A Delicate Balance

Early mornings on Mackinac, at least to a well-footed Michigander, are the best time to take in the island, and truly something to behold. Most vacationers are still sleeping off the previous night’s rebel-rousing, the bulk of the horses are still stabled, and there is a quiet and grace about the island that is unimaginably beautiful. By 7:45am, when the first ferries from the Michigan mainland begin dropping off visitors and the horses have been saddled up to wagons to fetch their luggage, the serenity of the morning has slipped away. Though the flora and fauna, the fresh lake air, and the charm of the paths that wind through the island never lose their attractiveness, there are some that never experience the true majesty of the place, which is only to be had before 7am.

Henry, having been fully educated by his fellow officers on the merits of touring the island early, and in any case having to report for duty, had stayed the night in the police bunk house and was now walking side-by-side with the captain who had who had offered to give Henry a private tour of the fur trading capital-cum-state park. The two of them headed out of the police station and on to the main street. Except for a couple of overweight Jamaican women in too-tight shirts and shorts loitering outside of the Arnold Transit Co. – no doubt flirting and catching up on gossip on the island -- they were alone.

“I think you’ll like it here, Henry. It’s a far cry from the hustle and bustle of the Motor city, but we like it, and I think you will, too. Just get to know the place. It’s more about instinct than by-the-book lawman stuff here,” he said.

John Fish, the captain, was an affable guy. A self-described lifer on the island, he had long divorced himself from the normal policeman’s duties and had clearly and fully embraced the life and profession of a small town cop. He had a sense of humor about it and a practical sensibility, more of an Andy Griffith than a Barney Fife, in Henry’s opinion, which made his slight hokeyness all the more charming. Notwithstanding his “aw shucks” demeanor, Henry suspected he was a seasoned and savvy officer. He took an immediate liking to him during the first interview and just as importantly, so did Mary Ann. “No nonsense kinda, guy,” she said, which was high praise coming from his wife.

“I guess you know these docks by now. Not much to do here during the day, but at night, it’s another story altogether, especially during the boat races,” John pointed toward the gutters and shook his head. “Grown men. Grown men drinking themselves til the vomit, piss and alcohol all come out at the same time. You think the manure smells bad; wait until those old boys from Chicago and the North Shore sail through here. Those Dartmouth drinkers got nothin’ on middle-aged i-bankers looking to blow off some steam without their wives.”

Henry laughed. Back in Detroit, he’d seen his share of grown men doing all manner of things that they probably shouldn’t. And he had gotten plenty of domestic disturbance calls when he was a beat cop, before he’d gone to the Gang unit, where the smell of vomit had almost knocked him over. It was one of the things he wasn’t going to miss. He had expected the air to be a crystal clear on Mackinac and was surprised to discover that for much of the day, the overarching odor came from the horses and their detritus. Getting up this early, there was a noticeable absence of horse crap; he now knew why most of the force opted for the morning beat.

“The manure does have a bit of a sting. Do you ever get used to it.” Henry hoped he hadn’t offended the man.

“You do, you do, but there are some Summer days when you wish there were cars on the island, I can’t lie to you. Sometimes I plan my beat around where the honey wagons will be just to get a little break.”

“Honey wagons? You mean there are cars on the island?” asked Henry.

“No,” said John, laughing out loud. “The honey wagons – have you seen them? Those horse-driven wagons with the giant water tanks on the back? Those are the honey wagons,” he said. “They go through the town and scrape up the horse manure into the water. Then it gets sold as fertilizer. Good business actually, and if you’rea recycling fan, well, its refuse-meets-reuse at its best. I think they got the name because of the color of the water after it's picked up the manure.

“Anyway, believe me, you’ll be planning your beat around them, too, on the hotter days. But in the morning, it’s nice. No smell, no tourists, no fudge.”

“I’ll remember that,” said Henry.

They passed the small library at the end of Main Street and turned right, toward the Grand Hotel, leaving behind the beautiful white picket-fenced clapboard homes characteristic of the island. Henry’s travel host pointed out landmarks here and there as they traveled what was clearly a well-beaten path for the captain. Henry followed his lead, his easy manner, which was itself easy for Henry. Although he could be zealous given the proper motivation, he liked to think of himself as a mellow guy. John seemed stalwart, with a sense of humor and a manner that would make this exile tolerable.

“So, you and your wife had been here a week now and are getting settled in, I take it. And we’re happy to have you bring some city sophistication to our little slice of heaven,” Henry thought he heard a tinge of sarcasm in John's voice, but he couldn’t tell whether it was directed at him or the slice of heaven. “But what can I tell you about this place? Eventually, you’ll know more than you care to not only about the island, but the strange cast of characters who live and inhabit the place, along with those who visit. Still, I’m sure there’s a few things on your mind right now, so fire away. I’ll stop you when we get to something important worth seeing. It really is a beautiful place.”

Henry wanted to tell him that his wife was going crazy in the over-republican town, and she was desperately seeking a real New York Times, instead of the “Island Summary” that most folks read. He wanted to ask if there was a decent meal to be had within 40 miles. He wanted to know what the hell a pastie was and why they were so ubiquitous around these parts. On the one hand, he suspected that John would probably take it all in stride. On the other hand, he didn’t want to seem a complainer. For the time being, Henry walked in silence next to his host.

They had not talked about the touchy stuff, his resignation from the Detroit Police Department, and he wondered if this little fraternal chat wasn’t a precursor to the more uncomfortable conversation they would inevitably have about why he had to go. He thought about bringing it up at this moment but thought the better of it. Unlike his wife, it was not in his nature to be forthright about things that weren't related to justice. He preferred to have some things wash over him in their own time. Suddenly, he realized that he better say something, or perhaps the captain would bring up Detroit, And he’d rather talk about the quirkiness of the island than his own issues, so he started talking.

“Well, I guess I do have a few questions that have come up,” said Henry. “ By the way, I think it’s a great little island, and Mary Ann and I are getting used to a slower pace. We miss Detroit, you know, our favorite haunts and all, but there’s no denying it’s a beautiful island.”

“That it is,” said his host. And it was. The home owners and the town counsel clearly took pride in every inch of their tiny island. Streets were kept clean, home gardens and public buildings alike were maintained with meticulousness. Even though the Grand might have sparkled a little brighter had it been infused with a few million, she sparkled still, particularly her façade, which was a bright white and could be seen all the way from Mackinaw City. There was the odd older family who had more history on the island than finances and had opted to display plastic flowers in their window boxes instead of real ones (adding a bit to the surreality of the place for Henry), but by and large, it was evident the island was truly loved by its inhabitants and they worked hard to keep it pristine.

“I’m glad you are getting to like the place,” said John. “I’ll tell you, there’s a big difference between the true locals here and folks like you and me. We can like it all we want, but it’s not like being one of them. Hard to explain in a way, but you’ll understand what I mean the more you get to know folks here. They see the place through a completely different lens. Sometimes the lens is a little cockamamie.”

“I don’t know that I’ve met enough of the people to really understand the zeitgeist that surrounds them, but I do have a question . . . . ah, well, perhaps we’ve spent too long in Detroit, but the whole, uh, make-up of the place, the Jamaicans servicing the island and you know, the noticeable lack of American blacks, or any other American service folks, for that matter. It – well, it seems a little strange to us.”

“I was wondering how long it would take you to get around to asking that,” John laughed and gave Henry a friendly slap on the back. “Yes, well, to listen to people here, you’d never know the world was any different. People act as if this is the way things should be.”

Henry breathed heavily. “I’m glad to hear you say that. That was our experience, and we were wondering if the world had gone crazy or if it was just us” said Henry, recalling his dinner earlier in the week with Jack and Barbara Whats-his-name at the Grand.

“For the record, it’s a little strange – creepy, in fact, I guess you could say in some ways. And folks here on the island are a little obtuse about their own attitude toward it, but well, it’s been that way for years and if it weren’t for the Jamaicans, well, I’m told the island would shut down. They get around the minimum wage labor laws by bringing in the seasonal workers, and it’s a win-win, they tell me, what with the economy down there. And it’s their off-season.

“But you’re wrong about one thing. They don’t do all the jobs on the island. In a week or two, you’ll see a lot of young kids working the bars down on the waterfront and also, a lot of the counter-help jobs. Local kids, you know, coming back from school. It’s a good thing they’ve got the island, too. Dumb as toast, some of them. Couldn’t get jobs if it weren’t for their parents shipping them up here.”

“Local kids? Kids from St. Ignace and the like?” asked Henry.

“Oh, no, not those local kids. I mean the families who summer here on the island. They’re the only ones who can afford to have their kids make no wages.” He motioned out toward the water. “These nearby kids, they work mostly in Mackinaw City. And even the local kids won’t wash dishes or work the counters – we have a number of Bulgarians in this area who do that sort of thing. Spoiled the kids are these days. Very picky about their jobs.

“Jack brings in some real ringers, though. You can’t have the island completely manned by Jamaicans and unskilled spoiled college kids. So the waitstaff at the busier places are seasonals from places like Vail and The Breakers down in Florida; kids that are used to the drill, can handle the type of clientele we get up here, and can manage the floor, too.

“And like I said, there’s jobs the Jamaican’s don’t do, and even some they won’t do. Those honey wagons? No way!” He laughed and shook his head. “Not the Mexicans. Not the Jamaicans. They got a whole cleanliness thing about it, I think, though I don’t know that much about their culture. That’s Jack’s balywick. Anyway, cleaning up crap is white man’s work. We get some burly white ex-con just down from upstate most summers. They’re usually pretty mean and won’t speak to folks, but they need a job.”

“Are there, you know, big racial issues up here?” asked Henry?

“Not as many as you’d expect,” said John. They were starting the climb up past the Grand Hotel and were walking in just the spot where Henry had knocked down that young black woman. The area was empty, save a few Jamaicans hosing down rubber kitchen mats in front of the Jockey Club. They nodded solemnly and went back to work. John continued.

“There’s the occasional rich kid prank, you know, where some white kid gets a little too much moonshine in his belly and starts shouting ‘nigger,’ or throwing rocks. We have to haul him back to his parent’s place and give him a warning. Even had to hold one or two in our little excuse for a jail.

“And once in awhile, we get some folks from some of those North Michigan townships coming out for the day. They spend a little too much time in the sun and in the bars and they get themselves in trouble. We’ve jailed a few of them in our time.”

“What about the Jamaicans?” asked Henry.

“They keep mostly to themselves. They don’t frequent the bars at all, and being here to work, most of them take on as many shifts as they can. For them, it’s a working summer. Anyway, they have their own culture, which, near as I can figure in my 20 years on the island, is a lot healthier than ours. They’ll hang out down on Main Street if they have a day off, and that prompts some of the more uptight and racist shopkeepers to call us and see we can’t, you know, remove them. Of course, they’re just standing there, like anyone else, so there’s nothing we could do, anyway, even if we gave a shit about the shopkeepers.” He stopped and held up his hand. “Which we do care,” he hastened to add.

“It’s just they often complain about nothing actionable and it can get frustrating responding to calls about a problem only to discover it’s one Jamaican group of men quietly chatting in front of the store. Most of these shop owners are the wives of older families here on the island. You know the type: bored, rich, and nothing better to do than complain.” The two of them stopped to rest at the top of the only real incline on the entire island (save the pathway to the fort). John seemed to be gathering his thoughts.

“They’re mostly a tight knit group, the Jamaicans. They stick close together and spend a good deal of time at ‘the Dome,’ a living quarters that is sort of an unofficial clubhouse for them. Man the food smells coming from that place are enough to make you leave your wife.” Perhaps that was the best place to get a decent meal, Henry thought.

“So, you don’t have too much trouble with them as a whole?”

“Nope. I think they have a pretty clear noose around their necks. They do anything that would make their employer unhappy and they get shipped home, never to work on the island again.” John pointed toward a small bed and breakfast just behind the grand, a signal to veer left in their walk.

“We may be small but we’re not stupid. We suspect there’s a good deal of illegal activity going on with some of the Jamaicans. We know for certain, for instance, that they smuggle a good deal of marijuana to the place. With the number of college kids and old folks here, it’s got to be a temptation they can’t resist.”

“Do you go after them?” asked Henry, unbuttoning the top button of his uniform. The day was heating up.

“Well, you know, it’s sort of a waste of manpower, don’t you think?” the captain shrugged. “If we find a large amount or see someone doing it in the open, sure, we make an arrest. But as for staking out a known dealer, no, we leave it be. I’ve never tried the stuff but my deputies tell me no one’s going to kill their mother on it, and we’ve got enough old-timers convalescing on this island that use it medicinally, well, it would just snowball if we tried to corner it. Besides, it’s under control and in some ways I think the underground economy not only keeps the Jamaicans coming back, but it cools the potential fires between them and the whites on the island.

“So it’s a little tense.”

“It’s a dance. Like any small town, it’s a dance. And sometimes people step on each other’s toes. We try to make it work, you know, keep the peace. It’s all about keeping this place from going under. If a piece is missing or unstable, the whole house of cards falls down, so most people check their own behavior. I’m sure the National forest service would love to shoo folks off the island and make it more like the other National Parks – visitors only. People understand that.”

The two of them walked in silence for a bit, John leading them down a dirt road, past a number of large homes, including one with a giant fully-manned stable. Henry slowed his pace so that he could watch the morning crew attend to their respective duties. Evidently, this was not one of those jobs that were off-limits to Jamaicans; the entire staff of grooms and hands was Jamaican. Like the men at the Jockey club, they looked up at John and Henry and gave a polite nod. Henry wanted to know more, to understand the social dynamic that was happening in this place, but he knew that his host was through with the topic. Time would give him the information he wanted to know.

“What about crime?”

“Oh, you know, there’s your run-of-the-mill stuff – kids vandalizing homes with shaving cream and stuff and the occasional break-in, usually by some folks who come in from up North.” John shrugged off the question.

“We get our share of drunks. They do most of the damage around here. Fights, mostly, and mostly downtown, I’d say, although we do get the odd call about somebody out of control on private property. We try to keep those from getting out of hand. The island’s too small to go jailing the actual residents. Word travels way too fast, which brings me to something I’ve been wanted to mention,” said John. He stopped briefly to square up with Henry for a moment, then turned and started walking again.

“I know you’re from Detroit and I know they do things differently in big cities – they have to. There’s a certain impersonal aspect to police work in a metropolis that probably makes the hard stuff easier and the easier stuff harder. Here, it’s just the opposite. Get my drift?”

“I’m not sure I do,” said Henry. The law, after all, was the law. Detroit. San Francisco. New York. Mackinac.

“Well, it’s like this,” said John. “When you know people, it’s easy to cite them for littering, or tying one on a little too frequently, or forgetting to correctly dispose of their garbage. A friendly visit usually wraps it up and even when you have to take a report, well, folks understand you’re doing your job. That’s the thing about homogenous societies; they all have the same values, and those values are the values they hired you to uphold. Even if it’s exercised against them, well, they know you’re doing your job. I can see where that would be harder in a place where you’ve got a real diversity of opinion about things like personal freedoms and civil rights.”

“I never thought about it, but I suppose that’s true,” said Henry. “You’re saying that it’s the big stuff, the real crime-crime stuff that gets awkward around here?”

“Exactly,” said John. “I mean, take something like some guy knocking his wife down the stairs. Or maybe you find some coke on a someone you pull over on a routine stop. It’s a no-brainer for you. Black and White. You swoop in and make the arrest. You don’t know him. He doesn’t know you. And the law is clear – he knows it and so do you. There’s no expectation of different treatment. All you did was your job. The little things get more awkward, because in big cities people don’t think it’s good policing to harass them for littering. It becomes a race issue or a socio-economic issue. But no one argues if you arrest a guy who shot his neighbor.”

Surely it had to be the same, here, Henry thought, jumping ahead to what he figured was John’s next comment. He could understand having to be a little more gentle with the hand-cuffs or making as dignified an arrest as possible. Or doing your best to keep a matter out of the local papers. Of course, those small town considerations had to be made. But crime was crime and police officers were sworn to uphold the law. It wasn’t a popularity contest.

Henry knew better than anyone that cops were perhaps too quick to pounce on the underdog. Hell, that’s how he ended up here, wanting to put those very opportunists off the force. But it didn’t mean he wanted gang members to go free if they deserved to be in jail. Thinking back to his own strange derailed career with DPP, he felt good that he had always maintained his integrity. A crook was a crook.

“Well, you’ll come to understand, things are different in a small town, and not just because you know the players and they could be prominent people. That’s the easy part. Remember I mentioned that it was a dance, the balance on the island? Make that a house of cards. Remove the wrong card and the whole place comes tumbling down.”

“I’m not sure I understand. Crime’s crime. I understand letting a kid go for a minor offense or going easy on one of the locals, but the big stuff?” Henry shook his head. “I guess I always thought our job was pretty cut-and-dry . . .” his voice faded out.

“I guess you have to get comfortable with the concept in life that justice meets itself out in its own timetable and sometimes we can’t force it or the whole damn world explodes.” The two men walked through the wooded area at the North end of the island. Behind them they could hear the horse drawn taxis clip-clopping toward the hotels at that end of the island. Captain John Stewart was now noticeably quiet and Henry was worried that his forthrightness had put off his new boss. He had a habit – sometimes, when he felt comfortable -- of pushing the ethical envelope, and worried that he had insulted his new boss. He pressed his lips together.

At the end of the road, the captain led him down a steep dirt walkway that was being bulldozed to put in a house. Henry could see a small pack of deer. He wondered if the construction had displaced them and whether they would have a place to live, now. The dirt road ended up on the paved pathway that encircled the Island. The sun was fully up and the heat was beginning to break through the damp morning. They crossed the path in silence and made their way toward the water.

“This place is beautiful, isn’t it?” said John after their long silence. “I like it best down here. The horses don’t come this way, just the bikes. All you can hear is Lake Michigan lapping up against the shore.”

“I thought it was Lake Huron,” said Henry.

“It was Lake Huron back there. This is Michigan.” He turned to Henry and smiled. “Life is a delicate balance, Henry. Like nature, you have to be careful about the way you go in and try to change things or you upset the balance. Sometimes you just have to let things go to preserve that balance. It’s not always black and white, just because the law makes it appear that way. I think our job as offices is to interpret it so that we keep the peace.”

Henry kept his mouth shut. It was better he let things be. It was his first week on the job, after all. And this gig had to work out. It was a second chance for him that he couldn’t afford to blow if he didn’t want to end up wearing grey polyester slack and a blue sport coat and sitting behind the desk at some high-rise asking people to please sign in.

John led them back up the hill and onto a pathway again. He continued the tour, pointing out various landmarks and filling in Henry on some of the more colorful characters on the Island. They passed the Dome, and then the condos and bed-and-breakfasts that dotted the island. Henry realized that like any beat, he was going to have to get to know the place. A delicate balance. He needed to watch his step.

“Tell me about the famous boat races?” asked Henry.

John laughed and shook his head again. “Ah, the boat races. That is a discussion for a very different walk. We don’t have time, to go into the whole thing, but I’ll get that one started, at least” said John. The two of them headed back, with John retelling stories of drunken debauchery. Their pace quickened as they chatted and laughed. They turned into the station house and disappeared, just as the second Ferry from Arnold Transit was pulling in to dump its human cargo.

Click Here to go to the next chapter.