Sins of Our Fathers (9781571319128) (34 page)

“Today I met with the tribal council, and they voted to dedicate part of this gorgeous new community center to house our new bank. It's not as close to North Lake, but it's still on a main road, and it has one great advantage I hadn't considered: it's next door to the tribal fire department.”

The crowd laughed and applauded again.

“So. What is a bank? A bank is community. A bank is all of us pulling together, and becoming more that the sum of our parts. A bank is hope, and a vision for a brighter, more prosperous tomorrow. Thank you for this great honor. It means more to me than you can imagine. Thank you Anishinaabeg!”

Eagle waved and stepped back as the crowd gave him a huge ovation. JW glanced at Mona as they applauded. He was stunned by the sense of greatness in Eagle's transformation, the effortlessness of it, and the sense of unity and vision he had created in the audience. He felt the hair standing on his neck. The gym was getting hot and stuffy. People were gathering around Eagle in a big crush, seeking to congratulate him.

“Do you want to stay?” Mona shouted over the din.

JW shook his head.

“I don't want to spoil his night.”

She laughed. “You wouldn't. There's a rule that everyone
has to leave animosity outside when they enter a powwow.”

But JW shook his head. Rule or no rule, he was too intimately connected with everything Eagle had spoken about. And then there was the fact that he still had to find a way to stop him, or he would lose everything. Congratulating him now would only make it harder. “We can talk to him later,” he said.

As they walked back through the great entry hall, the colors of the artwork seemed even more vivid, the piled flagstone walls even more palpable and the soaring wood columns even richer. JW wanted to run his hands over everything. He wondered at his heightened senses. Some white people he had known sought this sort of thing out. They clothed themselves in Native traditions like spiritual outfits, traveling to powwows and sweat lodges and pipe ceremonies as if they were horse shows, with more dedication than many Indians. JW had always thought of this as a sort of cultural gentrification, and he found it annoying. People should just be who they were, and he knew that most Indians didn't like such skinwalkers either. But there was something about the sense of connectedness he felt after dancing with everyone, and nobody really caring or judging him, that was undeniable. He felt light, which was making everything more difficult.

They pushed out through the glass doors into the warm dark night and Mona slipped her small hand into his. The sky pulsed down at them, fat stars throbbing with the beat of the drums echoing in his mind. Mona gave his hand a little squeeze at the tailgate and they parted and walked up either side of the truck to their respective doors.

32

JW drove back along the dirt road to Mona's house. She slid over next to him on the fur and stubbed out her cigarette, leaving only the peach and tobacco smell of her hair behind.

“Thank you,” she said.

“For what?”

“I don't know. Just bringing me. Being a good sport with our Indi'n ways.”

“I should be thanking you. Imagine me trying to dance alone.”

She laughed. “It was good to see him honored,” she said. Her face and dark hair were lit softly by the dashboard. “People haven't been too accepting of him until now,” she said.

“Well, it looks like he's overcome that.”

She nodded. “Johnny is a force of nature. He always has been.”

She tilted her head onto his shoulder and put a hand on his knee. Her hair licked at his face, then fell away in the buffeting breeze from the window. He suddenly realized how long it had been since he'd had anybody put a head on his shoulder, or a hand on his knee, and the scents drew a well of emotion up inside him. He turned his face into her hair for a brief moment, letting the smell and the feel of her feed him.

After a moment, Mona spoke again. “I've been thinking
about what you said. About feeling bad instead of trying to make the feeling go away. I haven't had a drink since we talked. I want you to know that's major progress for me.”

“I know it is,” he replied, a little taken aback. “Congratulations.”

“I feel like I've known you for a long time.”

He squeezed her hand and they drove on in silence, the road leaping forward into the headlights, then falling away, frogs and crickets singing in their wake. He remembered a night camping with Julie, when they had hiked to a precipice in the Boundary Waters and lain there looking up. “What if the world is upside down,” she had asked, “and we could fall off into the sky?”

As he and Mona topped the ridge and came down from the heavens, he saw a car turn on its lights as it emerged from the trailer park lane. It turned and headed away down the road toward the highway.

It was a dark night for someone to have driven down that hill and forgotten to turn on their lights, he thought. And then he suddenly realized that it must have been someone coming out of his parking area. As the car neared the curve, his headlights picked up a small hint of red on its back bumper. A vague sense of recognition shot through him, and then the other car turned the corner and drove out of sight. That spot of color was in the same place as the NRA bumper sticker on the back of Sam Schmeaker's car. And the car was dark and sporty, with a slightly elevated back end, just like Sam's.

He slowed the truck, turned into Eagle's barn drive, and came to a stop near the paddock. He could see Pride standing and looking at them, black and white in the throwaway light. Mona rose from his shoulder. He sat there for a moment,
thinking, the green dash lights glowing on him. Should he back out and give chase? If that was Schmeaker, Jorgenson was likely behind it, and that meant he was being outflanked somehow. Mona turned to look at him. She wiped a strand of hair out of her face, tucked it behind her right ear.

“Come up,” she said. Her lips were full and inviting, as if she had just awakened from a nap.

JW turned the engine off and sat there in the dark, thinking again. What could Schmeaker possibly be doing here?

“I should check my house,” he said.

Mona looked at him, trying to understand. “Can I come with?”

It occurred to him that she thought he was rejecting her. “Sure,” he said.

They got out and walked to the lean-to. JW hung the keys on the nail by feel, and saw them glint in the starlight as his eyes adjusted to the dark.

“Come here,” he said. He slipped his hand into hers and they walked together along the faintly visible paddock fence. Pride let out a long low nicker as they passed.

“It's okay,” said JW. “It's just us.”

They crossed the road, the stars pounding down on them, and walked up the drive to JW's trailer.

“How come so few people live up there?” JW pointed over the hill to the rest of the trailers. He wondered if the other car could have been from one of them.

“The band built better housing over by the community center,” Mona replied.

He didn't see any letter or notice outside his trailer, and there was no one lurking in the trees. He climbed the steps and slipped his key into the lock. “You probably want to step back,” he said.

Mona gave him a strange look, but did as he'd suggested.

“I thought I recognized that car,” he explained. “But it was probably nothing.”

She looked around, concerned. He pulled the door open slowly, then stepped in.

The floor creaked as Mona followed him in. The door had been locked, but he was still suspicious. He turned on the light and looked around quickly for anything that was out of order. But everything looked just as it had when he left. Then his thoughts leaped to the bug receiver.

“Give me a second, okay?”

She nodded and he stepped into his bedroom and partially closed the door, leaving just a narrow crack. He sat on the bed in the starlight and drew the clothes hamper between his legs. He plunged his arm into the clothing and felt the plastic box, then the cord. It was still there. He sat in the twilight, staring at the door. He pushed the clothes hamper away and got on the floor. He moved to the bedside table and reached under the mattress. His notepad was gone.

He tried to think back. This was definitely where he had been hiding it, but it was also true that he had been pretty disoriented the last time he had it out, when he returned from seeing Carol.

Could he have left it in the truck? Was he being paranoid?

The bedroom door edged open and Mona stepped in.

“Are you okay?”

“Yeah, I'm sorry.”

She sat down and slipped an arm around him, then tentatively kissed his jawline, sending a current down both sides of his chest.

“Come up to my place. Please.”

He glanced out the window up toward her house. It was much closer to Eagle's than his trailer was. If something happened, he would be in a better position up there with her. He nodded.

She took his hand and opened the door wide. He stood to follow and she led him back through the kitchen and then out under the stars. He flipped off the light and pushed the trailer door shut, and they strolled across the dark, foggy lane, the trees heaving and lurching overhead. The air had grown warmer.

“Just a sec,” he said. “I just want to make sure I didn't forget something in the truck.”

She followed him back to the pickup. He opened the door and checked the seat by the dome light. He looked on the floor and felt in the crack between the seat and the back, but the notepad wasn't there.

“What are you looking for?” she asked.

“Nothing,” he said. “Just a note I had written to myself. No big deal.” He closed the door. It would have to wait until morning.

Her fingers felt small as she led him up her flagstone steps. She stepped up onto her front porch, pushed open the front door, and led him inside.

Despite its pristine outer appearance, the inside of the house was only partly finished, not unlike Eagle's, but her work areas were lived in. The living room, to the left, was two-by-sixes and bare insulation. Beer bottles, tree stumps, rugs, and a stereo with huge speakers suggested that this was where the party sounds had emanated from.

Mona saw him looking at it. She leaned back against a foyer wall, lifting her ankles to pull off her tall boots.

“I know, it's a pit,” she said.

“No, no, it's not that. It's just, I thought it would all be finished.”

“I ran out of money,” she said. “And anyway, we Indi'ns do things in stages.”

He nodded.

“It's also more like a rubber room that way,” she said with a smile. With her boots off, she was about two inches shorter. He looked down at her bare feet and she took his hand. “Come with me. You'll like this better.”

She led him up a short carpeted hallway and opened the door into a clean bedroom that filled the end of the house nearest Eagle's. In contrast to the debauchery of the living room, it was serene in here.

“See? This is more to your taste, right?”

“I'm sorry,” he said. “I'm not one to judge.”

“You're the only guy that's made it past that door.”

He looked at her, not sure if she was serious. “Really?” he asked.

“Stop fucking this up.” She put her arms around his waist, her cheek on his shoulder. “We're both assholes, but we try. Now let's stop thinking so much for a little while.”

He held her as she pressed herself to him. He felt himself growing hard against her, but his eyes were still drawn to the corner windows facing the street.

He pulled her tighter, his mind racing.

“I'll be right back,” she said, and then walked into the master bathroom.

JW turned and looked out the window. Down over the paddock and through the swaying branches, he could just make out his trailer. What could Schmeaker have been up to? he wondered.

“Hey.”

He turned. She was wearing a blue-flowered negligee, and her bare feet melded into the plush carpet as she walked, her breasts moving freely under the silky fabric.

She hung her arms around his neck, and wove her fingers into his hair at the back of his scalp. “Do any Indi'ns ever call you whitey?” she asked. “Besides me?”

“Sometimes. Ernie does.”

“I like it,” she said. She kissed him. Her lips were warm and her breath was piney. “I think you should own it.” She kissed him again. “I'm usually attracted to losers and bad guys. Which one are you?” she asked him, her lips plush against his as she talked. He could feel her breasts on his chest.

He grunted. “Both. But I'm trying not to be.”

She put her lips to his neck. “Good,” she said into his ear, “'cause I could use a change.” She bit his lobe and then stepped back slightly into the starlight. She unbuttoned his shirt and pushed it off, kissing his shoulder. Then she stood back, opened her silky robe, and let it fall. Her wild-rimmed eyes seemed strangely vulnerable, and she stepped in to hold him, skin on skin.