“We just got our last bit of capital,” Eagle went on. “Treasury’s been dragging their feet for some reason, but we’re going to submit our national charter application on Monday.”
“Jesus. You’re really doing it.”
The telephone rang somewhere inside the house.
“It’s about time my people had a bank. You would know that better than anyone. What do you say? You want to be our token white boy? I could pay you a little more than I can for bagging rice.”
JW saw that Eagle was smiling wryly. Offering friendship and a new future, free of his past, free of the things that had trapped him, perhaps, or at least free of what he had done in response to them. He took a sudden deep breath. “Wow.”
Jacob burst out through the screen door. “Dad,” he said. “There’s a fire.”
21
Eagle’s bank was burning. JW could see the orange flames blossoming through the trees as the pickup lurched recklessly over the bumpy reservation road. They crunched to a stop next to an idling tribal tanker truck and scrambled out into the night.
The flames blew thirty and forty feet high, gulping and roaring with a thunderous power. The tribal firemen rushed to hook up a new hose. A breeze was blowing, feeding the flames up into great gobs that woofed up over their heads. The heat blasted them, burning their faces and the backs of their hands.
The big diesel tanker powered two massive water pumps that snapped the fire hoses taut, shooting powerful blasts into the sky. Three Indian firefighters directed water at the downwind vegetation, while two others kept their hose trained on the building. Orange reflections raced back up the giant arcs, as if the flames were fighting their way back toward the brass nozzles.
“We can’t get it, Johnny, it’s too big!” the fire chief yelled over the hum of the engines.
“You gotta get more water on it!”
“We got the other tanker going for another load! We gotta soak the brush to keep it from spreading or else we’ll have a wildfire!”
JW looked down the slope to the county highway, where two North Lake fire engines idled—a large pumper and a tanker—their emergency lights turning blue and yellow. City firefighters were standing on the shoulder in yellow slickers, smoking cigarettes and talking.
“What about them?” Eagle yelled.
“We canned the agreement with them when we opened our own fire department!” the chief yelled. He powered down one of the massive pumps and started working the big brass union of the slackening fire hose. Water began pouring from the coupling.
Eagle turned to JW. “I need your help!” he said. He jogged down the rocky construction access road to the highway. JW followed him down the makeshift gravel driveway and then along the shoulder, to where the North Lake volunteer firefighters had congregated with their two vehicles. Tony Amaretto, the city fire chief, was a short man with dark hair and a mustache. He stepped forward to intercept them. Eagle was yelling at him even before he stopped running.
“Can’t you people see we need help?” he said, sounding outraged.
“Yes, I can.” Amaretto said. He had the soft voice of an old drinker, and he lifted his hands in a gesture of helplessness. “We don’t have a cooperative service agreement. We’re just here to make sure it doesn’t spread.”
Eagle turned to JW as they stopped, full of disbelief.
“This is crazy,” he said.
JW appealed to the fire chief, who was an old buddy from the local curling club. “Tony, come on. Be a neighbor, eh? What harm can it do?”
“I wish we could, JW—”
“I’ll guarantee it,” Eagle said, his voice desperate. “I’ll guarantee your costs.”
Amaretto looked genuinely upset. “I’m sorry. There’s legal issues. Unless the county directs us, if we don’t have a CSA, we don’t have insurance. One of our guys gets hurt, he’s not covered.”
The trucks sat there rumbling, and JW saw the faces of the firefighters as they stood around on the shoulder or sat inside the vehicles, watching.
“This is insane,” said Eagle, raising his voice. “I’m begging you.”
Up at the construction site, the empty tribal tanker was backing out. Behind it, another one had arrived and was getting into position. JW could hear the beeping over the roar as it backed up.
“Take it up with the tribal council,” said Amaretto. “I wish I could do more, JW. We got it straight from the city attorney.”
“And don’t build right on the edge of the damn town until you can provide proper fire protection!” a firefighter called out from near the cab. Amaretto held up a hand to silence him. He looked apologetically from Eagle to JW.
JW nodded. “I’m sorry, Johnny,” he said.
Eagle shook his head in disbelief, then jogged back up the hill. JW turned to Amaretto.
“I gotta go help him,” he said, then started after Eagle. He saw him pick up a slackened hose and connect it to the new tanker.
“Okay, go!” the tribal fire chief yelled as JW arrived at the top of the hill. The tanker driver powered up the main pump and the hose snapped stiff with water. The firefighters bore in against it, aiming its nozzle, and a blast leaped out onto the fire. But it was a containment operation now. As if to confirm this, the roof collapsed, sending out a blast of heat followed by an eighty-foot plume of sparks that dispersed like fireflies to heaven.
Eagle put his arm around Jacob and drew him close. JW stood helplessly behind in the dark, watching their glistening silhouettes as they watched Eagle’s dream burn. By the time the remaining wall fell into the fire with another enormous blast of sparks, JW had a sense that something permanent had forever changed between them.
The tribal fire chief put a hand on Eagle’s shoulder. He turned him toward the pickup. “There’s nothing more you can do,” he said, waving JW over to join them. “Don’t torture yourselves.” Eagle looked as if he didn’t understand. Jacob tugged at his arm, and Eagle put an arm around his shoulder and the two of them began walking toward the truck. JW followed.
They drove home through a tunnel of darkness and leaves, the roar of the fire echoing in their minds, choking out other thoughts. Finally, Eagle slowed to a stop on the road in front of JW’s trailer, and the roar transformed into the raging thunder of crickets. They sat there for a moment, at a loss for words. JW finally reached up and hooked two fingers around the door handle.
“Johnny,” he said, “I’m so sorry.”
Eagle laughed with disgust. “You know,” he said, his voice hard with a bitterness JW hadn’t heard before, “I find it funny that you lost your job and just happened to move in next door to me and my son. You get my son thinking you’re this great guy—”
“Dad—”
Eagle raised his hand and grasped the air. He dropped his hand to his knee and looked at JW in the glow of the dashboard. His eyes were inflamed.
“What do you know about this?”
JW turned his head away and looked ahead at the yellow road, the bugs flitting in and out of the headlights, bumping blindly over and over at the glass. “Nothing solid,” he said. It could have been anyone from the town, even Grossman, or it could have been oily rags. But he had a strong suspicion.
“You’re working against me, aren’t you,” said Eagle. JW saw it from his perspective for a moment, how everything, starting with the one big coincidence of JW moving in across the street, all fell into place. He had wanted to believe. He had needed to believe.
“No,” said JW. It was a lie, but it was also true in the sense that he never would have burned down the bank. “Johnny—”
“Get out before I do something I regret.”
JW sat for a moment. He wanted to say something, but he couldn’t think of anything that would not come out sounding like an unforgivable betrayal. He stepped out into the night and watched as Eagle pulled away and left him standing alone on the road.
He walked across the dark gravel and through the dewy grass to his shadowed trailer home, soaking hi
s shoes and socks. A form moved in the shadows.
“John White?” a voice said.
Too late, JW saw the man as he stepped out and shoved a pale envelope into his hands.
“You’ve been served.”
He turned and walked back into the shadows, and JW saw the outline of a dark car parked there. The glass of its door gleamed like a knife as the man got in. Then the lights came on and the engine started and the car pulled out and drove away, leaving the sulfurous stench of a new engine’s exhaust hanging thick and noxious in the air.
Inside, he tossed the envelope onto the counter. He went into the bathroom and leaned over the sink. Things had taken a dangerous turn. This was not the kind of thing he’d ever imagined himself doing. And yet he couldn’t escape the feeling that he was responsible for the setting of the fire, at least in part. He took up his toothbrush and covered it with paste. He brushed his teeth and tongue for some time, but he couldn’t get the awful taste of smoke out of his mouth. He spit and watched the water swirl down the drain.
He sat on the edge of the thin mattress and ripped the envelope open. Inside was a note on bank stationery, scrawled in Jorgenson’s handwriting. Honor your commitment, it said, underlined twice. The note covered a formal notice of foreclosure.
JW crumpled the notice in his fist. He turned off the light and sat there in his boxers and white T-shirt. He kicked the flimsy wall.
His gaze rose to the family photo on the nightstand, barely visible, like the memory of a dream. For an instant he felt like smashing it to the floor. Chris, Julie, Carol, and him, all in front of the house, all happy. He grunted and looked away. The sum total of everything he had done. A middling father in a dwindling town, teaching bankers how to rip off Indians.
He reached into the clothes hamper and pulled out the bug receiver. He plugged it in, tuned it, and put the earbuds in. He felt a rush of self-loathing and almost pulled them back out, but in the end he was in this battle to win. He had to win.
He heard the faint sound of running water and the clack of dishes. The dinner plates, he realized. Then the water was shut off, and after a brief moment there was a loud smashing clatter, as if a whole stack of plates had been dropped into the sink. He heard the sound of breathing followed by a startling anguished cry.
The sounds were closer now. Footsteps, the door closing, a faint click, and a dim light went on in the window to Eagle’s office. Then JW heard the closet door opening. His heart leaped, and he rushed into the kitchen and rummaged through the junk drawer until he found the recorder. He punched REC, set one earbud next to the microphone, and put the other in his ear. He listened to the rapid clicks as Eagle spun the safe dial to the zero mark, then recorded the quick spins of the combination.
His heart was racing. He felt as if he were lurking in the room and might somehow be caught. He had the combination! He heard the fine rustling of a plastic baggie. The pot. Eagle was getting stoned, he thought. It was getting even better. He heard the pipe being lit, and the sizzling of the pot in the bowl. He sighed, thinking again of the fire and its consequences. He balanced the earbud and went and poured himself a Dewar’s. JW lifted the glass in a toast to the earbuds still lying on the mattress, and to the man getting stoned beyond them, then downed the harsh firewater in a long gulp that rushed back up and pounded him between the ears.
***
EAGLE HELD THE red calumet in his hand and stared at the rising band of smoke. The pipe had feathers carved into its bowl, and there were stones held to its six-inch stem with leather bindings. He put a disc in the CD player on the bookshelf—“Buffalo Soldier”—and turned the volume down.
He sat back in his Aeron chair, then slowly spun the pipe in his hand, watching the small gray stream of smoke spiral around and around in the holy way of his mother’s ancestors. He looked up at the clock, and his eye fell on a book on his shelf called The Assassination of Hole in the Day by Anton Treuer, an Ojibwe historian and writer. Wenonah had given it to him, and one particular passage had always struck him powerfully. The book chronicled the age-old hostilities between the Dakota and Ojibwe people, fought across the battleground of Minnesota as the Ojibwe migrated west, encroaching on Dakota territory in search of the land where food grew on water. It was a feud fueled by the guns and the economic interests of French traders who wanted the gold of the age: beaver pelts. And yet, despite the often brutal hostilities, each autumn the two great warring tribes of the North would call temporary truces in order to hunt and prepare for winter. The Ojibwe word for it was biindigodaadiwin, which meant “to enter one another’s lodges.” Even in the most heated periods of conflict, biindigodaadiwin was a common practice, he remembered reading. Ojibwe and Dakota would enter one another’s lodges, sleep in the same buildings, smoke the same pipes, form friendships, and even marry. Then they would be at war again the next spring, killing one another and taking the scalps home as trophies—or for bounties paid by the French, the Dutch, and the English.
For Eagle, the biindigodaadiwin was also over.
22
JW woke sweaty from a tangled passage of darkness. His mind lurched into the self-reproaching lucidity that had become an all-too-familiar midnight companion. He rose and paced the dark trailer, his mouth thick and dry, replaying his situation like a caged lion: a fruitless ambulation with no exit. He drank two glasses of water and took an aspirin against the hangover, a trick his father had taught him in junior high, and went back to bed. He dreamed of the wild horses. They milled around near the smoldering embers of Johnny’s bank as the sun climbed past dawn, their many colors visible through the smoke.
In the morning, JW looked outside. Eagle’s Bronco was gone. Ernie and the other Indians were already at work, stocking and turning. The bank fire was distressing, but the wild rice business went on. Ricers were still coming in and Johnny needed them now more than ever, he supposed.
JW sat on the edge of the bed, stiff-jointed and aching, a dull throbbing in his temples, and hardened himself to what he had to do. The fire would not stop the bank. In fact, it was stupid and unnecessary, and would only make his job worse. As sickened as he was by it, he had a larger mission, and that hadn’t changed. If anything, it was more important now than ever. And for this reason, first and foremost, he had to maintain access.
A hot shower cleansed any remaining doubts from his mind. He dressed for work and stepped out into a bracing morning—a high, crystal ring to the air, the thin scent of the fire, and the smell of fall. He crossed the road and headed up the drive toward the wide-open barn as if nothing had happened. But when he neared the parching fire, Ernie stepped out of the smoke and blocked his path. The others continued working silently.
“Good morning,” said JW.
“We don’t need you today.”
“Oh, come on, Ernie.” JW went to step around him, but Ernie blocked his path again.
“Johnny says you’re no longer welcome here.”
His face was as hard as granite.
“Okay. Fair enough.”
JW nodded, worlds shifting. His only chance to maintain access would be through Jacob. As JW passed the paddock, he saw him in the lean-to. He walked over. Jacob ignored him.
“I came to work, but Ernie says they don’t need me today. You want to work on the horse?”
“I can’t believe I trusted you.”
JW had expected this on some level. The kid deserved an explanation, but a disavowal would have to do.
“Jacob, I had no idea that anybody was going to burn down the bank, I promise you. Okay?” And it was true. Jorgenson had hinted at it, he could see in retrospect, but at the time he couldn’t have predicted it.
JW could see that Jacob wanted to believe him, but then the boy pulled away. “I’m going to sell the horse,” he said.
“Don’t do that,” JW said, stepping forward. Firm. He took another step closer, into the lean-to. “Look, I’ve made some pretty bad mistakes. But two things I know for sure. One, I didn’t burn down that ba
nk. And two, you are at the beginning of something really special with Pride. And I’d hate to see you throw that away because you’re mad at me. You set a goal, and you shouldn’t give up on it.”
Jacob looked at him. “Fuck you.”
JW stood frozen. There was nothing to say. “Maybe you’re right.” He walked out of the lean-to and into the pale morning sunlight. He saw his blue trailer in the copse across the road, and headed for it with a growing feeling of resignation.
“Wait.”
JW turned around. Jacob was standing in the lean-to opening. JW softened his face. They stood and looked at each other for a moment, and then Jacob said softly, “Okay, let’s train.”
Jacob walked back into the lean-to and picked up a saddle off the rack. JW stood there for a moment to let the feeling subside. Jacob cinched up the saddle, put the bit into the horse’s mouth, and pulled the headstall up over his ears. He led the horse into the paddock and closed the gate. He climbed on and sat in the saddle, concentrating.
“Okay,” he said. “I’m going to do everything you said.”
Then he lifted the reins, and JW forgot about everything else. Before him was not a rider and horse, but a single living animal, smooth and reflexively intuitive. The boy just needed to be pointed in the right direction. JW threw himself into the task, forgetting temporarily the more unsavory aspects of what he intended to do.
By mid-morning he and Jacob were working Pride at a trot, practicing a more refined way of turning the horse without using the reins. Dust hung around JW’s ankles as the horse turned in the sand, over and over. Several more carloads of Indians arrived, and as they weighed in their fresh rice deposits, most of them observed the unlikely pair. Ernie and Supersize Me stretched a large blue plastic tarp out on the lawn near the paddock to accommodate the extra volume, and soon there were six or seven hundred pounds of rice spread out across it, drying green and purple in the sun. JW felt like heading to his trailer for a drink of water and a break from the sun and dust, but he saw Ernie watching him and decided not to.
Sins of Our Fathers (9781571319128) Page 17
