Sins of Our Fathers (9781571319128) (38 page)

The interior walls were finished with light blonde bricks, and the bars, gates, and railings were of blue-gray painted steel, a contrast that gave the building a light, airy feeling. The floors were made of a faintly pinkish stone that was
polished to a reflective shine, and the corridor floors had a slight dip, worn thinner in the center by the daily traffic of a hundred years.

There were two main cell houses, each containing a detached, completely enclosed cell block—four tiers of blue-gray painted steel bars, cells, and catwalks—that sailed like a battleship inside in its own private, bounded ocean, never touching the outside walls. The other house, D block, had five tiers.

But what really characterized the prison was its enormous windows, which let in a wash of high milky light of the kind that would suitable for a painter's studio. This was especially true in the cell houses, whose exterior walls were three-quarters glass. In fair weather, these steel-framed window walls could be operated with levers to completely open the cell blocks to the breeze. The effect was of soaring freedom, which was sometimes a torture, but more often a balm.

The catwalks of JW's cell block had a catwalk that led along the cells like the gunwales of a battleship. During open hours, prisoners who were not at work stood on the walkways and leaned over the jointed pipe railings, talking or staring out the windows at the world beyond the walls. Otherwise they congregated by the telephones and exercise equipment that stood under the vast window walls in the wide stone aisle of the first floor.

Yet despite the beauty of the windows, and of the pipe-jointed railings and the pink floors, the cells themselves were instruments of torture. Numbered with black stencils, each was a mere six feet wide by nine deep, its front wall of bars the perfect receptacle for the guards' night sticks. The cell offered neither space nor privacy, nor room to think too far beyond the mundane and the daily, and JW hadn't
anticipated this closing of his mental world. Each cell held a single metal bunk rack hung from the wall with two solid steel brackets, a tiny sink, an attached metal desk with a built-in stainless stool, a bookcase, and a stainless toilet without seat or lid, which sat in full view of inmates and guards, and of escorted visitors and administrators of both genders. All showers were on the first floor, at the far ends of each cell house, and afforded a similar lack of privacy.

At some point, in light of these conditions, modesty inevitably gave way to a sense of indifference, as if the men there were little more than cattle. Over time, JW had come to share this immodest apathy, with one notable exception—he still closely guarded one last important secret: that he was, in fact, innocent, at least of the crime he had confessed to. He couldn't stop wondering if the space he bought Johnny Eagle had even been capitalized on in the wake of the events on the reservation.

It was a warm September day again, a little over a year after his arrest, and the windows in his cell block stood open to let in the breeze. Moving air lifted things and blew away the smells of defeat that sometimes seemed to emanate from the steel itself. He lay on the bunk in his first-tier cell, reading a copy of
The Economist
from the library and listening to the radio on low. Radios and TVs were supplied for good behavior, and came in clear plastic housings so inmates couldn't hide contraband in them. Cell phones, tablets, and computers were forbidden, and all communication with “the streets,” as the guards called the world outside the prison wall, went through monitored channels.

JW had tried several times to find news of Jacob and Johnny Eagle since his arrest, but he hadn't turned up anything
reliable. Carol and Julie had visited shortly after he was incarcerated, and JW asked them what they knew. Sitting opposite him in the visiting room, separated by a five-foot sea of blue carpet, Carol looked disconcerted. “Honey,” she said, “I guess I just don't understand any of this.”

“I don't expect you to,” he said. Then he asked if they knew whether Jacob had survived the shooting. They said they thought he had, but that they'd heard he was in a long-term care facility. When his subsequent questions went unanswered, he eventually stopped asking.

Then he heard of a new Ojibwe inmate from northern Minnesota, and he hunted the man down in woodshop. The inmate told him he'd heard about the shooting, and that the boy had died. JW was not permitted to make unsolicited telephone calls, so he sent letters to Eagle and to Mona, apologizing and begging for forgiveness. These, too, went unanswered.

Over the following months, his world had slowly contracted to what could be found within the prison walls. No one came to visit him. No one wrote or called. And as a result, JW turned increasingly inward. He became wiry and jaded and focused on the job at hand. But in idle moments he would think back to the events leading up to his arrest, shifting and re-shifting them until patterns of meaning that had seemed entirely clear grew murky and confused. His greatest source of comfort was a clear sense that he had behaved honorably, even if no one outside knew it. And yet—

Jacob.

He spent days mulling over minute details of the entire last year of his free life, building vast gossamer webs of cause and effect, and then tearing them to shreds, forcing himself to stick only to the known facts, and to abandon any thoughts of happy
endings, of karma and people getting what they deserved. That way lead to the unending dry road of depression and loneliness. He was beyond that now.

In the end, he told himself, life was not joy but catastrophe. There was no way around it, and so he needn't feel so bad. We all lose everything in the end. For him it was just a little sooner, and he had at least done it for a cause.

And yet there was the boy.

It burned at him, even though he couldn't imagine having done anything differently. His mistake was that he had acted too late, resisted Jorgenson too late, and been too slow on the uptake. In short, his were defects of speed and intelligence, perhaps, but not of character.

And yet.

He probably never should have gotten involved with Jacob. Had he not made him care, then at least the shooting wouldn't have happened. But then he doubled back yet again. Given the circumstances, the racism, the shackling arms of the past reaching forward, guiding everybody into ignorance of the past—could it have gone any other way? Given Grossman, could it have gone any other way? Was it even responsible to contemplate? Had he acted with the necessary kid gloves? Was it not his duty to first do no harm? Had he always been a prisoner of circumstance? Was he a killer, just the same?

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.