Authors: Jim Harrison
Sunderson’s mind drifted back to Monica and Lemuel and the ancient expression
played for a sucker
. He had been a sucker a number of times in his long career as a public servant, even reprimanded by his chief for being too “easy.” Since he himself had always been averse to lying he could be quite gullible with others. A bad kid could whine about not wanting a record and Sunderson would occasionally let him go though the kid didn’t have the foggiest idea what a record meant to his future. Would Monica cheat on him? Perhaps on the right occasion whatever that might be. Thinking it over they had never
“
plighted any troth,” as they used to say. Would he, in fact, screw Delphine his next door neighbor if the occasion arose? Of course. Everything seems to be a sliding scale. He, however, couldn’t imagine a woman sleeping with a man who started her at eleven. Shouldn’t there be some resentment? The world of sexuality was mysterious indeed. The
Detroit Free Press
reported that the age of sexual awakening was getting lower year after year. Who knew? Who was being honest about such matters? Kinsey was long dead and Sunderson struggled to tie his shoes and had lost the grandest wife imaginable on the grounds that enough was enough. The fact that he couldn’t imagine Monica and Lemuel having an affair was no reflection on the possible truth. He felt disgusted with himself for being jealous. He resolved not to follow in her father and uncle’s footsteps anymore and to find someone a more appropriate age.
Chapter 15
Marion left the next morning so Sunderson went home too, mainly to get his car fixed by the original dealer. The towing charge to Marquette was five hundred dollars, so he got a local kid with a tow bar to do it for two hundred. If he wrecked the car sullied by bullets so be it. He called Diane on the way home to ask why she’d bought it for him, but after he mentioned the bullet holes she was too distracted to answer. It seemed she thought she owed him and somehow it would wipe the slate clean on their marriage.
He had assured Marion that if he ever came back he was unlikely to see Bert again. Marion said that he had run into a number of bad people in his life and Bert was way up there. Sprague was worse thought Sunderson. But then Bert would be charged for contributing to the murder of the game warden and also attempted murder for shooting at Sunderson. It would add up to at least twenty-five years down in Jackson prison.
Sunderson was upset lately the way his fantasy life had tended to dissipate. It likely was his age, he thought. Everything is going away as many older men had noticed, and it was impossible to believe that everything was within reach. The grocery store, where he always saw beautiful housewives, rarely brought on any craving. The snack shop for university kids down the street was mostly empty during the summer but he enjoyed it when the girls were in their late spring athletic wear. They certainly never noticed him which allowed him to stare at them with freedom.
Late last summer he had sat on a bench outside the snack shop on a hot afternoon and watched eight scantily clad cheerleaders going through their routines. He should have been embarrassed but he wasn’t. It was too extreme to walk away. For a while Janis Joplin had been his favorite singer and he thought of her song “Get It While You Can.” When they left one of them waved goodbye to him and it was difficult to ascribe meaning to the gesture. Maybe it meant nothing. Maybe she was knowing age-old lust but that was doubtful. Maybe she was just a Friendly American. In high school of the four cheerleaders two were marvelous sluts bent on early marriage and two were prim as saints, also bent on early marriage. When he had seen them in later years they all looked like they had had too many pancakes after church, a tradition not to be broken. None of the husbands were successful but they all stayed married and had lots of kids.
Of course he knew that the aging process was bound to kick in with full force but there should be a way to hold it off for a while. The only reliable trigger of lust in the past few months was when Monica came home from work and took a shower, wrapping herself in one of Diane’s big expensive towels. Monica was beautiful, not in Diane’s classic way but in a sort of American manner like a Big Ten cheerleader. He felt too lazy to cook and hadn’t told Monica when he was coming or she would have had something ready. He went for his old standby, possibly the sin of gluttony, and picked up half a dozen pasties, meat pies that he had been fond of since childhood, a local tradition among miners who would reheat them on their shovels for lunch. Diane used to drive him mad with desire but then he was in love with her, and probably still was. What he had with Monica was a lesser form of love.
When he got home in the late afternoon he went to the backyard and sure enough there was his lovely neighbor crawling around in her flower bed. He went over to say hello and look at her at close range. She was wearing blue shorts again, and a halter top that barely controlled her breasts. She mentioned that her husband was in Lansing and she had to cook herself something. He said he had just bought six pasties if she would like to come over for a drink and pasties. “I love pasties,” she almost yelled so loud it startled him. “When?” “Now,” he said with a slight tremor in his voice.
He poured her a whiskey in the kitchen but she wanted wine so he drank two whiskeys which he needed. She said she would run home to clean up since she was still in her garden clothes so he sped to the peek hole in his study and lo and behold he saw the entire person naked which churned his guts more than Monica.
Here was an adult woman, now in green shorts and a different halter. At dinner the conversation was utterly strange to Sunderson. Delphine and her husband Fred were involved in “sexual freedom” to try to keep their marriage alive. As a teacher Fred’s opportunities were endless while she had to deal with a meager supply. Fred had to be careful as people no longer turned a blind eye as they had in the past, even if no one complained. They would visit their house late in the evening in secret and Delphine was expected to stay in her room so as not to upset the little dears. Throughout this monologue Sunderson sensed he was expected to stay silent and not utter any of the wretched witticisms that the situation called out for. They had tried everything to keep their marriage sexually perky: nude dancing, porn films which Freddy liked but she didn’t. “I’m not visual,” she said. They had gone to “swap parties” but generally didn’t like the people. Freddy, as a graduate of both Yale and Oxford, found them unbelievably vulgar. Sunderson had reflected on the idea that academic people found regular people disappointing.
Delphine pulled her chair down the table next to him and flipped one of her breasts out of the halter and into his mouth. He nearly choked what with a mouthful of meat pie. By a miracle he managed to swallow the chunk of pasty, take a quick drink of whiskey, and suckle at her ample breast. Isn’t life wonderful, he thought stupidly. She felt his penis under the table which was responding properly to the onslaught. She had been occasionally discouraged by dicks that stayed soft under the most outrageous stimulation. There was a bit of gristle to her nipples which he found intriguing. She stood up and pulled her green shorts down to her knees. He dove on her as if she were the most fascinating coral reef in the Keys. She leaned far over the table and he went down on her from behind. “Fuck me,” she said. Simple enough he thought. Unfortunately she twisted her butt wildly. This caused him to come off rather quickly. “There’s plenty more where that came from,” she laughed. After finishing dinner and an hour’s doze he managed one more and then he was tired, sleeping until Monica came home from work. He woke up barely enough to see her pull up her green shorts. He was feeling pretty lucky in his semi-sleep trance when she said goodbye and left by the back door. He was amazed by how sexy he found Delphine and the idea of a younger woman seemed a thing of the past.
He felt like a true adult and obedient to the law which wasn’t technically accurate. He remembered the startled talk in saloons when Jerry Lee Lewis married his thirteen-year-old cousin. Was this where Lemuel was headed? Of course in the north there was a free-floating contempt for anything southern that could only be understood by a new academic term,
geopiety
. There were cities in Italy a mere thirty miles from each other that regarded the food and people of the neighboring city with contempt.
He didn’t so much like the idea but his state police boss and a favorite professor in criminology had insisted that he was a fine detective because he could think like a criminal—he was totally opportunistic and understood the preferences of the local element. Any criminal with ill-gotten gains wanted to spend some money. It was burning up his pants pockets and the choices were limited for free spending. Several times he had found them broke and sober in Sault Ste. Marie. The local criminal element had thought that blacks might murder them in Detroit which was anyway a full day’s drive. Chicago was also too far. Milwaukee was an occasional choice for those stupid enough to think they were safe in another state. Minneapolis was unknowable and huge and thought to be boring by the criminal population though it would have been smarter to go where they could get lost.
When he was growing up Marquette people thought the strip clubs of Escanaba a hotbed of evil which made Sunderson desperately want to go to them. He announced to his parents that he and his friends were going fishing and camping, but they headed straight for Escanaba to see mysteries revealed. Later in life after a Tigers ball game he had gone to one in Detroit that was far better and more stimulating than anything the Great North offered. There were actually beautiful strippers in Detroit, not tired hags that looked as if they were going to drop dead from drugs and fatigue. The best ever, though, was an amateur night with a good prize in Escanaba where at his very feet a pretty girl had struggled and writhed to get out of her tight jeans. She was a bit classy which increased the lust. He was happy when she won the fifty-dollar prize and tried to imagine her in his sleeping bag beside the Ford River.
Sault Ste. Marie had the advantage of being close, an attractive town with some cheap flophouses and motels. You need only drive across the river to be in the Canadian Soo which featured an absolutely major league strip club where you could exhaust your wallet. There were many girls of startling beauty, nearly all French-Canadian from Montreal. Sunderson had been thrilled the first time he went there when he heard them speaking French together as if he was in a foreign country. Which he supposed he was. He bought a lap dance with money earned at a buck an hour. He was only eighteen at the time. The girl was the best-looking and couldn’t have been more than eighteen herself. She got on his chair nude, straddling his legs on the chair with her back to him. She bent way over placing her entire article on his nose. He was thrilled nearly to the point of fainting. In general he disliked strip clubs but this was an exception. The girls were fresh and in fine shape. Unfortunately one of his friends lipped off to the bouncer, a huge Native American, or in Canada they are called First Citizens, and got thrown about thirty yards into the parking lot where he was knocked out colliding with a pickup. The story naturally got inflated to a fistfight but the friend never would go to the strip club again. He admitted calling the bouncer “Tonto” and Sunderson quipped, “Must be he didn’t like the name” to everyone’s laughter.
Chapter 16
Monica came home and threw herself on him in the bed. He carefully explained he wasn’t feeling well because he had eaten three pasties very fast. She was disappointed especially when she noticed that two people had had dinner and he admitted to Delphine’s company.
“That big slut is after you,” Monica shrieked.
“Monica, take that back. She’s a married woman.” He wasn’t ready to level with her.
“Everyone in town but you knows that she would fuck a rock pile if there was a snake in it,” she said, a witticism from the north.
To calm things down they took a long stroll down to a beach on Lake Superior. It was a warmish evening and the lake was placid as it rarely is. The last time he had been there, there were still frozen mounds of snow on the shoulder and huge mounds of plowed snow piled up in beach parking lots. Sunderson recalled as a child digging in a sand dune near Grand Marais and coming upon a huge trove of snow and ice in July. Sunderson loved the little harbor village of Grand Marais where sometimes they had enough money to rent a cabin for a week or two when he was a kid. It was crowded and he always slept on the floor in his sleeping bag. They swam and fished for a weekend with him helping out his brother who was missing a leg.
Monica sat down on a bench and whispered, “I have to tell you something. I think I’m pregnant,” and Sunderson thought he would vomit. She said she thought she had gotten pregnant before she moved to Marquette with him, probably with Lemuel. Her ready admission startled him. Lemuel knew and had offered to take care of her in his big home. It would be pleasant as long as she could avoid everyone else. She felt stupid and careless for getting pregnant with her uncle of all people and wished it had been Sunderson. He couldn’t say how happy and relieved he felt that it wasn’t, which would have been a disaster at his age. He had to assume that she was being honest about the matter. Lemuel had told him that the buyers’ estate had called in the sheriff’s office when Bert wouldn’t surrender the land. They were on the way and would seize the other two houses but not his.
Sunderson reflected that the rest of this family bumbled and mumbled their way through life while Lemuel pinned it down. It was amazing how many men were slovenly fuckups. Diane had always taken care of all details in regard to insurance, taxes, etc., for him and he was sure Lemuel was good at these, too, while the rest of the family was out to lunch. He himself had needed Marion’s advice with some of his own paperwork. The world, of course, was full of needless details. When a questionnaire asks for your mother-in-law’s maiden name you should look for the dynamite.
His thoughts were confused about Monica’s pregnancy. Losing her made him forget his vow, but when he made love to her now he was soft and gentle. In the moment before she dropped the Lemuel bomb he had readily assumed he was the father. It didn’t seem all that bad but then he had never fathered a child much to the disgust of his mother who thought all marriages should be breeding factories. Now there was a certain melancholy in the fact that he probably wasn’t the father doomed to a hundred years of child support. He could see himself holding the baby and giving a bottle as he had seen men do at the grocery store. There would be a newspaper headline reading “Older Father Completes Spawning Run.” What was the source of the melancholy? He reminded himself again not to want things except fishing and maybe his neighbor’s gorgeous ass. He could imagine that after a lifelong affair how Lemuel’s years in prison hurt Monica, sitting around reading about Mexico and cooking for mongrels, waiting for him to come home.
He received a call from Smolens who sounded delighted that Bert had just received sentences totaling thirty years. Wow. He thought of a childhood song, “If I had the wings of an angel, over these prison walls I would fly.” When Bert got out he would be over ninety, too old to shoot. He felt as happy as he had about Mona’s drummer being locked up in France. He called Lemuel to suggest that he take Monica to Mexico on a honeymoon of sorts. Lemuel reminded him that he was the sort of convicted felon that didn’t have a passport. Could Sunderson do it? With the baby coming it might be Monica’s last chance. Lemuel also said he’d be glad to finance the trip but he’d rather they go to Toronto and see museums. Sunderson felt a little deflated after having his bright idea rejected out of necessity.
A few days later Mexico was resolved. Berenice called to say that their mother had had a severe stroke and was in Tucson Heart Hospital and wanted to see him. He doubted the latter not having got along well with her since he was a teen and especially since the little incident with the dancing girl at his retirement party, but he considered that visiting her would put him practically in Mexico anyway.
Late at night a few days later Sunderson was awoken by useless and absurd memories of the past, such as his puzzlement at seven or eight years old over the song “I’d Like to Get You on a Slow Boat to China.” While they were fooling around who was going to run the boat? Were they just turning around and coming back? You couldn’t fish on these big boats. It was too far to the water. What would they eat? Did songwriters know what confusion they caused among children? His whole class would sing “The Spanish Cavalier” and nobody had any idea what a cavalier was. How many of these kids would ever leave the country? In high school civics they spent an entire month on the United Nations, a real snoozer. The teacher had seen the actual United Nations in New York but couldn’t manage to get any of his excitement across. He loved to say “Dag Hammarskjöld” in a heavy Scandinavian accent. He must have sensed the utter futility of what he was doing.
Drifting back and forth in the incoherence of his mind he had the alarming realization that Lemuel had mentioned to him in passing that he had had his tubes tied, a vasectomy, to avoid paternity suits. Sunderson had thought it paranoid at the time, but now it struck him, how could he have made Monica pregnant? Had he had the medical procedure reversed or had he only wanted to raise a child? He had also mentioned that any child of his would be a good bird-watcher by age five. Suddenly Sunderson was wide awake in the middle of the night and felt the need for a whiskey and a Motrin, a magic combination for sleep. His thought, of course, was that maybe it was his child but they wanted it. Maybe that was okay because how was he going to raise a baby at his age? Lemuel was at least ten years younger. He imagined his nights broken by a crying baby. Time to heat the bottle. This was a matter he wouldn’t look into very far. If he really cared he could always have a DNA done from baby spit or something.
He was pleased by how quickly the trip had come together. Monica was excited, and her boss at the hotel restaurant was agreeable as there were few tourists in spring when you can get a surprise blizzard. Diane thought it was wonderful that he truly got out of town. He went to a travel agent to book tickets for Tucson for him and Monica to see his mother in Green Valley that wasn’t green, a stay at the Arizona Inn in Tucson for the nights, and going on to Mérida in the Yucatán via Veracruz so Monica could see the water. He got checks for a thousand dollars apiece from both Lemuel and Diane which was kind of them and not needed because his simple life had not managed to use his retirement checks. He had one more go-round with Delphine in the garage where he kept a cot for the odd very hot night because the garage was under an enormous maple. The mating was fast and uncomfortable as the cot was small and neither of them was an elf. He feared the cot might break and even though it didn’t afterward he continued to worry, worrying being habitual behavior.
Lemuel’s apparent lack of jealousy was curious. After watching countless nature videos it was easy to see that most of the conflict between animals came from sex. He was particularly horrified by a fight between two bull giraffes over a female. He had never realized that giraffes fought with their heads, swinging them hard on their long whipping necks, knocking each other down with stomach blows. Throughout most of the programs there was the wonderful calming voice of David Attenborough. In “Birds of the Gods” which was filmed in hospitable New Guinea, birds of paradise danced with a beauty that would make anyone in Detroit or Harlem jealous. Why not go to some of these places now that he was retired? At least he was headed for Mexico tomorrow with a stop to see Mother in Tucson. Finally Sunderson slept.