Miko Kings

Hope Little Leader is a kind and determined Choctaw man, “[t]he Miko Kings’ best hurler” (7), and the main character of the past storyline in book. The text details moments in his life, including being separated from his sisters as they leave for Good Land Orphanage, his being forced to stay at Hampton, his romance with Justina, his baseball career, and finally his betrayal of the Miko Kings. His story primarily jumps between two timelines: 1907, the year of the final Miko Kings game, and 1969, the last year of his life.

Hope’s story within Miko Kings begins when he is brought to the Hampton Normal School for Blacks and Indians. After the death of his mother, Hope and his sisters are sent to the boarding school, under the reassurance from their grandfather that their “uncle Ahojebo [will] come after them” (64). Ahojebo, who was a baseball player as well, was meant to become their guardian but never made it to meet the children. Once they arrive, they are told that they can’t stay. His sisters are sent to a Choctaw orphanage near Doaksville, but “the principal decide[s] at the last minute to keep him” (65). Hope’s memory of chasing after the wagon as his little sisters cry out for him is burned into Hope’s mind and is one of the times that he feels he failed as a caretaker.

Hope remembers this when he has a fight with his lover, Justina. When she leaves him, “he thinks about how he couldn’t protect his sisters like his mother had asked him to do. Maybe Justina was right, maybe he was weak” (194). This is a core wound for Hope and one of his greatest fears: that he will not be able to take care of the people he loves. It is this fear that drives his decision to take the money Bo offered and intentionally lose the game against the Fort Sills Cavalrymen.

In 1969, as an old man, Hope is in a nursing home. Through Hope’s story, Howe exposes some of the discrimination that Choctaws and other Indigenous Americans face in such facilities. The day nurses intentionally tend to Hope last, to the point where his bedsore is left untreated long enough that it proves to be fatal. Luckily, he has two kind nurses, John Lennon and Kerwin, who do what they can to make his quality of life better. He spends his days in the nursing home primarily fixated on the past, visiting the memories of his days on the ballfield and, most of all, his days with Justina.

One of the mysteries in the book is about how Hope lost his hands. When the text first introduces Hope, he looks at his arms, which “resemble two giant sea horses with curled fleshy ends for tails, instead of hands” (58). As a pitcher, losing his hands was one of the worst things that could have happened to him. At the end of the book, the text reveals that Hope lost his hands after throwing the baseball game. Hope is visited by a warrior spirit and a turquoise horse. While at first, he doesn’t want to revisit his betrayal, he must face the nightmare of what he did in order to visit the alternative history dream. In it—which is the last time the book discusses Hope—he makes the right decision.

Ezol is present in both the past timeline and the present (Lena’s) timeline. She is the niece of Henri Day, who was the founder of the Miko Kings and cousin to his daughter Cora, who is later revealed to be Lena’s grandmother MourningTree Bolin. Ezol is also close friends with Hope’s lover, Justina. In the present, Ezol visits Lena after construction workers discover a pouch containing Ezol’s journal in the walls of Lena’s home in Oklahoma.

Though she is not from the present timeline, Ezol does not present as a ghostlike figure. Instead, Lena describes Ezol as a striking woman:

Ezol’s radiant dark brown skin is exactly the same color as her hair. She piles it high into a chignon. Very fashionable at the turn of the nineteenth century. She wears a white linen blouse and a black skirt cinched at the waist with a narrow belt. The sameness of her hair, skin, and eyes make her appear like one of the photographs hanging on the wall (28).

There is one photograph on the wall that always catches Ezol’s attention. It is the one of Kit, Lena’s mother, as a baby. It is later revealed that this is because Kit was the baby Cora had after sleeping with Blip, who had been her true love. She feels a strong affection for Kit and, therefore, for Lena.

One thing that Ezol tries to open Lena’s mind to is the sacred nature of Choctaw traditions and their connections to mathematical equations for transcending time and space. Ezol dedicated her life to writing about and studying these theories. She tells Lena, “Time is like a majestic dance […] Your time and my time are two distinct patterns, but they intersect. That’s why I’m here” (45). Integral to her theories about time and space are the linguistics of Choctaw versus English, specifically verb tenses. In her journal, she writes of her teachers discouraging her from these theories, but she continues her work on them until her death.

Although Ezol is wise beyond her years, she, too, is afflicted by her past. She did not leave Good Land Orphanage until the age of 21, which is when she moved to Ada with Henri and Cora. After the move, Henri decided to take Ezol and Cora “to a baseball game over in the Cherokee Outlet” (147). In her journal entry for that day, she writes about how fearful she was riding through the town, especially after being warned about the thieves that were on the loose. Her anxiety was so visible that Henri ended up paying for them to go back home. He scolded Ezol for acting more frightened than Cora, who is only 11. Ezol told him, “[M]y father is dead and buried because of invading Nahollas who had apparently killed him for twenty-five cents” (147). This caused Henri to fall silent for a while and then apologize to his niece.

One person who makes Ezol feel safe is Blip Bleen. Ezol writes that she has dreams of marrying him one day, and he understands her theories and equations. She writes, “We have seen the patterns of a baseball field mapped among the stars, Blip and me” (164). Her love for Blip continues even after her death and even after he betrays her by sleeping with Cora.

Finally, her relationship with Cora ultimately proves that Ezol loves unconditionally. Even after Cora sleeps with Blip and after the fire (though never explicitly stated, the text implies that Cora might have had something to do with the fire), Ezol does not hold a grudge against Cora. She comes to Lena to watch over her and let her know that she isn’t alone. Instead of resenting the fact that Lena should have been her granddaughter, not Cora’s, she embraces the fact that her love is stronger than blood.

Henri is the founder of the Miko Kings. He is an uncle to Ezol and father to Cora. He runs for mayor but has several “personal disasters that have long swirled around him” (108). He never remarries after his wife dies of tuberculosis, and townspeople aren’t trusting of him for that. He prefers nicer, fancier clothes than what the rest of the people in Ada wear. Finally, he has proven himself a failed businessman. His “first business venture, Pony Express Glue, failed to attract a single investor” (108). All of this is already going against him when the scathing letter to the editor, written by his mayoral opponent, Leon Bonaparte, is published.

Though Henri is not necessarily good with money, the text portrays him as someone whose heart is in the right place. He wants the Miko Kings to be a catalyst for intertribal community and for them to reclaim something after losing so much to the violence of colonization.

Blip is the player-manager for the Miko Kings and “the batting champion” for the team (8). His defining feature is “a deep scar that runs from the top of his right eyebrow onto his cheekbone” (16). From the beginning of the book, Lena finds herself drawn to his picture the most, and it is later revealed that he is her grandfather. Blip is a determined leader, dedicated both to the game of baseball and to his team.

This dedication is both Blip’s greatest strength and his greatest weakness: “As a player-manager, Blip is gifted at inspiring the men. He tells them to imagine the plays before they happen” (54). Blip’s craftsmanship at the sport is the reason Hope wanted to join the Miko Kings in the first place. However, when Hope throws the final game against the Fort Sill Cavalrymen, the text reveals a more violent side of Blip. Hope’s betrayal of the Miko Kings leads Blip to take two other players to the Corner Saloon, where Hope is staying. There, they hold Hope down and chop off his hands with an ax. Blip dies that night, swinging the ax into Bobbitt, who simultaneously shoots him at range.

Bo is Justina’s cousin and the love interest of Cora. He is a complex character who serves as an antagonistic force for the characters in the book, but he also faces a great deal of racial discrimination himself. He is the one who initiates the deal with Hope, which ultimately costs the lives of five men, along with Hope’s hands.

In Ezol’s journal, it is revealed that there was a romance between Bo and Cora. Ezol writes of Cora, “She confides that she would like to marry Beauregard. I do not understand why. He’s handsome enough but splinters of ice shoot out of his eyes” (166). Bo is not trusted by Ezol, Henri, and the others. For Ezol, this distrust seems to be more based on his coldness of character. Henri, at first, appears to mistrust him for his “relationship with Tom Bobbitt and other unsavory persons” and refuses to sell him shares of the Miko Kings (178). This tension between the three is only heightened right before the big game.

When Bo approaches Hope with the deal to throw the game, he tells Hope about the discrimination he has faced among the Choctaws. He says through tears, “Henri told me himself that I couldn’t see Miss Cora no more and that I should move out to colored town and live amongst my own people. That ought to show you right there how he feels about me—and Justina!” (195). In that moment, Hope recognizes that Bo has more love for Cora than he realized and that he will face similar discrimination from his own people if he continues to be with Justina. After this vulnerable moment with Bo, Hope chooses to move on with him and Justina and to betray the Miko Kings.

Justina (also known as Black Juice) is an equally complex character. Her story is somewhat of a mystery that unravels throughout the course of the book. In the beginning, Ezol tells Lena, “[Justina and Bo] invented themselves again and again, especially Justina. Their behaviors wreaked havoc with their loved ones, but Justina was my dear friend. She understood me” (35). In the book, Justina is many things: radical and violent social justice legend, teacher, and lover. While all of these may evolve, one thing that stays consistent throughout the book is her friendship with Ezol.

Algernon Pinchot, the professor who researches Justina in 1969, confirms her complicated life. He writes, “To say her life has been filled with contradiction is obvious but insufficient” (70). When he interviews her, he is expecting to hear stories of her legendary days as Black Juice, who used violence to fight for equality. What he discovers is that she regrets those days: The violence didn’t change anything. She wanted to fight for the children she taught at the Courtesan, who faced violence and sexual abuse. However, the change she fought for never came. In fact, at 91, Justina admits, “I have many regrets, but my greatest is the loss of the one man I truly loved, Hope Little Leader” (80). Justina agrees to talk to Algernon about her life but not about her time in New Orleans as Black Juice. Instead, she will tell him the story of her time with the Miko Kings.