Other than his patrol car and his flat, the only place Hanson spent any time at all was in Walden Pond Books. The owner, Marshall, was an old-time East Coast radical-progressive who’d moved west in the early seventies. He was a soft-spoken, thoughtful intellectual with carefully considered opinions, but Hanson had seen him make friends with raving street radicals simply by listening politely. Hanson could feel himself relax whenever he walked into the shop. Marshall knew Hanson was a cop and they were both comfortable with that—it made no difference.
Marshall’s assistant, Darrell, was in his late twenties, a UC Berkeley grad and self-proclaimed anarchist, who always seemed to be brooding, grumpy and suspicious to such a degree that it was funny, and he played it up. When it was just the three of them in the shop, Hanson felt like he was among friends.
Hanson had just finished a run around Lake Merritt and was catching his breath as he passed the bookstore. Marshall was just visible through the poster-covered window, stacking books shoulder-high on a window shelf. Hanson stopped and went inside. Marshall didn’t even notice Hanson until he was standing by the cash register behind him, drumming his fingers on the glass counter.
“Marshall,” Hanson said, “you know about stacking books so high in the window that the cops can’t see in if you’re getting robbed.”
“Who’s gonna rob this place?” Darrell said. “There’s not nearly enough money.”
“The take from a 7-Eleven isn’t usually more than thirty or forty bucks. They’ll shoot people for fifty.”
“They?”
“The disenfranchised.”
Marshall had been unboxing new books. Milestones: The Music and Times of Miles Davis to 1960, Miles playing his trumpet, holding it with both hands as if it might overpower him and escape, leaning into the music.
“Officer Hanson,” Marshall said. “You looking for anything in particular today?”
“Birds.”
“Well,” Marshall said, laughing, “you know the store about as well as I do.”
Walden Pond had once been an appliance showroom, the space was deeper than it was wide. All the new books, bestsellers, self-help, and coffee table art books were up front on display tables and display shelves. You could bring in coffee from the coffee shop next door and sit on a flower-print sofa or one of the overstuffed chairs.
The rest of the store was serious, rows of shelves Marshall had nailed together from one-inch pine boards. Hanson could tell at a glance when a book had been added or taken away from one of the pine shelves.
The books back there were twenty, thirty, forty years old—most out of print, forgotten, ignored—their mildew smell drifting between shelves. At night, Hanson imagined, when the store was dark and silent, back in the stacks, the books talked to each other. They talked in low voices until dawn, each of them telling the same stories over and over every night about what happened or didn’t happen or might have happened, swapping different versions of the truth. All of them waiting through the days and nights for someone to pick them up, open and begin to read.
When he first started coming in the bookstore, Hanson would concentrate his attention on the War section, two bottom shelves in American History. The Vietnam War had its own subsection. He’d kneel down and, shuffling sideways, read the titles along the bottom shelves. Dispatches. Or a new history of the 5th Special Forces Group in Vietnam. Recently, however, he’d been focused on the bird books, reading about raptors: hawks, eagles. He walked down a narrow aisle between the stacks.
Falcons, hawks, and vultures—birds Hanson had gotten acquainted with in Idaho, missing them now sometimes. And California condors, a handful of them left, prehistoric birds who will soon be extinct and know it. Hanson used to look at them perched in their two-story aviaries in the World Center for Birds of Prey on a hilltop outside Boise. He’d make eye contact with them, hoping to learn what they knew. He found the “California condor” entry in volume one of The Birds of California, copyright 1923. Four volumes bound in green buckram. The condor was already in trouble in 1923. They were “extinct” or “very rare” in all areas north of San Francisco.
A dude in a black leather jacket came styling through the door, gold ring in one ear, Jheri curls pulled back with a green bandanna.
“How much the book ’bout Miles?” he said.
“Thirteen ninety-five plus tax,” Marshall said.
“Awright, then,” he said. “I be back and check it out. Miles, uh-huh.”
Hanson put the bird book back into its place and wandered over to Erotica, a section where the new books and the secondhand books were not segregated. They were mostly too cerebral, too highbrow, to be a turn-on for Hanson. Story of O. Several editions of the Kama Sutra. A glossy coffee-table book of tantric sex. The Marquis de Sade: The Complete Justine. Phyllis and Eberhard Kronhausen’s The Complete Book of Erotic Art, Volumes 1 and 2. Marshall kept Helmut Newton’s White Women in Erotica. Hanson picked up Chinese Foot Binding: The History of a Curious Erotic Custom and started leafing through.
The nineteenth-century British author considered foot binding to be an example of human inventiveness in the art of pleasure. The woman’s swollen feet, her hesitant gait, the heightened sensitivity of pain. The intensified pleasure for the man, as he holds captive the exquisite small silk shoes that encase the throbbing bound feet, positioning the submissive woman, fearful yet aroused, for his entry. Hanson caught himself thinking about Libya, her hurt foot in his hand as he bathed it. Libya’s feet had high arches and she was not helpless.
Too bad, he thought. It had been a long time since he met a woman he thought was interesting.
“Hey, Hanson.” Marshall was looking out the front window, over the books stacked chest high on the windowsill. “This kid on a bike outside. Been there since you came in the store. What’s up with that? Cute kid.”
He went out the door, taking Weegee by surprise.
“Officer Hanson,” he said, “I was just riding by.”
“Come on inside, Weegee.”
“Can I bring my bike in there?”
“You bet. Come on in,” he said, opening the door for him to wheel the bike in, the playing card ticking slowly against the spokes. “Weegee, this is Marshall. It’s his bookstore.”
“Weegee. Welcome to my bookstore.”
“And that guy over there, the grumpy-looking guy, that’s Darrell. He was born in the basement of the University of California at Berkeley. He’s really much nicer than he seems at first.”
“Mr. Weegee, a pleasure.”
“Weegee,” Hanson said. “Let’s go get a couple of All-American burgers…wait. I’m gonna give you a present, a gift. I saw it a few minutes ago, where it’s been waiting for you on one of those shelves. It’s lucky you came by. I’ll be right back.”
Hanson went back to the bird books and pulled out a barely used hardcover of the second edition of Peterson’s Western Birds. Hanson had his own copy at home.
He gave Marshall a twenty-dollar bill, which Marshall pushed back to him. “My pleasure,” he said.
“Thank you, Marshall. And if you’ll let me borrow this pen for a moment,” he said, opening the book to the title page. He looked out the window at Grand Avenue, looked at Weegee waiting with his bike, and wrote in the book, For Weegee, my good friend in Oakland who saves me whenever I’m lost. With this book he can give names to all the birds.
“Here you go, sir,” Hanson said, handing it to him. “Thanks again, Marshall.”
“Thank you, Marshall,” Weegee said, a bit bewildered by it all. He opened the book to what Hanson had written, looked at it long enough to read it several times, not moving from in front of the counter.
Hanson said, “Let me put that in your pack, and we’ll go eat.”
“You didn’t sign your name,” Weegee said.
“You’re right, young sir.” Hanson took the book back. “Your Friend, Officer Hanson,” he said as he signed with a flourish.
“Thank you very much, gentlemen,” he said to Marshall and Darrell, and they went out the door into the afternoon crowd on Grand Avenue, walking toward All-American Burger up by the Grand Lake Theatre, Weegee at Hanson’s side, pushing his bike.
They each got an All-American with cheese and split a large order of American fries. The girl behind the bulletproof Plexiglas didn’t recognize Hanson but smiled at Weegee. Weegee introduced Hanson to her. “Darlene, meet Officer Hanson. He’s off duty.”
“Officer Hanson, always glad to meet a friend of Weegee’s,” she said.
Weegee got a Coke and Hanson drank water, two big cups of it, glad that his hangover wasn’t as bad as it might be. The water helped, but he was still a little hot and jumpy, sitting at one of the grimy round tables, pedestrians all around them. Weegee devoured his burger and most of the fries, keeping an eye on Hanson and people on the street.
“You look a little worn out,” Hanson said. “Where’d you stay last night?”
“Where’d I stay? I live with my auntie, Officer Hanson.” Weegee sounded affronted. Then he laughed. “Course, could be I was out late. Summer vacation, you know. Riding my bike. Checking on things.”
“Maybe we could try out your bird book one of these days while I’m off work. It has descriptions and drawings of all the birds we might see. Let me see that book. I’ll show you something.” Hanson showed him the black-crowned night heron. “Sometimes you can see one of those guys up in a tree at Lake Merritt.”
“I like penguins,” Weegee said.
“I haven’t seen any of those at Lake Merritt.”
“That’s ’cause they all live down at the South Pole, on icebergs in the ocean. My auntie has a picture of penguins in her kitchen. They’re my favorite bird,” he said, getting out of his chair and pressing his arms to his sides, tilting his head up. “Walk around like this,” he said, waddling back and forth like a penguin. “Hello,” he said, nodding at an imaginary penguin. “How you today? ‘Just fine, thank you.’ They all know each other down at the South Pole on those icebergs, but they gotta look out for when those ice cliffs break off and fall in the water. You gonna finish up those fries?”
“No, sir,” Hanson said, grinning. “I believe they must be yours.”
Weegee sat back down and ate, asking Hanson, “How come Marshall didn’t make you pay for the book?”
“He’s a nice guy.”
“You don’t think it’s because you’re the police?”
Hanson laughed. “Like a payoff? So I won’t run him in for selling books? Weegee, I buy a lot of books there. We’re friends. And he liked you. Sometimes it just makes you feel good to give a present to somebody.”
Weegee shook his head, smiling to himself at Officer Hanson’s innocence. “How come you like birds so much? Mostly people shoot ’em with BB guns and slingshots.”
“I used to do that too. Long time ago. Now, I like to watch them fly.”
“Okay then. I better go,” Weegee said. “Thanks for the All-American, and for the book too.”
“You bet. Come on by my place any time. Let me give you my address,” Hanson said, realizing he’d never said that to anyone else in Oakland. “We’ll look at some birds.” He wrote his address and his home telephone on the back of one of his “I’m a Police Officer” cards.
“Okay, Officer Hanson,” Weegee said, getting out of his chair and hopping on the bike in one smooth motion. “Almost forgot. You remember that black rabbit we saw at where those witches live that day? I been seeing him all the time lately. Seem like he gets around as much as I do. See you later.”
Hanson watched him ride away, thinking of all the times he’d gone on combat operations with twelve-year-old Montagnard kids, watched as their fathers and uncles and brothers helped them with their equipment, smiled and told them they’d be okay. And he’d seen them dead too, their wrists and ankles lashed together, slung on bamboo poles and carried back to camp, where the women bathed their wounds, clothed them, and laid their bodies in the red wooden coffins that the Americans kept out of sight most of the time. They were good soldiers, those little boys, their best killers, if they survived their first few operations.