I glance past the pearl gray of the casket and smile at Scott’s wife, Margaret. Her dark eyes, puffy with tears, tighten my throat. She gives me a weak smile as she pulls the youngest of three Puget girls close. Amanda, only four, says something to her mother who nods in reply. Allyson and Abby Marie, the seven-year-old twins, huddle together on the other side of Scott’s mother. I find it odd to be thinking how Scott’s mother still looks the same these 32 years later as she did when I was nine.

My darling Joan had warned me not to tell too many stories. She told me to pick two or three short ones. She told me it would be enough. She emphasized that I was just reminding people of who Scott was. I wasn’t introducing him to anyone. “But there are so many,” I whined. “I don’t which to choose.”

In seventh grade, all of us moved from St. Adelbert’s to the public junior high, Taft. Scott went out for football, which was no real surprise. That he talked me into it, too, was. I never did catch up to my classmates in size. But I could run pretty fast, and I could kick a ball off a tee straight down the field. And Scott told me the team needed me. I even won a game ball, not for kicking the deciding field goal or extra point, but for tackling a return man who had gotten past the rest of the team on the kickoff at the beginning of the third quarter. I was halfway across the field when I saw him break past the last of our guys and start down the sideline. And I ran for all I was worth and got him on the nine. When the other team could only move it six yards and kicked a field goal, we were able to claim a 7-3 victory. The coach told me later that he didn’t think I could catch him. After that, I played on punts, too.

“As we celebrated the end of our ninth-grade year, most of us were feeling bigger and more important and invincible than we really were. I guess all boys of that age do. After the dance at the junior high, a bunch of us wanted to continue partying. Someone in the group suggested we go out to the lake. Scott told us he was going home, and that we could head over with him and call our folks.

Scott never smoked. And he didn’t drink until he was 21.

“What are you doing?” I asked Scott one day when I walked into the music room before choir practice at church.

“When we were at Wayne State, Scott and I decided to major in criminal justice. Actually, Scott decided on a major, and I went along because I couldn’t decide on anything I really wanted to study. Scott had decided on police work as his career when he was quite young—I was going to say, from the time he was little, but I don’t think he ever was.” I take a quick look down at Scott’s mom. She nodded when our eyes met. “It was the perfect career for Scott. It gave him a chance to help others do what was right and to help those who had been hurt by someone who had done something wrong.”

After 12 years on the police force, Scott learned to control his emotions very well. When I caught up with Scott that September, he was peering down into the drainage ditch in the back of the wooded lot where five-year-old Carolyn Hays had lived with her father. Even beneath the canopy of trees in the growing darkness of evening, the blue-black bruises on the child’s white neck were unmistakable. “We shouldn’t have to be looking at this,” Scott said. “The dad in custody?” he asked, turning toward me. There were tears in his eyes.

“Carolyn Hays’ death turned Scott into a crusader for some sort of shelter. As Scott worked on the case, he learned Carolyn Hays went to First Baptist Church with her grandmother. And he learned that the grandmother had tried to get Rev. Griffith to help her protect the little girl. The Reverend had felt helpless, as most of us do.”

When we were in college, Scott and I traded on our strengths. I was much better in math and science than he was. He was better in literature and history. Wayne state had mandatory study hall for the athletes—including the cheer leading squad. And the academic advisor, Coach Polk, made the rounds of classes during the day to spot check to make sure everyone was in class. Some teachers disliked the attention and help we got, but most welcomed it. Some teachers didn’t give athletes much credit for having any academic skills, but Coach Polk did his best to make sure everyone of his kids was in class and making progress.

I know I will miss his wry sense of humor. His enthusiasm for life. His willingness to lend a hand.

Two years ago, my wife and I tried our hand at selling house cleaning products as a sideline. The fact that neither of us liked to sell things, and the fact that we were required to start with so much of so many products that we paid for really put us in a big financial bind. For two months, a large part of our garage warehoused huge boxes of laundry soaps, whiteners, brighteners, hair-care products, and assorted perfumed candles and potpourris.

“I don’t think there was a community function to which Scott failed to lend a hand. Whether it was Pioneer Days or the Harvest Festival or the Winter Holidays Extravaganza, Scott was always there to help build booths, serve food or take tickets, or to clean up afterwards. The same was true at church and for both the Boy and Girl Scouts.”

“Doesn’t he look good,” I heard someone say as my wife and I approached the casket in the funeral home the other day. I looked down and thought, No. His skin was a sallow color I had never seen before. And, although his hair was still the same black it always was, it was different, somehow. The hue was not as intense. The fibers, somehow, thinner and limper as they fell down along his forehead. And his eyes were closed. There was nothing natural about seeing Scott lying there with his eyes closed. Even in college, when he went to sleep, there was movement beneath the lids. But they, too, were still now. He didn’t look good. He didn’t look like Scott.

I clear my throat and look down at my notes. “You can get through this,” I tell myself, and I plunge ahead without looking up at the Puget girls or Scott’s wife or his mother. I don’t even look at my wife.

Scott was always talking about his girls. “You know, my little Amanda is going to be the real heart-breaker of my girls. She is just so sweet. When I have had a bad day, she’ll crawl up into my lap and pat my cheek and tell me that I shouldn’t work so hard. She’ll tell the twins to quit fighting because I’m tired. She’ll even tell Margaret she needs to fix me warm milk and a bubble bath.” Scott would chuckle that soft chuckle whenever he thought of his girls. “They are all pretty special….”

“—saying goodbye to you. This ain’t right, Scott.”

We were off duty and were at Glenn’s Tavern having a few beers before heading home for the night. Everything was pretty normal for a Thursday night. A handful of guys were huddled at one end of the bar watching a college game on the tube. The three pool tables were busy, as was the shuffleboard. Scott and I sat near the back, under the old Hamm’s Clock.

“Scott, We shouldn’t be doing this.”