Driftless (32 page)

“My people,” repeated Winnie, her narrow, freckled face glowing with purpose, “are the people in my church. I’m the pastor of the Words Friends of Jesus Church, forty-five minutes west of here. One of my ladies, Olivia—she lives with her sister, Violet, in a house inherited from their parents—was here in a wheelchair. Violet is a widow and Olivia a spinster and lifelong invalid. Violet is in her sixties, if not older—I don’t know for sure because it seems impolite to ask. Olivia came here last Saturday night—in a taxi, as near as we can tell—with more than forty thousand dollars. She lost every
penny. That money was all she and her sister had. I assume you have a refund policy.”

“Refund policy?”

“Yes, a provision for giving the money back.”

“I’m afraid we don’t have a policy like that,” said Brian, shaking his head solemnly and looking straight into her eyes. “But I can certainly commiserate with your situation. I’m sure those ladies are nearly inconsolable. It must be very difficult in your position.”

“This isn’t about me,” said Winnie, who stared back without blinking, and Brian looked away. “This is about something that should not have happened—an
evil
that can now be corrected.”

Brian was astonished at the impression the word made upon him. It seemed so raw and distasteful. Evil? “Are you sure you wouldn’t like to sit down?” he asked. “I know the area you live in. It’s beautiful there. For three or four years I’ve had my eye on a particular piece of wooded land that I’d like to own around there. Why don’t you sit down?”

She shook her head and her long hair responded in waves.

“Would you care for a cup of coffee in the cafeteria?”

“I never drink coffee,” said Winnie, “and I would never eat or drink anything inside a gambling establishment.”

“I see.”

“Are you really the person in charge?” asked Winnie.

“I am today.”

“It’s hard to believe you don’t have a refund policy.”

“This isn’t a clothing store, Miss—?”

“My name is Pastor Smith. Perhaps I haven’t explained the situation well enough. See, Violet has taken care of Olivia for over ten years. They have nothing but Violet’s Social Security and what little money Olivia saved through the years from family gifts. They own about a dozen dresses, wear sweaters through the winter to save heat, and drive back and forth to the grocery store in a twenty-year-old automobile. Olivia, who hardly ever leaves her house, took out a mortgage, withdrew all her money from her savings account—in cash—and came here while her sister was visiting a neighbor.”

“I don’t see what this has to do with anything.”

“Are you listening to me?” asked Winnie. Her voice did not rise, but grew more intense. “I’m telling you the truth. Olivia took all their money, including a substantial loan, and brought it here in the middle of the night. She lost it all at your gambling tables.”

She pulled papers from her handbag. “Violet got these from the bank. See here—this is the exact amount. I’ve circled it. It’s proof.”

Brian ignored the papers. “I do wish you’d sit down, Pastor,” he said.

“I prefer not to,” said Winnie.

“This is a business,” said Brian with a nearly imperceptible sigh. “We run a business here.”

“A gambling business,” said Winnie.

“These books—” Brian motioned toward a shelf of hardbound volumes and loose-leaf binders. “These are the laws of Wisconsin as they pertain to our business. They regulate everything we do. We can’t turn on a light switch without the approval of the governor, the Wisconsin Senate, and the Board of Indian Affairs. We pay a gaming fee, pay federal, state, and local taxes, and employ over a thousand people who pay federal, state, and local taxes. Inspectors and auditors visit us routinely and we are, in addition, accountable to the tribe that owns all our assets. This is a business like any other.”

“You may be a business,” said Winnie. “But you are certainly not a business like any other. What is your product?”

“Entertainment,” he said with weary courtesy. “For the glad chance of winning money, people spend money. It’s good entertainment.”

“It may be entertainment,” said Winnie, “but not good entertainment.”

“To each her own,” said Brian.

“I’m afraid I’m not making myself clear,” said Winnie.
“A crippled woman
came here in a
wheelchair
around eight o’clock several Saturday nights ago and
lost forty thousand dollars.
That money was
all she and her sister had.
She was not one of your ‘high rollers,’ had never gambled in her life, did not have anyone to advise her, and did not even have a ride home. I do not think she was
entertained,
and in six
or seven months she and her sister will have
nowhere to live.
All this is the
absolute truth.
”

“I do not doubt your sincerity,” said Brian.

“Then give their money back.”

“I can’t do that. It’s not as though we have a room full of cash here. Our revenues pay the salaries of our employees, and the electricity, heat, and insurance; they pay for the hotel currently under construction and all the people working for the contractors. We have investors who trust us with their investments. The tribe has schools, clinics, and dozens of community programs that directly depend on this casino. And the circumstances of many reservation families are far worse, I might add,
far worse
than the circumstances of the women about whom you speak. I do not have the authority to refund money. No one does. Taking money from the casino would be against the law.”

“God’s law is the only important law,” said Winnie.

“God’s law is unfortunately not recognized by the Wisconsin Gaming and Licensing Commission,” said Brian.

“You’re not hearing what I say,” said Winnie, her face still possessing the look of righteous certitude. “These sisters are—”

“Stop,” said Brian. “It won’t do any good for me to hear that again. We have reached an impasse. You think if I understand something specific and personal about these women that it will make some difference. But it doesn’t and it won’t. We can’t detain everyone who walks through the front doors and ask if they can afford to come in, and we certainly can’t turn handicapped people away. Would you have us stop customers in the parking lot and accuse them of gambling with money they cannot afford to lose?”

“But it was a
mistake,
” said Winnie. “Your reservation families may indeed be living in regrettable circumstances and no doubt injustices were committed that contributed to that, but it’s never right to victimize one person in order to make up for another’s prior victimization. As decent people we are responsible for only those misfortunes we have influence over, and you have influence over this one. It was a tragic mistake and you can correct it.”

“People are free to make mistakes with their money. It was no
more a mistake than if this woman had paid forty thousand dollars to attend a fund-raising dinner at the Democratic headquarters.”

“I’m sure
they
have a refund policy.”

“I’m afraid you are very, very naive—and I don’t mean that in a negative way,” said Brian.

“What I’m saying is quite simple,” said Winnie. “It is
wrong
for you to keep these ladies’ money. I know it’s wrong and you know it’s wrong. I’m asking you to give it back.”

“Try to see this from our point of view, Miss—.”

“Pastor Smith, and don’t say ‘our’ when it’s really you.”

“Pastor Smith, there is no difference between this and your friend purchasing forty thousand dollars worth of stock just before its value falls.”

“This wasn’t an investment and it wasn’t a rational decision,” said Winnie. “It was a
mistake.
”

“If your friend had won forty thousand dollars I doubt you would be here today attempting to give it back.”

“Then you don’t know me, because I would be here in that case as well, if I knew anything about it. You simply don’t understand. I’m telling you the truth but you can’t accept it.”

“It’s not the truth we disagree about,” said Brian. “It’s the meaning of it.”

“The truth only has one meaning,” said Winnie. “It commands us to act charitably toward each other.”

“It’s curious how this truth only moves in one way,” said Brian, for the first time breaking his formal manner. “There was no similar truth when
your people
were moving here from Europe, slaughtering
my people,
taking the land for yourselves. Apparently no compassionate truths applied then. But as soon as one of your more vulnerable citizens walks into an Indian casino, the truth comes jumping out.”

“Violet and Olivia had nothing to do with the many crimes against Indian people, present or past.”

“They have certainly benefited from those crimes.”

“Should the sins of the fathers be suffered by the daughters to all generations?”

“No, but neither should those sins be dismissed. Like it or not,
Pastor Smith, we live in a collective society. The treaties and compacts that allow for some Indian nations to operate casinos and lower your taxes are like any other laws: they are based on general principles. They allow for certain public behaviors—in this case gambling—in the belief that it will, on average, benefit society. In some individual cases the permitted behavior may be detrimental; that is unfortunate, but it cannot be avoided if the general benefit is to continue.

“It’s the same with speed limits on highways. The overall benefit of higher speed limits is offset by the death of some individuals who might have lived at slower speeds. A person whose friends have died on the interstate can lobby to have speed limits reduced, but she cannot complain that some injustice has taken place—because at the time the law was enacted it was assumed that there would be, regrettably, more deaths due to higher speed limits.”

“I’m afraid your analogy has snared your feet,” said Winnie. “If my friends were to die while driving on an interstate highway I could not complain of an injustice, but if it were in the power of the highway department to restore them to life, they would. They don’t have that power, but you do. You can correct an instance of two individuals falling through the cracks in the general benefit.”

“I’ve told you I can’t do that. It’s as impossible for me as for the highway department to restore life.”

“Anyone can plainly see why the highway department cannot restore life, but no one, except you, can see why Olivia’s money cannot be refunded.”

“It’s not in my power.”

“Of course it is. If you were so inclined, you could easily write out a check for $43,241.53. You could do it. It would be in your power. It’s only the goodwill you lack.”

“A moot point.”

“Well, I hoped to not have to go into this, but you have forced me,” said Winnie, taking a deep breath and standing even straighter. “All right, I’ll tell you everything. Last fall I had a vision, an epiphany, and I saw God, or She saw me—however you wish to say it.”

Winnie became more animated as she talked, her arms and hands moving. “I should not have done it, but I had no one else to tell. So
I told Olivia and, well, I guess you can imagine what an impression it made upon her—she being an invalid. Anyway, she thought she would give God a chance to bless her through a monetary sign.”

Brian sat down in the chair across the desk and put his head in his hands.

“So you see, it was really my fault this all happened. I sinned through my blindness to the effect I was having on another person. You have no idea how deeply I regret it. I should have known better, but now at least you can see what happened. Olivia felt unloved and she acted out of ignorance. The devil made her think God hated her, and to prove this was not true she came here.”

“ ‘The devil’?” said Brian without looking up.

“Call it whatever you like—the dark psychological agency that makes us think the worst of ourselves and others. I don’t care if you prefer another word. Words mean nothing to me, absolutely nothing. She came here not to win your money, but to find God’s love. It was a theodyssey. So, in actuality, she wasn’t seeking entertainment, as you say, but looking for God in the wrong way and in the wrong place. It was a mistake—one in which you are not in any way to blame, except that you temporarily ended up with the money that had been provided for Olivia and Violet to live on.”

Due to her impassioned talk, her hair had become mussed. To correct it, she shook her head and the straight brown locks rearranged themselves again, falling like water behind her shoulders. And as she turned, he could see that her hair fell far below her waist. Her eyes darkened and the glow that had earlier projected from her face virtually beamed into the room.

“So, now you have all the facts,” she said and smiled for the first time, her white teeth gleaming.

Brian stared up at her and tried to ignore his mounting sexual desire. The look of triumphant dignity on her face—God, how appealing! Her advocacy for her church members colored every expression in a tenderness that should not—in the best of worlds—have conveyed a sensual content, but it did. She actually believed her intimate narrative would convince him, and this was so extraordinarily endearing he felt himself becoming aroused. She seemed so
childlike, and though the qualities of children—in women—were supposed to be indefinitely detoured from the paths leading to the house of adult—male—carnal pleasure, they nevertheless connected in the bright intersection of her smile.

His imagination began to suggest several wonderfully improbable vignettes of the immediate future and what her neck might flow into beneath her collar, how her hair might feel to touch, which he struggled to push out of his mind, but not without an audible groan of remorse. Why, he wondered, do we minute by minute create a world in which the things we most spontaneously desire are forbidden? Why do we continually create places celebrating the values we most despise, where a man will type numbers into a computer all afternoon—without questioning—and defend his company’s right to keep the money of a cripple to a woman he longs to love?