“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.
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.
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.
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.
“Yes, we’re very hungry,” the elder Aleut said.
She took us to a booth near the kitchen. I could smell the food cooking. My stomach growled.
“You guys want separate checks?” the waitress asked.
“No, I’m paying,” I said.
“Aren’t you the generous one,” she said.
“Don’t do that,” I said.
“Do what?” she asked.
“Don’t ask me rhetorical questions. They scare me.”
She looked puzzled, and then she laughed.
“O.K., Professor,” she said. “I’ll only ask you real questions from now on.”
“Thank you.”
“What do you guys want to eat?”
“That's the best question anybody can ask anybody,” I said. “What have you got?”
“How much money you got?” she asked.
“Another good question,” I said. “I’ve got twenty-five dollars I can spend. Bring us all the breakfast you can, plus your tip.”
She knew the math.
“All right, that's four specials and four coffees and fifteen percent for me.”
The Aleuts and I waited in silence. Soon enough, the waitress returned and poured us four coffees, and we sipped at them until she returned again, with four plates of food. Eggs, bacon, toast, hash-brown potatoes. It's amazing how much food you can buy for so little money.
Grateful, we feasted.
I said farewell to the Aleuts and walked toward the pawnshop. I heard later that the Aleuts had waded into the salt water near Dock 47 and disappeared. Some Indians swore they had walked on the water and headed north. Other Indians saw the Aleuts drown. I don’t know what happened to them.
I looked for the pawnshop and couldn’t find it. I swear it wasn’t in the place where it had been before. I walked twenty or thirty blocks looking for the pawnshop, turned corners and bisected intersections, and looked up its name in the phone books and asked people walking past me if they’d ever heard of it. But that pawnshop seemed to have sailed away like a ghost ship. I wanted to cry. And just when I’d given up, when I turned one last corner and thought I might die if I didn’t find that pawnshop, there it was, in a space I swear it hadn’t occupied a few minutes ago.
I walked inside and greeted the pawnbroker, who looked a little younger than he had before.
“It's you,” he said.
“Yes, it's me,” I said.
“Jackson Jackson.”
“That is my name.”
“Where are your friends?”
“They went traveling. But it's O.K. Indians are everywhere.”
“Do you have the money?”
“How much do you need again?” I asked, and hoped the price had changed.
“Nine hundred and ninety-nine dollars.”
It was still the same price. Of course, it was the same price. Why would it change?