Disinherited

 

Today, I was disinherited by a Kiowa man on my beat who I've arrested time and again for public drunkenness. Last year I encountered my friend passed out in one of the alleys off SW 25th and Walker in Oklahoma City. It was the morning after a drastic weather change in early December. And if you know Oklahoma, you know temps can drop from the mid sixties to below twenty in the space of an hour or two. He got drunk the night before when it was still fairly warm, passed out in the alley, and was freezing to death when I found him. I called an ambulance, and they tried to revive him, told me he might die. They loaded him up and went code-3 to the nearest hospital.

I didn't see him for a few weeks after that, had assumed he died, but one morning after New Years, I saw him walking a dog down the street, a dirty yellow stray with bitten ears and a mangy coat. He grinned at me, thanked me for saving his life and told me he put me in his will. He told me he had a lot of money because his tribe built a casino on his land near Anadarko. He boasted that I'd be "shitting in some tall cotton" if I treated him right.

Needless to say, I had to deal with him officially today. He had several warrants and was very drunk. I took him to the Oklahoma City Marshall's office. He was very angry, yelling at me the whole way. He chanted a song and called me "Atunga" which he said meant the "Other Side."