Protectors

by Kris Nelscott

  The woman let out a small half-laugh. “Yeah, I know all about that. Those things only work against someone who is not crazy.”

  Pammy now recognized the thrum of emotion. This woman had a particular person in mind. She was in trouble. But Pammy didn’t want to scare her away by asking what the problem was. The woman would say something if she ended up trusting Pammy.

  “That’s why I teach other methods,” Pammy said. “We start with de-escalation, and then we move to non-lethal self-defense moves.”

  “Non-lethal,” the woman said softly.

  Pammy braced herself for the next question: There are lethal moves?

  “Are you worried about the legal ramifications of teaching lethal moves?” the woman asked. “Is that why you don’t do it?”

  For a brief moment, the woman seemed like a different person: smart, capable, and no-nonsense. Pammy had a sense that she had just gotten a glimpse of the woman’s Before personality—Before whatever it was had happened. Until now, Pammy had been talking to After.

  “I teach those moves too,” Pammy said, deciding not to answer the entire question. “Mostly I demonstrate them on the last day of a self-defense class. Every now and then, I get enough interest in learning how to perform those techniques well, and I teach an additional class.”

  So far, she had only taught one such class, and if she were honest with herself, it had made her nervous. It had been in early June, just after the horrible, bloody events of May, when no one thought the next few weeks would be peaceful.

  The woman made a small sound in the back of her throat, a sigh or an acknowledgement. She extended a hand.

  “I’m Val,” she said.

  Pammy took her hand. Val’s grip was surprisingly strong. “Pammy.”

  “Pammy,” Val repeated, as if the name surprised her.

  It surprised a lot of people. They expected something butch, probably, or at least something without the diminutive. But her father called her Pammy, so the name meant a lot to her.

  She had learned along the way that if she approached her name with confidence, everyone else did too.

  “How do I sign up?” Val asked.

  And Pammy smiled.

  4

  Eagle

  Eagle had stayed up half the night, cleaning her apartment like she was going to perform surgery in it. She found a forgotten bottle of bleach beneath her sink and used it to scrub everything—furniture, floors, walls. She had to get the smell of pot out of this apartment before the police arrived, and once she started, she couldn’t stop.

  First, she cleaned up the mess on her coffee table. She stowed the bong in her footlocker, and hid the baggie of pot inside her Raisin Bran. She probably should’ve gotten rid of the pot altogether, but she didn’t know where to stash it, and when she cleaned the living room of her apartment, she had still been expecting the cops at any minute.

  Such an illusion.

  She had returned to the apartment at quarter to one in the morning, still shaking from the encounter with the guy and the truck, terrified for the woman he had beaten into submission. Eagle hadn’t even set her pistol down as she ran for the phone, taking the receiver off the wall cradle, and dialing zero for the operator, demanding the police department now.

  She should have had the emergency numbers taped to the fridge. Even her mother had had emergency numbers taped to the fridge in every apartment they had ended up in. Captain June Eagleton would have as well, but Eagle wasn’t that woman any longer.

  She had let so much of herself go.

  The police had brushed her off. The dispatch said they’d send someone, and Eagle offered to meet them, and when the dispatch had said not to worry, the police would come to her, Eagle felt the opportunity to rescue that woman slipping away.

  Eagle had hung up, then grabbed her phonebook and thumbed through it, making sure she had the right police department. When she got the same dispatch, she tried again, and the dispatch had snapped at her.

  They would take care of it. Someone would come to her.

  Eagle had let out a shaky breath, and that was when she realized what she had done.

  She had lit a fire under the Berkeley Police Department, who wanted to visit her in her apartment. An apartment filled with seeds and clips and the not-so-faint odor of the joint the kid next door had given her in a rare moment of kindness.

  Hence, the cleaning. And the dawning realization that she was so far from Captain June Eagleton as to be someone else.

  She had become a lot like the women she’d fled from when she’d left the res. Her grandmother’s friends liked a good smoke, liked their drink, and liked a lazy afternoon. Life at the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation hadn’t really been lazy, but it had seemed that way to ten-year-old Eagle. She hadn’t understood the tribal business or the fact that the meandering discussions actually had a point.

  She only realized that later, when she got older.

  She had fled the res when her mom died. Her mom had hidden there, when her father had started divorce proceedings after he got back from Europe in 1946. He wanted full custody of Eagle. When her mom got wind of it, she fled with Eagle, surviving in a thousand horrible ways. She finally brought them both to Pine Ridge, getting there just in time to die.

  Eagle called her dad, just like she had done a dozen times before. Only this time, her mom wasn’t around to spirit her to a new place before her dad arrived. Her dad had come for her and driven her back to California. She learned then he had come the previous times too, but they had left before he arrived, and he hadn’t been able to find them.

  Her mother’s death made Eagle’s rescue possible.

  Her dad had been happy to have her live with him, although his bitch of a second wife hadn’t been. Eagle had to put up with nasty comments about her skin color, her dark hair, her black eyes—all outside of her dad’s presence, of course.

  Her dad had treated Eagle like he treated his other kids, her four pure-white half siblings. He had expected her to perform well (she had) and he had paid her way through UCLA. At UCLA, no one had known her Lakota roots and no one guessed. She didn’t look that different from everyone else.

  Since then, she had not discussed her heritage at all, and she had left it off the forms when she joined the service.

  Ironic that they’d nicknamed her Eagle at Basic. Ironic that she’d clung to the nickname like a brand.

  Her father had been proud of her service. It had been because of him that she joined up in the first place. And she hadn’t seen him since she got back, even though he begged her to visit.

  She didn’t want to tell him about her war. It was so very different from his. He wouldn’t understand.

  And he wouldn’t like who she had become.

  She knew, because she didn’t.

  But that didn’t stop her from having expectations—of herself and others.

  Just like she expected the police to show up when someone called them in the middle of the night with an emergency.

  It was now thirteen hours later, and still no one had shown up at her door. She had done the superficial clean in the wee hours. After she got rid of the drug paraphernalia, she had done her dishes, piled up her laundry, and picked up all of the newspapers, magazines, and books littering her chairs.

  She picked up the box of photos she’d found in the garbage, probably tossed out by a bitter roommate, and put them under her desk. She couldn’t bear to throw them out like the roommate had done.

  Even with the box beneath the desk, the apartment hadn’t been that clean when she moved in.

  At 4:00 a.m., Eagle had called the police again, and asked if she needed to go to the precinct to give them the information she had on the man, the woman, and the truck. The dispatch or whoever she talked to had reassured her that someone would come see her.

  She hadn’t heard the word “shortly” but she had expected shortly. Good God, they’d already missed their window. Maybe someone had let the squad cars know to watch out for th
e truck. Maybe they’d already found the guy and rescued that poor woman, getting her to a hospital.

  It had been the thought of a hospital (which she had at 7:00 a.m.) that reminded her that she needed to clean the smoke residue out of the apartment before the cops arrived. That was when she broke out the bleach, and scrubbed until her hands were raw.

  At noon, she called a third time, encountering a new voice on the other end of the line. She repeated what she saw, wondered why no one had spoken to her, and added something she hadn’t said before (to her everlasting chagrin),

  How come you people don’t care about a woman who was beaten to unconsciousness? She might still be in the back of that damn truck, bleeding to death. She needs medical assistance. I can tell you that much; I’m a nurse for godssake. I know when injuries can be life-threatening.

  She wasn’t talking to some dispatch this time. The person who had answered claimed to be a sergeant. Probably a desk sergeant.

  We’ll send someone, ma’am, he’d said.

  I hope you have someone looking already, she’d snapped.

  First I heard of it, but then, I don’t always thumb through the night’s calls. I’ll make sure we get on this, he’d said.

  Unlike the person she’d spoken to first, he, at least, didn’t sound disinterested. He sounded like he might actually do something. Of course, he might’ve been so experienced with working with the public that he could make her feel like her call mattered to him, and still not do a damn thing about what she had told him.

  That call had taken the starch out of her. That, and the long night. She had finally settled on her dumpy old couch, and closed her eyes.

  The next thing she knew, someone was pounding on her door.

  Even then, she didn’t jump to her feet. She started to rub her eyes, then stopped because her hands still smelled of bleach. She grabbed some Kleenex off the end table, wiped her face, and stood up.

  The knock sounded again.

  “Coming,” she said. She got to the door, peered through the spyhole, and saw two rumpled men standing in the hall. She had a hunch they were detectives, but she didn’t know that for certain.

  So she left the chain lock on and pulled the door open until the chain caught. “Yes?”

  One of the men, a redhead with a drunk’s florid face, held up a badge. He held it long enough for her to see that it was legitimate, and for her to memorize the badge number.

  “You called us,” he said, his tone flat. He didn’t say “police.” He didn’t identify himself at all. Just those ice-cold words, as if she had done something wrong by even calling him.

  “Yeah,” she said. “Let me open the door.”

  She closed it, removed the chain, and pulled the door open. The redhead came in first. He was short and squat and smelled faintly of cigars.

  The other detective walked behind him with military posture. He was also younger by nearly a decade, his hair too short for Eagle to determine that its color was anything other than dark.

  “I’m Detective Brunsan,” the redhead said. “This is my partner, Detective Stuart. Heard you had some trouble this morning.”

  She closed the door behind them, then swept her hand toward the living room. She wasn’t going to talk to these men this close to the door. She had enough trouble with her neighbors, and their disrespect. They called the cops the Blue Meanies, a term that came from the Beatle’s Yellow Submarine movie, and always said with contempt.

  Of course, after the past few months, the cops didn’t always deserve respect, but Eagle knew that the community wouldn’t survive without them.

  “I called the police department shortly after midnight, Detective,” she said, keeping her voice emergency-room level. Then she extended her hand. “I’m Captain June Eagleton, U.S. Army, Retired.”

  She should have said former captain, because as a non-com, she didn’t keep her rank when she was discharged, but she didn’t. She wanted these men to take her seriously.

  Not that they were.

  Brunsan raised his eyebrows in disbelief, looking at her hand as if it were something that might contaminate him.

  Then the other detective—Stuart—stepped in front of Brunsan, and shook Eagle’s hand smartly.

  “Captain,” he said. “Forgive my partner. We thought you were a college student.”

  As if that made his rudeness more acceptable.

  “Until recently, I was a college student,” she said, deciding to give them personal information. “I came here on the GI Bill after my tour.”

  She didn’t explain any further. They didn’t need to know that she had dropped out or become too lazy to move. Not that there was somewhere else for her to go.

  “I’m sorry,” Stuart said. “If we had known that an adult had called, then someone might’ve gotten here sooner.”

  She felt a wave of anger, but she had learned long ago how to keep that to herself.

  “Your neighborhood worked against you, honey,” Brunsan added.

  Eagle gave Brunsan her best get-yourself-together-Mister stare. To his credit, he didn’t look away. Most people did when faced with that look.

  She straightened, wishing she was wearing something other than jeans and t-shirt. This was one of those moments when her uniform would have given her strength—as well as some respect from the red-headed idiot.

  “If you haven’t investigated this,” she said in that emergency room tone, “you’ve already lost fourteen hours, and your best chance of tracing that truck.”

  Brunsan looked away from her. He wasn’t going to admit he was wrong, but he knew it. He knew they had screwed up.

  Stuart’s mouth thinned a little. She took that to be disapproval of the way the case was handled, not disapproval of her outspokenness.

  “Tell us what you saw,” Stuart said. He hadn’t moved away from his partner. He was still half-blocking the older man.

  She bit back her first retort: Tell you again, you mean. She took a deep breath, and repeated her story.

  She ended with, “I brought my pistol. I did not fire it, although I did point it at him. That was when he decided to toss her in the flatbed and zoom out of there.”

  Brunsan shook his head, as if he couldn’t believe what she told them. “You didn’t shoot, did you, Miss Oakley?”

  As in Little Annie Oakley, the Wild West sharpshooter, as in dismissing a woman who knew how to use a gun. Eagle raised her chin and was about to respond when Stuart said to Brunsan, “That’s enough. Captain Eagleton deserves our respect.”

  Brunsan made a derogatory noise through his nose. “And how the hell do we know that Calamity Jane here really did serve?”

  Eagle’s eyes narrowed. She’d encountered this kind of bigotry before, and she hated it. She usually expected it from college students, though. They were why she kept her uniform in her footlocker and never took it out for any reason.

  Stuart said to Brunsan, “Why don’t you let me handle this?”

  Brunsan made that snorting noise again and straightened. He was clearly not comfortable with the way Stuart was treating him.

  “We don’t need civilians running around the streets with weapons.” Brunsan stepped around Stuart. Stuart turned again, looking frustrated, clearly about to say something, but Brunsan wasn’t done. He glared at Eagle and added, “May I see your pistol, ma’am?”

  The sarcasm pissed her off, but she answered him in her calmest voice. “Certainly.”

  She had nothing to hide. Besides, she hadn’t fired the weapon in months.

  Stuart was shaking his head, but Eagle ignored him. Instead, she walked into the bedroom, feeling a little lightheaded. She took the Walther from her footlocker and carried it back, along with her military identification.

  Stuart was speaking softly to Brunsan. Brunsan’s florid face had turned even redder. He was being reprimanded.

  She couldn’t quite tell their relationship. Was Brunsan, clearly the older man, also the superior officer here? Or was Stuart?


  And was that really any of her concern?

  “Would you like to inspect my weapon to see if it’s been fired lately?” she asked, managing a tone that she had learned when dealing with the brass. It was Hey asshole, I’m complying with your dumbass request. So back the fuck off.

  Stuart looked at her sideways, a small smile on his lips. He, at least, knew what she was doing.

  “No need,” Brunsan said without much of a glance at the pistol. He was actually looking at her identification as if he couldn’t believe it. He managed, “Sorry, Captain.”

  She inclined her head toward Brunsan, acknowledging his apology without accepting it. He was an ass. She didn’t need to give him too much credit for behaving like a human being.

  She set the Walther and the ID down on her newly cleaned coffee table.

  “So, Captain,” Brunsan said, “how do you know that this man and woman weren’t having a domestic, y’know. Maybe they were married or something.”

  She was still half bent over from setting down her weapon. Good thing, too, because she felt a surge of anger. She caught the anger, held it, hid it, and rose slowly.

  Her glance at Stuart told her that he too was curious about her response. Jesus Christ, these men. Every once in a while, she understood why Pammy Griffin had opened up her goddamn gym.

  “So, you think it’s perfectly all right for a man to beat his wife into unconsciousness and toss her, bleeding, into the back of a pickup truck?” Eagle asked in her reasonable, let-me-look-at-your-injury voice.

  Brunsan’s skin got redder, but Stuart’s expression didn’t change.

  “A man’s allowed to do what he needs to in his own home,” Stuart said.

  “He wasn’t in his home,” Eagle said, a little charge to her tone. She wanted to clear her throat, to get rid of the tone, which surprised her. She hadn’t expected it. But then, she had cast Stuart as the reasonable one. The fact that he wasn’t pissed her off.

  “True enough,” Stuart said, “but you don’t know if this man and woman had left their home and brought their fight to the street.”