Tell Me Something Good

There is a rhythm to a city that comforts those who are accustomed to it, and frightens those who are not. A New Yorker can step off the plane in Paris or Ho Chi Minh City or Istanbul and feel as at home navigating public transportation and side-stepping beggars as if they were around the corner from his own home.

Henry loved the city. The smell of barbeque, spaghetti, and Chinese food mingling with bus exhaust; the pace of early morning rush hour; the sound of arguments, food orders, and crying babies all in the same line for a gyro from a street vendor. It relaxed him, reminded him of his own insignificance, that what he did on any particular day was not that important. Like the garbage than flew past him on his beat, anything he did – good or bad -- was just a minor annoyance in the grand scheme of things. The world turned whether he and Mary Ann were in it our not, and perhaps in spite of that.

Though Henry had always felt this way to some extent, this perspective had served him well in the past year. The thought that he really didn’t matter had helped him shake the blow of being forced off the Detroit PD. The day he decided to resign, after things had gotten really bad and he could no longer count on anyone but his partner to back him up on a call, he took comfort in knowing that he – and his story – would shortly be forgotten.

“Man, go get lost somewhere, up in the boonies,” his partner had said to him over cheesesteaks at Willy’s, their usual lunchtime haunt. “In a couple of years, maybe you can even come back. You know how people are. Tomorrow, you’ll be forgotten.”

Of course, they both knew that he could never come back. The stink of IA didn’t ever come off, not really. It stayed around an officer even if, as in Henry’s case, he was right, and there were crooked cops doing mob bidding and shaking down gang members for drugs and money. The rule was that you took care of those things without alerting Internal Affairs, and if you couldn’t get any satisfaction, well, then you let it go. There was a code and Henry had broken it.

To think that what he did made a difference had at first given him a purpose. He had wanted to create true community policing, to give the people in Detroit the sense that the cops knew and understood them, and most importantly, were on their side. To the old lady who was trying to keep dealers off her street corner or out of her hallway in the projects, he wanted her to believe that she mattered.

Though he never thought of himself as particularly naïve, it had come as a shock to him that the corruption was so pervasive. When he was coming up through the ranks there was the odd rogue cop, but there was honor, too, and if you operated under the radar, then you did it alone.

Now, it wasn’t just a cop here or there that was on the take in one way or another, it was very nearly in the training manual. When he had first witnessed it and confronted the sergeant he saw lifting a some cello-bags of coke from his collar and letting a few slip into his pocket, the guy had dismissed him with barely a wince. “Look, man,” he said after Henry cornered him in the locker room. “You think I’m gonna risk my life every fuckin’ day out here for 30 grand? Fuck that. This is the only way to make a living, man. Everybody does it. Leave me the fuck alone.”

The Sergeant had been right on a number of levels, and though he probably would have done well to leave it alone, his conscience couldn’t let him let down the people who counted on him the most. His partner had warned him against it, reminding him that good cops who rat on bad cops only come out smelling clean in on Law & Order. In real life, though sometimes bad cops get caught, good cops gotta keep their mouths shut. Period. “Look what happened to Serpico and that guy in The Onion Field,” his partner reminded him. “Let it go. It doesn’t affect you. As long as they’re just taking and not planting evidence, no one gets hurt, Botner. Hell, some guys – those downtrodden ones you think you want to save – they might actually fare better. It’s just people getting a little snort to get by. Shit, man, you can’t deny a cop’s salary is crap. Bottom line, you don’t get points for being noble. Except maybe from your wife. And if you can pay your mortgage on that, well, then have at it, but I can’t.”

After 11 years on the force, there had been no party when he left. No gold watch was waiting for him in the captain’s office, no one even brought him a doughnut. Except for the admin personnel and a few old-timers whose reputations could not be sullied by fraternizing with Henry, people pretended not to notice as he cleaned out his desk and walked through the hallways to the elevator for the last time.

His union rep had made certain that unsubstantiated allegations against Henry were removed from his record. It hadn’t been terribly difficult to negotiate that since everyone knew the claims were only there to speed his departure. Even so, getting employed somewhere else had not been easy. Seemed like every precinct in the whole damn state had a friend who worked in the Detroit PD’s office.

Word of his transgressions against his fellow officers had not reached Mackinac, or if it did, they had either understood his original cause to be noble, or perhaps they had skeletons of his own and wanted a cop who was unlikely to make trouble. The latter thought had occurred to him, though he could see no external sign of untoward shenanigans at the department here. Either way, his career trajectory at DPD never came up in the interview and there hadn’t been any sideways looks at him from anyone. At some point, he would bring up the whole thing with the captain. At some point. For the time being, he wanted to be, well, insignificant, which at some level, was quite impossible to do on Mackinac Island.

“Good Morning, Mrs. Havers. How are you?” Henry said, responding to the frantic-like waving of the shopkeeper across from Doris’ Coffee and Treats. He had just emerged from the little bakery – if you could call it that -- where he had started his own ritual of buying a latte each morning to start his “rounds.” Despite the infusion of Jamaicans on the island, he had yet to find a decent cuppa Joe. He fantasized that perhaps at the Dome, they were brewing up little pots of Blue Mountain coffee and playing dominos. He would have given his eye teeth for just one sip of something really rich.

The lattes at Doris’ were passable at best, and the virtues of skim milk had not yet reached the island; the Bulgarian woman behind the counter had been quite perplexed when he ordered his drink skinny on that first day. He longed for a Starbuck’s, something he never thought he’d say, or even a Dunkin Donuts.

“Good Morning, Officer Botner, Good Morning,” said Mrs. Havens who, judging by her roundness, had been frequenting Doris’ for many years. “I just wanted to say hello, you know, and see if there was anything you needed,” she said, gushing just a little.

“Well, I think I should be asking you that question,” said Henry, “and please, call me Henry. Is there anything you need? Everything OK?”

“Oh, everything’s just fine, just fine. I mean, well, I worry some nights, you know. Things have changed over the years and you just cannot be too careful now that the downtown is so, well, so filled with different sorts of people, you know.” She leaned in close and whispered, “I don’t have an alarm on the place, so I hope you’ll take an extra minute or two when you pass by.”

“Sure, of course, Mrs. Havers. You’re on my list now.”

“Oh, you don’t know how much safer that makes me feel, Henry. And call me MaryAnn. That’s your wife’s name isn’t it? How is she enjoying the island?”

“Uh, oh fine, thank you. She doesn’t get over too much what with her Summer school duties, but she’s well. Gotta run. Bye Bye” How Mrs. Havers had managed to find out Mary Ann’s name he didn’t know. So much for anonymity and insignificance. He grabbed his 10-speed -- the standard police issue to every cop on the island – and started his walk down Main Street. The ferries had already made several runs to the island and the shop-keepers, Like Mrs. Havens, were starting to open their doors. It was the closest thing he could get to a rush hour and he savored it for what it was, even if it meant talking to MaryAnn Havers.

Henry remembered on his walk with the Captain, that he had singled Mrs. Havens out as one of the true PIAs on the island. He recalled their conversation now, waving goodbye to this flirtatious pudge.

“We only have two patrol cars for the whole island, and we park one of them out by the airport,” the captain started. “We don’t have call to use them here, and well, since there’s a no-car rule, we leave them parked. We don’t bring them out for calls about strange characters below windows or on decks, because the strange characters usually end up being animals, and anyway, the roads are so narrow, it takes us longer to navigate the cars without hitting cyclists and horses than it does to get on our 10-speeds.”

“What about assault calls? I assume you bring them out then?” asked Henry.

“No, not usually. Most of our fights are barroom brawls and we can get to them quicker on foot or bicycle than we can driving. The place just isn’t set up for cars, as you can see. We do take them out, but it tends to be for serious illness and we mostly use them to clear the road for the ambulance.”

“Most of the folks on the island don’t even know we have cars here, locals like Mrs. Havers do. Well, she’s a real piece of work, that. Always calling us because she’s sure there are fingerprints on her window or shady characters lurking around her home or business – if you haven’t met her yet, you will,” the captain said.

“Anyway, one night she calls completely hysterical and says that she’s heard something outside and she thinks she’s having a heart attack. ‘Course, she knows that we’ll drive the prowler out there with the ambulance, and we know she’s fulla shit, but we gotta do it. I mean, there’s always that chance she could be serious. Well, dispatch puts it out on the radio and Timpson’s out at the airport so he jumps off his bike to grab one prowler, and Brandt hops in the prowler garaged at the station, and wouldn’t you know it? They run smack into each other!” He stops and laughs at the incompetency of his own deputies.

“Well,” said Henry, did she have a heart attack?”

“Of course not. She just wanted us to bring out the prowlers so she could spend the rest of the summer talking to her neighbors about how important her little scare was, that we brought out the cars. You’ll get to know her quickly,” said the captain. “And you can be sure she already knows about you.”

It was quite amazing, in fact, how fast word traveled in a small town and even more amazing to Henry why anyone cared about him. But the new cop on the beat was big news in Mackinac and inside of a week, the locals were calling him Office Botner. Some were even calling him Officer B. And now Mrs. Havers was calling him Henry and asking after his wife.

The slight dampness to the air had worn off and the sun was beginning to burn through the heavy morning mist. The Ferry had let off just enough tourists that bike rental shops and breakfast places were starting to rake it in. Locals in Mackinac were doing what in all likelihood locals in Nantucket, and Fripp Island, and Hilton Head, and Pleasant Beach were doing to get ready for the onslaught of tourists just waking up in that town’s hotel rooms or rented homes. On the 300 meter stretch called “downtown,” Sandwich boards were carefully set out in front of store fronts hawking fudge and ice cream and t-shirts and waffles and bicycle rentals. Sidewalks were being swept and watered. Burly men were climbing aboard the honey wagons to give the main drag a once-over. Cabbies had long saddled up horses to carts and were beginning to shuttle people and luggage to various destinations about the island.

Locals on Mackinac were not effusive, but they were polite. As Henry walked by, they nodded or gave a brief “good morning” to him. He toasted them with his coffee and continued down the street. On occasion, one of the Jamaicans who was washing down rubber entry mats or cleaning windows would wave a hearty “good morning” to him, maybe even engage him in polite conversation about “da wedduh” and whether it would rain. He liked them. Their color alone reminded him of Detroit, which he never thought he would miss. But being here made him actually long for some diversity of thought and appearance and character, and he found the seasonals to have more life in them. Had he only the homogenous Mackinanders to talk with and listen to, he probably would have taken a bath with a razor the second day on the job.

They had great names, like Jama, and Miss Willie, and Stedley and Rupert. They were happy to be there, or at least made a good show of it. Old Barbara Walker may not have meant what Henry meant when she said at dinner that the Jamaicans understood service, but she was nonetheless correct. They were here to work and they must have figured they should enjoy it. They didn’t get an offended look on their faces when asked a question about the island. They were approachable, good, people. Jack Walker, too had been accurate when he said they would have to close down the island if the Jamaicans stopped coming each year, but in Henry’s mind it wasn’t merely financial. If the less-than-effusive Michiganders had to replace these smiling, gracious people with the translucent skinned, churlish Bulgarians he had met during his short tenure here, well, one might as well stay home. Whether it came naturally or by virtue of practice, the Jamaicans knew the value of a friendly wave and a warm smile.

It was to one of them that he finally decided to ask what the smell was. Henry’s citified nose could generally discern any smell. Like a pig sussing truffles, he could smell waffles where other people only smelled exhaust and factory smoke. So it troubled him that he couldn’t identify the strangely familiar, sickly-sweet, slightly chemical smell that was clearly coming from one or two of the stores about halfway down the middle of the block. He thought it might be candy at first, but it was too floral. Flowers crossed his mind, but there were no flower shops or gardens nearby and anyway, there was something strangely artificial about it.

He might have simply asked one of the shopkeepers from whence the smell had come, but was afraid he would be rebuffed. The fudge, baked cookies, barbequed chicken, spilled beer from the night before, horse manure, grilling meat, and scrambled eggs he could identify. Whatever this other smell was, he had to know. Finally, he walked up to one of the porters at Shipley’s Ferry, who gave him a big smile and a nod.

“Good Marnin’ Officer,” said the porter. “Ya’ll be needin’ a ride?”

“Good Morning. No, nothing like that. But can you tell me, what is that awful smell coming from that t-shirt store there and the bookstore down the street – at least that’s where I think it’s coming from. Is it some sort of food?”

The porter gave a great belly laugh. Evidently, Henry had found the man’s funny bone. “I’m sorry,” he said, collecting himself. “I had to smile. It’s just that you’re quite right, sir. It ‘tis pretty bad. Worse than smellin’ the horse pies, you ask me, but don’t nobody ask me,” he chuckled. Then he lowered his voice just a little. “It’s important, you know, to the Islanders, dat smell. Dey pump it out onto da street, because dey like it so. It’s lilac.

Ack! Now Henry realized where he’d smelled it before: in his grandmother’s purple bathroom. She kept a giant can of Glade on top of the toilet tank and she felt obliged to spray it a good 10 seconds each time she emerged from the john. Naturally, the scent managed to waft through open doors and archways until it permeated the entire house and sent him running to the window for air. Lilac. Of course.

The captain had also told him – or better warned him about the Lilac Festival, which was coming up. Evidently, there were several strains of lilac on the island and each year for 10 days in June, the Festival was held. There were a number of contests, art shows, and other events, and townsfolk and visitors dressed in period clothing, all to celebrate the delicate lilac. “You think this place looks like the back lot of a Hollywood studio normally? Wait ‘til the lilac festival,” the captain said to Henry. When he had told his wife about the event, and showed her the pictures of the festival-goers with bustles on long skirts and top hats and parasols, her only comment was, “Please remind me when it comes around so that I can be certain not to step foot on The Island of Dr. Moreau.”

By the time Henry made it to the end of the downtown strip his coffee was drained and his olfactory glands needed a break, so he did a quick once-around on the 8 mile bike path that encircled the island. Not as daunting as it might seem; the path was virtually flat and for someone in shape, like Henry, even at a leisurely pace, he could complete the journey is 45 minutes. It was part of the patrol in any case and gave him an opportunity to work off that whole milk in his latte.

When he got back, he checked the duty roster again to see what the schedule was, headed out to see if any follow-up calls needed handling, cycled up to the Grand to see Jack Walker about a problem he’d had with a guest claiming a theft (the jewelry was ultimately found in the bed), and helped an older tourist up the steps of the hotel. He tried to stay busy, to keep his mind off his boredom. This wasn’t police work, it was babysitting. He had another hour to be alone. After lunch, when the crowds got bigger, they worked in pairs, but in the morning, it was just Henry.

“Out to lunch,” he called out to no one in particular at the station. A few folks waved at him. He grabbed the sack he’d packed for himself earlier that morning and hopped on his bike to head toward the library and eat his lunch in solitude.

He was still getting used to it, he knew. He would have to endure the pace of life, the lack of anonymity, the loneliness he felt. He would have to contend with the fact that he was a city boy and by his very nature, uncomfortable with being so . . . so exposed. He had wanted to make a difference at one time not too long ago. Now that he had the chance, he longed only to be swallowed up. The facelessless of big city life.

Henry had “found” the Mackinac Public Library some days ago. A little corner of privacy in this new world. The library sits feet from the Mackinac Straits and is designed with several reading room inside, complete with comfortable chairs and subdued colors. Someone had the very good sense to build a back porch that overlooked the straits and the Mackinac Bridge, which was Henry’s favorite spot, not only for its solitude, but for its simple beauty. Just two chairs atop a plane pine desk, looking out over an expanse of quiet water. Henry brought his bicycle around the back, laid it down on the rocky shore, and climbed up on the deck to eat his lunch in one of the two Adirondack chairs that faced the water. The last two times he had been back here, he had been completely alone. This time, he saw a woman in one of the chairs, her head buried in a book. He thought for a moment that he should leave and find another quiet spot, but she was clearly lost in whatever she was reading and so he plopped down in the chair and unwrapped his sandwich.

Henry enjoyed the water. He ate his lunch and enjoyed the solitude and the view. After a time, he glanced over at his back porch partner. She had not wavered from her book, even to look up and acknowledge him. She was Jamaican. He hadn’t met many people on the island just yet and even fewer who were black, so he recognized her immediately as the woman he had crashed into that night after dinner. Perhaps he should say something. He had always felt bad about making her friends tease her so.

He stole a glance here and there while he made up his mind about what he would do. She was quite lovely, at least in profile with her head down. She had wrapped her curly brown hair in a black velvet ponytail holder so he could see the side of her face perfectly. Her skin was a warm light brown and her arms were lean and strong. He couldn’t tell exactly how tall she was but judging from her legs, he guessed about 5’8” or taller. Her face was soft and serious.

“Excuse me,” he finally said to her. When she looked up, he couldn’t tell if she recognized him, but she smiled at him. “Hi, do you remember me?” he asked. Her brow furrowed and just then he realized that he had not been in uniform the last time they “met.” It was something he had learned over the years: people simply did not recognize cops when they were in their uniforms. “I . . . I’m afraid I was the person who ran smack dab into you a couple of weeks ago on the island,” he said. “Remember? By the bikes?”

“Oh, yes,” said Miiga, and then looked down. “I’m sorry.”

“No, No, it’s I who should be apologizing to you. I should have been watching where I was going. I didn’t want to disturb your reading, I . . . I just wanted to say how sorry I was to have knocked you over.” His right hand crossed over his body toward her chair and she shook it. “I’m Henry Botner,” he said.

“Officer Botner,” she said. “I’m Miiga.”

“Please, call me Henry. I feel we should be on a first name basis after our little gymnastics event over there by the Grand,” he laughed. She laughed too. “I don’t want to disturb your reading,” he said. “Please, go back to your book.”

“I was ‘bout done, anyway,” she said, and put the book down. She’s young, Henry thought, looking at her now. Not quite young enough to be his daughter, but close enough to be arrested by someone like him.

“I just discovered this little back porch. It’s really wonderful,” said Henry.

“I come here a lot. Been comin’ here for t’ree years now. It’s quiet an’ I like to read. It remind me of Negril,” she said, smiling back at him. “No one comes back here, most days.”

“Must be hard being away from home for so long, huh?”

“It ‘tis, yes, but I get paid. Are you from Mackinac, uh, Henry?” she asked him.

“Me? No. I’m sort of far away from home, too.” He offered her some slices of his apple which she took. “But tell me about where you live. I’ve never been to Jamaica and this place makes me a little homesick for anywhere else,” said Henry. “Tell me something about the shores of Negril. Tell me about the coffee”


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