Half an Inch of Water: Stories

Graham Greene

I had done some work on the reservation nearly ten years earlier, helping to engineer an irrigation ditch that brought water from a dammed high creek down to the pastures of Arapaho Ranch. I slept on a half dozen different sofas during the seven months of the project. The tribe paid me well and I left, thought that was the end of it. Then just a few weeks ago I received a letter from a woman named Roberta Cloud. I was not so much surprised by the call as I was by the fact that she was still alive. She’d actually had a friend write for her as she was blind now, the letter stated. The friend said that Roberta needed my help. It was a short letter, to the point, without many details. The letter ended with an overly formal “Until I see you I am sincerely, Roberta Cloud.”

I made the drive up from Fort Collins on a Thursday. I left in the morning and stopped at Dick’s Dogs in Laramie for an ill-advised early lunch. I loved the dogs, but they never loved me back. I drove into a stiff early-winter wind that caused my Jeep to burn more gas than usual. The high-profile, flat-faced vehicle felt like it was on its heels as I pressed into the breeze. I hit Lander midafternoon and drove straight through to Ethete. Ethete was just a gas station with a convenience store. There was a yellow light at the intersection that flashed yellow in all four directions. I stopped and grabbed myself a cup of coffee.

A heavyset woman rang up my drink and the packaged cake I’d put on the counter.

“Think it will snow?” I asked.

“Eventually,” she said.

I nodded. “Can you tell me how to get to Roberta Cloud’s house?”

“She’s on Seventeen Mile Road.”

“Where on the road? Closer to here or Riverton?”

“Did you know it ain’t seventeen miles, that road?”

“How long is it?”

“Changes,” she said. “I’ve never measured it myself. Some people say it’s only thirteen miles. Dewey St. Clair said it’s nineteen, but I think he just said that because he was always late for work.”

“How will I know Roberta’s house?”

“She’s at the first bend. There’s a purple propane tank in the yard. Big one.”

“Thanks.”

I drove back to Seventeen Mile Road and turned east. After a couple of miles I saw the bend and there was the big purple tank. Someone had scrawled Indian Country across it in white paint, but the last letter of the first word and the last two of the second were worn off, so it read India Count. I rolled into the yard and waited behind the wheel for a few minutes. A black dog came trotting from the house next door. I got out and opened the back of my Jeep. I placed a carton of cigarettes on a stack of three new dishtowels and a twenty-dollar bill on top of that. The dog walked me to the door.

I knocked lightly. I didn’t remember Roberta all that well. I recalled only that she was the oldest person I had ever talked to. She looked to be ninety back then. The gift was customary. I didn’t know if she smoked, but the tobacco was important. I knocked harder and a woman called for me to enter. I did.

Roberta Cloud sat in a rocker across the room, backlit by the sun through a window. She didn’t rock.

“Ms. Cloud?”

“Yes?”

“It’s Jack Keene.”

“Mr. Keene, you came.”

“Yes ma’am. You call, I come. That’s the way it works.”

“I could get used to that,” she said.

“I have a few things for you,” I told her.

“Thank you, Mr. Keene.” She pointed to the table.

I put down the towels, cigarettes, and money. “Please, call me Jack.”

“Sit down, Jack.”

I sat on the sofa under the window. The sun came through the glass and hit my neck.

“I was wondering if you got my letter,” she said.

“You didn’t give a phone number and I knew I could get here faster than the mail.”

“And here you are.”

“Here I am. What can I do to help you?”

“I want you to find my son.”

“Ma’am?”

“My son. I’m one hundred and two years old. I’m going to die and I want to see my son one last time. I haven’t seen him in a bunch of years, maybe thirty.”

“Ms. Cloud, I’m not a detective.”

“He’s a good boy. I was twenty when I had him and he never gave me any trouble.”

I did the math. “Ms. Cloud, that would make your son eighty-two years old.”

“I reckon that’s right.”

In my head I did more math. I was told once that the average Native American man lives to be forty-four. I wasn’t sure I believed the statistic, it being so shocking and sad, but I was certain it wasn’t a gross exaggeration. Ms. Cloud’s son would be defying the odds if he were still alive.

“So, you’re telling me you haven’t seen your son since he was fifty-two years old.”

“His name is Davy.”

“Do you know where I should look for David?”

“Davy. His name is Davy. That’s what’s on his birth paper. His name is Davy.”

“Davy.” I looked at Roberta Cloud’s wrinkled face, her cloudy eyes. I wondered if she could see at all.

“When I met you years ago I knew you were a good man,” she said. “And here you are.”

“I’m glad you think that,” I said.

“That’s why I wrote to you.”

I didn’t know whether to feel flattered or like a sucker. “Ma’am, I have to say that I don’t think I’m the person to try to find Davy.”

She nodded. “You’ll find him. I believe with all my heart that you will find him.”

“Why do you believe that, ma’am?”

“Let’s just say I have a good feeling about you.” And then she let out a high little laugh that seemed incongruous.

“I see.”

“The last I heard he was working in the restaurant in Lander. The restaurant would be a good place to start.”

“There are many restaurants in Lander, Ms. Cloud. Do you know the name of the restaurant?”

“No, I don’t.” She reached over to the table beside her rocker and picked up a photograph. She pretended to look at it and then pushed it toward me.

“Ms. Cloud, eighty-two is kind of old to be working in a restaurant. Working anywhere.”

“Here’s a picture of Davy.”

I took the photo and looked at it. I looked at the olive-skinned man with a long braid. He looked familiar. The man in the picture looked to be in his midforties. “It’s an old picture, Ms. Cloud. Do you think I’ll be able to recognize him?”

“You’ll know him when you see him,” she said.

I wanted to ask her if she was sure he was still alive, but thought better of it.

“What’s his birthdate?” I asked.

“The second of December,” she said quickly.

“The year?”

She directed her useless eyes at the ceiling. “I don’t know,” she said. Maybe she was crying.

“Ms. Cloud,” I started.

“Mr. Keene,” she said, her voice softer than before. “I’m going to die in one week. I can’t stop it, that’s the way it is. I know you will find my Davy.”

There was nothing for me to say. Actually, there were many things I could have said, but none of them to Roberta Cloud. But I said the one thing that I could say to her and that was “Yes ma’am.”

“Well, you had better hurry, Mr. Keene. The clock’s ticking.” She laughed.

Needless to say, I did not. Hurry, that is. What was I supposed to hurry up and do? I rose, bid her good-bye, and walked out into the cold March air. I looked at the propane tank and was sorry it had been so easy to spot. I stood just outside the door and heard no movement from inside. I wondered briefly what had prompted me to respond to the old woman’s letter. Briefly, because I answered the question in short order. I was there because I was a stupid do-gooder, a typical idiot with a slight messianic complex. I thought I’d come up here and the old woman would ask for something simple, like a repair on the aforementioned propane tank, and I would do it, feel good about myself, and help out an old woman. I got what I deserved for being a nice guy.

I climbed into my car and drove to the reservation office. Maybe this would be simple. Perhaps Davy Cloud, if he was still alive, which I doubted, was living only miles away on the reservation. As I parked and got out I peered up to see that the sun was giving in to a sky that looked like snow. Inside, I found a lone woman sitting at a desk behind a long, high counter.

“What can I do you for?” she asked.

“A man could hear that a couple of ways,” I said.

“A man could,” she said. “But a man won’t.”

“Fair enough.” I put the photograph on the counter. “I’m looking for this man.”

“I’d be looking for him, too,” the woman said. “He’s a looker.”

I nodded. “But he’s about eighty now.”

“Oh.”

“His name is Davy Cloud.”

“No Davy Cloud,” she said. “There’s a Roberta Cloud. No Davy Cloud.”

“He’s Roberta’s son.”

The woman looked at me with a sidelong glance for a second. Then she might have shaken her head. I wasn’t sure.

“Could you check?”

“Check what?”

“Don’t you have a register or a roll or something?”

“Yes, we have a list of everyone in the tribe. Is he Arapaho?”

“He’s Roberta Cloud’s son.”

“Okay, I’ll look up Roberta.” She walked to a desk and sat at it, facing a computer screen. “We just digitized what we have. Here’s Roberta. No mention of a son. But that wouldn’t be that strange. Eighty years ago some people just had their kids and that was it. No paperwork, no nothing.”

“A reservation phonebook?”

She came back to the counter, reached under it, and pushed the thin volume that was the phonebook toward me. “Look for yourself. One Cloud. Roberta Cloud.”

“I believe you,” I said. “Do you have any old phonebooks?”

“No.”

“Is there a library on the reservation?”

She shook her head. “There’s a library in Lander.”

“Thank you. Sorry to come in with such strange questions.”

“Every week some wasichu comes in here looking for an Indian nobody knows.”

She was joking, but she had used Lakota slang for a white person and it kind of rankled me. “I’m not white,” I said.

“You’re not Indian,” she said.

“True enough. Have a good day, ma’am.”

I drove to the library in town. It was late in a steel-gray afternoon. I asked the cliché of a librarian at the reference desk if they had old phonebooks. They had some for Lander and a few for the reservation. Apparently the reservation hadn’t started keeping a phonebook until seven years earlier. Still, I looked through all of them. I had nothing better to do with my time.

I found a computer, got online, and found a couple of David Clouds. Not one was Native. All were young and none were in Wyoming. And as usual I felt a little sullied by having been online.

I drove to a diner and tried to find some food. It should have been easy, given that I was in a restaurant, but it was not. The chicken soup tasted like soap and the club sandwich’s only memorable attribute was that it was enormous. The waitress was an older woman who seemed well aware that the food was substandard.

“I would ask you if everything’s okay,” she said and left it at that, just filled my mug with coffee and walked away.

When she came back, I asked her how long she’d worked there.

“Twenty years,” she said.

“That’s a long time,” I said.

“You bet your sweet ass that’s a long time. Now every week feels like twenty years.”

“Sorry,” I said. “You ever have any Arapaho men work in the kitchen?”

“A couple. A Sioux guy worked the kitchen last year.”

I showed her the photograph. “You ever see him?”

She studied the image. She gave it a good, very long look. “Nope, never seen him.”

“That picture was taken about thirty years ago,” I said.

She turned her head to the side like a dog and said, “There is something familiar about him.”

“So, maybe he worked here?” I asked.

“What’s his name?”

“Davy Cloud.”

She shook her head, but said, “He does look familiar. But all Indians look alike to me.”

“Well, okay then.”

“No, he hasn’t worked here since I’ve been here. I know that much.”

“Thank you.”

“Sure thing.”

“Can I ask you something?”

“Shoot,” she said.

“Is this chicken soup?”

She glanced quickly back at the window. “That’s what I’m told. It’s bad, right?”

“Tastes like soap.”

“It tastes exactly like Palmolive dish soap. Exactly like it.” She smiled at me as if we were sharing some important knowledge.

“Why didn’t you mention this when I ordered it?”

She shrugged.

I put the photo back in my breast pocket.

I walked into two other restaurants, for no reason except that I had time to kill and didn’t know what else to do, showed the photo, and got strange looks. When it was getting late I wandered into a run-down tavern with pool tables and a jukebox and ordered a beer. I said hello to the woman who was working the bar. A couple of bikers shot a game behind me. I thought, what the hell, and pulled out the photograph.

“Excuse me, miss, but have you ever seen this man?” I asked the bartender.

“What are you?” she asked.

“What do you mean?”

“Are you a cop?” At the word cop I heard the pool game stop briefly. “You some kind of private eye?”

“No, I’m an engineer.”

That didn’t help clear things up at all, so I decided to change my story. I told the next person that Davy Cloud had come into an inheritance. The heavyset blond young man with two sleeves of tattoos showed great interest.

“Is there a finder’s fee?”

“No, I’m afraid not.”

“Then why are you looking?” he asked.

“Friend of the family.”

“Fuck that.” He went back to playing pool.

“Let me see that picture,” a woman said.

I did.

“I know that guy.”

“You do?” She was about twenty and wouldn’t even have been born when the picture was taken.

“Yeah, that’s that Indian actor. What his name?” She bumped her forehead with her fist a couple of times. “Damn it. Sherry, come over here.”

Sherry did, along with three leathery bikers. They all looked at the picture together.

The first woman said, “What’s that guy’s name? He was in that movie with Hal Kilmer.”

“Val Kilmer,” Sherry corrected her. She thought, gently pounding her own forehead with her palm. “Graham Greene. He was in that Dances with Wolves.”

“Val Kilmer wasn’t in that,” a biker said.

“The movie was Thunderheart,” Sherry said. “I know my movies. Yeah, that’s Graham Greene.”

I looked at the picture. I’d seen both of the movies and he did look a little like Graham Greene. In fact, he looked a lot like Graham Greene. Then I felt like an asshole for thinking that maybe the two men looked alike, as if it was because they were both Indians.

One of the bikers stared at me. He had a cliché red bandanna tied over his hair. “You know this guy?” he said, more an accusation than a question.

“Trying to find him for a friend.”

“Why?”

“Some inheritance thing,” the first guy I’d talked to said as he was taking his shot at the table.

“How much?” the biker asked.

“I don’t know. The guy in the picture is about eighty years old now.”

“Eighty? What the fuck does an eighty-year-old need with an inheritance?” The biker let loose a high-pitched laugh and his friends laughed with him.

I shrugged and took the photo back from Sherry.

“Thanks,” I said.

“You’re welcome,” the biker said, not sincerely.

“That’s Graham Greene,” Sherry called to me when I was at the door. “I’m telling you that’s Graham Greene.”

After a night in a motel I returned to the library the next morning and looked at images of Graham Greene. The man in my photograph did look a lot like Graham Greene, but also different. Regardless, I didn’t know where to look next. I decided to try the sheriff’s office.

The inside of the office was as nondescript as the outside and in fact so was the sheriff. He was a new sheriff, though he was over fifty. I could tell because his clothes were so neat and crisp. His dispatcher was out sick and so he was manning the desk, he told me. I showed him the photograph.

“Looks like that actor,” he said.

“I know.”

“What’s his name?”

“Graham Greene.”

“No, that’s not it. He was on that Chuck Norris television show.” He scratched his head as he looked out the window. “Floyd something. Westerman. Floyd Westerman.”

“This man’s name is Davy Cloud. He’s Arapaho and he’s about eighty now.”

“Why do you want him?

“I promised his hundred-year-old mother I’d find him.”

“You’re shittin’ me.”

“I wish I were.” I tapped the picture. “I can’t find out anything about him. I was thinking maybe he has a driver’s license.”

“And you thought you could just wander into the police station and have somebody look that up on a computer, right?”

I blew out a breath, feeling pretty stupid.

“Well, let’s take a look,” he said. He laughed.

“Really?”

“Why not?” The sheriff used the computer on the counter. “What’s the name?”

“Davy Cloud.”

“David Cloud,” he said.

“Davy,” I repeated. “It was made clear to me that the name is Davy, not David.”

“Doesn’t matter,” he said. “No Clouds at all.”

“Okay, thanks, Sheriff.”

“What are you going to do?” he asked.

“Beats me.” I looked at him for a second. “What would you do?”

“You got a birthdate for Davy Cloud?”

“Day, month, but no year.”

The sheriff snorted out a laugh. “Then I’d give up.”

“You would?”

“I would.”

“Thanks, Sheriff.”

I liked the sheriff’s advice. It made complete sense to me and I would probably follow it because there was nothing more I knew to do. I could not drag my carcass all over Wyoming looking for someone who was probably really a carcass. But before admitting defeat I decided to go ask around on the reservation one more time. I felt guilty because my search was really half-assed. That was due to my complete incompetence and also a sheer lack of any fundamentally important information. All I had was an old photograph, and for all I knew the man in it was an actor.

I parked in front of the little store at the flashing light. It was just starting to snow. I walked inside and grabbed a cup of coffee and walked up to the register. The same heavyset woman stood behind the counter.

“Remember me?” I asked.

“You were in here asking about Roberta Cloud.”

“That’s right. I found her. Thanks to you. Tell me, do you know Ms. Cloud?” I sipped my coffee.

“She used to come in more, but I haven’t seen her in a long time. Why were you looking for her?”

“Wants me to find her son.”

“Her son?”

“He’s eighty-two years old.”

The woman laughed.

“So, you don’t know him.”

“I didn’t even know she had a son.”

“Here’s his picture. It was taken forty years ago, I think.” I handed her the photograph.

“Never seen him.”

“He doesn’t look familiar to you?”

She shook her head.

“Like an actor?”

She studied the picture again. “Nope.”

It pleased me that she didn’t think he looked like anyone else. I put Davy Cloud back in my pocket. “My name’s Jack.”

“Delores.”

“Delores, after Roberta, tell me who is the oldest person on the reservation?”

Delores looked at her feet and then out at the snow that was falling now in earnest. “It’s going to be a mess,” she said. “I’d guess that it would be Regina Shakespeare. I don’t know how old she is, but she’s almost as old as Roberta.”

“Where is her house?”

“Last I heard she was living over on Yellow Calf Road.”

“Where’s that?”

“Off Seventeen Mile before Plunkett. Plunkett is where the tribal office is.”

“Okay. How will I know her house?” I asked.

“Never been there.”

“Thanks, Delores.”

“Can I ask you a question?” Delores looked at my eyes. “Why are you doing all this?”

“I don’t know. An old lady asked me to do something for her and I said I’d try.”

“You could have said no,” she said.

“I suppose I could have. But I didn’t and here I am.”

“You must have hurt somebody along the way, I guess.”

“Excuse me?”

“You must be guilty about something.”

I stared at her for a long few seconds. “Who isn’t?”

I found my way to Yellow Calf Road. There were two houses on the dirt lane and they faced each other. On the porch of one lay a big black dog, a Doberman mix perhaps. The dog raised his head as I got out of my car and so I made the reasonable choice of trying the other house first. I walked through the deep yard and onto the narrow stoop. I knocked. I heard grunts first and immediately came barking as five or six dogs ranging from medium to huge came tearing around the corner of the house. They lunged while I tried to remain calm and slowly walk away. They did not chase me all the way to my car, but rather disappeared much as they had appeared. I looked across the road at the Doberman mix. His head was down again. I noticed smoke coming from the chimney pipe.

I walked to the other house and stepped onto the porch. The dog looked up at me and then closed his eyes. I knocked. A young man came to the door. He might have been in his midtwenties. He had two long braids that fell over his shoulders.

“I’m looking for Regina Shakespeare,” I said.

“What do you want with her?”

“It’s a long story, but I just want to ask her about Davy Cloud.”

“Who’s Davy Cloud?” he asked.

“Roberta Cloud’s son.”

“I didn’t know she had a son. And who are you?”

“My name is Jack Keene. I’m a friend of Roberta.”

“You can come in, but it won’t do any good to speak to my great-grandmother. She’s got Alzheimer’s.”

“I’m sorry,” I said.

“She’s in and out.”

I stepped into the house. An old-fashioned wide-stance wood-stove kept the place very warm.

“Gammy,” the man called her.

The woman sat in an old wheelchair. She didn’t look up.

“Gammy, this man wants to ask you a question.” He looked at me. “Go ahead.”

“Ma’am, sorry to bother you, but do you recall someone named Davy Cloud? He’s Roberta Cloud’s son.”

“Roberta Cloud,” Regina Shakespeare said, surprising her great-grandson. “Why, she’s even older than me.” She let out a strong, throaty laugh.

“Do you know anything about her son?” I asked. “He’d be about your age.”

“Alder wood pops too much, don’t you think?” she said. She held up her index finger and smiled at the man. “What’s this?”

“It’s your finger, Gammy.”

“Alder wood pops,” she said.

The young man looked at me.

“Thanks for your time,” I said.

“Sorry.”

The highway was nasty as I drove back to Lander. The temperature had dropped suddenly and every curve looked like black ice to me. The snow was falling heavily now. I made it to a motel and lay in bed and did nothing. It was only Friday night and I had exhausted every avenue I could think of. I wondered what I was supposed to do for a week and then I remembered that if I waited a week Roberta Cloud would be dead. At least, she had told me she would be. I would have to go to her house the next morning and tell her that I had failed, that there was no way I could track down Davy.

I fell asleep wanting to dream about finding Davy Cloud, but I didn’t. I dreamed about an old girlfriend that I’d never loved. And so I woke up in a bad mood.

The world was buried in snow on Saturday morning. My car along with it. I raked the windshield clear and then chipped and scraped off the ice. My fingers were numb when I started my engine. I returned to my room and let the car run for a while. I wanted the heat in the car and I wasn’t sure if I could even shift and steer with my hands as frozen as they were. I snapped on the television for a weather report and there was Graham Greene talking to Val Kilmer in Thunderheart. Greene’s character was complaining about Kilmer’s character having a vision.

I fell in behind a snowplow on the highway and though it was slow going I felt more confident about the safety of the road. But that was short-lived as the plow turned around at the reservation border and I was left to push through six inches of snow with my Subaru.

There were a couple of cars and a pickup parked at Roberta Cloud’s house. I tramped through the snow to her door and knocked. A young woman answered.

“Are you Mr. Keene?” she asked before I could say anything.

“I am.”

“Come in.” There were two other women inside the house and a tall man who drank from a large travel mug.

“What’s going on?” I asked.

“She’s dying,” the man said.

“She’s been asking for you,” the woman who met me at the door said. “Who are you?”

“A friend,” I said.

“Let’s go then,” she said. She led me into the room where Roberta Cloud lay on the bed under quilts.

“He’s here, Roberta,” the woman said and left.

“Mr. Keene, you’re back.” He voice was so weak, so soft I could barely hear her from five feet away.

“Yes ma’am.”

“I knew you would find my Davy. Davy, my Davy.” Roberta Cloud reached out her hand. She was so weak that I thought I could feel her life slipping away.

I stepped close and took the old woman’s hand. It felt like a baby bird. Her bones felt like nothing. I said nothing.

“Davy, my Davy,” she whispered. “I’ve missed you so much. I love you.”

I didn’t make a sound. I rubbed the back of her little hand with my thumb.

“It’s been too long,” Roberta Cloud said. She said that several times until her voice just trailed off.

I watched her face. I felt her leave. I didn’t even hear her last breath. She was just gone.

One of the women came in and I looked up at her. She left and I heard her tell the others that Roberta Cloud was no more. There was no crying. I let go of her hand and stood up. She looked peaceful. I toyed with the idea that I was partly responsible for that. I also felt terrible that I had lied to her. I told myself it was not exactly a lie. I had simply let her assume something. But of course I had lied.

I left the room and joined the others in the kitchen.

“So, who are you?” one of the women asked.

“Ms. Cloud asked me to come here and then asked me to find her son, her eighty-two-year-old son. I couldn’t find him.”

“That’s because he died when he was a boy,” the man said.

“Excuse me?”

“He would have been my great-uncle, I think,” one of the women said. “Granduncle?”

I looked back at the bedroom.

“What did she say to you?” the woman from the door asked.

“She thought I was Davy,” I said.

“And so you were,” the man said. “So you were.”