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  “I hate this,” Frankie mumbled as they entered the crowded waiting area. They joined a long, winding line for the security check. While Frankie’s mom placed her keys and purse in the locker, Frankie examined the sea of faces around them: young, old, and oldest, all different colors. There were crying babies, bored teens, and one babbling older man. But mostly it was women, ladies like his mother, who stood by her man, no matter what.

  “I’m sorry, Frankie, did you say something?” his mom asked when she returned.

  “I said I hate this.”

  Frankie’s mom nodded, and an out-of-place smile spread across her face.

  “What are you smiling about?” Frankie asked. When they visited his dad, his mom rarely smiled or even spoke, acting like it almost hurt.

  She didn’t answer—just eyed Frankie, still smiling.

  “Come on, why are you smiling?”

  “You said you hated this, right?” Frankie’s mom asked.

  Frankie nodded. Like everything else in St. Paul, the lobby was crowded and noisy.

  Frankie’s mom leaned in toward him and put her hands on his shoulders. Then she lightly brushed his long black hair out of his face. “Good. It’s jail. You’re supposed to hate it.”

  10

  Frankie cradled the tan visitation phone in his hand. Everything in the Stillwater State Prison visiting area was the same: tan, dirty, and gritty. Phone in hand, Frankie wondered how many other sons had used it to speak to their dads, or the other way around. In the Smith line, the male roots of the family tree were firmly planted in corrections. Except nothing ever got corrected. Year after year, generation after generation, the Smith men ended up behind bars.

  “How is school?” Frankie’s father asked in his familiar raspy voice.

  His father’s interest in his schooling was surprising and new. “Okay, I guess.”

  “You connected with Jay and Billy Creech?” Frankie’s father asked. “You need your brothers to protect you out there, like I do in here.” Frankie hesitated before answering.

  Even through the glass, Franklin Smith’s eyes burned dark. To Frankie, it seemed his father’s eyes had turned from brown to black over the years, especially when he stared hard at his son.

  “Listen, bad things are going down,” Frankie’s dad said. “You keep the twins close, you hear?”

  Frankie nodded, breaking his father’s stare. But it wasn’t just the stare. Everything about his dad—including a three-inch scar visible on his newly shaved head—told the world that Franklin Brave Eagle Smith was a man to be feared, respected, and avoided.

  “Why did you shave your head?” Frankie asked.

  “I took my hair before the white men here could,” his father answered. “Like they took everything else from us.” He looked down and then looked straight at Frankie. “Even when we rose up, formed a new tribe, then the white men called us gangsters and locked us up.”

  Frankie avoided his dad’s stare. His grandfather saw it differently—thought his dad wasn’t a leader of a new tribe, he was a criminal. Who was Franklin Brave Eagle Smith, really? If he had to keep spending weekends in Stillwater, Frankie hoped these visits would help him decide for himself.

  11

  The visit with his dad lasted the whole hour that was allowed. Then visits with Jay and Billy’s father, and four other family members, lasted another three. Half a Sunday spent in Stillwater seemed like forever. “I need to stop at a library,” Frankie told his mom as they left the prison parking lot.

  The request earned a double take from his mom, but she agreed, and Frankie mumbled, “Thanks.” He clicked on the music as they drove out of the prison’s shadow into a bright fall afternoon.

  The fast-food lunch they’d gotten on the way to Stillwater didn’t sit well in Frankie’s stomach. Nor did the ongoing conversation with his mother—although conversation was the wrong word, since Frankie rarely spoke. He listened, nodded, and repeated back as needed from his mom’s endless lecture on how Frankie would be different, how he wouldn’t repeat his father’s and uncles’ mistakes. He would stay free.

  Inside the library, Frankie and his mom asked to get a library card.

  “Your name, please?” asked the librarian.

  Frankie started to speak but then stopped.

  “Frankie, tell the woman—” his mom said.

  Frankie handed the white woman behind the desk his Rondo ID. “Frankie Brave Eagle.”

  The woman looked at the ID. “That’s not what it says here,” she said, confused.

  “Smith is the name white people gave my family. Brave Eagle is my real name,” Frankie said.

  His mother’s irritation filled the small space. “Fine, use Brave Eagle.” The woman typed the information into the computer and then handed Frankie the card, which he signed Frankie Brave Eagle. He imagined his father’s proud smile, somewhere in Stillwater.

  “I’ll be back in an hour. Is that enough time?” his mother asked.

  Frankie nodded, and his mother took off. Frankie went to a computer station and printed off a web page on Paul Newman for his report. Then he returned to the desk.

  “Can I help you?” the librarian asked

  Frankie smiled. “Can I borrow some scissors?”

  12

  When his mom returned to the library and saw the hatchet job Frankie had done with the scissors, she refused to take him to a real barber. “Actions have consequences, Frankie, and now you look like a fool,” she’d said. Instead, Frankie snuck out late that night, and his cousins shaved his head to finish the job.

  At school, he waited until the end of the day to speak to Sofia so if she blew him off, he wouldn’t reek of humiliation for six hours. “What do you think of my new look?” Frankie asked her.

  Sofia clutched her books—way too many books—to her chest.

  Frankie rubbed his fingers over his newly shaved head. “You wanna touch it? It’s smooth.”

  “Like you?” she asked. The faintest smile broke on Sofia’s face.

  “Me? Smooth, no,” Frankie’s voice trembled.

  “Well, you’ve made a lot of friends around here, Frankie Smith.”

  Frankie inched a little closer; she didn’t back away. “What can I say? People like me.”

  Sofia laughed. “From what I hear, people mostly like your cheap cigarettes.”

  How can women slap a man so hard without raising a hand? Frankie wondered.

  “You don’t approve of smoking?” Frankie asked. “I just sell ’em, I don’t use ’em.”

  Another laugh, smaller. “No, I don’t approve of what you’re doing. I’m not dumb.”

  Frankie moved another inch, closer. “I’m not either. I know you’re about the smartest and prettiest girl here.”

  “Please, Frankie,” Sofia said, books clutched tighter. “I know it’s a gang thing.” Frankie said nothing. Sofia pointed at the 26ers tattoo on her right arm. “I’m out, and I don’t want anything to do with that life or anyone in it.”

  “But I’m not—” Frankie started, but Sofia turned on her high heels and walked away.

  13

  Frankie picked at his dinner of black beans and rice. While his mom had a good job counseling chemically dependent women, it didn’t pay much. Rice and beans made up a good part of most meals.

  “Aren’t you hungry?” his mom asked.

  “I’m not feeling well,” Frankie mumbled. “I don’t think I can go to school tomorrow.”

  “Your book report is due tomorrow. You’ll be there.” His mom’s tone shifted, now harder.

  “Maybe.” Frankie shoveled food into his mouth to cover his I-got-caught grin.

  “Frankie, I’m so pleased with the reports I’m getting from your teachers,” his mom said with a new tone, one of pride. Frankie didn’t hear it much, so he soaked it up. “You seem more focused. Why?”

  “I don’t know.”

  His mom sighed a classic mom sigh. “Come on.” She waited. “No idea?”

  Frankie
scratched his head—it itched like crazy. His mom tapped her fork on his plate over and over, waiting for a response. “I don’t know, Mom. The teachers at Rondo, they’re different than my old teachers. Not better, just different. It’s like they care more. About me.”

  His mom smiled like she’d won a big victory. “So you be different from the old Frankie—and go to school.”

  Frankie nodded. Truancy had been Frankie’s best subject at Riverwood. The temptation of Sofia had made him want to go to class at Rondo until she’d rejected him.

  “What do I get if I get an A?”

  His mom smiled. “A proud mom. Now go finish your homework.”

  14

  Frankie hardly looked up from his page—he didn’t like speaking in front of the class and hadn’t memorized the report. When he did glance up, he tried to make eye contact with Sofia. But she wasn’t having it here, now, or any time or place. When Frankie tried to talk to her, she wouldn’t say a word.

  “So, that’s my report,” he finished.

  A few kids clapped, including Luis and his friend Jose. Frankie started to retreat to his chair, but he got two steps away before Mrs. Howard-Hernandez stopped him with a question. “Frankie, what was the most interesting thing you learned about Paul Newman?”

  Frankie looked down at the website printout. “A lot of stuff.”

  “Put the paper down,” the teacher said. Frankie dumped the paper on his desk and slid into the chair. “Tell us what you think. Don’t just tell us what you read about Paul Newman; tell us what you learned that you found interesting about him, that you’ll use. Who you admire reveals a great deal about who you are and what you believe.”

  “Well, it was cool how he wasn’t just an actor,” Frankie said softly. “And then he was, like, freakin’ rich and could have been richer, but he gave a lot of money he made to charity.”

  Mrs. Howard-Hernandez nodded. She seemed pleased.

  “And what did you like least about him?”

  “Well, in a movie called Hombre, he played an Indian. That’s messed up.” Frankie told the story of the movie, which he had read about on Wikipedia. “He was this Indian-raised white guy who, uh, faced prejudice when he returned to the white world for his inheritance after his dad died.”

  “Maybe we can show it in class,” Mr. Aaron interjected from where he was sitting in with the class. “It’s got a lot of action, which I know you all like, but the theme is pretty good too. It’s about how people can change.”

  Frankie didn’t know which caused him to smile more: what Mr. Aaron said or the B+ that Mrs. Howard-Hernandez wrote at the top of his paper. It was the best grade he’d ever received in English.

  15

  Frankie tried to keep calm as his father came into view, but his mother screamed. Two prison guards ran to her side and spoke with her while Frankie picked up the visitation phone.

  “What happened to your eye?” Frankie asked, his voice trembling.

  “A Twenty-sixer took it in a fight.” Over his father’s right eye was an eye patch. It wasn’t black like a pirate patch—that would have been much better. It was a weird pinkish flesh color that looked like an empty socket.

  “Did they get the guy?” They. The other members of the First Nation Mafia.

  His dad said nothing.

  “Can you still see okay?” Frankie asked.

  An unfamiliar smile came over Frankie’s father’s face. Years of fights, drugs, and alcohol abuse had destroyed his dad’s mouth and face, along with the rest of his body. The missing eye was just the latest wound.

  “You know of any of them?” his dad whispered into the phone. “Any Twenty-sixers?”

  Frankie’s blood turned icy.

  “Frankie?” his dad repeated, still soft but commanding.

  More silence from Frankie. He didn’t want to hear any more. He turned to his mom, who was waiting off to the side. As he started to pull the phone away from his ear, he heard his dad say, “You know what to do, son. An eye for an eye.”

  Frankie dropped the phone. It bounced with a thud from the table. The sound echoed in the small space over the clamor of voices, along with the smack of Frankie’s hard shoes against the hard cement as he walked toward the exit.

  “Frankie, come back here!” his mother yelled, earning stern looks from the guards.

  No, Frankie thought, shaking his head. I’m never coming back here again!

  16

  Friday afternoon, the Creech twins’ beat-up Buick waited for Frankie in the Rondo parking lot. Coming out of the school at the end of the day were plenty of hard faces of all colors. Going into the ice rink part of the building were bright white faces with hockey gear. The contrast of colors, fates, and futures angered Frankie.

  “Frankie!” Jay shouted from the driver’s side.

  Frankie looked over his shoulder. Where was Sofia? What if she saw him with the Creech twins and their sunglasses and gang tattoos?

  “What are you doing here?” Frankie walked over and leaned in the busted car window.

  “You need more cigarettes to sell?” Billy asked. “You must be out, since no money is coming in.”

  “I’m shut down,” Frankie told his cousins a false story about Mrs. Baker threatening to expel him for selling cigarettes on campus. It was really Sofia’s words that had shut him down.

  “So, big deal, they kick you out of school,” Billy said. “We’re dropping out soon.”

  Frankie knew better than to confess that he wasn’t dropping out or that he liked Rondo. “I gotta go,” he said.

  “Come with us, we’re headed to get more product,” Jay said.

  Frankie shook his head.

  “Frankie, you scared? Don’t worry. It’s not another smash and grab,” Billy said.

  “Just busy,” Frankie said. Busy trying to change.

  “Really? My dad says you ain’t been busy with what your old man told you to do,” Jay said.

  “Get in, Frankie,” Billy said. “We’re headed to Riverwood; you can see the fam.”

  Frankie thought of his grandfather’s wise grin, so different from his father’s battle-wrecked smile. He glanced around again and then got in the back seat.

  17

  Gus Tall Horse braided together the strands of sweetgrass effortlessly, like a man much younger. As Frankie sat by his grandfather’s side in the small house, he tried to hide his smile. While his grandfather worked, Frankie knew his cousins were focused on another sacred plant: tobacco. There was no cigarette tax on the reservation, so the twins were buying up cigarettes at low cost to sell in St. Paul on the black market.

  In a small alabaster bowl, a bundle of sage leaves burned, filling the air with the smell of fall. A musty cedar chest, open in the corner of the room, added to the aroma of the tiny space.

  “You look tired, Frankie.” His grandfather placed his hands on Frankie’s sore shoulders.

  Frankie laughed and then pointed outside at a large pile of rocks that he and his grandfather had spent the afternoon collecting. Rocks for the I-ni-pi, the sweat lodge ceremony, were symbols of the past.

  “It’s hard, being in a new city and school,” Frankie said. His grandfather nodded like he understood. Frankie knew better: Gus had never left Riverwood in his life.

  “You are a brave eagle. Spring is your time, not the fall. In spring, the whole world is starting over.” They both sat silently for a moment before his grandfather continued. “Your mother writes me often. She says you’re doing better in school, that’s good.”

  Frankie nodded. “I guess so. It doesn’t matter, though. Look at you.”

  His grandfather inhaled the smoky, sweet scents of the room deeply into his lungs. “Times have changed. Education matters more than it ever did. I’m proud of you, Frankie.”

  Don’t be, Frankie thought to himself. In truth, he’d been spending more time with the Creech twins than with his schoolwork. He faked a smile to his grandfather, ashamed, and vowed to change.

  18

>   Frankie’s mom wasn’t happy when he called to say he was staying in Riverwood for the weekend. In particular, she didn’t like his ride. Frankie wished he could’ve driven to River-wood on his own. But his mom’s Ford was older and even more beat-up than the twins’ ride. He didn’t trust it to make it there.

  “I stayed with Grandfather,” Frankie said when he called his mom again Sunday, then quickly told his mom how he’d ditched his cousins after they got to the reservation. They’d agreed to take him on the return trip, provided that he find another place to sell their smokes. Frankie needed the ride.

  “Still, you went without even talking to me first, and—” his mom started.

  “I got no minutes left,” Frankie said over her. “I’ll see you at home.”

  “No, stop by the office.”

  “Your office? Why?”

  There was silence, a sigh, and then she hissed, “Because I said so.”

  Frankie hung up.

  Jay drove just below the speed limit down the highway. With the trunk and backseat stuffed with cigarettes, Frankie guessed they were breaking some law. It’s what his cousins did. It’s what his family did. “Frankie, what’s your plan?” Jay asked.

  “I don’t know, maybe set up in my building or outside of school or—”

  “Not about that, cuz, what are you doing about your dad?” Jay told Frankie what their father, also a First Nation Mafia chief imprisoned in Stillwater, had said about the fight and Frankie’s duty to make it right. “Law of the jungle and law of the streets, right?”

  Frankie wished the loud music was louder. He didn’t want to hear this. If he didn’t hear it, he didn’t have to think about it.

  “I don’t believe in the eye for an eye,” Jay said. “You gotta teach ’em respect. Take an eye? I say take a life.” Jay glanced back at Frankie, reached into his coat pocket, and showed his cousin the Glock 9 handgun.