Sins of Our Fathers (9781571319128) (23 page)

“What was his name?” Eagle said softly.

JW looked at him with a start, drawn back out of his reverie. “Chris. Christopher John White. I tried to call him CJ, but it never took. He hated it.” He smiled and shrugged.

“How did he die?”

“It was a car crash, just outside of town. Bob Grossman said he was high and drunk. A one-car crash, thankfully. Deer jumped out and he lost control. Totally random. The real kicker: I was supposed to help him with his brakes the night before, but because it was the end of the month, I was working overtime at the bank.”

Eagle blew out air. “I'm sorry.”

JW nodded and sipped his beer. Toed some sand on the sidewalk. “It doesn't matter,” he said. “You just have to learn to deal with it. Or not.” He chuckled painfully.

“It's hard to know what people need,” said Eagle. “I wasn't there enough for my wife either.”

JW glanced over at him, but Eagle just picked at his bottle label. It was clear he didn't want to say more.

JW studied his beer bottle. “I feel different now,” he said. “At least when it comes to the gambling. Cured by the snake that bit me, I guess.”

Eagle glanced over and saw that JW was barely hiding a smile.

“Seriously though,” JW continued, “I am reading the Big Book. But being out here, I don't know. Somehow it's taking me back to my youth. Making things more bearable.”

Eagle nodded. “Someday I hope we won't need casinos,” he said.

JW nodded. There was a brief silence before he spoke again. “Why don't you work toward that then?” he said. His heart was racing. While the exchange had developed naturally, this was the moment he had been working toward since he first got out here. “Set up a bank,” he suggested. “It's what you do. I mean, the wild rice business is nice, but you could get some economic development going. Let's face it. There's no one else up here that could do what you do.”

Eagle regarded his Summit, the ochre grains on the label glowing in the long rays of the sunset. The paper was wrinkling from the moisture.

“You want to help me?” Eagle kept staring at the bottle, his expression unchanged, and with his thumb he began to peel off the label. “You probably figured that's what the new building is.” He glanced at JW.

JW suddenly felt cautious. He looked away. Was this a trap?

“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 his 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.