Sins of Our Fathers (9781571319128) (21 page)

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.

It was nearly four by the time they pulled into the bumpy North Lake Feed Mill parking lot. The mill itself was a tall, galvanized steel building next to an old railroad spur. There was an old painted ad for Nutrena Feeds way up near the top. Around back, the tower spread out into a long, low L of garage doors into the warehouse. Across the lot was the North Lake Toro & Small Engine Repair. Together, the tower, the warehouse, and the Toro dealership made a big U around the potholed gravel lot. JW backed up to the concrete loading dock by the garage doors.

They both got out, climbed up onto the dock, and walked down to the back door of the mill. JW led the way through a back room, down a narrow hallway with offices and a small restroom on either side, and then into the store. It was full of hardware, traps, poison, hoses, cages, buckets, birdfeeders, and guns. A big window behind the counter looked over the parking lot and the truck scale outside. Manny Peltonen, the mill's owner, was a thin bachelor of about fifty-five who wore striped engineers' coveralls every day. JW grabbed a couple of Dorothy's root beers from the bait cooler and went up to the counter to order the oats. Peltonen was in a good mood, bopping around behind the dusty counter. The register dinged and he handed JW his change.

“Let's get her loaded up.” Peltonen led the way back to the loading dock. But then he noticed Jacob handling the merchandise.

“Can I help you?” he said. He was polite, but JW could sense an undercurrent of suspicion.

Jacob looked up and JW saw a different boy, as if through Peltonen's eyes. His demeanor suddenly seemed surly. His court shoes, loosely tied. His baggy shorts. His loose-jointed, long-fingered movements.

“I'm okay,” Jacob said without making eye contact.

Manny stood for a moment, his eyes running from Jacob to the merchandise rack and back. JW realized what was going through his mind: he didn't want to leave the suspicious Native American boy in the store unattended. “He's with me,” he said.