“Yes, sir.”
“People said similar things about immigrants from Italy and Poland and Germany and Russia. Thing is, McNulty, we’re all immigrants here. Native Americans are the only ones with a legitimate beef against immigrants.” I leaned toward him and squeezed his shoulder in what I hoped he’d take as a gesture of conciliation and encouragement. His deltoid was surprisingly robust. “You must work out a lot. Do you?”
“Four or five times a week.”
“Don’t forget to challenge your heart muscle,” I said. “Most important muscle in the body. Takes a much stronger man to be kind than to be a bully and a jerk.” He gave a perfunctory nod, but I could tell he’d had enough moral instruction for one day—maybe enough for a lifetime. “Now get out of here. I’ve got work to do.”
He stood and headed for the door. “Just so you know,” I called after him, “you’re not out of the woods yet.” He stopped in his tracks and turned, looking alarmed. “If Mona wants to file an assault charge or a conduct complaint, she’s within her rights. But I’ll encourage her to give you another chance. If you apologize—and I mean a sincere apology, not some half-assed, sullen sham—I hope she’ll show you some compassion. Which is more than you showed her.”
“Yes, sir,” he said. “Thank you.” And with that he was gone.
I slumped in the chair, suddenly weary—and painfully aware that I wasn’t out of the woods yet either.
MIRANDA WAS IN THE BONE LAB, AS I’D THOUGHT she would be, but—contrary to my prediction—she wasn’t absorbed in an e-mail or a Google search or a post for her Facebook page devoted to forensic anthropology. She was staring at half a dozen skulls, arranged in a semicircle on a lab table, their empty eye orbits all staring back at her. Surveying the lot of them, I noticed that she had three males and three females; two Caucasoids, two Negroids, and two Arikara Indians. “What are you looking for,” I asked, “and what do you see?”
“I’m looking for an explanation,” she said. “A reason why people choose to see differences as defects. As deficiencies.”
“You’re looking in the wrong place,” I told her. “You won’t find your answer in the dead. Only in the living. But you already know that.”
She sighed. “Yeah, I guess I do. It just always surprises and saddens me when I smack up against that kind of thing.”
“I know,” I told her. Quit stalling, Brockton, I scolded myself. I drew a slow breath. “You know I admire your idealism. And your sense of justice. And your bravery.” I paused. Here came the hard part. “But Miranda—”
She interrupted me with a sudden, keening cry. “I know, I know,” she said, her shoulders suddenly shaking, her words so choked I could scarcely understand them. “I crossed a line. I did.”
“You did,” I agreed. “Never lay hands on a student in anger. Never, never, never.”
“I know, I know,” she wailed. “You’ve taught me better than that. You’ve shown me better than that. I’m so sorry, Dr. B. So, so sorry.” She wiped a trail of tears and snot off her face with her scarf, then stared at the slimy mess. “Goddammit,” she said, but there was no heat in the curse; just defeat. “Do you need to fire me? Do you want me to quit?” Her eyes, so sorrowful and vulnerable, damn near broke my heart.
“Good grief, come here,” I said. I opened my arms and enfolded her in a hug—not the first one I’d ever given her, I realized, but one of only a few, and the only one that had ever been more than a quick, awkward, surface-level gesture. “When I was a little kid,” I said, “maybe five or six years old, my grandmother came to visit. Nana, we called her. She loved to take us for nature hikes, and one day, on one of these nature hikes, she was teaching me how to make a Robin Hood hat out of a great big leaf. She pulled a leaf off of this bush and made a hat for herself, to show me how, then pointed to a leaf and said, ‘Now you try.’ So I grabbed the leaf and pulled and pulled, but it wouldn’t let go of the stem. Finally I snapped, ‘How do you get these damn leaves off?!’ She was shocked. Hell, I was shocked—I didn’t even know I knew that word, let alone how to use it—and I knew I was in for it. Sure enough, when we got home, my mother said she’d have to wash out my mouth with soap.”