4:09 a.m. June 8, 1998 Monday
The phone rang. He forced one eye open and looked at the
clock. It was 0409 hours. He made a mental note to
change the clock back to a.m. and p.m. tomorrow. That
crazy air force woman was always changing the clocks.
“Hello,” he said.
“Hi. You in bed?”
“Yes.”
“Asleep?”
“Not now.”
“Roger just took off up
the river. He wants to be there by six. Your door
unlocked?”
“You know it is.”
“I’ll be over. Bye.”
Sue Diggs sure has a
sweet voice on the phone. Especially when she wants
something. I wonder if I can perform twice in one night?
Might be I can.
He lay in bed with his
eyes closed listening to the occasional traffic on the
road to the lake. In the state of half sleep he recalled
his first meeting with Sue at the marina.
“But you’re married,” she
said.
Hawk pulled on his lower
cheek. “So are you.”
Her smile was infectious.
His eyes took in her dark short lean endowed body. When
he looked up a smile crept across his face and their
eyes had a mutual understanding.
He tipped up his beer.
She did the same and within an hour they each had five
empties stacked beside them. He had never drunk that
many beers and later he recognized it as a purposeful
distraction to avoid what was happening between them; a
brief blocking and prolonging of the inevitable.
“Let’s take a boat ride,”
he said.
Sue giggled, her eyes coy
under the dark eyelashes. “I don’t know if I can walk
let alone get in a boat.” She stood up and he held her
arm. He wasn’t very stable either.
During the time they
spent getting the boat the marina operator showed some
concern as to their sobriety and ability to run it.
After they had been shown how to start and operate the
motor, Hawk went back and got another six-pack, grinning
like a high school kid when he set the frosty beer under
the seat.
For the first fifteen
minutes they motored close to the bank until they came
to a passage between the shore and a small island
covered with scrub brush.
Sue pointed to the island.
“Let’s go over there.” Then she stood up, the boat
tilted and for a moment she was parallel to the water,
her laughing face looked at him before she was enveloped
in the water.
Like drawing a pistol,
Hawk whipped out his wallet, threw it in the boat and
dived in after her. He cupped his arm around her and
towed her to shore while she coughed and spit and
laughed. While they sat on the shore chuckling, a gentle
breeze shoved the boat up on the sand. Hawk secured it
and grabbed the beer. When he turned around Sue was half
undressed, demurely hanging her wet clothes on a small
bush. He stood looking at her, his passion rising.
“Well…” she said. “You
gonna let them dry on or off?”
Like teenagers, they held
each others naked body, kissing hard, thrashing around
on the hot sand. Hawk tried several times to penetrate
her but she was very adept at deflecting that
opportunity. She grabbed him with her hand.
“Come on,” he pleaded.
She giggled. “Try this,”
she said and began stroking him with her hand.
That was the first of
many meetings. It laid the foundation for both divorces.
What if she never came
over again? How would I feel about it? Put the pluses
and minus’s on a T-sheet and see the result. Plus: she’s
pretty, sexy, intelligent, fun to be with. Minus: lousy
family, won’t finalize her divorce, argumentative,
distrustful, petty, can’t handle money worth a damn.
Hell—that gives her more minus’ then pluses.
He heard the door open
and the squeak in the 3rd step coming up to
the 2nd floor. He opened one eye and looked
down the hallway. Nothing. He heard rustling of clothing
and then the streetlight shining through the window fell
on her body as she came through the open door. It was a
body to behold for a woman who had given birth to three
kids. He could feel his loins strengthening and he gave
no more thought to whether he could or could not perform
again.
At 5:30, or 0530 by the
clock he awoke and started to the kitchen. From the door
to his bedroom and down the hall to the landing the
woman’s clothes were scattered. He stepped on her bra
with his bare foot and realized it was padded. He hadn’t
noticed that. Course he never undressed her anymore. She
took care of that.
He dumped a damp load of
clothes into the dryer then opened the cupboard and took
out the Rogaine. With his left hand he smeared it on his
head and with the other poured a cup of V8 juice. Then
he upended a paper cup of vitamins into his mouth and
flushed them down with three swallows.
The window framed the
backyard, lushly planted with native and exotic flora
starting their first bloom of the year; the hot tub was
a late addition to the big house that sat on the only
hill in Rapid City overlooking the river. It was the
only house in town he had lusted for. He had driven by
it a hundred times, watched the owners grow old, saw the
property deteriorate, planned and hoped how he would
acquire it. Now that he owned it, he had halted the
deterioration, added some to the landscaping. It was a
financial drain the last three years and only his
equity, which he kept borrowing against, was keeping him
afloat financially.
He smiled. He should have
been sitting in a rocking chair mostly blind and barely
able to walk with his damaged back. At age fifty he
could have spent the rest of his life being looked after
by one of his sons in the big house beside the Sturgis
River. But cataract surgery was a wonderful thing—it
restored his vision to 20-20 and a neurosurgeon
installed titanium discs between his deteriorated
backbones.
In his life there had not
been much time for self-analysis, other than a scratch
moment or two before dawn. Born on a poor ranch in the
scablands of Eastern Washington, he had worked hard from
dawn to dark all his life. All things were laid out as
soon as he was old enough to understand tasks in
relation to daylight hours. Even before daylight he
milked the cow, gathered the eggs, fed the chickens, and
ran the milk through the separator. When it was light
enough he could do regular farm work, mend fence, chase
down cattle that had gotten out, cut fire wood, repair
equipment and do school work.
There were folks who had
more time than money who analyzed people’s lives and
they had told him more times than he cared to remember,
that he was the skip generation. His grandfather—tough
as rawhide—had talent and drive. It was what was left of
the ranch his grandfather had established, that his
father, stepmother, stepbrother, stepsister, and he
lived and worked themselves to death on.
The good land was gone.
Sold off to pay his fathers gambling debts, personal
errors of judgment and flagrant misunderstanding of how
the formation of capital and the use of money functioned
in the world in general and in one’s family life in
particular. His father would have at one time been
considered a ‘coupon clipper’; one who’s fore bearers
had left enough wealth for the family to invest and
receive monthly checks. Even through the depression of
the late 1930’s his family had lived comfortably. He had
not known that time; only this time and he had vowed to
not just survive, but to prosper like his grandfather.
Every time he pulled an
egg from under a clucking hen, stacked a chunk of fire
wood, lifted a bucket of milk, or drove a staple into a
fence post, he vowed that he would rise above this;
would live in the best house in town; drive the best
car; that he would match and then exceed his
grandfather.
It was almost dawn on
Monday, June 8, 1998. He stood barefoot in the kitchen,
looking out at the bubbling spa in the backyard and
about to start the 1258th day of work on a
$400 million dollar real estate transaction. His name
was Hawkins Neilson and upstairs asleep in his bed
waiting for the sun to rise was Sue Diggs, the most
expensive mistress in Jefferson County.
He lifted the phone and
dialed a number from memory. Slim and Reba Collins would
be awake by now, having their morning coffee and
listening to the stock reports. In the southeast corner
of Jefferson County, on a chunk of ground that leaned up
against the Coburg Mountains, they farmed some 600 acres
and ran cattle over the remaining 3,200 acres that had
been homesteaded by Colonel Rhett Collins in 1878.
“Morning Slim. You ready
to trade for that six hundred forty acres today? We
gotta close it up this week or Fish and Game is gonna
back off the deal—and you know—we’re never sure of the
Indians.”
A slow voice scarred by
fifty years of cigarette smoking came over the phone.
“Hawk—you didn’t even let me finish my morning coffee.”
He held the phone away from him and coughed.
“Me and the wife been
talking it over. We aren’t gonna do the deal. That six
hundred forty is nothin but rocks and rattlesnakes.
That’s why the government still owns it and it wasn’t in
the original homestead. It’s just not worth the prime
riverfront you’re wanting us to trade for it. What I
really want is some of that high meadowland up on
Buffalo Lake. Get me an acre for acre trade of that and
I could get interested.”
There he goes again. Hawk
dropped his head, his brain in gear for an answer. The
signal on the clothes dryer squawked and he walked into
the utility room to shut it off.
“Slim—you know and I know
that they’re not goin to bust into that park and cut you
out some lakefront. It would make an inholding that they
don’t have now and it wouldn’t straighten out their
boundary line or solve their problem.”
“Well…” Slim hesitated.
“We’re just not in the mood to make it easy for them.
The sons-a-bitches have been makin it hard for me for
twenty-five years.”
Hawk took a deep breath.
“Slim—don’t say no just yet. Hang in there with me on
this and I’ll get something you like better but I need
time—ok?”
“I got time till I die
then you’ll have to deal with the wife and kids and
they’ll be a damn sight tougher than I am.”
“I’ll get
something—soon.” He pulled the hot clothes out of the
dryer and laid them across the washer, a chair, a small
table.
“That’s what you’ve been
saying for more’n three years now Hawk. Don’t those
people have any sense of when to get things done?”
“Some do. But I’m
fighting a whole bureaucracy you know.”
“Yeah I know. Fight the
good fight. I’ll be hayin’ down on the low land this
week so don’t bother callin’ me until Friday. And drop
down here next time you’re in the area, we’ll hoist a
few and talk man talk.”
Hawk heard another cough
and then the phone rattled in the cradle. “Dammit,
dammit, dammit!” He slammed his fist on the counter.
Hawk showered, dressed,
took a quick glance at Sue lying in the bed with the
sheet tucked under her arm. How could she sleep when
this deal was unraveling every day? He left his shoes
off until he got to the garage, grabbed his keys and let
the car ease down the driveway until it was well away
from the house before he let the clutch out and started
it on compression.
7:15 a.m. Monday, June 8, 1998
His usual booth was
waiting for him at Ella’s Café, a relic of the gold rush
logging days complete with a screen door with holes in
it and a spring that pulled the thing shut against the
frame. The smell of diesel truck fumes emanating from
the street and bacon frying inside vied for olfactory
dominance as he slid in on the red plastic seat broken
down by the weight of big men for twenty years. He
opened the Spokane Review, checked the track scores then
threw the paper on the table. The waitress slipped a cup
of coffee to him as she passed and said “Usual?” Hawk
nodded.
Going over the
conversation with Slim he tried to think of anything he
had left out, anything that would make a reasonable swap
for Slim other than the high meadowland he wanted.
Hell—he wouldn’t give up
riverfront for that inholding either, but BLM insisted
it was a fair trade, their appraisers had said so and
they were sticking to it. Sitting in Boise in an office
supplied by the government, driving a government car,
with a government credit card—what did they know of a
rancher’s daily bargain with the land?
“Morning Hawk,” a
familiar voice burst through his thoughts.
Hawk turned to see
Carroll Swenson, president of Wesco Bank, standing
beside the booth. “Hello Carroll.”
“Wish you’d drop by the
bank as soon as you’re done here.”
Hawk looked up at him
with a question in his eyes.
“Why don’t you come to
the back door around 9:00 o’clock? I’d like to talk to
you as soon as possible.”
The waitress brought
Hawk’s breakfast and slid it across the table with one
hand while she poured him more coffee with the other.
“Morning Carroll,” she said. “You got any financing for
boats?”
“What kind of boats?”
“River boats. Those
things cost several thousand now days.”
“Sure. You buyin’ one for
Carl when he retires to keep him out of your hair?”
“Just five days a week,”
she laughed.
“Sure. We’ll finance it
if you give us all your tips for payment.”
“That’d take a hundred
years.”
“Not from what I see you
pick up.” Carroll’s eyes narrowed. “Do you report those
to the IRS?”
“Just yours. You’re the
only one who keeps track of what you leave.”
She moved on.
“You having breakfast?”
Hawk said.
Carroll picked up the
discarded paper, folded it and put it under his arm. “I
did.”
“Why don’t you just sit
down and tell me what you want here and now?”
Carroll glanced around.
“I’d rather do it in my office.”
Hawk turned the eggs over
and covered them with black pepper. “I’ll be by.”
Carroll wrinkled his
nose, “I couldn’t eat like that,” he said, and turned to
leave.
Hawk finished eating in
seven minutes while his mind drifted over the
possibilities of what the banker wanted to talk about.
He and Carroll went back
a long ways. Being a year younger than Hawk, Carroll had
always had a bit of trouble playing with the big boys
but by high school he had fleshed out enough to handle
the end spot on the football team, shot well enough to
be a basketball forward and was fast enough to run a
fair 880. They had lost touch when Hawk had gone to
agricultural college and Carroll traipsed off to the
University of Oregon, took business courses and after
graduation started working for a small bank in Bend,
Oregon.
But as strange as this
world is, when Hawk wanted to start a second bank in
town to rival the one that thought they had preemptive
rights to every dollar that flowed through Rapid City,
he went looking for a bank president who could pull in
local deposits because he could talk their language and
would have their full faith and trust. He found Carroll,
who had progressed up the corporate ladder to senior
vice president, whose wife was longing to get back to
Rapid City, and whose kids would be a reasonable asset
to the high school sports program. He made him an offer
he couldn’t refuse.
Title—President, and all
the glory that goes with it, a five year contract with
extensions if it worked well, a salary that would put
him in the upper two percent of the population in
Jefferson County, and an option on enough bank stock to
allow him to retire when he was sixty-five if it went
well. Hawk never discussed or even thought about it not
going well. Carroll thought about it all the time.
Hawk stopped at the
cashier on the way out, where over the intervening years
of his life, Jessie Hahn had gone from a comely
eighteen-year-old cheerleader to a comfortable, chubby,
pleasant, know-everybody-and-their-business cashier.
“Morning Hawk. Cash or
credit?” she said.
“Put it on my account
will you Jessie?”
“Sure.” She pulled out
the credit book, opened a page and ran her finger down
the column. Her finger stopped and she looked up.
“Ella’s gonna want some payment on it pretty soon. It’s
getting up there.”
“Yeah—I know.”
She took a pen and wrote
the numbers.
He pushed the screen door
open and stepped out on the sidewalk. His gaze fell on a
logging truck stopped at the red light, loaded with
twenty-five to thirty small trees, their tops no more
than six inches in diameter. The air was colored with
diesel fumes.
Pecker poles. Was it true
that all the high quality trees were cut out of
Jefferson County? When he was in high school the trucks
often had only two or three logs for a load.
7:45 a.m. Monday, June 8, 1998
Hawk opened the door to Jefferson County Realty and
smiled at the mounted game heads on the wall, the
morning light reflecting from their glass eyes. He
tilted his head and ran his eyes over each mount,
recalling the hunt, the stalk, the shot. Thirty years of
his life were represented on the wall and he wanted to
never forget the days in the field. He relived the hunts
to keep them fresh in his memory, to not forget the
sights and sounds and smells of standing in the
backcountry alone, shivering in the cold dawn, listening
to the bugle of a bull elk, watching the smoke of his
breath in the frozen air or turning to hear rock tumble
from sheep climbing out of a deep canyon. He had pitted
his two legs against their four, his powder and lead
against their sense of hearing and smell and had won
often enough to have a fine head collection. And he had
not been a wastrel with the meat or hides. The meat was
eaten, if not by him and his family, by others who
needed it, and the hides tanned and given to Indians on
the reservation who manufactured items from them to
sell.
“Mornin’ beasts,” he
said.
The mounted heads were
mute.
He walked to his desk and
flicked on the voice mail.
“First message: Mr.
Nielsen, this is David Bires calling. I’m a field
representative for the Internal
Revenue Service in the Boise office. We have some
concerns regarding your reported sale of a house in your
1996 returns and just as a housekeeping item, we’d like
to audit your books for the last three years. This is
just a superficial audit to try and get a feeling for
your income and expenses. We’d like to be there
Wednesday if that’s a good time for you. You can reach
me at…”
Hawk shook his head. He
listened to the other messages and then cleared them. He
stood up, closed his eyes, stretched his head back over
his shoulders until he felt his back pop. He usually got
two or three pops as the discs slid back and then he
could stand and think straight.
At 8:00 a.m. Wev and
Ruthann came in with sixteen ounce Lattes in hand.
“Morning brother,” Wev
said.
Hawk looked at him.
“What’s this brother stuff?”
“Ruthann said a lot of
people didn’t know we were brothers and I should take to
calling you that more often.”
Hawk glanced at Ruthann
opening up her desk for the day. She had once been
pretty but the addition of forty pounds hadn’t done her
body any good although it did smooth out her face.
“Well—being a step
brother doesn’t mean the same thing and I don’t see any
reason for you to go around town calling me brother.
Sounds like some sort of black man’s game, and Ruthann
shouldn’t—.”
Ruthann burst in. “When’s
the deal gonna close Hawk?”
Damn her! She knows the
closing date as well as anyone.
“This week. Got to. Too
much hanging on it,” he shot back.
Hawk slammed the door behind him and jaywalked across
the street, down the alley and knocked on the back door
of the bank. He saw Carroll Swenson turn, smile, get up
from his leather chair and start for the door.
A woodpecker was working
on the mulberry tree behind the Sandstone Bar and the
sound mingled with the smells from the garbage cans
pulled out in the alley. This alley hadn’t changed its
smell in twenty years. It took Hawk right back to grade
school when he walked through it on his way home.
There was the little
pocket behind the garbage cans between the Bar and
Shakey’s Pizza Parlor where he had hid on initiation
night while the seniors were searching out the freshmen.
That was the first time in his life he could remember
being frightened. Tales of being left naked fifteen
miles out in the country and being forced to walk back
to town or having to smoke an entire cigarette inhaling
every puff until you puked your dinner up, pervaded the
freshman class, and while no one actually knew anybody
who had had to do these things, it was assumed that
someone in their class would.
“Thanks for coming in
Hawk. Just need a few minutes.”
Carroll led into the
conference room, closed the door slowly and quietly with
both hands.
“Looks like it’s gonna be
a nice day…” Carroll started, then trailed off.
“Nice enough,” Hawk said.
Carroll had his hands on
the tabletop with the fingers interlaced. He looked at
them in silence for a moment before looking up. Hawk had
seen that same look a hundred times in history class
when the teacher asked him a question he couldn’t
answer.
“Hawk—you need to do
something for me on your line of credit. The board
meeting is coming up Thursday night and they’re gonna
insist on some action on it.” He took a quick breath and
continued. “You haven’t made a payment on it for over
four months and from what I hear around town your credit
at the store and cafe are about to be closed. When’s
this deal gonna close?”
“Carroll—I need time.”
“Dammit Hawk, I’ve
loosened every screw, every binder that’s available to
me but they won’t let me keep ignoring this loan. It is
a sizeable amount for our bank you know?”
“Look—Carroll—I worked my
ass off getting this bank in here. Got depositor’s—big
ones to switch banks and help open this place. And I got
you out of that lousy bank in Bend to run it. Now I need
some help. Time is all I need. When this deal closes my
fee alone will double the capital of the bank.”
“That much?” Carroll
watched Hawk nodding. “How much?”
“It will double your
capital.”
Carroll looked out the
window. “You mean we’d have close to fifty million?”
Hawk nodded again.
Carroll took a deep
breath, bent his head back and looked at the ceiling.
His lips were pursed and the tips of his fingers had
turned white.
“Ok. I’ll tell them we
need to extend for another—what—ninety days?"
“That’s plenty."
“You’re sure you can pay
the full $120,000 by then?
They both nodded.
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