“Just a second,” he called out.
He took the receiver to the bedroom and threw it under some clothes in the laundry hamper. He swallowed and wiped his hands on his pants. Noticed his dirty shirt cuff.
He rolled up his sleeves and went to the door. There was nothing else to do. His lips felt numb. This is the way people’s lives change, he thought. In quiet little moments, and there’s no going back. His stomach felt jittery. He shook out his hands to get the rubberiness out. Tried to seem calm and cool. Don’t assume he knows anything, or what he may or may not know. Don’t incriminate yourself. He opened the door.
The tribal cop was standing on the top stair, which put him a step lower than JW. He had to shuffle sideways to avoid the out-swinging door.
“Yes sir, can I help you?” said JW.
“Mr. White?”
“Yes.”
Through the fog of fear, JW noticed that the man had an expectant smile. He was waiting—for what? A confession? Maybe to see if he would give something away. JW had heard that most one-time criminals admit their crime almost immediately when confronted by the authorities. He wasn’t going to be one of them.
“You don’t remember me,” the cop said. “Rick Fladeboe. Used to work security at the bank.”
“Rick! Sorry. Of course!” replied JW.
Jesus, he thought. Fladeboe. Security guard.
“You look different in that tribal getup.”
JW knew as soon as he said it that it was offensive, but he desperately wanted to keep the upper hand, so he didn’t apologize—he smiled.
“Yeah, well, I heard you were staying out here now. Figured I’d stop by and say hi, welcome to the reservation and all.”
“Well, thanks, Rick,” replied JW noncommittally. “I appreciate that.”
He saw Fladeboe notice that he was sweating.
“You doin’ okay?”
JW nodded. “Just hot in here. No AC. You want to come in for a sauna?”
Fladeboe laughed. “No thanks. Say, I heard what happened, about you losing your job and so on—”
“Rick, I got some stuff on the stove—”
“I know, I know. I don’t want to take your time. Just to say, listen, if you ever want, the tribe’s got a gambling and addictions support group. A real nice one, we got top people, trained at UMD, the whole works. It’s one of our mandates, for having the casino. We don’t want anybody to get hurt.”
He handed JW a business card. It bore a colorful round tribal logo, the name of the group, the Bizaaniwewin Support Group, and a phone number and web URL.
“It’s a funny-sounding name, Bizaaniwewin,” offered Fladeboe. “Means peace.”
JW looked down at the card. His brow creased as he looked up from it. He felt his pulse in a vein on his neck. He wondered how word of his situation had traveled so quickly, and whether Fladeboe was acting individually, or if this was a visit some band committee had asked him to make.
“Anyway, welcome.” Fladeboe gave him a curt little nod and a wave, then turned and walked back to his cruiser.
“Rick!” JW called out after him. Fladeboe stopped and looked back. “Thanks.”
Fladeboe waved. As he got in his car, JW noticed for the first time that someone was sitting in the back seat. The car backed out onto the road and stopped in front of Eagle’s house. Fladeboe got out and opened the back door. The boy from across the street climbed out and sloughed off toward the pole barn without so much as a word to Fladeboe, who saw JW still standing in the door, and waved before getting back into his car. He had kept the kid waiting that whole time.
JW waved back, then pulled the door shut and returned to his macaroni. He stirred it weakly, recovering from the adrenaline rush. He glanced at the business card in his left hand. Peace. The tiny crescents swam like blind fish in the roiling water. He went to the fridge and pulled out the Red Owl carton of milk. As he turned, he glanced out the window. The boy was tugging on a red lead rope, trying to drag the horse across the lawn toward the riding ring. The animal was ignoring him again. It grazed on the lawn, planting its feet against the lead rope. JW noticed how tightly wound the boy seemed. He was probably recovering from his own adrenaline rush after getting a lift home from Fladeboe. His teenage frustration wafted across the road.
“Come on!”
The horse ignored him, then finally, begrudgingly, it lifted its head and half-heartedly let the boy lead it away from the grass. The boy dragged the horse over to the riding paddock gate, unlatched it, and swung it open. He pulled with first one, then two hands, but the horse stood still, feet planted, head high, refusing to go in.
JW moved to the window, watching this little drama. Horse training was all about convincing a horse that what you wanted was what it wanted too, only more so, and JW could see that the kid had no idea what he was doing.
“Damn it, come on! Come on!” The boy pulled hard on the lead rope, stretching the horse’s neck out, but the animal’s feet were firm. He stormed up beside it and the horse responded by stepping backward. The boy stumbled as he tried to stay on his feet. JW heard the horse snorting.
“No!” The boy yelled. He punched the horse on the side of the neck. It threw its head and pulled hard backward, squatting on its haunches as it prepared to rear. It stood, which dragged the boy up off the ground and into its dancing front hooves.
“Hey!” he yelled at the window. Stupid kid, he thought. The rearing horse’s head could come down and break his neck, and it would trample him if it ran forward.
The boy twisted to miss the hooves and scrambled to the right, along the horse’s front left flank. He’s quick, I’ll give him that, thought JW. Then the boy wrapped the lead rope around his wrist and kicked the horse hard in its soft underbelly. The horse screamed with a high frightened sound and tried to spin away, but the boy had leverage with the lead rope, so it reared and pulled him right back into the range of its hooves. This time the boy couldn’t find his footing.
Before he knew it, JW was out the trailer door and running. The horse twisted and landed and galloped off across the lawn, dragging the boy close to its thundering hooves.
“Pride!” The boy yelled as he bumped along over the ground. “Pride, no!” His voice sounded screechy with fear.
“Let it go!” JW yelled as he ran after them.
The boy took a hard bump on a root and let go, and the horse galloped off. He lay on his stomach, the wind knocked out of him, his cheek pressed into the grass. The horse slowed to a trot and began to circle in the yard. Then it stopped at a safe distance and snorted and pawed at the lawn.
“You okay?” JW asked as he ran up. The boy was wheezing for breath and wincing back tears. He slowly got to his hands and knees. Then, ignoring JW, he headed shakily after the horse.
“Hey!”
The kid spun around. “I got it!” he yelled, then fell into a coughing fit. He was wearing jeans and a baggy Twins jersey.
“Okay. Nice to meet you,” said JW. “I’m your new neighbor, by the way. Why don’t you let me help.”
The boy ignored him and turned back toward the horse, which trotted a few steps farther away.
“Fuck!” He stopped and stood, angry.
“You’re chasing him off.”
The boy’s posture slumped, but he didn’t turn around. He took another step toward the horse, but it jogged even farther away.
“Goddamn it!”
JW glanced back toward the trailer home. The door was standing open. He looked down at the waxy milk carton in his hand.
“Hey kid!” he said, and began marching toward the boy’s back. “I got something for you.”
The boy turned around. “Hold this,” JW said, and shoved the milk carton into his hands. He turned toward Pride and gave him a snappy whistle. Pride snorted as he grazed, made a big sigh, then took a few steps toward the neighbor’s house, still munching on the lawn.
“You’re chasin’ him off, old school,” said the boy.
JW turned,
irritated. “Go over there,” he said, and pointed toward the house. “So you’re not between him and the gate. Go on!”
The boy didn’t move.
“You want your horse back?” JW looked at him and he looked back. “I did this for a living,” said JW. The boy shook his head and walked across the yard to where JW had indicated. When he was a safe distance off, JW nodded. “Okay.”
He looked down at the ground, hands in his pockets. He jangled his keys and assumed a relaxed air, not a care in the world. Just him and the horse, together and alone in a herd of two. It was like a mantra. It all came back as if it had been yesterday. If he got his mind in the right space, JW knew the horse would follow. He started whistling softly—“You Are My Sunshine”—and he grazed with his feet, swinging and poking them at the grass. He walked wide around the horse, not paying it any attention, not getting too close, just focused on the grass. I’m just doing my thing here, just leave me alone and I’ll leave you alone, he thought, walking and whistling.
Pride’s ears followed him like radar dishes. He stopped about fifteen or twenty feet behind the horse, between him and the house. Pride grazed, flipping his ears around, flapping his tail to scare off the flies. But JW could see from the tension in the horse’s muscles that he was ready to leap, turn, and trot off down the road at a moment’s notice. He stopped whistling and looked up—at Pride’s chest, not his eyes. The horse snorted long and low as he grazed—a dramatic, put-upon snort.
JW took a big step toward his rear end and lifted up his arm toward him, as if he were reaching for his tail. Pride lifted his head and trotted eight or nine steps toward the gate, then went back to grazing, with a frisky air about him, light on his feet.
JW noticed the boy was studying his moves intently. He felt a sudden affection for him, rude and surly as he was. JW kept looking at the grass and whistling. He strolled wide and away and then angled back, stopping behind and to the side again, but closer. Then he took his hands out of his pockets. He kept whistling, and he walked slowly, eyes averted, toward Pride’s side. The horse’s ears flicked around as he grazed, but he stayed where he was.
The boy watched him, his arms crossed and a scowl on his face. JW reached out and petted the base of the horse’s sweaty neck. Gentle. Relaxed. No reason to hurry. Just the two of them grazing. Then he reached down and picked up the lead rope, but left it slack. They stood there grazing for another minute, the horse munching and JW poking the grass with his toe. He examined the rope in his left hand, pretending to be interested in its fine weave. Not a care in the world, until he reached back wide with his right hand, toward Pride’s rear end, and whistled sharply.
“Come on.”
Pride let out another long snort and then lifted his head. He walked next to JW on a slack rope, right up to the gate. The boy looked amazed. He began heading down toward the paddock. JW made a kissing sound at the horse and reached out toward his rear end again. Pride stepped into a trot and moved into the riding ring with his head high and an eye on JW, but without any hesitation. JW tossed the lead rope over his neck as he went in and closed the gate behind him. Pride snorted and circled and came to a stop, watching him attentively as if waiting for the next order. It was the old magic.
The boy looked down as JW turned to him. “Can’t fight nature, son. Gotta sweet-talk her.” He extended a hand to shake. “John White, but my friends call me JW.”
“Good for you,” the boy said, looking right at him but not offering his hand in return.
JW snorted at the response.
“Gimme my milk, you little punk,” he said and smiled.
The boy held it out, but then began to turn the carton to pour it out. JW snatched it out of his hand.
“Thanks,” he said. “You got a weak hand there? ’Cause it looked like you couldn’t hold the milk up or something.” He turned and walked back across the street, jangling his keys in his pocket. He laughed and shook his head as the boy walked off toward the paddock.
“No wonder he doesn’t like you,” he called. “You don’t show gratitude, and you act mad all the time. Think about it.” He turned back toward his trailer, whistling “Sunshine.”
As he put a foot on the first step, he remembered the neighbor. He glanced back over his shoulder, up the hill at the white brick house, but there was still no sign of life. He stepped up into the trailer.
The macaroni was burning.
He rushed to the stove, shut the flame off, and grabbed the smoking pot by the handle, burning his thumb and forefinger. He threw it clattering into the sink and turned on the tap. Steam filled the trailer as he sucked his burnt fingers.
10
Johnny Eagle’s form leaped into focus in the oval field of JW’s binoculars. He moved with a contractor through the pale ribs jutting up from the commercial building site. He looked excited, almost boyish, as he walked amid the carpenters, their air-nailers trailing pink and blue hoses. About half of the workers looked Native American. He could hear the phtt, phtt of the nailers through the open car window.
“I knew that son of a bitch was up to no good.” Jorgenson was irritated. JW took the field glasses down and set them on the dash before him. The two men sat in the plush leather interior of Jorgenson’s new Cadillac. JW’s seat creaked and emitted an aroma of kid leather every time he moved. “I mean, what the hell, ‘Nature’s Bank’? How fucking pompous is that?”
The Caddy was parked diagonally in the corner of the PDQ store parking lot, facing the highway. JW took a bite from the Chuckwagon sandwich he had balanced on a paper napkin spread over his lap, and then refocused through the binoculars at the construction site across the road.
“Why the hell didn’t you take the paperwork?” Jorgenson pressed him.
JW followed Eagle as he walked toward his black Bronco. He had forgotten how mercurial Jorgenson could be, and what a relief it was when he got the promotion and moved to Minneapolis. Trapped in his trailer home, in this plot of Jorgenson’s, JW had begun to wonder why he’d thought of him as a friend all these years. JW was only now coming to recognize some of his own blind spots, but Jorgenson seemed even less self-aware.
“He would have known,” JW replied, setting the binoculars back on the dash. “Besides, it’s not necessary. Once they file their application with the comptroller of the currency, it’ll all be public. I can text you a photo.”
“Don’t. I gotta be hands off.”
Jorgenson’s cell phone rang. The display said US Treasury. He pushed the glowing green bar on the screen.
“Ted! What did you find out? Uh-huh.” He cupped a hand over the phone. “It’s a buddy of mine from Minneapolis, moved over to Treasury.”
JW examined the building site again as he listened to Jorgenson’s conversation. The canopy had a concrete footing in the middle that divided it into two drive-through stalls. It was definitely a bank.
“It’s already passed preliminary approval?” Jorgenson’s voice rose as if someone had insulted him. “All right. Let me know if you hear anything else.” He touched the screen again and tossed the cell into the center console.
“Fuck.”
JW noticed he was pale and saw he was making a fist. “They’ll be doing background checks in the next phase.” He glanced and pointed two fingers at JW. “You need to get back in there and find a reason for them to deny.”
“You should go through his loan app from last year,” countered JW. “Maybe there’s an angle.”
“I did. Fucker makes himself out to be Mother Teresa, which is why you need to find some dirt on him. Something Treasury won’t be able to defend to an angry public. Then we can pressure them to nip this thing in the bud.”
JW didn’t really want to tell him about the bug, but suddenly felt like he needed to show some more progress.
“I planted a bug.”
“Really? You did?” His boss brightened immediately. “Why didn’t you say so?”
JW shrugged and took another bite from the Chuckwagon.
/> “You are a crafty bastard, JW. People underestimate you at their peril.” He took a bite of his sandwich, smiling now and shaking his head. “I knew you’d come up with something. But I don’t want to know any more. You pull this off, I’m telling you, you have a real chance here. Be good to have you rehabilitated.”
“I may have been seen.” There. He was out with it.
Jorgenson glanced at him sideways. JW knew that if he were ever caught it would cause serious legal and PR problems for the bank, but he felt he had to say something in case Jorgenson suddenly heard from the police.
“By who?”
“A neighbor. I thought I saw the curtain move. I knocked on the door, but there was no answer. I’m not positive.”
“We can’t have any fingerprints on this, John. I told you that.”
“I know. I’ll take care of it.”
Jorgenson glanced out his window and saw Deputy Bob Grossman getting out of his county sheriff’s cruiser nearby. Without warning, he smashed his hand against the car’s big horn.
“Jesus, Frank, wait, what are you doing?”
“It’s just too risky. I’m sorry, but I’ve had enough.”
Grossman turned, his hand reflexively cupping his holster. Jorgenson yelled to him out the window.
“Bob! Frank Jorgenson. Can I have a word?”
The cop lowered his head, curious, and walked over warily. He put a hand on the roof and leaned down, looking in. His stern features softened.
“Frank, didn’t recognize you!”
“New car. You like her?”
JW made eye contact with Grossman, who nodded to him. “JW.”
JW nodded back. “Bob.” His heart was racing.
“She’s nice,” Grossman said, admiring the instrument panel. “Say, how come we never see you at the Rotary anymore?” His Old Spice wafted into the car, and JW noticed a gold rear molar glinting in the sun.
“I don’t get up here much, I got banks across the whole state now.”
“Big shot, eh?” Grossman grinned.
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