Sins of Our Fathers (9781571319128)

by Otto, Shawn Lawrence

  When the barrel was empty, Eagle wheeled the load over to the winnower, which sat in the barn’s center aisle, back behind the big tarp where the raw rice was laid out to dry. He switched the winnower on, and its conveyor started rattling uphill, while its massive fan blew a ticking wind through the clear plastic exhaust duct. JW shoveled the thrashed rice and chaff onto the conveyor. It rode up seven feet and dumped into a chute at the top. As it fell through the machine, the blower separated the feathery mazaan dust from the heavier rice. It blew through the exhaust duct in a sudden hiss and out the sidewall of the barn, where it was collected for later packaging. Excess flour blew away in the breeze like fine smoke. And clean multi-colored rice began to pour out of the bottom chute, into a white bag that hung from a small stand.

  Eagle went to get another bag, then exchanged it midstream for the full one, before tying it off and putting it on the scale as JW finished feeding the machine. Its rattling hiss slowly dropped off to a few ticks, then just the hollow sound of the fan. JW shut it off and came up as Eagle affixed a label with the date and weight.

  “This finished product is 99.9% pure,” said Eagle. “An organic foods distributor picks it up every Friday. We run these big bags through the packager and labeler to make one-pound packages whenever we have the time.”

  He handed JW a clipboard with a spreadsheet showing each bag’s weight and number, logged with a date. JW was impressed by the efficiency of the operation.

  “You keep doing what we’ve been doing. Keep track of the inflow and outgo, and report everything back to me. Any questions?”

  “This is just so far from banking,” JW observed. “Was it your wife’s idea or something?”

  Eagle shook his head. “She was into banking too,” he said. He pulled leather gloves on and headed back out to the fire. “Used to work for your boss in Minneapolis. She knew him from when he ran the bank up here. That’s how I know he’s an asshole.”

  “Did I know her?” JW asked.

  Eagle shook his head. “I don’t think so.” He picked up a paddle and stepped into the smoke.

  ***

  JW SPENT THE rest of the week helping Ernie run the rice operation. It was mostly a silent détente. Both days, Eagle was away for hours at a time in the morning and into the early afternoon. When JW asked Ernie where Eagle might be, Ernie ignored him. When JW asked a third time, he muttered, “Meetings,” and kept working.

  In the late afternoons, Jacob would get home from school and ask JW to help him with Pride. One day Eagle overheard the boy asking and barked back, “Later. We’re busy with the rice. Get your homework done and then maybe gichi-mookomaan will have time to show you a little more of his moomigo-manidoo ways.”

  “What does that mean?” JW asked Eagle as they turned rice on the tarp.

  “What?”

  “Gichi-mookomaan.”

  Eagle laughed, but he seemed uncomfortable. “Depends on the context,” he replied.

  JW turned over another shovelful and spread it out. Over by the door, Ernie was weighing in another rice delivery.

  “Okay…?” he pushed.

  “Means butcher knife,” Ernie said as he plunked a bag down on the scale.

  Eagle glanced at Ernie with a flash of irritation, then turned back to JW with a sigh of resignation. “Sometimes it means butcher knife, other times it means white man,” he said.

  JW saw Ernie smiling wryly. “White man is the same word as butcher knife?”

  “I didn’t make up the language,” said Eagle. JW grunted and threw himself back into turning the rice.

  At night he took long, hot showers in the trailer’s tiny stall, trying to relax his muscles. Some nights he listened to Eagle and Jacob’s conversations over the bug, a towel draped around his neck and his hair damp, but they were mostly arguments about homework. Eagle wanted to see it, because he suspected Jacob just wasn’t doing it. Jacob usually said he didn’t have any, or he’d already done it all, or he had forgotten it at school. Then he would go into his room, and Eagle would catch him playing online games with his old crowd in Minneapolis, and the arguments would begin again.

  Other nights JW was so tired that he forgot to listen in. After a few minutes spent reading the Big Book in bed, he would turn off the light and lie back, listening to the swaying trees and the drunken howls of coyote packs until the world fell away from him.

  By Sunday he was sore up and down his back and arms. Eagle had given him the day off. He lay on his mattress and fantasized about spending the day in bed reading the Big Book. He had placed it within reach on the bottom shelf of the nightstand. Reading it would be his excuse for not moving. But he had a brunch meeting scheduled with Jorgenson. He sighed and slowly swung his feet out onto the floor, bending his neck and rolling his crackling shoulders.

  JW shaved and slapped on some Old Spice, then shrugged into his suit coat and ducked down to look out the kitchen window at the Indians. Seven thirty and they were already at it. For the first time in days, he didn’t smell like wood smoke. He gently touched his injured nose with his fingertips. The magenta was fading, but it was still puffy and tender. He went back into the bathroom and replaced the white cross.

  As he put on his tie in the bedroom, he watched the Indians in the open barn door, running last night’s batch through the packager. The act of tightening the tie’s knot had a powerful effect, underscoring his sense of impending return to his former world. He just wished he had his own car. He shot his cuffs and turned for the door.

  16

  Gethsemane Lutheran Church was within walking distance of JW and Carol’s house. Built during the mining boom of the 1990s, it had high brick walls broken by vertical slices of colorful stained glass and a roof like an accordion bellows laid sideways. Pastor Rick was delivering a sermon as JW slipped in. “God said man had dominance over all the animals and was the steward of the Earth,” he said, raising his voice, “and it is economic freedom that makes ecological stewardship available to ever greater numbers of people.” JW spotted the back of Carol’s blonde head and Julie’s finer hair next to her near the aisle up front, but as he began to walk down to join them, several people turned to look at him disapprovingly. He slid into the back pew next to a group of Slovenian miners—squat single men with short foreheads, dressed in worn dark suits and smelling of Pinaud-Clubman—who jockeyed down the bench to make room for him. When the service ended, he was the first out the heavy oak doors and back into the sunshine.

  He descended the broad staircase and walked a short distance down the sidewalk before taking up a position under one of the hickory trees that ran along the driveway to the lot. After a moment he saw the flash of satin robes as Pastor Rick stepped just outside the doors to shake hands with the exiting congregation. JW stood with his hands in his pockets and toed the sidewalk, playing with a small pebble under the tip of his shoe. He rolled it in and out of a sunny patch, then side to side and around in circles as the congregants poured down the stairs and turned past him down the walk. JW didn’t like Pastor Rick. He found him to be overly solicitous toward Carol, and at the same time, judgmental toward him. “Well, you’re not as observant,” Carol said once when he brought it up. And as soon as she said it, JW knew that this was true. Rick could probably sense that JW wasn’t under his moral authority, and if so, he likely resented it. Plus, the guy’s credit was less than stellar.

  Finally Carol appeared at the head of the stairs, and JW lifted himself up into an expectant stance. She was standing in the clutch with the pastor, her pale hair shining in the midmorning sun. Pastor Rick took her hand in both of his for what seemed like a long time, his satin robes hanging from his wrists. He glanced down at JW. He said something else to her and she leaned in, smiling, and nodded thankfully, then pulled away and came down the stairs with Jim Franklin, fixing her hair. Julie followed, texting on her phone.

  The group stopped near the base of the stairs as other congregants flowed around them. Jim joked with another man and Julie hung ba
ck, typing something with her thumbs. Carol said something to Jim. He nodded and she started toward JW. His heart turned over at the implications of these small gestures.

  “John.”

  “Carol—are you seeing him?”

  She glanced back over her shoulder. “Jim? No! We were just walking out.” Her cheeks and neck flushed red.

  He nodded, his heart sinking.

  “John, I’m not. Seriously.” Her blue-gray eyes were open and guileless. And, he thought, just a touch haughty.

  “So why aren’t you taking my calls?”

  “I don’t know, I’ve been busy.” Her brow drew into furrows before she recovered her composure. She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. “Have you been leaving messages?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Well, I don’t know, I’m sorry.”

  Suspicion and grief mixed in an unsteady state. “I’m not gambling anymore,” he said.

  Jim headed over, smiling cheerfully at JW.

  “Hey, John! How’s it going?”

  Carol waved him back tensely. People were glancing over as they walked past to their cars. It seemed obvious that their separation was a subject of gossip.

  “How long?” Carol asked. Her voice was quick and desperate.

  “A week.” He shrugged as he said it. He knew it sounded foolish, but it was a change all the same.

  “Well. That’s good!” she said, as if she were congratulating a small child. He nodded, plunging a hand back into his pocket.

  “Not really. But it’s a start. Are you okay? Financially?” he said.

  She gave a small shrug, then smiled, her eyes wisps. “I sold my first policy yesterday.”

  “Congratulations.”

  He smiled back, but it was pained. His gambling losses were the reason she had to get a job. He had always taken care of her. It’s what he did. He had always managed their money, and he had been so sure that he would win far more than he would lose that it was hard to accept the current situation. Making it back was no longer a possibility. Now that he was moving past the storm he could see clearly how foolish it had been all along. He looked down, then out over the grass, toward the parked cars. It was the largest blunder of his life.

  “Frank put me on leave at the bank,” he said.

  Her face went pale and flat. “I told Jim it wasn’t true—that you would have said something.” A vein pulsed in her neck.

  “That’s why I’ve been calling you.” His voice was thick and throaty and it nearly broke on him. He swallowed hard and inhaled. His eyes felt thick and cloudy. He shook his head, at a loss for words. “I’m going to get it straightened out,” he said, “but I can’t pay the bills for a few weeks—”

  She took a step back and put a hand up to her forehead the way his mother used to when fighting a migraine. “A few weeks?” Her face was white and angry, her mouth a slash. “Weeks?” She let out a few short breaths. “This can’t be happening.”

  “Carol, it will be okay, I swear—I’m past it—”

  “I can’t take this. We have bills.”

  “I know. But you’ve got to believe me, it’s over. Okay? It’s over. I’m never going back there.” He knew he had no credibility, but what else could he say? The Big Book made clear that the only way to keep from sliding back was complete and utter honesty, a fearless and searching moral inventory, and then making amends. At the time, reading the book in bed, it had all made sense. He had decided he had to tell her, if only to keep Jorgenson from outflanking him, and he had thought it would be better to get it all over with at once. But now he could see that this was a mistake. “We’re working it out. Frank’s just—well, you know Frank. He’ll come around. Carol. It will be all right. I screwed up, okay? But I’m making it right. I love you. I never meant to hurt you.”

  His chest was tight with emotion. He felt naked and raw and irretrievably broken.

  Her face was a moon. She shook her head and seemed to find him in her focus. “I don’t know.”

  He nodded and smiled. “Well, I do. You’re still the most beautiful girl in North Lake.”

  She smiled and shook her head. Her face softened, but her eyes were damp. He could feel the warmth returning, and with it a toehold of hope.

  “You are! You really are. So there’s just one last thing I need to tell you. To be totally honest. And Carol, I swear, this is it. You’re probably going to think I’m an idiot, but . . . last year I took out a hundred-thousand-dollar second mortgage on the house.” There. He’d done it. He’d told her everything. Almost.

  “Oh my god—”

  “Now don’t overreact. Please. I promise, it’ll be okay. I’m working it out with Frank right now—but he might say or do something in the next few days, and I need you to wait until we talk before you agree to anything. Okay? Honey? This is it, all of it. I love you and I’m trying.”

  “Trying? You are trying?”

  An ocean had opened between them. “You know what I mean.”

  He could see her reading his lips, as if she were looking at him through a distant telescope. Jim appeared behind her and JW held up a hand. “Just a minute, Jim. Okay?” It came out sharp. Jim held his hands up like an astronaut cut loose, floating back and away.

  He shook his head at Carol. “I’m sorry. I’m just trying to be completely honest here, and to make amends. It’s very difficult, I mean, I’m used to being the guy in control, the man you look up to, and right now I have nothing. Carol? Are you listening? I still love you and I will make it all back. Okay? Nothing’s changed, it’s just that now you know. That’s something that Jim here, well, I could tell you stories about him, things from his credit record—”

  “Just stop!” She was pale with anger, he could see, but her tone was also pleading.

  “I really need you to forgive me, to give me a little credit for the twenty years we’ve been together,” he said, more softly now. There was a new lump in his throat, and he was trying to hold back.

  She stared at him. “I see.” She nodded slowly, and he nodded back.

  “Please,” he said. “Just give me a little more time.” He saw Julie standing a dozen feet away on the lawn, still texting. He needed to reclaim some part of his dignity. He called to her. “Sunshine! Come give your daddy a hug.”

  Julie slipped her phone into her back pocket and came over. She hugged JW stiffly. He held her close and smelled her hair, which still had the blush of childhood. He wanted to drink her in. His baby. He held her shoulders and looked into her eyes.

  “I miss you every day, you know that?” He pushed a lock of hair out of her face. His heart ached, and he knew in that moment that he would do anything not to lose her. She was small for her age, and he sometimes still thought of her as an intellectually precocious child, rather than the thirteen-year-old she had become. The smell of her fine blonde hair and the feel of her thin limbs reminded him of the times he had carried her up to bed after reading her to sleep.

  “I miss you too,” she said, and her cheeks flushed. It felt like the sort of obligatory greeting a teenager gives to a strange uncle.

  “No, really,” he said, softly. “Julie, I’m getting better, I promise.” The hair fell back out, and he tucked it behind her ear again. “I am. It’s me. Daddy. I love you.”

  “I know.” She looked around for a girlfriend. “Amy! Amy, wait up!” Then she back to JW. “I gotta go.”

  “Wait.”

  She looked hurried.

  “You think we could do something sometime, just you and me? Go on one of our dates? A hike or something? I still have my dichotomous key.”

  “I’m not really into that anymore.”

  “Shopping?”

  She looked aghast. “With what?”

  “I have a job,” he said. “I can take you shopping.”

  “Yeah. Sure. Why not?” She looked at him as if the suggestion were completely crazy. He chose to ignore it.

  “Okay. I love you.”

  “Me too.” The pain flitted
across her face like a bird. And with that she was off, flying over the lawn toward Amy. He nodded to Carol and Jim, then turned to walk back to his truck, a rolling boil in his chest.

  He got to the wild rice truck and pulled open the door, exhaling deeply as he suppressed tears. He had done it. He turned back, caught Julie’s eyes, and waved. She turned to Amy. He was suddenly acutely aware of how different the truck looked from most of the other vehicles in the lot. Native American organic wild rice. He got in and started the engine, then shifted into drive. He couldn’t really blame Carol and Julie. But he would win them back or die trying. He pulled out, the dream catcher swaying and spinning as he headed off down the driveway.

  17

  The Denny’s was on the north end of town, near the Curves and Hokanson’s Garden Center. JW pulled the truck into the lot and parked away from the building. He checked his wallet and his pocket. He had found five dollars and twenty-seven cents in the ashtray of his car before leaving it with Big Al, and now he scavenged another four dollars and thirty-nine cents from the door handle of the truck. He got out and dumped the change into his pocket.

  The restaurant was a favorite meeting place for casual business conversations, and on Sunday it was busy with the church rush. He waded through the tables, waving and nodding to local farmers and businesspeople he knew. The place smelled of coffee, bacon, eggs, and pancakes, and it rang with the hubbub of conversation. JW could hear a blender going somewhere, and the clatter of dishes from the kitchen. He found Jorgenson in a faux-wooden booth by a window, eating a large plate of pigs in a blanket.

  “Coffee,” JW said to the waitress as he slid into the booth, buoyed by the friendliness of the many people who had waved to him. He saw Jorgenson note his crisp white shirt and his unusually dirty fingernails. He realized he’d forgotten to scrub them.