She knocked on the door and heard
“What’s going on,
He dropped her hand and gestured toward the girl. “This is
The girl’s face was cut and bruised, and there were streaks of blood on her white blouse. The pain in the girl’s eyes made
“
Sam walked past them into the kitchen. He seemed glad to have something to do. He pulled ice trays from the refrigerator and banged them against the sink.
“Does it hurt a lot?”
“I’m okay.”
She led the girl into the living room and sat down beside her on the couch.
“There now,”
He sat down in a stuffed chair closest to the couch and looked at
“
“One of the boys on
“That’s right.
“Bastards!”
“He stopped them,”
“Bastards!”
He moved his chair closer and leaned toward them.
“
“From this department?”
“That’s right. Second Watch captain. He’s the man in the bookstore. It was
Stillness at Appomattox
—it’s a Civil War book. There’s a cannon on the cover.”
“What were you doing in his office?”
“He called me in there. Said he didn’t like the way I handled the situation here with
First Avenue
after my shift was over. Said he was going to transfer me if I didn’t have a satisfactory explanation. He’s as dirty as they come.”
“Why would he get mixed up in that?”
“It’s got to be the money,”
“Even so, why would they risk it?”
“I found a hundred dollars one time in the back of my patrol car,”
“I decide to buy a new saw. I buy the saw thinking that I’ll put the hundred bucks into my account to cover the check, but when I get home, I decide I don’t want to think about that hundred bucks every time I cut up a board. So I leave the money where it is.
“A while later, I buy a TV thinking I’ll put the hundred bucks in the bank to cover part of that, but then I don’t want to think about that money every time I watch a football game. Finally I decide I can’t afford that hundred bucks anymore. You know what I did? I took it out in the kayak and tossed it in the Sound. I should have burned it though. It’s bad luck. Some fish will probably swallow it, and then some poor bastard will catch it, and now he’s got it. He thinks that hundred bucks is a windfall, but that money is only bad luck.
“I came that close to keeping the money,” he said and held up his thumb and index finger an inch apart. “If it had been a thousand dollars, I would have turned it in. Or if it had been a dollar, I would have stuck it in my pocket and never thought about it again. But those hundred dollars—they stayed with me a long time. All I’m saying is that it happens. A guy like me, he makes up his own rules as he goes along. What if I had actually used those first bills and then took other money out of the bank and threw that away? Would that get rid of it? It gets complicated before you know what happens.”
He stood in front of her, looking at her and expecting her to understand. She didn’t understand. She didn’t see what his story had to do with
“I’m glad you threw that money away,”
“I am, too,”
“What are we going to do now?”
“I need to talk to
“
“I don’t want to cause any trouble for you,”
“It’s no trouble.”
As she led
“I have some aspirin in my apartment,”
Maria looked at her briefly, and
“Some of the pain,”
The girl’s eyes lost some of their detachment.
“I’m staying in a motel in the University District,” the girl said. “I haven’t been in
“A girl has other things to do than clean her room.”
“I don’t do many things.”
“We won’t worry about that. We’ll just pick up a few clothes and leave.”
Maria was staying in an old motel in the University District on
Northeast 45th Street
. Her room was on the second floor.
“I couldn’t afford anything else,”
“I understand,”
Maria picked up loose clothes from the floor and stuffed them into a dresser drawer. Then she pulled an overnight case out of the closet and carried it into the bathroom.
Katherine remained at the door so that
Maria had no pictures on the wall, but
Maria started to come out of the bathroom, but froze in the doorway when she saw
“It’s
“That picture wasn’t supposed to be out,”
“It’s out. And who is this?”
“My mother.”
Katherine studied the picture—a boy in a lumberjack shirt holding hands with a girl, unwrinkled smiles, a beach with driftwood behind them. In love, almost certainly in love.
“When was this picture taken?”
“Before I was born.”
It was not difficult to add or subtract the years. Still standing motionless in the doorway with a small suitcase in her hand,
“
Maria put the overnight case down but didn’t move from the bathroom doorway. A mask, one part from the girl, one part from the lumberjack in the picture, covered her face.
“Does he know?”
Without voice and with barely perceptible movement,
Katherine marveled at how long this girl must have held the mask in front of her. Still holding the picture,
Silently she waited while
“I wish you would tell me about it,”
“My mother gave me that picture before she died,”
“He fished in my mother’s village in
Alaska
. Boys would come for a year or two to work on the boats or in the cannery. Sometimes they would get a boat of their own. He never came back after that summer.
“I don’t know why she never tried to find him. That was her way, I guess. She heard a little about him through the village. She knew he had become a policeman. Somehow she got a book of poems he had written. She was in some of those poems, but she never tried to find him. She said I was to keep the picture and the poems for myself.
“My mother was very intelligent, not what most people think of an Indian girl in a fishing village—not what most people here think, anyway. She went to the university in
Anchorage
and got a scholarship after her first year. She took me with her. My grandparents were unhappy that she wouldn’t let them keep me, but then she didn’t do anything they wanted.
“She met my father, my stepfather, in college. He was a teacher there. I can barely remember him before they got married. I don’t think I was very nice to him. I didn’t see why my mother needed to find somebody else. My stepfather was divorced and had two daughters. I think they were ashamed to have me around. They’re white, like my stepfather—like my father. I don’t know if I should have come here.”
“Oh,
Her face, her poor face,
“He wants to know. I’m sure of that,”
“Do you think so?” The mask was disappearing, line by line.
Katherine had to say yes, but how could she be sure? She hardly knew this man, this unknown father, any better than the girl. It didn’t matter, not anymore.
“Yes,” she said, then pounded
The vigor of her actions surprised both of them, and they lost their balance for a second.
“I wish I could tell you more about
“What about you?”
“Me? I have a big family.”
“I mean, you and
“Of course I like him, but that’s not important right now. Does your stepfather know where you are?”
“Yes, he knows. After my mother died, he did the best he could. He tried to like me.”
“I’m sure he did like you.”
“It wasn’t easy for him, you know. He got me because of my mother, and then he lost her.”
“I’ll bet he was glad to have you.”
“He didn’t want me to come to
Her voice thickened as though she had a cold, and she struggled with the words so much that
“I thought maybe he would just know. After my mother died, I would put on a pink dress she had given me and walk down to the post office and stand there and watch the people go in and out. I thought maybe my father would see me, would see what a pretty girl I was in that pink dress. It didn’t make any sense, but that’s what I did. It was stupid to think he would know me, but I had come so far.”
And could go no farther. She put her hands up to her mouth to stop the quivering of her lips, then brushed tears from her eyes, but there was too much for her hands to do.
“Don’t worry,”
Brave words.
“Do you have a pink dress like the one you used to wear?”
“I brought some dresses,” the girl said. “I don’t know if there’s anything like that.”
“Let’s take a look,”