Authors: Jim Harrison
He was still distraught over his sexual paralysis but it was as dumb as regretting your suicide. What’s over is over. Sunderson mentioned that Smolens had told him Kate was fourteen and not twelve—she’d been a sickly child and remained skinny so no one figured it out.
“He’s still her uncle, and she’s still a child. Lemuel should go to prison for sleeping with her.”
They had reached their lunch place, a lovely park rest stop near the bridge that crossed the middle branch of the Ontonagon River. Before eating their sandwiches he led her on a longish, steep path down to a fine stretch of the river. He stumbled twice but managed to stay afoot. Diane was surefooted. On summer vacations with her parents they always visited vacationing relatives in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, and Diane had learned rock climbing early. Diane was thrilled seeing a heron across the river. Everything was fine until they turned around and Sunderson had difficulty, slipping on the steep path. She did what she could to help his huffing and puffing and efforts to get a solid foothold. She was ahead of him pulling on his left arm and at one point he stumbled and fell grabbing her bare calf. A bright light went off in his head and he was suddenly aroused. The calf had been so palpable. Near the top there was a small tussock of soft grass and he dragged her down. She couldn’t stop laughing hard but he quickly made love to her and she responded energetically. His heart actually soared rather than fluttering. At lunch never had a ham and cheese sandwich tasted so good. She acted natural as if nothing had happened though she kissed him.
When they got home in two hours they made love long and languorously in their old marriage bed. Afterward she had tears in her eyes. “We really screwed up, didn’t we?” she said. Now he teared up as well and muttered, “Yes.”
“I could never get married again.”
“Why?” he asked with an ache behind his voice.
“I noticed as I get older it’s hard enough to take care of myself let alone adding a man. When I was nursing Bill I was exhausted all the time though it wasn’t much work. We couldn’t find another nurse he could abide. He said the problem was that when you’re dying you can’t stand banality. So when a nurse would say her dishwasher broke or she thought her grandson was smoking dope it would drive him batty. In those last weeks he kept talking about his glorious dream life in which he could see death creeping up on him while he was whirling free through the universe which he loved. He told me how he was able to visit many of the ninety billion galaxies out there. He would say, ‘If this is death it’s not bad.’ That aspect was quite encouraging. I mean he had always been a doctor, a scientist of the body, and quite the cynic about anything religious. Now he was talking about visiting galaxies and hearing the voice of God in the explosion of a black hole that had the power of five million suns.”
Sunderson’s curiosity but not his comprehension was piqued by any information about black holes. He had read about the one with the power of five million suns but what could he make of it? Was this where God lived? There was also a constellation surrounded by five million stars. How did they count them? It had to be an estimate, he thought pathetically. He had read a couple of books by the astronomy writer Timothy Ferris that left him chewing the air as if it were food. The man had once appeared at the local university to give a lecture. That helped to humanize it a bit though all the details were still beyond him. In childhood Sunderson and his friends had the usual dream of inventing a time machine. If he had one he would mainly use it to revisit his best days of fishing. So many years later after the divorce he kept wanting to go back to certain times with Diane like one night camped on a deserted beach miles east of Grand Marais when the northern lights were so spectacular that for the first time he had felt at one with the universe. Usually it was at two, three, five
,
ad infinitum
.
In truth, like most men he lived his life in pieces and remembered only fragments.
They stopped at the travel agent in Marquette to synchronize her trip to Paris with his own. He didn’t mind heading to Seville first, then Barcelona and on to Paris when she arrived. She told him she’d picked out a relatively inexpensive hotel with a room overlooking a garden that she and her husband had loved because she could watch birds and there was little street noise. When he looked he realized she’d chosen the hotel where he stayed with Mona. It was now easy to admit that it was the worst thing he’d ever done in his life.
Sunderson dropped her off at her grand home that she was eager to leave. She kissed him on the lips, an instant thrill.
“See, we don’t need to get married. We can have a nice affair until we die.”
Chapter 24
At home Sunderson was pleased Diane had given him the Le Creuset of leftover cacciatore. He saw Monica’s bags packed near the door and no longer regretted that she was moving away to be with Lemuel. There was a phone message from Berenice in Green Valley that said his mother was dying again but there was no point in his coming out. The doctor thought she would die soon from her stroke and pneumonia. He was relieved that she didn’t seem to be in pain, though he could not imagine his mother absent from earth.
There was also an angry call from Kate who was furious that Lemuel was kicking her out in favor of Monica. Kate was now willing to tell him anything he wanted to know about the “murderers” as she called them.
He hurriedly called Smolens who was overjoyed with the news. He would send a car early and take Kate’s statement at headquarters as the location would encourage her to say everything. Smolens said that they would be able to hold Lemuel indefinitely on sex abuse charges. Could Sunderson bring her in, since she seemed to trust him? Sunderson wanted to say no but couldn’t very well do so since he had broken the case. Smolens admitted he just didn’t get Lemuel’s motive. Sunderson told Smolens about Lemuel’s overwhelming hatred and shame, how he wrote of endless abuse from other members of the family, describing himself as runt of the litter.
There was a note from Monica. “Lemuel is picking me up late this evening. I left a rib steak in the fridge for your dinner. Love, Monica.” Sunderson liked the idea of living alone again. If it wasn’t Diane it was settling for less. He was nervous indeed about her idea of a lifelong affair but then suddenly he perceived she did not want to be tied down like a housewife, a position that had never appealed to her. He remembered again his mother’s struggles to think of something for dinner that everyone would eat. Bobby was the most difficult. He only wanted a piece of fried meat with Worcestershire sauce and cottage cheese. Mother had a partial deliverance when she met their neighbor Mrs. Amarone, who taught her about Italian cooking. She realized that lots of garlic and basil, thyme, and oregano turned the corner for her. For several months the family wouldn’t tolerate anything not Italian. She made massive pizzas in the oven though Berenice and Roberta wouldn’t accept the anchovies that males loved so she had to mark the sections of pizza that were anchovy free. Roberta claimed her boyfriend nearly “puked” when kissing her with anchovy breath. No wonder Diane didn’t want that job.
Sunderson couldn’t imagine life without his mother. Berenice said that they would cremate her rather than go to the pointless expense of shipping her whole body back to Munising. Berenice had always counted her pennies and worked at a soda fountain after school. She also sewed drapes for people. Sometimes when Dad was particularly broke she would loan him money from her savings. But in this case her penny-pinching made Sunderson feel maudlin.
After Monica got home from her last shift, they were chaste from eleven until midnight when Lemuel showed up. Sunderson helped him take the bags out to the car, a new blue Yukon, perfect for the snow. They sat at the dining room table with Sunderson having a drink. He offered one to Lemuel who refused it. He was careful about drinking because of his rotten family.
“So this is where Sprague died? What a gift,” Lemuel said, “to humankind.”
Sunderson pointed to the spot on the dining room floor where Sprague had fallen in an actual hail of gunfire.
They talked peaceably until the subject of Kate came up and then Lemuel grew angry. She in revenge had torn up his favorite book, a big folio of Audubon reproductions.
When they left there were tears in Monica’s eyes. After all it was Sunderson who liberated her from her awful family. Lemuel was a bit embarrassed but possessive of Monica now that she was pregnant. Sunderson sat there a long while steadily drinking and pondering the vagaries of life. His family was without descendants to the disgust of his mother but he thought this was meaningless. At least he would never have to tell his mother that Monica’s baby would not be her grandchild. Roberta at one point had adopted an unruly Pawnee boy but he had run away and hadn’t been found for years until she located him back on his reservation where he wanted to stay. Now she was putting him through the University of Washington in Seattle. It occurred to him that if Diane was going to regularly visit the house he should do some cleaning, sanding, painting or, better yet, hire it done with blackmail money. It was all insignificant to Diane who had had money since she was born and never felt the pinch of normal people.
He was up bright and early to be fully conscious while helping Smolens with Kate. He had stayed up late reading Lemuel’s murder chapter at Diane’s insistence. There it was clear as a bell with all of the cracks of doubt filled in. The whole crime was concocted early and well thought out—it gave him new respect for Lemuel’s intelligence. He was the movie director of the crime organizing the dosages for the girls to pass out, deftly stuffing them in food. A pinch of cyanide could sink the ship. He would pass the chapter on to Smolens and the prosecutor. They would be slow to read it because it was fiction, but he knew Kate could corroborate the details.
He felt melancholy entering the police station for the first time in so long. Smolens had his old office but now it was spick-and-span. He had good take-out coffee on a tray, a relief to Sunderson as Kate had insisted he be there which suited Smolens too. Interrogations often made him doze. The problem was that both sides lied as much as possible. You were trying to build a case for yourself and so was the putative criminal.
Kate turned out to be much more intelligent, well spoken, and acerbic than they expected.
“When did Lemuel first make love to you?”
“What does that have to do with the murders?” She practically spit this out.
“We have to start at the beginning.” Smolens was undeterred. “We have to establish that Lemuel was thinking of these murders for years. He needed coconspirators so he would start affairs to get them.”
“Lemuel was kind and no one else was. I think I was twelve and the two of us were off mushrooming and bird watching. None of the other men paid any attention to me except to force me to blow them. Anyway we two were way off in the woods and he bent me over a stump and pulled down his jeans. It hurt a bit. He was the only person who was ever nice to me!”
“Did you know it was wrong?” Smolens persisted.
“What’s right or wrong? Everyone in my family is drunk all the time, and all of us girls knew sex would come up sooner or later. No one ever told us it was wrong and no one cared whether we liked it. It was like eating to them, whereas with Lemuel he actually cared. I read in the newspapers about a man going to jail for making love to his sixteen-year-old daughter and that was the first time I knew anyone thought it was strange.”
“Did you at any time refuse to help Lemuel?”
“He didn’t force me, if I didn’t feel like it. But he told us we were doing ourselves a favor by making them real sick, so they’d be civilized and peaceful rather than drunk and violent.”
“Didn’t you ever feel that he was actually raping you? That’s what it is at your age.”
“No, though I gradually realized that our compound was another country.”
“What about school?”
“School is nothing out there. I was self-educated better than my teachers. For teachers our school is the end of the line. A clique of loutish boys run the school. Disgusting young men, all of them athletes. I keep my head low.”
“When the first couple died what happened to the prolonged illness plan?”
“Lemuel can talk brilliantly about science and medicine for days. And he was the only one I could turn to out there. My parents were puking drunks, and Lemuel was kind and gentle. He said we made a mistake in the dosages.”
“Still, they continued to die.”
“Look, if you’re in prison and only one person is kind to you they’re all you have and you have to believe in them.”
And so on. Sunderson had nothing to contribute. Of all the dozens of interrogations he had taken part in she was the hardest case, absolutely unapologetic for what she’d done and that she was blowing the whistle on Lemuel because he had chosen Monica over her.
Kate seemed to be comfortable talking without him now so he excused himself and went out the front door for some fresh air. Standing there on the steps smoking his first cigarette of the day he remembered reading Freud’s
Civilization and Its Discontents
at the insistence of a girlfriend, a very bright sorority girl. He had gone to a Greek dance with her after which slick young men and girls greeted him in the halls. The book hadn’t given him much that was new. He had long since come to believe that the world was fucked and always had been. He imagined himself one of the several thousand Polish cavalrymen who charged German tanks on their horses and were wiped out. Or that other one on the Crimean War, the Tennyson poem, “Into the valley of death rode the six hundred.” He was tempted to simply move out to his cabin to live except for the affair with Diane. His mind was such an unresolved mishmash of historical texts that he swore he would read only fiction and poetry in the future. Keats for instance.
It was raining lightly and he was transfixed by the sound of cars on the wet streets. It was certainly time to go to Seville and Barcelona. He hurried across the street and had a quick double whiskey then returned to the station. Things were winding down with Kate giving full assurance that she would be “happy” to testify against Lemuel in court. Smolens was very happy himself. He actually glowed. The police were putting Kate up at the Ramada Inn at the top of the hill. Sunderson offered to give her a ride up there. She needed something to read so they stopped at Snowbound Books on the way. He bought her a couple of Loren Eiseley books that he revered. While she further browsed he went out and bought a pint of whiskey. She made him want a drink, or so he thought.
He drove to her motel and stupidly went to her room to pour himself a decent drink. She went to the bathroom and took a hasty shower saying that she felt dirty after talking to the police. He sat by the window with his drink looking out at the banality of rooftops. He felt amiss because he hadn’t done the daily page promised Diane. He had meant to get up early but hadn’t. He would go home now and get his work done. Kate came out of the bathroom carelessly wrapped in a towel. She dropped the towel and lay on the bed completely nude on her stomach.
“I have to go,” he stuttered and fled.
He was barely home with his papers out on the desk when Diane called.
“How did it go?”
“Very well. I don’t see how the prosecutor can resist Kate’s testimony. I’m bothered by the idea that Lemuel has a spy in the prosecutor’s office. That means Lemuel will know everything Kate said. I hope she’s not in danger.”
“I got a note from him in the mail saying he was pleased to have met me and to come out and see his osprey which are nesting on a phone pole behind his house. He also said that you were the most wonderful man he had ever met.”
“You should take the recommendation of a multiple murderer,” he said, concerned that Lemuel had found her.
“Oh, I do, darling. I’m sure honest men also commit murder.”
They agreed to meet the next day for dinner. He continued to worry about Kate and the idea that Lemuel might take vengeance for being ratted on. Maybe he could drive out and try to talk sensibly to him. Monica seemed safe as he had chosen her as a bride.
With a leaden heart Sunderson sat at his desk to write his daily page, perceiving the irony of trying to write about violence when the last few months with the Ameses had dragged him into so much. Diane had put stars near the last few paragraphs of Lemuel’s chapter where he’d written well describing the osprey nest near his house up on the cross arms of a phone pole. It was a slow process getting the mother and chicks to accept him by trapping and taking up the pole a pocketful of mice which they loved to eat and a dead garter snake they ripped into pieces. After a while they apparently recognized him and were pleased he was bringing lunch. Sunderson could imagine Lemuel dangling up there with his first love, birds. In another chapter Lemuel had claimed that two of his brothers cornholed him and once he had to go to the doctor for rectal repairs. Shocking to Sunderson John had been there and not saved him. He had had trouble believing this at the time but as he learned more about the family it seemed possible or even probable. The accrued insults that led Lemuel to murder.
Smolens called and interrupted his writing, actually his cheating, as he was copying passages from
Nightwood
and
Ada
that should help him write well. Smolens was joyous because the prosecutor had agreed to proceed with the prosecution of Lemuel after reading Kate’s statement. He also knew that Monica and Lemuel had gone to the courthouse yesterday afternoon to try to get a marriage license. They were turned down, but Monica still wanted to spend her life with Lemuel and was refusing to testify. Sunderson said that they should have enough evidence with Sara and Kate testifying. Smolens was pleased that for the time being the prosecutor wouldn’t come down on the women. Smolens was still carrying a torch for Sara. Sunderson told Smolens that Lemuel had an ex-girlfriend in the prosecutor’s office and therefore would be aware of their strategy. Smolens was appalled but said he thought he knew which woman was the spy and it couldn’t have done any real damage.
Sunderson was chewing his fingernails which he hadn’t done since grade school. He couldn’t stop worrying about Kate. At least Sara was safe in the hospital. He removed a book and took a peek at his neighbor at her afternoon yoga. It wasn’t all that stimulating but then no woman could compare to Diane. He didn’t particularly want to drive all the way to the cabin but his mind was full of frightful intuitions and he’d feel better knowing where Lemuel was and that Monica was all right.
Berenice called the next morning to say that the doctors didn’t think Mother would last another night. She was just a few days from her eighty-seventh birthday, although when you’re on your deathbed what do birthdays matter. With typical efficiency Berenice had already contacted the funeral home in Munising to request next Tuesday. This seemed ghoulish to Sunderson but Berenice said that Mother had requested her ashes be dumped in Lake Superior and agreed with Berenice about cremation and saving the money it would have cost to ship her whole body back to Munising. Berenice said that pneumonia is thought to be an old person’s friend as the death is comparatively easy. Sunderson noted that Tuesday was the day before he was to leave for Seville and Barcelona thence to Paris to meet Diane. He lacked enthusiasm for this trip and worried that the bars of Spain would be difficult, typical of an American drinker worried about his future drinking.