the years. I wonder if he knew I was diabetic.
“What the hell are you doing here?” he asked.
“I was cold and sleepy,” I said. “So I lay down.”
“You dumb-ass, you passed out on the railroad tracks.”
I sat up and looked around. I was lying on the railroad tracks. Dock-workers stared at me. I should have been a railroad-track pizza, a double Indian pepperoni with extra cheese. Sick and scared, I leaned over and puked whiskey.
“What the hell's wrong with you?” Officer Williams asked. “You’ve never been this stupid.”
“It's my grandmother,” I said. “She died.”
“I’m sorry, man. When did she die?”
“Nineteen seventy-two.”
“And you’re killing yourself now?”
“I’ve been killing myself ever since she died.”
He shook his head. He was sad for me. Like I said, he was a good cop.
“And somebody beat the hell out of you,” he said. “You remember who?”
“Mr. Grief and I went a few rounds.”
“It looks like Mr. Grief knocked you out.”
“Mr. Grief always wins.”
“Come on,” he said. “Let's get you out of here.”
He helped me up and led me over to his squad car. He put me in the back. “You throw up in there and you’re cleaning it up,” he said.
“That's fair.”
He walked around the car and sat in the driver's seat. “I’m taking you over to detox,” he said.
“No, man, that place is awful,” I said. “It's full of drunk Indians.”
We laughed. He drove away from the docks.
“I don’t know how you guys do it,” he said.
“What guys?” I asked.
“You Indians. How the hell do you laugh so much? I just picked your ass off the railroad tracks, and you’re making jokes. Why the hell do you do that?”
“The two funniest tribes I’ve ever been around are Indians and Jews, so I guess that says something about the inherent humor of genocide.”
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
