First Avenue (34 page)

In the girl’s silence
Maria
heard another voice.

It was warm then, Maria, and never night.

She looked above the young woman’s head and feared that nothing more would come. But more came.

Two villages at the top of the world with a river between them.

There was the red raven,
Maria
remembered, that dropped food for the villages. There were many red ravens.

No one was ever hungry.

And then one day.

One day
, her mother’s voice repeated,
a boy and a girl, one from each village, started arguing what they should call the river. It had no name. The boy said it should be called Hope, but the girl said it must be Peace. Adults heard the argument, and the argument spread through the villages.

The argument would not go away.

People from each village shouted across the river the name they had chosen. The two villages began to hate each other because they could not agree on the name. Peace, Hope. Each side shouted names across the river that now separated them.

The noise from the bickering frightened away more and more of the red ravens. People became hungry, but they would not stop shouting. Instead they shouted louder and blamed the other village for the hunger.

One day the girl and the boy left their villages at the same time and walked alone upstream. They were tired of the noise from the bickering. They saw each other across the river and remembered the good friends they had once been. They had never cared what the river was called. It had only been a game between them. They could speak softly because they were away from the noise.

Maria took a step, but she was afraid she would lose her mother’s voice if she left the young Indian woman and the woodcarvings.

They made a plan.

The young woman was now watching her.
Maria
smiled, grateful and fearful, and took more steps toward the street. She would like to have been the silent woodcarving standing on the counter. She crossed one of the two streets at the end of the Market and entered a small park overlooking the water. Many people were in the park. She walked to a concrete railing that marked the edge. People were sitting on the railing, and she sat on it, too. She looked at the water and waited for her mother’s story to return.

They made a plan.

She remembered that the boy and girl jumped into the river and swam toward each other. They met in the center and held hands. The river carried them downstream to the villages.

They held their hands high so that everyone could see. The people came out from the villages. The girl and boy shouted that everyone should stop arguing. They should forget all of their disagreements and call the river Love. Instead of making them forget, the people united against the boy and girl. Everyone threw stones—so many that they blocked the sun.

The stones dammed the river.

The boy and girl would have drowned, but a red raven flying high above, the last of the red ravens, saw them, swooped down, and picked them up. It carried them away from all the angry noise to a place of their own—a place that would never change.

The flood from the dammed river destroyed the villages. A long night replaced the day, and the river became a great, frozen sea. Most of the people ran to get away from it. Some never stopped running. The few who stayed became lost in the darkness. They scattered like red feathers in the wind.

One by one they began to recognize a star that never moved. It guided them, and over time, small groups came together. They were glad to be around each other. They did not care which village they had come from. One day the sun moved around the mountain of rocks so that there was light again.

Everyone was happy. They danced and sang together, but after a while, they began to forget how much they had missed each other in the darkness. Just as it seemed the people would fall back to their old, bickering ways, the sun disappeared behind the mountain of rocks, and they saw the star again. Then the bickering stopped as the people remembered the long night that would come, and they touched hands, and shook their heads, not believing they could be so foolish again.

Which star is it?

It was always her mother’s question. It’s the North Star, Mama.

Why doesn’t it change?

It’s the place where the red raven took the girl and boy.

That’s right, Maria, and it’s not as far away as people think.

But I can’t see the stars here, Mama. Too many lights get in the way.

Maria touched the corners of her eyes with her fist. She looked around the park, but no one had noticed the end of her story. Out on the water a ferryboat was coming in. There was already one at the dock below her. It blew a long blast from its horn, and the water next to the dock began to churn violently as it slipped slowly away. Much more quietly, she slipped away herself.

The promised storm had arrived, and the wind threw water at everything exposed to the south and west. It was strong enough to pick up water from the pavement and make it rise again.
Sam
parked as close as possible to the south door of
Betty
’s Cafe and turned to
Markowitz
, whose window was sheeted with water.

“Do you ever come here anymore?”
Sam
asked.

“Haven’t for years. I take it you do,”
Markowitz
said.

“Every week or so. Old times’ sake.
Betty
is dead, you know.”

“No kidding?”

“She had a heart attack in the kitchen about a year ago when nobody was here. Funny, you could count on one hand the number of times there wasn’t at least one cop in her place, but that’s when it happened.”

“Goes to show you,”
Markowitz
said, “there’s never one around when you need one.”

Betty’s Cafe, and it was still called that after Betty died, was a tiny square building on a triangle lot that fit in the first small block of Second Avenue Extension South. The street was a mutant arm of
Second Avenue
from Yesler to the train station. It filled a gap created when the streets that followed the waterfront changed direction to a truer rendering of north and south. If no one parked on the sidewalk, there was room to drive around all sides of the cafe. That seldom happened. A police car was usually parked there.

“You brought me here the first time. This is the first place I ever went as a cop,”
Sam
said.

“We all came here.”

“My first night,
Markowitz
, and you taught me all I needed to know. Right out of the station, you drove down here to
Betty
’s and up to the back door. You took out your nightstick and hit the door twice. The door opens, and
Betty
hands out two cups of coffee. You take a sip, I take a sip. Then we get a call. A knife fight at Third and
Lenora
. You dump your coffee out the window, so I dump my coffee out the window, and off we go. The knife fighters have disappeared and there isn’t any blood, so we come back here to
Betty
’s. You hit the door twice and out come two more cups of coffee. You take a sip, I take a sip. Then we get another call—an injury accident. You dump your coffee out the window, I dump my coffee out the window, and off we go again. By the end of the night, I figure I know what police work is about. You get a cup of coffee, drink a little, throw the rest out the window, and go like hell from one call to the next.”

Markowitz laughed as
Sam
told the story. “Damn, those were the hot dog years, weren’t they? Do you guys still get coffee from the back door?”

“No. We have these portable radios now. We go inside and listen to the damn radio while we drink coffee. One other difference,”
Sam
said, the humor of old memories leaving his face. “We don’t get it free anymore.”

“I didn’t think you dragged me down here just for a cup of coffee,”
Markowitz
said.

“You want to come in or get some to go?”
Sam
asked.

Markowitz looked out his window. “Let’s get it to go,” he said.

“Still black?”
Sam
asked.

“Black.”

Sam opened his door and made a dash for the cafe. Once inside
Betty
’s he stood at the door a moment and let the water drip from his coat.
Rosemary
ran the cafe now. She had worked for
Betty
, and the cafe remained as it had always been. There were eight stools at the counter and four tables in front of the big windows on the east and south. It had closed the day of
Betty
’s funeral, but otherwise, there had been no interruption in the business. It opened at
5:00
and didn’t close until
midnight
. A customer could order chili for breakfast and bacon and eggs for supper, and many did.

“Nasty out there,”
Sam
said to
Rosemary
, who was behind the counter. The weather had thinned out her business, but she was long past caring about that.

“Haven’t seen you for a while,”
Rosemary
said. “Take a little time off?”

Sam walked over to the register.

“Not much,” he said. “How about two cups to go.”

“Who you got with you?” she asked. She tried to see through the south window, but sheets of water obscured it.

“
Markowitz
. You remember him?”

“Sure. What’s the matter with him? Too much a stuffed shirt to come in here anymore?”

“He didn’t want to get wet,”
Sam
said.

“Chicken,” she said, but she had already turned to the coffeemaker. She put two large Styrofoam cups filled with coffee before
Sam
and pushed the cream pitcher toward him.

“Maybe he needs a little cream?” she asked.

“Black.”

She reached below the counter for plastic lids.

“Do you remember
Captain
Jenkins
?” she asked.

“Kind of,”
Sam
said.

“Retired five or six years ago,”
Rosemary
said. “He was just in here yesterday. You probably never met his daughter.”

“I’m not sure I ever met him.”

“Lovely girl. Saw her a few years ago at the wedding.
Captain
Jenkins
said she was getting divorced. Too bad. She’s smart, too. Got a degree and a good job and all that. You know how it is. Some men have trouble with a smart woman.”

He knew how that was. He watched
Rosemary
slowly put the plastic lids over the edges of the Styrofoam cups. She took an unusually long time.

“I could get her phone number, you know.”

“No thanks,
Rose
.”

“Something else on your mind?” she asked. “You seem kind of glum this morning.”

Sam smiled to show that he was not glum.

“Who else belongs to
Rosemary
’s lonely hearts club?”

“Nothing lonely about it. Just passing the time, that’s all.”

“
Rose
, you know I’m waiting in line for your divorce. You tell me when that happens. Then I’ll be interested.” He smiled again.

Rosemary was well into her sixties, but she still enjoyed a compliment however it came. An additional red tone crept behind her heavy layer of makeup.

“It could happen any day,
Sam
. You better be careful what you say.”

Sam paid for the coffee and laughed as he walked to the door. “Thanks,
Rose
,” he called over his shoulder. “I’ll be waiting.” Then he opened the door into the rain.

Markowitz slung the car door open for
Sam
. He handed both cups to
Markowitz
and slid into the seat. Water dripped from his hair down onto his face. He put the car into gear, turned the windshield wipers to high speed, and moved slowly into the street.