Percival Everett - Half an Inch of Water - Stories

“I could get used to that,” she said.

“I have a few things for you,” I told her.

“Thank you, Mr. Keene.” She pointed to the table.

I put down the towels, cigarettes, and money. “Please, call me Jack.”

“Sit down, Jack.”

I sat on the sofa under the window. The sun came through the glass and hit my neck.

“I was wondering if you got my letter,” she said.

“You didn’t give a phone number and I knew I could get here faster than the mail.”

“And here you are.”

“Here I am. What can I do to help you?”

“I want you to find my son.”

“Ma’am?”

“My son. I’m one hundred and two years old. I’m going to die and I want to see my son one last time. I haven’t seen him in a bunch of years, maybe thirty.”

“Ms. Cloud, I’m not a detective.”

“He’s a good boy. I was twenty when I had him and he never gave me any trouble.”

I did the math. “Ms. Cloud, that would make your son eighty-two years old.”

“I reckon that’s right.”

In my head I did more math. I was told once that the average Native American man lives to be forty-four. I wasn’t sure I believed the statistic, it being so shocking and sad, but I was certain it wasn’t a gross exaggeration. Ms. Cloud’s son would be defying the odds if he were still alive.

“So, you’re telling me you haven’t seen your son since he was fifty-two years old.”

“His name is Davy.”

“Do you know where I should look for David?”

“Davy. His name is Davy. That’s what’s on his birth paper. His name is Davy.”

“Davy.” I looked at Roberta Cloud’s wrinkled face, her cloudy eyes. I wondered if she could see at all.

“When I met you years ago I knew you were a good man,” she said. “And here you are.”

“I’m glad you think that,” I said.

“That’s why I wrote to you.”

I didn’t know whether to feel flattered or like a sucker. “Ma’am, I have to say that I don’t think I’m the person to try to find Davy.”

She nodded. “You’ll find him. I believe with all my heart that you will find him.”

“Why do you believe that, ma’am?”

“Let’s just say I have a good feeling about you.” And then she let out a high little laugh that seemed incongruous.

“I see.”

“The last I heard he was working in the restaurant in Lander. The restaurant would be a good place to start.”

“There are many restaurants in Lander, Ms. Cloud. Do you know the name of the restaurant?”

“No, I don’t.” She reached over to the table beside her rocker and picked up a photograph. She pretended to look at it and then pushed it toward me.

“Ms. Cloud, eighty-two is kind of old to be working in a restaurant. Working anywhere.”

“Here’s a picture of Davy.”

I took the photo and looked at it. I looked at the olive-skinned man with a long braid. He looked familiar. The man in the picture looked to be in his midforties. “It’s an old picture, Ms. Cloud. Do you think I’ll be able to recognize him?”

“You’ll know him when you see him,” she said.

I wanted to ask her if she was sure he was still alive, but thought better of it.

“What’s his birthdate?” I asked.

“The second of December,” she said quickly.

“The year?”

She directed her useless eyes at the ceiling. “I don’t know,” she said. Maybe she was crying.

“Ms. Cloud,” I started.

“Mr. Keene,” she said, her voice softer than before. “I’m going to die in one week. I can’t stop it, that’s the way it is. I know you will find my Davy.”

There was nothing for me to say. Actually, there were many things I could have said, but none of them to Roberta Cloud. But I said the one thing that I could say to her and that was “Yes ma’am.”

“Well, you had better hurry, Mr. Keene. The clock’s ticking.” She laughed.

Needless to say, I did not. Hurry, that is. What was I supposed to hurry up and do? I rose, bid her good-bye, and walked out into the cold March air. I looked at the propane tank and was sorry it had been so easy to spot. I stood just outside the door and heard no movement from inside. I wondered briefly what had prompted me to respond to the old woman’s letter. Briefly, because I answered the question in short order. I was there because I was a stupid do-gooder, a typical idiot with a slight messianic complex. I thought I’d come up here and the old woman would ask for something simple, like a repair on the aforementioned propane tank, and I would do it, feel good about myself, and help out an old woman. I got what I deserved for being a nice guy.

I climbed into my car and drove to the reservation office. Maybe this would be simple. Perhaps Davy Cloud, if he was still alive, which I doubted, was living only miles away on the reservation. As I parked and got out I peered up to see that the sun was giving in to a sky that looked like snow. Inside, I found a lone woman sitting at a desk behind a long, high counter.

“What can I do you for?” she asked.

“A man could hear that a couple of ways,” I said.

“A man could,” she said. “But a man won’t.”

“Fair enough.” I put the photograph on the counter. “I’m looking for this man.”

“I’d be looking for him, too,” the woman said. “He’s a looker.”

I nodded. “But he’s about eighty now.”

“Oh.”

“His name is Davy Cloud.”

“No Davy Cloud,” she said. “There’s a Roberta Cloud. No Davy Cloud.”

“He’s Roberta’s son.”

The woman looked at me with a sidelong glance for a second. Then she might have shaken her head. I wasn’t sure.

“Could you check?”

“Check what?”

“Don’t you have a register or a roll or something?”

“Yes, we have a list of everyone in the tribe. Is he Arapaho?”

“He’s Roberta Cloud’s son.”

“Okay, I’ll look up Roberta.” She walked to a desk and sat at it, facing a computer screen. “We just digitized what we have. Here’s Roberta. No mention of a son. But that wouldn’t be that strange. Eighty years ago some people just had their kids and that was it. No paperwork, no nothing.”

“A reservation phonebook?”

She came back to the counter, reached under it, and pushed the thin volume that was the phonebook toward me. “Look for yourself. One Cloud. Roberta Cloud.”

“I believe you,” I said. “Do you have any old phonebooks?”

“No.”

“Is there a library on the reservation?”

She shook her head. “There’s a library in Lander.”

“Thank you. Sorry to come in with such strange questions.”

“Every week some wasichu comes in here looking for an Indian nobody knows.”

She was joking, but she had used Lakota slang for a white person and it kind of rankled me. “I’m not white,” I said.

“You’re not Indian,” she said.

“True enough. Have a good day, ma’am.”

I drove to the library in town. It was late in a steel-gray afternoon. I asked the cliché of a librarian at the reference desk if they had old phonebooks. They had some for Lander and a few for the reservation. Apparently the reservation hadn’t started keeping a phonebook until seven years earlier. Still, I looked through all of them. I had nothing better to do with my time.

I found a computer, got online, and found a couple of David Clouds. Not one was Native. All were young and none were in Wyoming. And as usual I felt a little sullied by having been online.

I drove to a diner and tried to find some food. It should have been easy, given that I was in a restaurant, but it was not. The chicken soup tasted like soap and the club sandwich’s only memorable attribute was that it was enormous. The waitress was an older woman who seemed well aware that the food was substandard.