The Evolution of Alice

by David Alexander Robertson

  “Shee-it, just curious,” Gunner said.

  There we both were, standing in the aisle surrounded by a bunch of junk. All I wanted to do was grab my stuff and go, but he was standing in my way, between me and the cash register. I woulda went the other way, to the back of the store and then all the way around, but I didn’t think he deserved that much of an effort from me. So I didn’t go, on principle alone.

  “What do you want, Gunner?” I said.

  “Say, you ever think about that little girl? What’s her name, that little girl … uhhh …,” he said.

  “Grace,” I said.

  “Yeah, Grace. You ever think about her?”

  I picked up a pack of peanut M&Ms and rolled it around in my hand.

  “I do, yeah,” I said. “Always do. Think about what she might’ve become, all that.”

  Gunner shrugged, like he didn’t care to hear the answer even though he’d asked the question. I reached over and picked up a package of liquorice to go with my peanut M&MS. I got to thinking about how I was saving money by getting junk for supper. That’d always been funny to me, how a big bag of candy was cheaper than fruits or vegetables. Yeah, I coulda bought a few bags of candy for the same price as a carton of milk. Stupid.

  “Yeah,” Gunner said. “But, you know, she could’ve been a real nobody too, if she’d gotten the chance to be anything. She could’ve been a real shit. Kids grow up that way from time to time.”

  Well, I don’t know what else to tell you about that. I dropped the liquorice and the peanut M&Ms faster than you can say go, and then I grabbed Gunner by his stupid Metallica T-shirt with my left hand, and punched him straight across the jaw. Felt that thing bust into pieces. Heard it crack, too. It sounded just like when you crack your knuckles all at one time, you know. He flew against the candy display and a whole bunch of candy bags came showering down over his head like rain; M&Ms, Reese’s Pieces, Nibs, Clodhoppers, and every other candy you could think of. I stared at him there for a moment, along with a bunch of other people who’d come running when they heard the commotion. We were all standing there staring at him. He was out cold. His head was resting to the side and there was this sound coming from his mouth that was kind of like snoring but kind of like gargling water. If he wasn’t lying in a heap of candy, and there wasn’t blood dripping from the corner of his mouth, you woulda thought he was having a nap.

  Me, you woulda thought I’d just run a marathon. I’d only just decked the bastard but I was sweatin’ like crazy. My hand hurt like a bitch, too. Anyway, it wasn’t long before Randy, the manager, showed up.

  “What happened over here?” he said.

  I didn’t answer him, just stood there rubbing my hand, kinda worried I broke the damn thing, to be honest. I’d never punched anybody before in my entire life, and, with how I was feelin’ right then, with the sweating and the pain in my hand, I was sure I wasn’t going to do it again.

  “You’d better get out of here, Gideon,” he said.

  “Yeah,” I said, “that’s a pretty good idea.”

  I got home about 20 minutes later. I took off my boots and my windbreaker, went to get a bag of frozen peas for my knuckles, and got all settled in. Ended up laying down on the futon with my head against the armrest. I flipped through channels on the television until I found a good crime show, a Law and Order spin-off. SVU I think, not that it matters. Not long after that, my eyes kind of trailed down to the microwave dinner I’d heated up for myself earlier in the evening, and wouldn’t you know, I felt like eating. I reached over and picked up the tray and rested the food right there on my stomach. Now it was as cold as one of them piles of snow out around the rez, but I didn’t care about that. With my left hand—the one without the ice pack on it—I picked up a chunk of “steak” and shoved it in my mouth. I say “steak” because that’s what it was supposed to be, and it was the only kind of steak I really ever got to eat, but it was more like a hockey puck or something like that. It tasted pretty good. Coulda used some ketchup, mind you, but I ain’t ever been picky. I must’ve been pretty tired, though, because I fell asleep before I could take another bite.

  When I woke up in the morning, there was an infomercial playing about some kitchen tool in place of the crime show I’d been watching, and that bag of peas had gone and melted on me, right across my pants, too. I got up to throw my food in the garbage, and when I looked down I saw that it looked like I’d pissed myself. I went over to my dresser in the corner of the room, pulled off the wet pair of jeans, and fished for something else to wear. Ended up finding an old ripped pair that I had. I got one leg into them when I heard a knock on the door. I didn’t have any clock around me that worked, so didn’t know exactly what time it was, but it felt pretty early for somebody to come see me. Hell, nobody ever came to see me no matter what time it was anyway. I was usually the one who went and saw people.

  I hopped across the room to the front door, walking while trying to get my pants on. Opened the door while zipping them up. I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised to see Ernie there with his cop getup on. Even had the cop car behind him still running. He looked pretty serious; his mouth was stuck in a frown, and it made his wrinkles seem deeper and longer. I ain’t ever seen Ernie like that, actually. He was usually hiding behind the desk at the RCMP detachment in the rez, playing some kind of game on the computer. He was always happy, too. Point is, I was surprised to see him at my door, whether I should’ve been or not. Guess I thought nothing would happen after I punched Gunner out. Or at least I never thought too much about it. Honestly, people get punched out around here all the time and I’m not sure how many of ‘em get in trouble for it. Then again, most folks don’t get punched in the middle of a grocery store in front of a bunch of shoppers and workers and shit. So, it was what it was.

  “Hey, Gideon,” Ernie said.

  “What’s up?” I said, even though I knew exactly what was up.

  “I heard what happened last night,” he said.

  “I guess so,” I said.

  “What were you thinking?” he said.

  “I was thinking he was being an asshole,” I said.

  “There’re lots of assholes out there, Gideon. You can’t just go punching them all.”

  I didn’t put up much of an argument when Ernie said he had to take me in. I knew I had to go. So, I put my windbreaker on and got in the car. I wanted to walk over to the detachment, it wasn’t very far, and I felt like fresh air would’ve been good considering I was about to get locked up, but Ernie wouldn’t let me. He did let me ride shotgun though. That was good. I woulda felt like a real criminal sitting in the back seat.

  Before too long I was sitting in my cell, and I have to tell you, sitting inside and seeing it from the outside are two different things. You know, I’d been in the detachment before, but I’d never been there on account of something I’d done. It might sound like a bit of a cliché, but there wasn’t much to do in there but sit and think. I got to thinking in a roundabout way, though, because at first all I was doing was looking across the room out of boredom. It had three white walls and one wall made of metal bars. It was small in there, but that didn’t bother me too much. My house was small, too. There was a bed but no pillows or sheets. Guess they didn’t want people gettin’ too comfortable. Out on the other side, the free side, there wasn’t much to see, neither. There was a desk that Ernie was sitting in, the reception desk, I guess, and then a couple more desks in the room where the other cops sat. Other than that, there was just a bunch of posters on the wall. One of them caught my eye, though: a recruitment poster for one of those Aboriginal programs that tried getting people jobs. There was this good-lookin’ Aboriginal woman in a police uniform smiling big and wide on it. I’d been to a few of those programs in the past. Anyway, when I looked at that poster, I started to think about what Gunner said when he went and got himself punched out. You know, about what Grace woulda been if she didn’t get killed. She coulda been a police officer for sure. She was feisty, th
at one—little but fierce. Hell, she coulda been anything she wanted to be.

  Thinking about Grace got me thinking about Alice and the girls, and thinking about them made me feel pretty lonely even though I hadn’t been in there for too long. I figured I could ask Ernie to use my phone call. I knew I got one of them from all the crime shows I’d watched. From the way I was feeling, I thought the best thing woulda been to get them to come over and visit with me, maybe at the same time get Kathy to bring me over a book, something like that book I seen her reading a long time ago. The Lovely Bones, I think it was. I didn’t read much, me, but I woulda read right then, and a sad book like that woulda been a good one for me. Course, that wasn’t ever going to happen; Alice never left her house any more, and she certainly wasn’t gonna leave to come visit me in jail. It woulda been good to talk to them, though, whether they came or not. You know, hear a familiar voice.

  I was about to ask Ernie about that phone call, too, when I saw the front door open. I went and hid in the corner faster than you could imagine. It wasn’t that I was scared or nothing, you know, but I sure was embarrassed. Like I said before, I knew most people around the rez, and nobody thought I was one to make any trouble, and I didn’t want people to think that now. I listened real close as heavy footsteps made their way across the room and then stopped. I didn’t know many people who had footsteps like that. Started to wonder who it could be. Even when the person started to talk, I had trouble placing the voice. It was real low, and all the words kind of jumbled together. Sounded kind of like they were talking without their lips open.

  “I’m not supposed to allow that,” I heard Ernie say.

  After that, I heard footsteps coming in my direction. That was a surprise to me. Couldn’t think of who would come to see me. Hell, nobody even knew I was there. I woulda thought that maybe Ernie called Alice to come by, like he’d had the same thought as me about needing some company, but Alice didn’t walk like that and she didn’t sound like that neither. As the footsteps approached my cell I looked for somewhere else I could hide, but of course there was nowhere I could go. Woulda looked like a real idiot slipping underneath the bed, seeing as how it stuck right out from the wall like one of those floating shelves. I ended up walking out from the corner and sitting down on the bed just as the footsteps stopped. I was looking away at first, maybe because I was too ashamed to look up, in case it was somebody I knew real well, but I figured I had to eventually, so I did.

  Gunner. Of all the people, it was Gunner standing at the bars beside Ernie. I got all warm in the chest and I wasn’t sure if I was angry or I felt bad for the bastard. Might’ve been a bit of both, I guess. His jaw was all swollen up, and the left side of his face was pretty much blood red. When I saw that, I got why he was talking funny. Musta been hard to say anything with his face looking the way it did.

  Ernie set down a chair and motioned for Gunner to sit, which he did.

  “Hey-uh, Gideon,” Gunner said.

  I looked at Ernie.

  “What’s going on?” I said.

  “Gunner’s come by to talk to you,” Ernie said, all calm.

  I didn’t get why he sounded like that. Me, I was pretty far from calm. My chest just kept getting hotter and hotter, and my right hand started to hurt again like it was trying to remind me about what I’d done. I kept trying to think of why Gunner would be coming to see me after I’d knocked him out, but I drew a blank.

  “I don’t really think I want to talk to him, Ernie,” I said.

  If he was there for anything, I thought he was probably going to bark at me for getting caught like I did, throw it in my face. I didn’t need nobody to do that to me. I was doing that fine on my own.

  “I think you should hear him out,” Ernie said.

  “Do I have a choice?” I said.

  “Not really,” he said.

  Gunner and I shared an awkward look.

  “You gonna bark at me or something?” I said.

  Gunner shook his head.

  “Fine, I guess,” I said to Ernie.

  Ernie looked us both over, as though he wasn’t really sure if he should be leaving us like he was, even though we were separated by the bars and all, but then he took a deep breath and walked away.

  “I’ll give you two some privacy,” he said as he settled back at his desk.

  I tried my best not to look at Gunner, but I couldn’t keep myself from stealing glances at him. It’s like when you see a car accident, a bad one, and you don’t want to stare but you do anyway. That’s a good way to put it, I guess, because Gunner’s face sure looked like a car wreck or something. His jaw was crooked and because of that his whole face looked bent this way and that. Whatever he’d come there to talk to me about must’ve been hard to say, too, because there was a whole lot of silence right then. I couldn’t stand that. I wanted him to say what he had to say and leave. In the end, I figured if I said something, he might say something back.

  “Look,” I said, “I’m sorry about hitting you and all. You were being a shit, and I got mad but I shouldn’t’ve hit you.”

  Gunner leaned forward in his chair. He tried to rest his face against his hand, but I guess he forgot about his injury. He winced and sat up straight.

  “I’m not mad at you, you know,” he said. “Not really.”

  He didn’t say anything for a little while, and I didn’t say anything neither, because I wasn’t sure what I woulda said in the first place. I’d already said everything I wanted to say, me. Not much else I could do but apologize. So, while I waited for him to keep talking, I killed time counting the metal bars. I got up to 13 before his lips opened a crack, probably about as far as he could manage.

  “Everybody does things they wish they wouldn’t have done,” he said. “I guess that’s what I’m trying to say.”

  “Okay,” I said. “Thanks.”

  “I might’ve punched me, too, you know. If I was you,” he said, and he said that real quiet, like he didn’t want me to hear. But it felt good to hear it, and I figured that Ernie was right about letting Gunner talk to me.

  “I’m glad you come to see me,” I said.

  “Yeah?” he said.

  “Yeah,” I said. “I been feeling pretty heavy about it this morning but I feel a bit lighter now.”

  Gunner rubbed his hands against his knees. And he was doing it hard, too, because I could see his knuckles get white.

  “We’ve both been feeling heavy about things I guess,” he said. “We both regret things.”

  “What’ve you got to regret?” I said.

  He didn’t answer me. Instead, he stood up like he was about to leave. I stood up too and put both my hands against the bars. It felt kinda weird to me right then, because at first I didn’t want him to be there, and now I didn’t want him to leave. Imagine that, me wanting Gunner around. It’d been years since I could say something like that. He started to turn away.

  “Gunner,” I said.

  He turned back to me, put his hands in his pockets, but wouldn’t look at me.

  “I’m sorry about Grace,” he said. He opened his mouth a crack, closed it, and then opened it again. “What I said about her. I’m sorry.”

  “Yeah, sure,” I said.

  He gave me one last little head nod with that big ol’ head of his—kinda looked like a bobble head, him—and then turned around and left me standing there. Walked right out the door after I seen him nodding to Ernie. I didn’t know what that was all about until a few minutes later, when I was sitting on the bed again, and Ernie come up to me and unlocked the jail cell. He swung the door open and motioned for me to step outside. You woulda thought right then that I’d jump up and run out of there, but I didn’t even get up. I couldn’t wrap my head around what was happening.

  “What’re you doing?” I said.

  “Gunner doesn’t want you to be in here. He asked if I’d let you out, forget everything that happened.”

  Ernie stepped to the side to give me a clear pathway. I stood
up, took a step or two forward but didn’t leave then neither.

  “You sure you heard him right?” I said.

  Ernie shook his head. “He’s talking funny because of his jaw, but there was no mistaking what he said.”

  “Gunner said that he didn’t want me in here?” I said.

  “What do you think, that I’m playing a prank on you? He was real clear about it, okay? Now, I could keep you in here if I wanted to, but honestly I don’t want to and neither does ol’ Randy at the store. Now stop looking all funny at me and get the hell out of there.”

  I don’t think I’ll ever understand that one, but eventually I did step outta that jail cell. Ernie offered me a ride home, but since I was a free man at that point I told him I’d rather walk. It wasn’t a long way from the RCMP detachment to my house anyway. When I got outside, the air felt fresh to me, and I took a few deep breaths before starting on my way. I guess you could say I was smellin’ freedom. And right then it didn’t matter that I’d walked around there a thousand times, because it felt like everything was new. Even the way I was feelin’ was new. You know, for years I’d thought that Gunner was a big piece of shit and that’s that, especially after what he’d said to me about Grace, but I don’t think I felt like that any more. I mean, I didn’t like what he said, I never would, but then he’d gone and done that kindness to me. I’m still not sure why he went and did that, but maybe all I have to know is that he ain’t all that bad.

  Anyway, I didn’t even end up going home. I landed up heading over to the grocery store. “The scene of the crime” is what they’d say in one of my crime shows. I wanted to get some candies for Kathy and Jayne, you know. Ended up getting them some of those jujubes, without the yellow and black ones, of course. I didn’t get anything for me, though. By that time my craving was all gone.

  SEVEN

  Jill stood with Amanda in the foyer of the reserve’s school as their children scuttled off to class. The school was only about three years old and looked just about as nice as any she’d seen in the city. Better even. Jill and her friend were both staring at the new addition to the foyer, a set of large wooden carvings that represented the seven sacred teachings. There was an eagle, a buffalo, a bear, a beaver, a turtle, and a wolf. Jill counted them, and then counted them over again. She scratched her head.