“Yeah, well, what can I say?” Jorgenson shrugged nonchalantly.
“Well, I can’t tell you how much the boys appreciate all the contributions you steer our way from the big dogs in Minneapolis. I think every business owner in town feels that way. You do a lot of good.”
“Well, JW brings some good ones in too, I’m sure—”
“Yeah, but he’s puny compared to you, Mr. Statewide.” Grossman winked and grinned at JW, who shook his head in obligatory mock disgust. He and Grossman had run against each other for a city council seat several years back, and had both lost to a retired Republican environmental attorney who had moved up from Edina. The competition and shared defeat created a kind of poking friendship between them. Carol had called them “frenemies” ever since.
“Well, it’s no problem,” Jorgenson said. “I’m happy to help. You know that.”
“Yes we do. Say, I tell you we’re going to try a snowplow parade this year, like they do down in Frazee?”
“That’ll be good,” Jorgenson laughed. A hot wind blew through the car. “Hey, I called you over because, well, frankly I’m a little freaked out. JW just told me he broke into a house on the reservation, and I need to report it.”
JW’s heart sank. Jorgenson was selling him out. Grossman looked at him and the jokiness drained from his face. His eyes narrowed, and his bottom lip drooped a little. JW froze, his heart pounding in his diaphragm. The stories he had crafted raced through his mind, but they wouldn’t work here.
“Frankly, I think you should arrest him,” Jorgenson continued, “because he didn’t take a damn thing!” Jorgenson laughed and slapped JW on the biceps. JW smiled and nodded in return, masking his fury and pained embarrassment. Finally, Grossman laughed halfheartedly, realizing he had been the brunt of the joke in some way, or at least an unwitting player. Some months back a Native American had accused Grossman of stealing a shotgun from his house while executing a search warrant. It came out only later that the man’s cousin had borrowed it to go coon hunting. JW knew it was a sore spot for Grossman, and he suspected that Jorgenson had intended to make a joke that was also a subtle jab.
“You had me,” he finally said, looking from Jorgenson to JW. “He’s a funny guy,” he said, pointing at Jorgenson. Then Grossman punched him in the shoulder and walked off.
Jorgenson looked over at JW and erupted again. “You shoulda—” he got out between laughs—“you shoulda seen the look on your face!” JW was stone-faced, but he felt his jaw muscles clenching again. “Come on,” Jorgenson said and backhanded his shoulder. “We’re on the same team here! Lighten up! Christ!”
JW smiled weakly and nodded. He glanced back at Eagle across the highway. He loosened his clenched fist. He briefly imagined being at the casino, playing a few hands, drinking vodka gimmies, winning real money. And then suddenly Grossman was back, leaning into JW’s window this time.
“You know what I wish?” he said to them both. “I wish they’d all move. I don’t mean to be racist—”
“Of course not,” Jorgenson said empathetically. It was an absolution often exchanged before slamming Native Americans.
“Half my god dang time is spent chasing after their punk kids or the drunk older ones. What do you suppose they’re doing over there?”
“That’s exactly what we were wondering,” said Jorgenson.
“I bet it’s something to suck money out, right on the edge of town like that. Pawn shop or something.” He breathed hard through his nose as he studied it. “Well, you take care.” He rapped the top of the car door and straightened up. He hiked up his heavy belt and headed toward the convenience store.
“I’ll call you,” JW said to Jorgenson.
“Don’t fuck this up.”
JW nodded and got out.
He headed home down the narrow reservation road, kicking up a coyote tail of dust. The sides of his car—from the trim strips on down—were covered with grayish ochre again, and he found himself using the wipers to clear dust from his windshield when he passed through the thick clouds kicked up by cars heading in the opposite direction.
He traveled through various band settlements. There was a fair amount of construction underway in some places. The band was investing in tribal housing, building a number of cheap duplexes and some nicer single-family homes next to old shacks. They had begun making per-capita payments a few years back. The checks weren’t very large, in contrast to those cut by some bands, whose members become millionaires on their eighteenth birthdays. But they were large enough that some members used them to begin to build new houses for themselves. A Native American at the trading post had engaged JW in conversation while he got gas, and on finding out where he lived, the man told him this was why the trailer park was mostly empty now, and why some houses were only partially completed. They were waiting for their next checks.
The construction traffic—pickups, trucks pulling Bobcat trailers, cement mixers, employee cars, and delivery trucks—had slowly pushed the gravel into waves, creating a washboard surface. JW had learned to drive the road either very slowly, in order to soften the bumps, or very fast, so his wheels skipped over the tops of the waves. He was taking the second of these approaches when a slow-moving construction van pulled out of a job site just ahead, forcing him to slow down through the teeth-rattling phase in between. His windshield was immediately covered by dust as he entered the van’s wake, and he turned on the wipers. He passed the job site and noticed through the ochre haze that the workers appeared to be drinking. One of them raised a beer bottle in a salute of sorts.
JW looked away. Why the hell, he thought, did the bastards have to confirm Grossman’s sweeping generalizations so perfectly? But this abrupt reaction was followed quickly by recognition of the fact that Grossman’s racism, like all good lies, was rooted in truth. The simple truth was that alcoholism and drug use ran much higher on the reservation than in the rest of society, and the tribal authorities didn’t seem to really do that much about it. Nor did many Native Americans seem to care much about doing away with their junk. There were collections of trashed cars, old bureaus, and sofas sitting out in their yards, and nobody seemed to care. Their dogs often slept on these sofas, or in junker cars. And then there was the story he had heard from the old Native American at the trading post: a couple he knew hung their keys on a nail high above their door when they went out drinking. That way they couldn’t get back in and trash their own house while under the skull and crossbones. They slept on an old mattress on the porch until they were sober enough to climb for the key and let themselves back in.
It could be that the crew was repurposing beer bottles as water bottles, he realized as he looked over a littered yard. All that seemed to matter to these people was the utility of things, not their intended purpose or aesthetics.
The washboard had flattened somewhat and the construction van had picked up speed to about forty-five. JW caught glimpses of its blue back end when the clouds dissipated in momentary damp spots, and though he held back it was impossible to keep out of its dust stream. They had left the development behind and were traveling through an area of dry scrub pasture and tree-covered hills. He was turning his wipers back on to clear the windshield when a car veered toward him out of the cloud.
He saw that the driver was young and Native. He was reaching down for something and not paying attention. The car was full of Native boys, and it looked like the one JW had seen at the gas station. He laid on the horn, but the driver didn’t look up. The other boys saw JW’s car, and one in the backseat hit the driver on the shoulder. He looked up and veered at the last second, but lost control. The car’s wide back end drifted over into JW’s path. He cranked his steering wheel at the last instant and flew out and down into the ditch, smashing his face on something. The trees came up at him at crazy angles and his teeth banged together. Then he was up out of the ditch and crashing through the scrub pasture at what seemed like a crazy speed. The roof came down and hit him on the head and there was the
sound of crunching metal.
11
JW gradually became aware of the buzzing of insects and the singing of birds. A fly landed on his lip and he tried to shoo it away, only to realize that his arm was pinned. He opened his eyes and saw an airbag slowly deflating. As it did, he noticed splatters and bursts of shining blood across the sagging surface. He became aware of a metallic taste and a feeling of pressure in his upper teeth. Something warm was spreading across his face.
He was in his car. He must have had an accident. He felt his face, and his hands came away with gouts of sticky blood. He tilted the rearview mirror down to investigate, smudging it. Blood was washing from his nose, which had a jagged gash on the upper right side of the bridge, where the broken bone had cut through the skin.
JW pushed the airbag aside and reached over to open the glove box. He pulled out a wad of fast-food napkins and gently daubed around the cut. It was puffy and red, with a tiny ribbon of maroon gelatin deep inside.
He pushed the napkins against his lower nose and mouth. The sharp swollen pain made him gasp into full awareness. He eased up and tilted his head back. The roof was intact, and none of the glass was broken. He held the wad against his nose and felt warm blood running down the back of his throat.
He sat with his head back for a moment longer, waiting for the blood to clot while he pieced together what had happened. Painful alertness slowly gave way to a deep wave of exhaustion. He needed to get home.
He reached for the ignition. The engine turned over with a great shudder before coughing to a steady run. So far so good. He lowered the wad. His face was throbbing as if a hole had been kicked in it, but the bleeding had mostly stopped. He stuffed the airbag skin through the steering wheel so he could turn the wheel, shifted into drive, and stepped on the gas. Nothing happened. He put the car in park and opened the door, leaving another sticky red smudge on the handle.
JW unbuckled his seat belt and stumbled out into the thorny weeds. He was shaky, but after a moment he steadied himself and waded out to inspect the damage. Grasshoppers transformed into butterflies and sailed away before him. Dry white blossoms of hoary alyssum bloomed all around him. Spotted with blood and soaked with sweat, his white shirt was attracting the small biting black flies that were the bane of summers up here. The car looked fine until he walked around the hood. The front wheel on the passenger side had hit an old tree stump and was resting at an angle to the car. He thought back to the car of boys, now long gone. The damn fools.
He waded back around the ticking car, then sat gingerly back into the driver’s seat. His focus was returning. He pulled the door closed and tried to roll up the front window, which has somehow fallen down, but it was no use. He jiggled and tugged up on the top edge of the glass, eventually pulling it back to a nearly closed position. But then he decided it wasn’t wise to leave the car running with long weeds surrounding the exhaust system, so he shut it off and rolled both front windows back down. He gingerly checked the napkin and found that his nose had finally stopped bleeding. He stuffed the reddish-brown wad into the door bin. He looked around for his cell phone and saw it lying in the passenger footwell. He leaned over and fished it up between two fingers, his nose suddenly pounding painfully and beginning to bleed again. He grabbed more napkins off the seat, pressed them to his face, and dialed Jorgenson with his other hand.
“We’re sorry,” a woman’s voice said. “Your Verizon wireless account has been suspended. If you would like to make a payment—”
He smudged the red End button and threw the cell onto the passenger seat. He unrolled his back windows as well, and the warm breeze twisted and twirled the crucifix. There was no one in sight.
He knew from personal experience that he was lucky. It had been a little more than a year since Chris went off the road. He had been thrown from the car and killed instantly, Grossman had told JW, and the Earth fell away from under him in that instant. Each day since had been spent navigating the endless drop.
He was shaking now with a sudden chill, and with it came an unreasonable sense of loss and helplessness. How unfair it all was, this accident, that one, and the year of dissolution in between. It was too much. He jammed his hand on the horn and held it there, breathing hard and heavy, blasting it until some kind of focus and reason began to return.
Some long minutes later, he heard a car approaching from behind. His neck was stiff, but he looked in his driver’s mirror and saw it was an old blue pickup with a red hood and a brown front quarter panel. He turned slowly and got out. As he stumbled toward the road the alyssum gave way to scrub grass and thistle that snagged and clawed at his suit pants. Deer flies lifted from the hot, thin grasses and buzzed around his head. He slapped and waved them away, but a handful pursued him and kept biting. Slapping at them worsened his headache. He climbed toward the road and lifted an arm. His shirt had large dark wet spots under his arms that felt the cool as he waved. A Native American man was behind the wheel and a woman was in the passenger seat. She looked frightened as they blazed on by, leaving JW standing in his bloody shirt and a cloud of yellow-gray dust.
As the air cleared, he saw a small herd of wild horses at the distant end of the scrub pasture. They were a variety of colors, and he stopped to watch, admiring their beauty in spite of his predicament. One by one, they disappeared into the forest on the far side.
There were poachers in the woods. As JW picked his way back to the wreck, he could hear their distant gunshots echoing faint and high and imagined a bloody deer crashing through the undergrowth. He eased back into the driver’s seat, feeling woozy. The Jesus was spinning and swaying in a hot breeze. He turned it away and looped the beads up over the rearview mirror to stop it. His eyes fell on the Big Book on the seat near his phone. He opened it against the exploded steering wheel.
1.We admitted we were powerless over gambling—that our lives had become unmanageable.
2.We came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity . . .
The sound of tires on gravel prompted him to looked back to the road. An SUV was trailing another foxtail of dust. He got out again, his muscles aching, and trudged back toward the road. But as he neared, the SUV blew past, powdering him with dust yet again. Before he could turn back, he saw another vehicle appear over the distant ridge. He waited for it by the roadside and waved as it neared, but this one, too, left him stranded.
He considered walking home, but it was several miles away and he figured no one in their right mind would pick up a hitchhiker covered in blood. He decided to simply stay put. Sooner or later someone had to stop. At the very least, some kind traveler would see that he was the victim of an accident and call the police. But after two more cars passed, JW began to feel both angry and desperate. He would step out more aggressively the next time, he decided, and make the car hit him or stop.
After waiting a few more minutes, he saw a new foxtail in the distance. As it approached, he could see that it was another SUV. He stepped out into the road, but as the vehicle neared it began to slow and pull over of its own accord. The windshield was dirty and he couldn’t see inside. The SUV shifted into park and he could hear a Bob Marley song going. “One Love.” Then it stopped. The door opened and a man stepped out. It was Johnny Eagle.
Eagle closed his door and walked slowly toward him. JW wanted to turn around. Needing help from a man he had rejected was humiliating. He watched Eagle’s boots crunch on the gravel, then forced himself to look him in the face.
“Thank you for stopping,” he said in his best professional tone. His tongue was dry and his lips felt swollen. “I went off the road.”
Eagle looked from him to the car and back. “Yeah, I see that. Looks like you broke your nose.” He was speaking too loudly, as if he thought JW might be deaf.
“Some hoodlums ran me off.”
“Really.” Eagle nodded, visibly unhappy.
“They took off.” JW gestured in the direction they had gone. He realized that his shirttail was
hanging out and began to tuck it in, then realized that such decorum was ludicrous under the circumstances.
Eagle looked at him for a long moment, then turned and whistled sharply at the SUV. The passenger door opened slowly and the boy stepped out, wearing baggy basketball shorts and a tank top. He looked as surly as usual.
“My son had those hoodlums find me, and they told me you overcompensated. Jacob here was worried about you, and he made me come look. Said we had to make sure you weren’t dead or something.”
JW recognized his error and his heart sank. “I appreciate that.”
Eagle stood there, a hand in his pocket as if he were perturbed. Then he laughed. “You’re really living in that old trailer?”
JW didn’t know what to say. He shrugged. “It’s cheap.”
“I know! That’s what I’m saying! I mean, you, of all people.” Eagle half-laughed again as he gestured at him, shaking his head as if the whole thing were some sort of ridiculous miracle.
“It’s a long story. Is there any chance I could, maybe, borrow your cell phone to call for a tow? Mine’s . . . not working at the moment.”
Eagle looked at JW’s wrecked car and spoke back over his shoulder. “What do you think, Jacob? He’s not dead, he can walk. Should we leave him?”
“I don’t think anybody’ll pick him up.”
“I think you’re probably right,” Eagle said, looking back at JW. “Indi’ns don’t like to pick up strange white guys. They can be dangerous.”
JW shrugged, and Eagle gave a distasteful sigh. He nodded toward the car in the field. “Why don’t you get your stuff.” He turned and walked back to his SUV.
It was two hours before the tow truck finally pulled out with the Caprice on its flatbed. Eagle and Jacob waited, talking with him about the weather, the car, the reservation school, and the usual Iron Range politics: who was sleeping with whom, who was making a power play with the unions, and the mining mafia versus the crazy enviros.
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