Lorrie Moore - 100 Years of the Best American Short Stories

We laughed.

“Listen to you, Jackson. You’re so smart. Why the hell are you on the street?”

“Give me a thousand dollars and I’ll tell you.”

“You bet I’d give you a thousand dollars if I knew you’d straighten up your life.”

He meant it. He was the second-best cop I’d ever known.

“You’re a good cop,” I said.

“Come on, Jackson,” he said. “Don’t blow smoke up my ass.”

“No, really, you remind me of my grandfather.”

“Yeah, that’s what you Indians always tell me.”

“No, man, my grandfather was a tribal cop. He was a good cop. He never arrested people. He took care of them. Just like you.”

“I’ve arrested hundreds of scumbags, Jackson. And I’ve shot a couple in the ass.”

“It don’t matter. You’re not a killer.”

“I didn’t kill them. I killed their asses. I’m an ass-killer.”

We drove through downtown. The missions and shelters had already released their overnighters. Sleepy homeless men and women stood on street corners and stared up at a gray sky. It was the morning after the night of the living dead.

“Do you ever get scared?” I asked Officer Williams.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, being a cop, is it scary?”

He thought about that for a while. He contemplated it. I liked that about him.

“I guess I try not to think too much about being afraid,” he said. “If you think about fear, then you’ll be afraid. The job is boring most of the time. Just driving and looking into dark corners, you know, and seeing nothing. But then things get heavy. You’re chasing somebody, or fighting them or walking around a dark house, and you just know some crazy guy is hiding around a corner, and hell, yes, it’s scary.”

“My grandfather was killed in the line of duty,” I said.

“I’m sorry. How’d it happen?”

I knew he’d listen closely to my story.

“He worked on the reservation. Everybody knew everybody. It was safe. We aren’t like those crazy Sioux or Apache or any of those other warrior tribes. There’ve only been three murders on my reservation in the last hundred years.”

“That is safe.”

“Yeah, we Spokane, we’re passive, you know. We’re mean with words. And we’ll cuss out anybody. But we don’t shoot people. Or stab them. Not much, anyway.”

“So what happened to your grandfather?”

“This man and his girlfriend were fighting down by Little Falls.”

“Domestic dispute. Those are the worst.”

“Yeah, but this guy was my grandfather’s brother. My great-uncle.”

“Oh, no.”

“Yeah, it was awful. My grandfather just strolled into the house. He’d been there a thousand times. And his brother and his girlfriend were drunk and beating on each other. And my grandfather stepped between them, just as he’d done a hundred times before. And the girlfriend tripped or something. She fell down and hit her head and started crying. And my grandfather kneeled down beside her to make sure she was all right. And for some reason my great-uncle reached down, pulled my grandfather’s pistol out of the holster, and shot him in the head.”

“That’s terrible. I’m sorry.”

“Yeah, my great-uncle could never figure out why he did it. He went to prison forever, you know, and he always wrote these long letters. Like fifty pages of tiny little handwriting. And he was always trying to figure out why he did it. He’d write and write and write and try to figure it out. He never did. It’s a great big mystery.”

“Do you remember your grandfather?”

“A little bit. I remember the funeral. My grandmother wouldn’t let them bury him. My father had to drag her away from the grave.”

“I don’t know what to say.”

“I don’t, either.”

We stopped in front of the detox center.

“We’re here,” Officer Williams said.

“I can’t go in there,” I said.

“You have to.”

“Please, no. They’ll keep me for twenty-four hours. And then it will be too late.”

“Too late for what?”

I told him about my grandmother’s regalia and the deadline for buying it back.

“If it was stolen, you need to file a report,” he said. “I’ll investigate it myself. If that thing is really your grandmother’s, I’ll get it back for you. Legally.”

“No,” I said. “That’s not fair. The pawnbroker didn’t know it was stolen. And, besides, I’m on a mission here. I want to be a hero, you know? I want to win it back, like a knight.”

“That’s romantic crap.”

“That may be. But I care about it. It’s been a long time since I really cared about something.”

Officer Williams turned around in his seat and stared at me. He studied me.

“I’ll give you some money,” he said. “I don’t have much. Only thirty bucks. I’m short until payday. And it’s not enough to get back the regalia. But it’s something.”

“I’ll take it,” I said.

“I’m giving it to you because I believe in what you believe. I’m hoping, and I don’t know why I’m hoping it, but I hope you can turn thirty bucks into a thousand somehow.”

“I believe in magic.”

“I believe you’ll take my money and get drunk on it.”

“Then why are you giving it to me?”

“There ain’t no such thing as an atheist cop.”

“Sure, there is.”

“Yeah, well, I’m not an atheist cop.”

He let me out of the car, handed me two fivers and a twenty, and shook my hand.

“Take care of yourself, Jackson,” he said. “Stay off the railroad tracks.”

“I’ll try,” I said.

He drove away. Carrying my money, I headed back toward the water.

8 A.M.

On the wharf, those three Aleuts still waited on the wooden bench.

“Have you seen your ship?” I asked.

“Seen a lot of ships,” the elder Aleut said. “But not our ship.”

I sat on the bench with them. We sat in silence for a long time. I wondered if we would fossilize if we sat there long enough.

I thought about my grandmother. I’d never seen her dance in her regalia. And, more than anything, I wished I’d seen her dance at a powwow.

“Do you guys know any songs?” I asked the Aleuts.

“I know all of Hank Williams,” the elder Aleut said.

“How about Indian songs?”

“Hank Williams is Indian.”

“How about sacred songs?”

“Hank Williams is sacred.”

“I’m talking about ceremonial songs. You know, religious ones. The songs you sing back home when you’re wishing and hoping.”

“What are you wishing and hoping for?”

“I’m wishing my grandmother was still alive.”

“Every song I know is about that.”

“Well, sing me as many as you can.”

The Aleuts sang their strange and beautiful songs. I listened. They sang about my grandmother and about their grandmothers. They were lonesome for the cold and the snow. I was lonesome for everything.

10 A.M.

After the Aleuts finished their last song, we sat in silence for a while. Indians are good at silence.

“Was that the last song?” I asked.

“We sang all the ones we could,” the elder Aleut said. “The others are just for our people.”

I understood. We Indians have to keep our secrets. And these Aleuts were so secretive they didn’t refer to themselves as Indians.

“Are you guys hungry?” I asked.

They looked at one another and communicated without talking.

“We could eat,” the elder Aleut said.

11 A.M.

The Aleuts and I walked over to the Big Kitchen, a greasy diner in the International District. I knew they served homeless Indians who’d lucked into money.

“Four for breakfast?” the waitress asked when we stepped inside.