Pawn! Just three hours from almost anywhere and the largest selection in the upper Midwest!”
He stared into the fridge’s yellow interior and shook his head to regain his focus. Pig’s Eye pilsner, Red Owl milk, Swanson TV dinners. Some bologna gone green. He took out a beer and closed the door. He wasn’t a slob, JW thought, but he should be cooking. The fridge should have real food. Perhaps that was part of the problem. Not enough self-care. He had been spending too much time at the casino. He was a well-respected banker with a beautiful family. And yet here he was, with no real sense of what he should do next.
He turned and walked back across the slanted floor. Road construction on the highway had caused the building’s foundation to bow inward. He had examined it one day while doing laundry on the first floor. It explained why the windows along the highway side would not open and why the floor ran at a funhouse slant.
This flaw presented the need for special adjustments. The legs of his bed were propped up on the road side with chunks of two-by-fours. In the kitchen the fridge and the range both trudged uphill. The countertop tilted downhill. On his first day in the apartment JW had come home to find his brand-new Walmart toaster oven in pieces on the floor.
He returned to the living room. The pale-green brocaded sofa emitted a sharp, dusty odor when he sat down. He grabbed the remote and changed channels to the Home Shopping Network. He ran through his ribbon of scratched-off loon tickets until he found the two winners. He tore them at the perforations and tossed them on the coffee table. Six dollars each.
“Isn’t it gorgeous?” the blonde saleswoman asked viewers as she modeled a cubic zirconium necklace. “What woman wouldn’t fall in love with the man who gave her this?”
He opened his first letter, a bill from Connexus, the local rural electric cooperative.
DISCONNECTION NOTICE: Your electricity will be DISCONNECTED for non-payment. You must call immediately.
He set the mail down and rubbed his temples.
The following morning was fine and dry, and it felt warm as JW left the building. He pulled out onto Sixth, heading for the highway. The city of North Lake had a scenic rusticity that owed much to its proximity to the west end of the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness, a vast roadless expanse of hundreds of lakes along the border with Canada. Native lake names like Kekekabic, Ogishkemuncie, and Gabimichigami, fell easily from the tongues of Iron Rangers when they talked fishing, and the region attracted outdoor enthusiasts from around the world who wanted to experience an authentic American wilderness. North Woods décor, log buildings with dark green roofs, colorful chalk sandwich boards changed daily by dreadlocked hipsters, Will Steger mukluks, and tree stumps sculpted by chain saws into bears and eagles all helped to attract eco-vacationers who injected cash into the local economy.
North Lake Bank operated from a log building out on the main highway. It hadn’t been built to appeal to the granola crowd. That was a happy accident. During the housing crisis, one of JW’s best customers, a log home builder, was suddenly left with several unsellable vacation homes he had built on spec. They were pitched up like derelicts along the vast shores of North Lake. When he fell behind on his payments, rather than liquidate his business at a certain loss, JW suggested he use his unsold inventory to construct a new building for the bank, thereby saving an important customer’s business and solving the bank’s space problem at a bargain-basement price. The picturesque result had earned JW a feature article in Banking magazine and a Community Banker of the Year nomination. Since then, business was up sharply.
He pulled in, bumping up over the curb cut. A large carport supported by thick log posts and iron stanchions sheltered the drive-through lanes. The grounds were well landscaped, with a chain-saw sculpture of a leaping trout on the front strip of grass. He angled into a space marked by a small brass lawn sign that read President.
The morning’s rising heat hit him hard as he stepped out. The lawn sprinkler heads hissed, wetting the sidewalk. Schmeaker’s black Charger with its red NRA bumper sticker was already parked in his spot, which was marked by a similar sign that read Vice President.
With morning had come clarity. He was still the president of North Lake Bank. He could get a short-term loan to consolidate his debts. He would call Carol to apologize. It was all manageable. He pulled open the front doors, fully reinhabiting the persona of the competent and successful bank president, the man invited to speak about his successes around the Midwest. He was, truly, among the very best at what he did, and that counted for something.
Sandy smiled up at him.
“Sandy.”
“Good Morning, Mr. White. Mr. Jorgenson’s here to see you.”
“Jorgenson?”
That was a strange bit of news. JW walked back to his office to deposit his things on his desk. He wondered what could have caused Jorgenson to make the four-hour drive and arrive by nine in the morning, when he had just seen him yesterday afternoon.
JW snugged his tie and headed for the conference room, a wood-paneled space centered by a long table. Its red surface was rich with morning light slanting in through wooden blinds. Jorgenson sat at the far end, poring over some papers.
“Frank! Is something wrong?”
Jorgenson looked up from the paperwork. His face was inscrutable.
“Close the door, John.”
JW corrected course, surprised at Jorgenson’s tone.
“Sure.”
He closed the door and touched the button to turn the blinds down slightly, as a courtesy more than anything, and began walking between the wall of windows and the long table.
“Everything all right?”
“No, John, I’m afraid it’s not.” Jorgenson set the papers down and sat back as he neared. “I didn’t sleep last night. I got up at four in the morning just to come and see you, so I could find out what’s going on up here.”
JW’s heart sped up. Had he discovered the loan? “I don’t understand.”
Jorgenson picked up his smartphone and thrust it toward JW. The screen glowed with colors.
“Take a look at that.”
JW took it and examined the image. Two men pored over a roll of blueprints spread over the hood of a truck. Behind them rose the pale ribs of a new building. He was surprised to recognize one of the men.
“That’s Johnny Eagle.”
“The one from your talk yesterday. And he’s at the building site that Sam Schmeaker’s been e-mailing me about, the one that’s going up on the edge of town. Just took that this morning.”
JW looked up at him. Jorgenson was clearly irritated. “What else do you know about him?” he asked.
JW put the phone down. He didn’t, really. Not much more than the story in his presentation. “Moved back to the reservation after his wife died, little over a year ago.”
He pulled his right cuff farther down his wrist. His white shirt and collar felt constricting under his jacket, as if they had become twisted somehow.
“Have you been keeping track of this building project?” said Jorgenson.
“There’ve been some grumblings about it at the Sunrise Rotary, but—” He hadn’t paid any particular attention. They had just started putting it up ten days ago or so. “It’s on the edge of the reservation. They haven’t announced what it is yet,” he said.
“Last year when he was in here, was it a tribal loan he was after?”
JW shook his head. “No, I would have approved that. It was for his house. An addition, remodel or something, and some kind of small business.”
Jorgenson nodded, thinking