2

My first day at work when I saw Butras from across the back room of the police station, I saw teeth striking teeth. It was a strange thing to notice first, but it stuck in my mind.

Butras saw me and came over. When he squeezed my hand, he squeezed it hard and kept moving forward until we stood very close. By the time Butras stopped, it was as if we were in the center of a ring and we were scheduled to fight. I didn’t realize then that he was someone from my past, although I figured there would probably be classmates from my high school on the force.

I could smell Butras’ aftershave on his neck. It was a powerful, rum odor and Butras wore too much. Or perhaps it was the odor of panic in my own sweat.

In the glare of the squad room the other men, pacing back and forth in their slow black shoes, were drinking coffee from Styrofoam cups and smoking cigarettes. I studied the bookcase where trophies from teams the department sponsored were kept. The American flag sticker on the side of the bookcase read: “These colors don’t run.” I heard the noise—stories fighting other stories—and the forced click of the broken wall clock. If I shut my eyes and breathed in, it was the smoke and rattle of my freshman dorm. It was as if I were back at Rutgers.

I was told I would be sharing a car with Frank Butras from that Monday, the first of December to the end of the month. He would be my teacher. After the New Year I’d get my own car and I would work alone like the others.

Butras leaned toward me and whispered, “You’re gonna get it now. Keep your head down.” Then he turned toward the eight or ten guys seated near their tall blue lockers, some getting into their uniforms, others undressing, the end of one shift, the beginning of another.

“This is Donald Gambell, the newest product of the Academy,” Butras introduced me.

“Should we tell him about you, Frank, or let him find out on his own?” The way they teased him I could tell he was well-liked.

Then I heard:

“We know who Gambell is.”

“We’ve read about him in the paper. Pompan High. Recent college grad. Doing what he wants with his life.”

Butras asked, “We all want to know: you satisfied with the spread you got in The Record?”

“Can’t get a better story,” I said.

I didn’t tell the reporter who did the profile on me all the stupid things I’d done in Pompan; he was only interested in the positive, the new black officer who could “go where no man had gone before.” I didn’t tell him how I smashed my first motorcycle, driving late at night without a helmet, pulling into my driveway too fast, waking neighbors. I didn’t tell him I’d been suspended from Pompan High for cutting classes sophomore year, and how my father had hit me for the last time the night he found out, how I caught his hand and warned him never to hit me again.

The reporter didn’t seem to know I’d been written about in The Record years before.

“You’ll have a good month working with the master,” Tom Prescott said. Tom had black hair everywhere—inside his ears and nose, up his neck, thick on the tops of his hands. “Just remember that although he acts like an old man sometimes, he’s only a few years older than you are. What are you Frank, 26? Oh, and Gambell, don’t forget to cut us a break when you talk to the press again.”

“Okay, that’s enough,” Butras said. Then he put his arm around my shoulder and guided me around the room as I shook hands with each, like it was a receiving line.

Around me, conversation shifted to other subjects:

“Where’s Teddy today?”

“Hurt his hand.”

“Oh, yeah?”

“Burned it.”

“So you’re in for him?”

“They couldn’t do any better.”