To Cubbin that was still a kind of economic heresy, but he shrugged it away. “That’s not so important.”
“And I don’t want power. I don’t mean I wouldn’t take it if it were offered. Hell, who wouldn’t. But I haven’t got the drive or the hunger or whatever it is to go after it.”
Cubbin nodded. He knew about power and what was done to get it. “Well, if you don’t crave it, you almost never get it.”
Kelly looked at his father. “This is going to sound corny but I found out something about myself. I like to help people, I mean individuals.”
“Well, you probably got that from me.”
“You bet, chief.”
“You sure as hell don’t make any money helping people. You usually get kicked in the teeth for it.”
“Well, I like it and I’ve even figured out why. You see, I’m smarter than most people. I’m not bragging, it’s just something that happened to me like the fact that I’ve got black hair and blue eyes. So I know how to do things for people — or get things done for them and I get a kick out of that. I get a kick out of being the one they come to when they have a problem.”
“Maybe you oughta be a lawyer. Like you say, you’re smart enough. You got that from your mother, I guess,” Cubbin said, this time in a mild bid for a little praise.
“I got it from you, too, chief, but I don’t want to be a lawyer. You see what I really want to be is the town wise man. I’d like that. I really would like that.”
Cubbin looked at his son, at the intense young stranger who sat across from him. I think I know what he means, Cubbin told himself. He wants to be “it.” Hell, he might call it a wise man, but he wants to be the one who messes around in other people’s lives. He wants to do what the old-time ward heelers who could fix things used to do. That’s power of a kind and that’s one way to get more of it, doing favors for people. And once you’ve tasted it, you want a little more and then a little more until one day you wake up and find out that you want it all.
He doesn’t understand, Kelly thought, staring back at his father. He thinks that there’s really more to it than I’ve told him, that there’s something devious about what I want to do that I don’t really understand. Or am not aware of. He doesn’t understand that it’s partly guilt and partly my need to be respected and liked and loved by a few people, but not too many, because I don’t think I could handle that. And wait’ll I tell him how I’m going to do it.
“So what do you think you might do, son, go into one of the — what do they call them — the helping professions? Social work, teaching, something like that?”
“No, I’m not wild about kids and I’ve known a few social workers. A lot of them get bitter after a while and they get all mixed up with their jargon.”
“Well, what have you decided on?”
Kelly took a deep breath and then let it out slowly. “I’m going to become a cop, chief.”
Cubbin sat bolt upright in his chair and grabbed at the brandy bottle. “Good Jesus Godalmighty, you don’t mean it?”
“Yes,” Kelly said. “I’m pretty sure I do.”
“Jesus. My son, the fuzz.”
“Your son, the pig.”
Cubbin looked at Kelly carefully. “This isn’t just some childhood ambition that you’ve decided to realize a little late, is it?”
Kelly shook his head. “My attitude toward cops is typically American.” He touched his left eye. “Another inch or so up and I’d have lost this at Chicago.”
Cubbin nodded and then said, “It’s the hard way to do what you want to do, isn’t it, become the village wise man?”
“You’ve got it, chief,” Kelly said, “it’s probably the hardest way there is.”
Two months later Kelly Cubbin joined the Metropolitan Police force in Washington, D. C, at the peak of its recruiting drive for college graduates, a drive that petered out a little less than two years later when Washington decided that it really didn’t need any more smart kid cops.
But when Kelly joined they put his picture in the paper and after training assigned him to a beat that was just back of the Hilton and took in most of Columbia Road. It had once been a toney enough white neighborhood, but by the time Kelly arrived the fancy grocery stores had closed, a once-popular nightclub had folded, and one of the movie houses had been torn down and the other ran Mexican films and called itself a teatro instead of a theater. And everybody began putting special locks on their doors and heavy metal screens over their windows.
Kelly tried. He taught himself Spanish and because he was nearly as good a mimic as his father he was speaking it quickly, hamming it up at first on purpose, getting a few giggles from the youngsters that he talked to on the street and patient instruction from the older people.
It took him longer to get an in with the blacks. But after his partner discovered that Kelly wasn’t interested in splitting what little juice the neighborhood provided, things got better. His partner was Private R. V. Emerson, a black, sad, tough cop with five kids who passed the word that Kelly was about half human and nobody had better mess with him.
The people in the neighborhood never trusted Kelly completely, but they slowly accepted him, and some of them even liked him — as much as they could ever like any cop. And after a while they began to turn to him with some of their problems because they found that his advice was usually sound and it was always free. And finally he became the neighborhood’s unofficial ombudsman, which was as close as he ever got to becoming what he wanted to be, the village wise man.
He liked it. He even liked being pure cop but not well enough, at least not well enough to satisfy the annual review and evaluation board, one of whose members asked him: “You know what they call you, Cubbin?”
“Who?”
“The guys you work with. They call you Mother Cubbin. Now what do you think of that?”
“Not much.”
“It don’t bother you?”
“No,” Kelly said, “it doesn’t bother me.”
“Do you really like being a cop, Cubbin? I mean really like it?”
“I like it very much. Why?”
“Because you sure don’t act like a cop.”
Three days later he was placed on what they called administrative leave. Only a few of the residents of the neighborhood back of the Hilton ever asked Private R. V. Emerson what had happened to his ex-partner, “You know, that white kid cop who was always stickin his nose in other folks’s business.”
It was eleven o’clock in the morning and Kelly Cubbin sat in a chair and drank coffee and watched his father sleep. He had been watching him for nearly a quarter of an hour and thinking: at least you don’t hate him. Whether you love him or just pity him probably isn’t too important. You’ve come to know his posturing and his playacting and what they cover up. My father, my elder brother who fell in love with the sound of applause at an early age and spent the rest of his life looking for it in all the wrong places. I didn’t fly up here to be consoled by you because the only way you can offer that is from the depths of your checkbook. I flew up here because the village got rid of its wise man who wasn’t quite smart enough to hold on to his job. Do you need a wise man, chief?
Donald Cubbin rolled over in his bed and groaned. He was awake and wishing that he weren’t. He had to make it to the bathroom and vomit, but it seemed too far away. A mile too far.
“You awake, chief?” Kelly said.
“Kelly?”
“Right here.”
Cubbin groaned again. “I’m dying, son.”
“Let me help you up.”
Kelly helped his father to sit up on the edge of the bed. “Little queasy?”
Cubbin nodded, not trusting himself to speak. “Can you make it to the john?” Kelly said.