“Mazaan,” he said by way of explanation, then realized it provided none. “Wild rice hulls. It’s like soot. Sticks to everything.”
“I know. I recognized the color. Like toasted buckskin.”
JW looked at him with some surprise. Jorgenson shrugged.
“What, you don’t think I know anything about Indians? I used to spend time on the reservation when I first came up here, back before we took you on. Chasing squaws and doing sweats.”
“You’re kidding.”
“Don’t you remember? I used to talk to you about vision quests, all that new-age stuff.”
JW remembered, flashing back briefly to some of their long talks over beers in Jorgenson’s office after-hours at the bank. They had discussed meditation and the nature of the universe, and whether the solar system was really just an atom in the body of an enormous person we call God.
“Turtles all the way down,” JW said.
“That’s right! The old Hindu line.” Jorgenson chuckled as he carved off another bite of his pigs in a blanket.
“Wrong kind of Indians, though,” added JW.
“That’s your problem, right there. You’re too literal,” Jorgenson said.
“Well, what changed?”
“Changed? Bethany.”
Bethany was a divorcée who had come up for a vacation at the enormous lake home she received in the settlement. She was a born-again follower of Dr. James Dobson, and not long after she arrived on the scene, Jorgenson stopped talking about cosmic consciousness. Gone were the copies of Be Here Now and A Course in Miracles, replaced with The Purpose Driven Life and The Prayer of Jabez. The two of them went on mission trips to Haiti and Guatemala, and took in foster children from Bethany’s mega-church down in Woodbury. Jorgenson embraced his new religion with the same vigor he attacked everything, telling JW of the many wealthy people he met at church on weekends down in the Cities, how he was selling more lakefront properties than the realtors up here, and spouting Bible phrases at work. His subsequent promotion was, he claimed, ordained by God. “I’m telling you, you should join the church,” he had said. “In Proverbs 13:18 it says, ‘Poverty and shame shall be to him that refuseth instruction.’ All you have to do is look around at these Indians.”
“Anyway,” Jorgenson continued, “what have you found?”
“Nothing solid yet,” replied JW.
Jorgenson was silent for a moment, chewing. “You called a meeting to tell me that?” he said finally, after a swallow.
The waitress was a wiry woman named Judy. She thumped a coffee mug down and poured it full from a plastic pot, which she then set on the table. “You ready to order?”
“The number three,” JW said. He opened a creamer and poured it into his coffee as she left. He stirred it with a spoon, then took a sip. “Except that I think he may be smoking pot.”
“Jesus! Well, that’s something!” Jorgenson brightened, leaning forward. “That’s definitely something. Did you see him?”
JW leaned in and picked up his butter knife. Played with it absentmindedly between his thumb and forefinger, speaking low.
“His son said something about it over the bug and I think I heard him doing it, but I’m not positive,” he said. “I think he keeps it in his safe.”
JW saw the light catching the edge of Jorgenson’s gray whiskers as he resumed chewing, more quickly now. He could tell this was exactly the sort of evidence Jorgenson had been hoping for.
“We get him busted for drugs, the feds’ll definitely reject the charter.” He stabbed a piece of sausage and shoved it in, thinking as he chewed.
“I said maybe.” JW sipped his coffee and watched him.
“Well, find out! Fuck. If they’re building, you know they’re gonna be applying any day,” said Jorgenson. “We need this. Hell, you need this.” He swallowed and swigged from his cup.
JW set his coffee down and folded his hands on the table.
“First I need to work out a payment plan on my second mortgage,” he said. He watched Jorgenson with the unblinking poker face he had used many times when rejecting loan applications. He had been pondering this move for some time. Jorgenson needed him and it was reasonable to seek some protection for Carol. Jorgenson stopped chewing and studied him for a moment, then nodded with the air of someone figuring out they’d just been taken in by a carnival barker.
“So that’s what this is about. You called a fucking meeting because you’re worried I’m going to foreclose on you.” He shook his head and put another piece of sausage in his mouth. “You used to be smarter than that. You get the dope on this guy and then we’ll talk.” He chewed, avoiding JW’s eyes.
JW took the tiny spiral notepad out of his shirt pocket and set it in a slice of sun on the table, the metal spiral curling like a silver spring. He opened to the page he had scrawled on, and noticed his hand was shaking slightly. He had confronted Frank many times over the course of their relationship, but never with stakes this high.
“Then you want to tell me what this is?”
He turned the pad around and plowed it across the table. Jorgenson read the note he had written there—Bank’s b/c of what her boss did—then turned back to his food. JW watched him closely. He avoided eye contact, but resumed chewing. “That’s a blind alley, John. If I were you, I’d focus on the pot. Don’t waste your time chasing bullshit.” He finally glanced at JW and went back to eating with an air of nonchalance, leaving the notepad untouched where JW had placed it.
JW had found a soft spot, he was sure of it. He sat back, consciously controlling his face and his eyes—open, studious, unflinching. But Jorgenson wouldn’t make eye contact again. JW could sense that he was hiding a weakness, some exposure that could be exploited. But what? He sought to expand the beachhead. “Is this something personal between you and him?”
Jorgenson glanced up at him and kept chewing, but then he looked around and leaned in, his eyes small and his fists balled around his fork and knife. “She worked for me in Minneapolis, okay? So the fuck what. I canned her. Worst employee I ever had. She tried to bring some equal-opportunity lawsuit. You know how they are. She was a fucking cunt.”
Jorgenson stared at JW for a moment, snorting like a bull, then took another bite. JW watched Judy bring a check to the table of people behind him. He nodded, studying his adversary. “I want you to work out that payment plan,” he said.
Jorgenson stopped eating. Blood rose to his face. For a second JW thought he was going to explode. He pursed his lips as if he had tasted something disgusting, then leaned in again, closer.
“Fuck you,” he said, gesturing at JW with his butter knife. “What you did was illegal. I could have your ass in prison. You really want to fuck with me?” He was breathing hard and staring straight into JW’s eyes. “Do you have any idea how many people I know? What kind of resources I can bring to bear against you? You are way out of line, pal, trying to threaten me over some equal-opportunity bullshit when you committed a fucking felony. I can’t believe I’m hearing this, and from a fucking friend.”
JW’s bluff had evaporated in an instant. He looked out over the highway. He had been outplayed, regardless of whether there was anything to his hand in the first place. “I’m sorry,” he said, trying to look friendly.
Jorgenson calmed. He sat back. “Look,” he said. “I’m trying to do you a favor here, so quit being such a cocksucker. You take the pot out of the safe, you put it in the desk drawer, and we call the cops. You saw him smoking. It’s that simple.”
JW lifted his hands in surrender. “Fine. If it’s there.”
Jorgenson nodded and put down his napkin. “It’s there.” He slid to the end of the booth as if to leave, but instead of rising he paused. “I know the mortgage is a concern. You do your job well, we’ll talk. But I need leverage to justify things too, and I really don’t like being threatened, John. Is that clear?”
“I wasn’t threatening you, Frank. I was asking. For Carol—”
“Fuck that
—”
“Look, whatever I’ve done in the past, I’m the one who’s risking my ass, and I deserve to know the full story.”
Jorgenson looked at him, shook his head, and smiled. “Well, now you do. Next time you want a fucking meeting, bring me something solid.”
Jorgenson stood and left without looking back, waving and stopping to backslap or shake hands with men at the various tables he passed on his way out.
JW nodded to himself. He should have thought his approach through more carefully, and he should have had a solid fallback position. The waitress brought him his number three as Jorgenson walked out the door.
“Did you gentlemen want your check?”
JW glanced up at her and sighed, then forced a smile. “Sure,” he said, and she went off to ring the two of them up.
18
Ernie, Caulfield, and Supersize Me were still turning rice over in the parching pan when JW got back. He could smell it as he walked to his trailer. He changed clothes and headed back out to help.
The air was warm and dry. A cloud of smoke billowed off the parching fire. He waved to Ernie and Caulfield, then entered the barn. Supersize Me was weighing in a new load that two ricers had just brought in. JW pulled a bulk bag of rice from one of the pallet racks and carried it to the packager. He had just set it down on the counter when Eagle stepped into the pole barn.
“You’re back,” he said, standing over JW.
“Yup.”
“Why don’t you let that go and come on inside for a sec. I got something to ask you about.”
It was impossible to read his face with the bright light behind him, but JW sensed something in his tone that set him on edge. His mind leaped to the bug.
“In the house?”
“Yeah.”
“Okay.” He carried the bag back to the pallet rack and followed Eagle out of the pole barn. He noticed that Ernie was watching him with a scowl as he turned to follow Eagle up to the house. They walked in, then went down the hall to his office. JW eyed the top desk drawer as Eagle turned to look at him.
“Why do you look so nervous?” Eagle asked.
“I don’t know. Do I?”
Eagle turned and opened the closet.
“I don’t know. Maybe not. I keep the safe in here,” he explained.
He pulled his Aeron chair over and perched on the edge of it as he leaned down to spin the dial. It clicked faintly as each number passed the set point. He spun it to zero, then looked up and saw that JW was watching.
“Actually, do me a favor and look the other way,” he said. “No offense, but it’s all my cash at the moment. If something happened I wouldn’t want you to be the first person I think of.”
“Yeah, sure. Sorry,” said JW, making a mental note of the zero mark. He moved closer to the desk and looked out the window at his pale blue trailer nestled under the reddening oak leaves.
The clicks stopped and Eagle turned the lever and opened the safe. JW glanced down, but Eagle’s shoulder blocked his view. Eagle reached inside for some cash. JW shifted slightly and glimpsed what looked like a baggie of marijuana on the bottom of the safe, below the shelf. His heart leaped. Eagle stuffed it farther back into the safe, in the process uncovering an old bill. Eagle pulled it out and JW looked back out the window.
“Thanks,” said Eagle. “You ever seen one of these?”
JW turned and Eagle handed the bill to him as if it were an offering. He took it carefully in both hands. It was a five-dollar note with an Indian chief in full headdress on its face. It looked almost like an ancient counterfeit bill.
“What is it, a phony?”
Eagle laughed. “Oh no, it’s real. It’s called a Chief Onepapa Silver Certificate, 1899. The only US bill ever to feature an Indi’n.”
“I never even heard of it,” said JW. “Surprised there were any.”
“I was, too.”
“It must mean a lot to you.”
Eagle nodded. “Symbols have power for me. Same reason I keep these rice books by hand in this old ledger. Indi’ns who didn’t understand money lost most of their land in this state to white traders whose most powerful weapons were the phony debts they wrote in these ledger books.”
JW nodded and handed it back.
Eagle took it and put it back in the safe gingerly, then pulled out some cash. “Okay,” he said, “there’s two thousand dollars. Four hundred for the knockers who just delivered, three hundred for each of the guys in the barn, and you and Ernie each get five.”
“I thought Ernie did the money.”
“Yeah, well, I had a talk with him about that. I just think that with your skills as a banker, it makes more sense to have you handle it.”
JW nodded. “Okay. Why cash?”
Eagle smiled. “Don’t worry. We pay our taxes. But this isn’t white America. Lot of these folks don’t have bank accounts. I don’t think Caulfield’s ever had one, except when he was in the Army. And, no offense, but most of ’em wouldn’t feel welcome going to the bank in town to cash a check.”
“I see. Makes sense.”
Eagle pushed the safe door shut with his cowboy boot. He reached down and spun the dial.
“Good. Now I gotta make some calls.”
JW walked back through the house, taking it in differently than he had when he broke in. The home felt almost like a post-and-beam warehouse, and yet it was cozy. The expansive table in the dining area was too large for Eagle and Jacob, and it was almost completely covered by what looked like homework and house plans. Across the room, a sliding glass door stood open onto the backyard. The eating area flowed into a gorgeous kitchen with commercial-quality appliances and stone countertops, but bare sheet-rock on the walls. He went back out the front door.
In the pole barn, he paid the harvesters, who had brought in two hundred pounds of green rice. He got them to sign a receipt, and then he paid the workers as Eagle had instructed. Ernie looked insulted when he handed him his money. At first JW thought he wasn’t going to take the bills, but then he wordlessly grabbed the wad and stuffed it in a pocket.
“This wasn’t my idea,” explained JW. He counted what he had left and realized that Eagle had overpaid him. He should have had five hundred-dollar bills left for himself, but he had fifteen. He folded the bills and tucked them into his pocket, then headed back up to the house. The new role of paymaster provided him with a cover of sorts. He tiptoed up the deck stairs and eased the screen door open. He stepped inside, closed it silently behind him, and walked quietly down the carpeted hall, hoping to overhear something as he neared the office.
“But why the delay?” he heard Eagle say. “Are there any other banks you’re doing this with?”
The floor creaked and JW realized he’d almost surely given himself away. He knocked lightly on the frame and stepped into the study. Eagle snapped a pencil in half. He was so engrossed in the call that it looked as if he hadn’t even noticed the floorboard. He looked up as JW entered, obviously frustrated. But he quickly masked it and waved JW forward.
“Hold on, Glen. Just a minute, please.” He cupped a hand over the phone and gave JW his attention.
“I think you handed me an extra thousand by mistake.” JW handed the money back. Eagle looked surprised.
“Are you sure about that?”
“Johnny, I know I’ve had a gambling problem, but I’m not one of those white traders you were talking about. I know that was a test.”
Eagle’s face flushed and softened. He held up a finger, then put the phone back to his ear.
“Glen, I gotta get back to you. Okay, thanks.”
He hung up, clearly upset by the call. He tossed the phone on his desk and turned to JW with an apologetic look.
“I used to give the same one to my cash tellers,” JW said, “and if you’re half the banker I think you are, you’ve got a ledger that accounts for everything down to the penny. You probably even photocopied these.”
Eagle looked at him for a moment, then his poker face fell
away and he opened his top drawer. JW’s heart leaped, but Eagle pulled out a set of photocopies of the bills. He set them on the desk. He shrugged.
“Yeah,” said JW, secretly relieved. “So don’t treat me like I’m some kind of criminal. Okay?” He turned and walked out.
“Wait. I’m sorry.”
JW stopped in the door. He nodded and then continued on his way.
“Look—John—stay for dinner. Please. It would mean a lot to me.”
JW turned back. Eagle looked honestly apologetic. “Okay,” he said. “But I told Jacob I’d work with him on Pride. And we gotta run down to the feed store.”
“Great. When you’re done.”
“Okay.” JW took another step, but paused again in the door and turned back. “Johnny—” he said, and then waited for Eagle to look up. “My friends call me JW.”
19
JW returned to the trailer and thought over his plan. He knew Eagle zeroed out his safe dial when doing the combination. That meant if he could record it somehow, he should be able to crack it. He plugged the receiver in and listened on the earbuds to see if Eagle would open it to put the thousand dollars back, but just then he saw him step out onto the porch. He put the device away, disappointed.
As he and Jacob drove into town, JW endured a nonstop barrage of questions and observations about horses. Something had turned on inside the boy.
“When they’re grazing, why is it that if you step toward their flank from behind they move away, but if you step from in front they just lift their heads?”
“Because they can’t run backward. Coming from behind is running them off. From in front it’s either pushing them away or saying hello.”
“Can they really feel a fly?”
“Why do you think they flick their skin?”
“But—are they like people?”
“In a lot of ways,” he nodded. “They’re herd animals, so they’re social like us. If you can manage a horse, you can manage anybody. It’s all the same principles.”
The kid was out there in the pen every afternoon and evening now, and JW had noticed that the horse wasn’t planting his feet or pinning his ears anymore. He had heard the boy and his father arguing about how Jacob was skipping his homework in order to be with the horse, and how he was getting Ds in his classes. There was a way Eagle could check online to see the status of Jacob’s homework in every class, but by the time it was posted it was always too late to do anything about it. This constant struggle was driving Eagle crazy. JW made a mental note to keep what he heard over the bug about this and other topics to himself, so he didn’t give himself away. He had to focus on what he had to do.
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