Sins of Our Fathers (9781571319128)

by Otto, Shawn Lawrence

  In the end, he always concluded, he was who he was. Just as Eagle and Jacob were who they were, and Grossman was who he was. People had their roles in the play, and sometimes bad deeds led to good endings, and good deeds led to bad ones. It was all a big gamble, really, and thinking one could predict the outcome was hubris. Nature did not have a human morality, and chance led down strange alleyways. Why did he get that jack of hearts? The odds were totally against it. Everything would have been different. Why did a deer jump out in front of Chris when it did?

  Chance.

  The men played poker on the floor of the cell block, all day long, every day. Penny hands. He could hear them now.

  Lady Gaga sang low over his small radio. Baby, I was born this way. The Economist was three months old, but it had an interesting article on the reinvention of America for the new global economy, and how this was happening because of innovation and increased corporate competitiveness, particularly in the manufacturing and financial-services sectors. The future was bright for the companies that knew how to capitalize in this new environment. He couldn’t help but think of Eagle and Jorgenson and the seminars he used to teach. He turned the page. Full-page ad for Las Vegas. What happens there stays there. Pretty blonde in low-slung white satin, boobs hanging half out (come hither, they call), laughing and gripping a guy’s arm, five o’clock shadow, collar open, perfect white teeth, young and rich and happy with their gorgeousness. This is how we see luck.

  He set the magazine down. The steel wall above his bunk had a twenty-seven-inch square that was painted a darker gray. Charcoal, not the pleasing blue-gray of the rest of the steel in the cell block. It was the one place where personal effects could be displayed, according to the prison fire code. Taped in the square was a Valentine’s Day card from seven months ago. He reached up and took it down—rough paper, faux-torn edges—and opened it for the umpteenth time. It bore a photo of Julie behind rubber bars in a funhouse jail cell, crossing her eyes. I miss you, Daddy. Love, Julie, was written beneath it. He smiled.

  Something had changed with Julie in recent months. She was writing him letters, and she was opening up in ways he hadn’t seen since the old days. Perhaps his absence made him the perfect listener: a grateful recipient of any observation, no matter how mundane. But whatever the cause, the change was a source of great joy for JW. On low days, he would pull her letters out and reread accounts of boy troubles and the brutal competition between eighth-grade girls, of her science homework and the trees she had identified. She wanted to explore the oceans, she wrote, and was thinking of becoming a marine biologist. After all, ninety percent of life on Earth happened below the surface.

  The song ended and the station went to a commercial break. He stuck the card back up on the wall and turned back to the magazine, propping himself up on his elbow. Copper mining in Alaska, thirty-one tribes up in arms, more water troubles, Tiffany CEO opposed, arbitrage and currency trades, Goldman Sachs and SolarCity, Tesla electric cars charging forward, gold and palladium market moves on the dollar, sockeye salmon spawning, the rebirth of Ford and GM, auto sales up worldwide, China as the future. His thoughts drifted to banking and corporate competition, currency manipulation and microlending, and then suddenly he realized that this line of thinking had been prompted subliminally: a radio commercial was blathering on about some new bank with a variant of an irritating jingle he had heard so many times before. “New home? New car? New business?” Something about the announcer’s voice was familiar. “Get the lowest rates online at Nature’s Bank, the cold country’s best source for hot cash!”

  36

  Nature’s Bank was hung with a vinyl banner proclaiming its Grand Opening! A new drive-through canopy jutted out from the southeast corner of the community center. The window faced southeast to the wetlands and the fire station beyond. Finished in the stacked flagstone-and-wood style of the community center, it looked as if it had always been there, as if the drive-through were simply a bluff rising from the wetlands and water. Eagle admired it with satisfaction.

  The place was packed. Cars filled the community-center lot and the overflow field beyond, lined up for the grand opening of what his employees were calling Nature’s drive-through.

  Rick Fladeboe stood on the main highway directing traffic, but he was of little use because of the backup. Eagle walked up and down the row of cars that had made it into the driveway, handing out flyers, joking, and shaking hands. When he had embarked on this journey in the dark months after Wenonah’s passing, he never could have imagined this. It was always about the drive forward, the push against the odds, the power of will to make it happen or die trying. It was a means to flush his anger and his guilt, his grief and shame and fundamental distrust of life. More importantly, he could see only now, it was about being a good father, making a meaningful contribution, and surviving without sacrificing everything that he hoped to become.

  Then, just as suddenly, a new goal had emerged: to be not just an Indian bank, but the bank. And here he was, thanking and greeting Indians and townsfolk alike.

  The band had gone all out. Ceremonial drummers drummed and sang near the stone entry waterfall as people flowed in for a sip of hot apple cider and an oatmeal mazaan raisin cookie, and to open a new account and get a chance to win the new Tesla that was roped off and gleaming in the lot. Others came simply to see the new bank and to experience a bit of history.

  “It’s a great day!” a woman yelled to Eagle. He bubbled up with a bright smile.

  “Yes, it is!” he replied joyfully. He looked over to Rick Fladeboe, who was gesturing to get his attention.

  “I let her jump the curb,” he yelled. “Now everybody wants to do it!”

  He pointed to Eagle’s black SUV, which was parked in the lot. Mona hopped down from the driver’s side and a second later Jacob got out of the passenger seat.

  He still looked weak and pale, Eagle noted, but he was alive, and that’s all that mattered. He headed over to greet them.

  “I thought you were supposed to be in school,” he called to Jacob as he approached.

  “Are you kidding? I was dying to get here.” He played it deadpan and Eagle grimaced, drew him in roughly for a quick neck hug, and then shoved a handful of flyers at him.

  “Just hand ’em out?” Jacob asked.

  “Meet all our friends,” Eagle replied.

  Mona stepped up as Jacob moved off with the flyers, and Eagle smelled the aura of tobacco that always seemed to surround her. “I can take some too,” she offered.

  He split the rest of his stack and gave her half.

  “Jacob told me you’re still telling people JW’s responsible for his getting shot,” she said as she took them.

  Eagle hated her constant tirades on this subject, and his face became hard as stone. He and Mona had gone around on the topic so many times over the course of Jacob’s recovery that the exchange had long been chiseled into predetermined paths. Eagle was tired of the anger that resulted from it. She had helped save Jacob’s life, it was true, and she had been loyal in the sense that, in order to build a new relationship with Eagle and Jacob, she followed through on her promise never to communicate with JW. But when she brought it up repeatedly at times like this, he couldn’t help but be irritated.

  “Mona—” His voice came out high and complaining.

  “What?”

  “He framed us. We’ve been over this.”

  “He didn’t.”

  “He was a typical white boy, and he was doing everything in his power to stop this very bank. From day one. Now stop it. Please.”

  He looked around for the next car to greet, but Mona stepped in front of him.

  “‘White boy?’ When did you get all racist, Mister Half-White Boy? He was good for your son, and you should stop saying that. You were nicer when he was around.”

  “Good for him? He got him shot! Your nephew—”

  “I remember that speech of yours the night before—”

  “Look. I don’t want
to argue with you, especially not today,” he said. “Let’s just forget about the whole thing. You have your opinions, I have mine. It’s over. At least for now.” He laughed painfully at his own compromise offer. “Okay?”

  After a moment she nodded.

  “You guys cover the drive and the lot. I’ll walk the highway,” he said, trudging off in an effort to shake the bad spirits, and to get away from her.

  Vehicles idled on the two-lane highway, waiting to turn left into the lot. Eagle waved to Fladeboe and then worked his way down the row of cars and trucks, chatting up the drivers and their passengers, handing out flyers and raffle tickets, thanking them for coming.

  As he worked his way along the row he noticed a Cadillac a few cars ahead. The driver was engrossed in an animated phone conversation, and as he got closer he saw that it was Frank Jorgenson. He handed a flyer to the car in front of him and moved forward, his heart ticking up. Jorgenson’s window was down and he could hear a voice over the car’s audio system.

  “They’re all pulling their money out,” he heard the caller on the other end saying in an alarmed tone. “Even the white people—”

  “I can see that!” Jorgenson barked at the dashboard.

  “What should I do?” Eagle heard the voice say, and he recognized it as Sam Schmeaker’s.

  He rapped on Jorgenson’s hood, making him jump in his seat, his face washed white with panic.

  Eagle laughed. “Mr. Jorgenson,” he said.

  “You stay the fuck away from me.” Jorgenson fumbled at his arm rest and his window began to close. He tried to pull out onto the shoulder, but he was completely boxed in.

  Eagle laughed again and shook his head. “You don’t have to worry about that,” he said. “Just wanted to welcome you to the new bank.” Then he leaned in close to make sure Jorgenson could hear him through the glass. “Wenonah’s bank,” he said. “It was her dream.” He stared in at Jorgenson’s pale face and saw his chin tremble.

  The cars ahead moved forward a notch and traffic loosened momentarily. Jorgenson cranked the wheel of the Cadillac onto the gravel shoulder and sped away, kicking up a cloud of dust that settled over the other cars.

  A horn honked and he turned to see one of the women from the tribal council grinning in the next car. “Give me a damn flyer!” she said. He grinned and resumed walking the line, feeling relieved.

  The three of them—Eagle, Jacob, and Mona—spent the rest of the afternoon in a state of suspended joy, a lofted floating sensation that Eagle could only liken to what he had felt at his wedding to Wenonah, wrapped in the well-wishes of nearly everyone they knew, plus a hundred new friends. But this day also had a somewhat bittersweet quality, because of the circumstances surrounding its inception.

  At four o’clock, Mona gave him the keys to the Bronco and the three of them piled in. The next big wave of customers consisted of people stopping by after work, but Eagle was confident the staff could handle it. They had been training for this day for a month. He had something important to do before it got too late.

  The cemetery was a quarter mile from Waterfowl Lake. Interspersed in the tall grasses were a haphazard mixture of spirit houses, crooked whitewashed crosses, and homemade tombstones hung with wreaths. The graves were set at odd angles to one another, placed on the edges of hillsides or tucked in stands of birch trees. The stones and crosses bore the names of his people. Stella Two Bulls. Eddie Musher Arnason. George Bigwolf.

  The spirit houses were the spookiest for him—low-slung mausoleums with shingled or birchbark roofs, moss-covered and creepy. Their wooden-slat walls covered the aboveground bodies and possessions of the dead, all of which were visible through the slats. The glimpses of clothing and hair still gave him the willies. Feathers hung from nearby trees.

  Wenonah’s grave had a conventional tombstone; he had seen to that. She had never expressed a wish one way or another—death had always seemed to be decades away—but he knew he would not be able to handle the thought of her rotting there on the ground in the wind. Her grave was on a hill with a view of the lake, just as she would have liked. He remembered her joy in leading Jacob by the hand along its watershed when he was a little boy. They would wind along the edges of the wetlands, following the scat trails of animals and the tracks of pheasants, and she would point to the different kinds of dung and tell him stories about the deer and the fox, the rabbit and the bear.

  The gravesite had a view of a corner of the community center, far in the distance. It wasn’t the corner with the bank, but that didn’t matter. She had a piece of it just the same. And the bank was named after her greatest passion.

  He stood by while Jacob approached the grave, carrying a fall bouquet of purple asters and green hydrangea blossoms that glowed with a pale aquatic light in the long afternoon sun. This was Eagle’s first time back here with him since the funeral, and he saw that the boy’s face was puffy around the eyes. He squatted down and placed the bouquet in a short metal holder that Eagle had put there for that purpose in the first weeks following her burial, when neighbors and friends in Minneapolis were still bringing them meals or taking Jacob for the weekend. He would drive up and spend Saturday afternoons with Wenonah, bringing her fresh bouquets of purple hyacinths and daisies. He would sit next to her in the seedling grasses and look out over the lake, wondering what to do now that all his shortcomings were clarified in the sharp inner mirror of anger and grief.

  Now the grass was long and dotted with yellow dandelions, clover, and the curled violet remnants of alfalfa blossoms. Jacob knelt in them and put a hand on the headstone as if it were her shoulder. He leaned in close and Eagle heard him whisper, “I love you, Mom.” Eagle knew how much he needed this.

  Mona had been to the grave many times herself. At first Eagle would see her in passing, or hovering on weekends, but more recently she had taken to coming during the week, while he worked. He would find her flowers and other offerings when he came up. Now, when Jacob stood away from the headstone, she moved in and squatted next to it. She unbuttoned her top and took something shiny from around her neck. It spun in the sun on a blue silken ribbon. She draped it over the rounded stone and walked away without looking back. When Eagle knelt close he saw that it was her one-year Alcoholics Anonymous medallion.

  He kissed the headstone. He ran his hand over it and felt its cool granite smoothness. He thought of her skin, of her warbled laugh, of lying next to her cool naked body and running a hand over her hips as she told him stories of the Anishinaabeg and their search for the land where food grew on water, reconnecting him to a past he had never known and a future he was eager to explore. He thought of her fiery eyes, too quick to anger, and even quicker to laugh. How could he not have moved back up here? he wondered. How could he not have left his life in Minneapolis, with all its compromises and lost moments? And before that, how could he have spent so much time away from her and their son?

  He stood then, feeling right in this place for the first time. Then he brushed the dirt off his hands and they walked away.

  37

  It was ricing time. Eagle looked up from the winnowing machine and saw Mona struggling to lift a large black lawn-and-leaf bag onto the industrial scale.

  “I can get that,” offered Jacob.

  “Thank you,” she replied.

  Jacob recorded the weight in a notepad and paid the ricer. They shook hands and the man headed to his car, past Ernie and Supersize Me, who were turning rice in the smoke of the parching fire.

  Watching Jacob, Eagle felt a sudden blossoming of pride. His boy was becoming a young man.

  The rice committee had declared the season open unusually late this year. Many of the migratory waterfowl had already spent a few days bobbing around amid the rice stalks, but finding them green, they lifted off and flew south without eating much. Then an Alberta clipper blew in, the great northwest wind that heralds the onslaught of winter in the Northland. The waves lashed at the rice stalks in a cold fury, swamping them and sending them to th
e lake bed. When the surviving stalks were finally ready to harvest, the crop was half what it had been. The biologist told Eagle that it was only on account of the long cool spring and summer that some of the rice was still green and strong enough to withstand the storm.

  Ernie and Supersize Me were back for the season, but Caulfield’s Guard unit had been called up for duty in Afghanistan, so Mona and Jacob pitched in to fill the gap. Jacob was fifteen now, and Eagle noticed his developing muscles and emerging confidence, though he still had an air of fragility.

  Supersize Me had taken Jacob under his wing. He was teaching him how to navigate the finicky moods of the thrasher, a special responsibility that was the next best thing to driving. Jacob assumed the role with careful attention to detail, monitoring the revolutions per minute in the dashboard tachometer and timing the operation for exactly forty-five seconds, unless they were running harder-hulled rice from farther north. He even volunteered to change the engine oil as the season got underway, and Supersize Me assisted, handing him box wrenches, oil-filter wrenches, and shop towels.

  Eagle pulled a full white woven poly bag of clean rice out from the winnower chute. He tied it off and replaced it with an empty bag, then got the winnower going again, its frenetic conveyor squeaking and clacking over the pneumatic howl of the blower. Last year so much had revolved around JW in one way or another, and he was glad to have him gone. They had kept the horse; Jacob still rode him daily and was worlds beyond where he had come with JW. Over the summer, they had taken Pride to horse shows nearly every weekend, and they had begun accumulating blue ribbons and nine-hundred-dollar stud fees.

  Mona came over as he finished shoveling a last load of rice from the wheelbarrow into the winnower. “I need to take a break and cover my tomatoes. It’s supposed to frost tonight.” She wiped the sweat off her face with her upper arm.