
LeAnne HoweMiko Kings
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2007A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 2-3Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 2 Summary: “Indian Territory, as Told by Ezol Day, Postal Clerk and Experimenter of Time”
After a few weeks of visits from Ezol, Lena has come to expect a ritual from the spirit each night she appears. Ezol walks through Lena’s office, looking at the photographs on the wall and only asking about one: a photograph of Lena’s mother, Kit, as a little girl. She then settles into a 19th-century wingback chair that belonged to Lena’s grandmother, which seems to help her settle in again.
Ezol comments that the house they are in must have belonged to her Uncle Henri and Cousin Cora. Lena disputes this, saying that she has papers to prove that the house belonged to her grandmother and was part of her allotment land. Ezol calmly reminds Lena of the “75,000 white people [who] applied to the U.S. Dawes Commission for a place on the rolls of Choctaw and Chickasaw Nations” because they knew they’d receive free land if accepted (29). All of them were admitted, “but the Cherokees and Choctaws contested the inflated numbers and appealed to the government for a review. It’s still pending” (29). Ezol tells her that this is just one example of why documents can’t always be trusted to accurately reflect history.
The women review the book they’ve been writing. One important section involves “Choctaw entrepreneur Henri Day” (30). It states that in 1904, he “begins building a baseball park in Ada, and a baseball team called the Miko Kings. He also has plans for an all Indian-owned baseball league” (30). Other sections include the muddy and robust history of Ada—including a skunk farm that was built when skunks were thought to one day be as valuable as minks, tales of “wild west” crimes, typhoid fever, fraudulent deeds, and the Corner Saloon, where people frequently gambled on the Miko Kings games.
As Ezol dictates to Lena, words of the past and present start to blend. Ezol explains that Choctaw language “does not distinguish between past and present” (37). In 1905, Ezol wrote a paper that elaborated on her theory: “She posited that universal time in space could not exist because there are no universal verb tenses” (38). Her theories are rooted in linguistics, comparing English and Choctaw verb tenses, and are incredibly thorough.
She discusses this further with Lena, asking why their ancestors should have to obey the rules of time and space put in place by English speakers. Lena asks what the formulas of language and the physics of space and time have to do with the story of the Miko Kings and baseball. Ezol replies that they are intrinsically linked. She continues, “After I understood there might be spacetime terms embedded in our language […] I studied the patterns in our stomp dances and baseball games” (39). She tells Lena that “base-and-ball” is actually an ancient Indigenous American tradition and is a physical embodiment of interacting with different planes of time and space.
Lena recalls a different ceremony, a healing one conducted by “an Alikchi, a Choctaw doctor” in the year 1969 (42). She remembers that her grandmother drove them to Tannehill, Oklahoma, and soon tornado clouds began to form. She “was terrified, but the Alikchi kept on pitching his ax into the ground until the earth opened up a large crater. Then, as the winds died down, he walked counter-clockwise and around the crater” (42). Soon after that, the skies cleared again. Ezol pushes Lena to remember who the ceremony was for, but she can’t recall. She does, however, remember that the crater vanished after the ceremony was over.
Ezol is satisfied, her point proven: “Embedded in these rituals and games are mathematical codes that harness cosmic forces. You witnessed it yourself” (43). Lena is still not convinced that what the Alikchi did was mathematical, nor does she understand how baseball is embedded with equations as Ezol claims. Ezol urges her, “Don’t confuse our ancient game with the one that’s been assimilated into America’s consciousness” (43). She tells Lena that while white Americans used baseball to exclude others, the original game was intended to include everybody.
Lena shows Ezol more papers that she has found in her research, and Ezol gives her a list of new topics to investigate. She writes down “three mathematical equations, ‘John Lennon,’ and ‘Four Mothers Society’” (46). Lena is puzzled by these but doesn’t ask further questions of Ezol. Ezol then cites the names and positions of the players on the Miko Kings for Lena to type out. When she looks at the finished list, Ezol rests her hands on a certain name, Blip Bleen, and Lena senses the weight of grief from the spirit. She looks back from Ezol to the screen and starts to type again.
Chapter 3 Summary: “The Bases Are Loaded”
In Ada in 1969, Hope is in the Elms Nursing Home. He finds himself daydreaming about his lost love, Dusky Long-Gone Girl, a Black woman he met at Hampton Normal School for Blacks and Indians when he was a teenager. He can still recall in vivid detail how she looked at 18: “Her hair is slick black like the leather of his tight new shoes. Her lips are creased like the segments of an orange, […] her husky voice purrs low and dangerous like an unnourished panther” (50). Hope lies back and slips into a memory, daydreaming about his love and singing an old Choctaw song, the Borrow Money Song, quietly to himself. Soon, he isn’t in the nursing home but back in 1907, at the height of his baseball career.
The game between the Miko Kings and the “Fort Sills Seventh Cavalrymen, winners of the Oklahoma Territory League” is expected to bring in 5,000 attendees (51). Spirits are high, but there is an unspoken fear of what will happen if the soldiers lose to the Miko Kings. The Cavalrymen have a reputation of being “dangerous sore losers. Since Custer’s last stand, they’ve tried to kill every Indian on the continent […] And now they have Geronimo locked up in their stockade” (52). Tension and excitement both run high as the people of Ada await the big game.
When the Fort Sills Cavalrymen arrive, a photographer takes photos of both teams, and they remain friendly with each other as they prepare to play. Hope scans the stands for Justina. He thinks, “Surely she’s gotten over the uproar he had with her cousin, Bo Hash. […] He should have pounded Bo’s head in for asking him to throw the last game, but he didn’t” (57). Hash is there today and even worked his way into the team picture, so Hope is certain that he can’t still be angry with him. Finally, he sees Justina and Ezol sitting together and is put at ease.
The game kicks off with the two managers of the teams shaking hands, followed by a song from the Indian Territory Singers. The song repeats in Hope’s head as he is pulled from his memory and back to the present, in 1969. A man is standing over him, telling him that it’s time for his shot. Hope’s arms are in the air, as if he’s still back in time on the day of the big game. However, when Hope looks at his arms, he has “two flesh ends for tails, instead of hands. […] they resemble two giant sea horses” (58). Hope is still groggy from the morphine and doesn’t quite understand where, and when, he is now.
He slowly starts to come to and recognizes the man as “John Lennon, [his] nurse-not-the-singer” (59). Hope asks him how he lost his hands. John guesses that it was either diabetes or possibly a wild tale that Hope told him once about how he and a gambler were betting against their own team, which eventually led to the gambler being murdered and Hope’s hands being cut off. John scoffs, stating that Hope has told too many stories for him to know which one is true.
Suddenly, a scream is heard from the other room. John leaves to see what it was and returns with a “tall bulky Indian wearing a red and white polka dot dress and an orange wig” (60). Kerwin, another nurse, struggles in John’s grip, trying to explain: “I just thought it was a good time to protest for personal change, while we’re protesting the Vietnam War” (60). John starts yelling at Kerwin to take off the dress, and Hope tries to dissolve the tension between the two. His attention is soon brought back to his hands, and he wonders again what happened to them. He starts to drift off again, back even further into the past.
In 1896, Hope is placed in an isolation cell at his boarding school, Hampton Normal School for Blacks and Indians, after attempting to run away a total of 12 times. Even at 14, Hope knows that he wants to be a baseball player, but he feels trapped at Hampton. There, Choctaw language, customs, and religion are frowned upon or even punished.
Hope’s time at Hampton began when
[a] preacher named Clyde Spencer came around to his mother’s place and told her there had never been any Choctaws at Hampton. He said her son and two daughters would be good role models at the school because Choctaws were known for their fine dispositions (63).
After Clyde found out that Hope’s uncle was Ahojebo Little Leader, a skilled baseball player, he “hinted that the boy could play on Hampton’s baseball team” (63). Hope and his two sisters are initially sent to Hampton together, but upon arrival, they are told that they aren’t welcome since the Choctaw are one of the tribes who enslaved people before the American Civil War. Hope’s two sisters are sent to the Good Land Orphanage, but the principal decides to let Hope stay after all at the last minute. As the siblings are separated, Hope chases after the wagon as long as he is able, with his sisters calling out to him. Eventually, the school janitor, a Black man named George Lincoln, knocks Hope to the ground, holding him down until the wagon is out of sight. He tells Hope, “It don’t do no good to die here. White folks’ll jest parade your body around town asking for more donations. I know how you feel, boy” (65). Finally, Hope resigns himself to being alone at Hampton and merely hopes that his sisters will be able to manage without him.
Hampton doesn’t prove to be all bad, however. It is there that Hope meets his true love, Justina, or “Dusky Long-Gone Girl,” as he calls her (66). They meet in math class, and when Hope is in isolation, he can’t help but think about her and wonder if she misses him.
Hope is pulled back to the present in 1969. Kerwin, still in his dress and wig, sits at Hope’s side. Hope tells Kerwin that he “might pass for Ohoyo Holba […] Like a woman, but not” (66). Kerwin takes off his wig and leans in closer, hoping for more stories about Hope’s past. Hope is too tired and starts to close his eyes again.
Chapters 2-3 Analysis
These chapters delve into The Intersection of Baseball and Indigenous Identity, reflecting on the spiritual and ancient ritual of baseball and the importance of geometry in Indigenous American culture. Ezol, who studied and wrote about these theories for much of her life, starts to explain them to Lena. Baseball, Ezol insists, was not invented by the white Americans. She asks, “How plausible is it that white people, who live by the clock and sword, would invent a game without time, one that must be played counter-clockwise?” (42). She also says of baseball, “From the mound, a pitcher was the embodiment of the center pole that could access the Middle, Upper, and Lower Worlds” (39). Baseball is repeatedly said to be a game without limits, and this is a more visual interpretation of the game’s connection to time and space. Hope, the pitcher, is one such character in the story who seems to move seamlessly through his past and the present, and it is his story that brings Ezol and Lena together in his future (2006, which is Lena’s present).
Another ritual that the text examines more thoroughly is the healing ceremony that Lena recalls from her childhood. This ceremony took place in 1969, the year that the book refers to as Hope’s current timeline. On the day of the ceremony, Lena remembers that a large tornado appeared as the Alikchi performed the healing ceremony, which, like baseball, included walking counterclockwise. Ezol uses this as proof that Lena has seen these mathematical equations put to work with her own eyes. When Lena remains skeptical, Ezol challenges her, saying, “A stop dance and a baseball game mimic natural phenomena, such as tornado winds, that are counter-clockwise. Why can’t you believe that the Alikchi knew how to interact with the chaos?” (43). These connections between tornadoes, baseball, and Choctaw heritage are all elements of the book that are woven throughout the story, and they are key to the ways in which each timeline relates to the others.
The timelines are not the only thing that starts to feel more connected. As Lena spends more time with Ezol, she “consider[s] asking her if [they]’re related. [They] must be. She seems to read [Lena] like a book” (41). For so long, Lena felt disconnected from her Choctaw family, but as she spends more time writing with Ezol, she finds herself wanting to know more: about the language, about the past, and about what it means to be Choctaw now.
Part of this inquiry is also connected to the house and the land itself, tying into the theme of The Relationship Between Land and Identity. Just as Lena in 2006 finds herself wanting to come home to Oklahoma, young Hope, back in 1896, wants to go home after being taken to Hampton. The boarding schools during the time of Allotment were just one way that Indigenous Americans were taken from their homes and families and forced to adapt to white culture, religion, and attire. When the school janitor, George Lincoln, tells Hope, “It don’t do no good to die here. White folks’ll jest parade your body around town asking for more donations” (65), it speaks to the performative investment that white Americans did in order to obtain more money, land, and control over the people whose homes they invaded. Hope doesn’t reach his sisters, but he never stops thinking about ways to get away from Hampton and go back home.
In these two chapters, Howe plants the seeds of the conflict to come later in the book by establishing the gambling habits of the citizens of Ada. For them, “betting on Indians is like betting on horses” (32), and Bobbitt, one of the co-owners of the Corner Saloon, remarks that “without the gamblers, Miko Kings ballpark would go under” (33). This is important to note, especially when Hope discloses the argument he had with Justina’s cousin Bo Hash, when Hash asked Hope to throw the last game. In 1969, Hope’s nurse, John, mentions in passing a story that Hope told him about having his hands chopped off for betting against his own team. The text therefore leaves clues that something involving a bet goes awry during the last game, and the unfolding mystery imbues the story with suspenseful tension. From a narrative perspective, the text weaves these clues into each of the timelines and successfully foreshadows the primary conflict without giving too much away at once.
Finally, in Chapters 2 and 3, the text gives more insight into one character, Blip Bleen. First, the book reveals that there is a strong connection between Blip and Ezol, as Ezol fixates on that name when Lena types the list of players on her computer. Secondly, the book indicates that Blip is the reason that Hope initially wanted to join the Miko Kings. Hope greatly admires Blip’s work ethic, describing him as “a man who lives the game. He’s always honing his swing. Making slight adjustments to where he places his hands on the bat, or the way he stands at the plate” (54). Hope looks up to Blip and finds in him a good friend who encourages him during the games. The two share a bond over their love for the game, though this very love, which borders on obsession, is what will ultimately tear the two friends apart.
