The Big Seven

by Jim Harrison

  While looking at Monica’s butt his thoughts turned naturally to the Seven Deadly Sins. He had no sexuality left and was in a clinical state of mind. He knew he should feel guilt but rarely did. He had largely lost his capacity for sexual fantasy but Monica represented actuality. He had read that some famous theologian had had an affair. So did Einstein. Could he do less? But you can’t have an affair unless you are married and he had lost a wondrous woman. The divorce still made his heart ache and occasionally brought tears to his eyes. She had been utterly burnt out on his drinking and usual cop depressions. He had steadfastly refused to go to the counseling she had insisted on. The last straw had been when cleaning his den she had come upon a big cache of shooters, about fifty of those small bottles airlines use. This upset her a great deal. Their marriage had been open and when he had wanted a drink he poured it in the kitchen. This secret supply profoundly upset her. Enough was enough and she filed. She had left his cache out in the open so he would know she had discovered his secret. They never mentioned it. The language was clear.

  His mind slid from Diane back to theology. When a battle was lost during the Crusades the sultan didn’t have the enemy all killed, he just told them to go home and not come back. But when the crusaders were victorious the streets of Jerusalem ran red with blood. The Christians were cleaning up home plate. Sunderson had read that currently there was an old desert chieftain still deeply upset by the Crusades. Why not? It was the beginning of our relationship with the Middle East. It occurred to Sunderson that he still believed in the Resurrection because no one had ever taught him how not to. It was a childhood holdover, still in the air around Easter. “Up from the grave he arose; with a mighty triumph o’er his foes” the hymn went. The world and religion were huge and he had no authority to disbelieve anything.

  Smolens called. He was easy to talk to and apparently not jealous of his territory. Mona had been called as a computer whiz and found out that Bert had been close friends with a medic in Vietnam. That was a tie-in, however slight, to poison. Could he imagine Bert killing his brothers, if not his father? Easily.

  Smolens also said that the .32 pistol they confiscated with difficulty from Bert outside the tavern was ballistically not the right pistol. Sunderson told him that Monica had said that Bert had a whole big drawer of pistols in his room. Smolens sighed. “How do we get at them?” he asked. Sunderson had no immediate idea. A .32 man was a .32 man and Bert likely had many. He had won many NRA shooting contests, Mona had learned from her latest searches. Sunderson wanted to say “shoot him and get the pistols.” Monica could get at them but why endanger her for a dead murder case? “I suppose you’ll have to keep arresting him and confiscating his current .32. I doubt he has any permits at all.” Smolens agreed that would be the only option. Sunderson called Lemuel to see if he had any ideas. Lemuel said that years ago Bert had given him a .32 because Lemuel as a felon couldn’t buy one. Bingo, thought Sunderson, unload your vulnerable .32 on your brother.

  He called Smolens with this new development then drove out to the cabin after calling Monica and saying he wouldn’t be home for dinner. He took the leftover chicken pot pie with him as a precaution against hunger. He had tasted every kind of canned and frozen food imaginable with no luck except Stouffer’s mac and cheese but doubted its health value, to the extent he thought about his health. Right now he was thinking about fishing and how easy it was to get too busy. He resolved to go fishing the minute he pocketed the pistol but the moment he reached the cabin it started raining fairly hard. Lemuel was already there standing on the porch and he felt obligated to make a pot of coffee. Along with the gun Lemuel handed him another sheaf of manuscript which he dreaded. This chapter was called “The Afterlife.” Glancing at page 1 as he drank coffee he didn’t need he spotted the dreaded word karma. He hadn’t heard that word in use since way back in college, certainly not in Munising except perhaps by tourists he didn’t know. Doubtless some of the college people in Marquette used karma but he knew very few of them. He wasn’t at all enthused about Lemuel’s notions of the afterlife. He had told him to stick to the crime story. If you shot someone or were shot yourself there was the vision of someone shooting up to heaven, presumably in a distant galaxy like a NASA rocket. The idea that some unearthly creature was keeping track of your bad habits and these bad habits would revisit you to your detriment in a future life seemed specious. For billions of people the scorecard would be immense. A beatnik girl, this was pre-hippie, in college had told him in a coffee shop where he was eating a hamburger and she a bowl of rice that he had bad karma and must stop eating meat immediately. She was rather attractive and he had had hopes to see her bare naked but the prospects looked dim. He had heard she didn’t shave her armpits or legs and her long hair looked a bit unwashed. He tried to make the deal that he would quit eating meat if she would come back to his room with him but she insisted that he “purge” himself for a month first on a vegetarian diet including lots of boiled almonds. They parted ways without compromise. He never got close as a hamburger eater.

  The rain had stopped. Sunderson began putting on his fishing gear and that got rid of Lemuel who left with the interesting point that all the criminals in prison assumed they were going to heaven, even murderers of children. He beat God to the starting gate on self-forgiveness, Sunderson thought. He hadn’t waded twenty feet when he stumbled and heard a voice. It was Bert up the bank on solid ground. He grabbed some dogwood branches to steady himself.

  “If you start drowning I’m not saving you,” Bert said.

  “I wouldn’t imagine you would,” Sunderson replied.

  “You got to stop bird-dogging me.”

  “Don’t know what you mean.”

  “The cops outside the bar that took my .32. I was kicking the shit out of one but the other drew a pistol.”

  “Yes, I heard you got an assaulting an officer charge. That should get you sixty days.”

  “Tell it to someone who gives a shit. It means no booze, drugs, and cigarettes. Maybe Monica would come over and give me a blow job through the bars. I’m sure she will. She has before. What a total slut.”

  Sunderson was enraged and couldn’t resist the needling. He drew his pistol from his shoulder holster, cocked it, and aimed it at Bert’s midriff. “You’re her father. Say Monica’s name again I’ll blow your guts out your ass.” He lowered the barrel a bit and shot at the ground between Bert’s feet. Bert yelled and jumped which was hard to do and Sunderson was amused at how often ex-marines stood with their feet widely apart as if prepared for imminent war.

  “I missed,” Sunderson said.

  “You asshole,” Bert yelled. “I saw you lower the barrel.” He seemed as much amused as enraged. “You should get your fat ass a half mile downstream. There are a couple of big holes for brown trout. Use that big fly called a muddler minnow.”

  “Watch your mouth but thanks for the tip. I’m just learning the local fishing.”

  Bert walked away but just before he entered the woods he peppered the water around Sunderson with .32 bullets to get even.

  So much for fishing, thought Sunderson, his heart beating wildly in his chest. He crawled out of the river but then on a hopeless angler’s impulse trundled downstream. It was a warmish day and in his uncomfortable waders he could feel sweat trickling down his legs. A fine time to think about death, he thought. He was wheezing with effort to get to the new fishing holes Bert had mentioned. And there they were where the river entered the woods, big river holes looking like brown trout habitat. He sat down in hopes of catching his breath, feeling greasy with sweat and hard breathing. He thought about heart attacks. It was altogether natural for a retired man of sixty-six to think about death, the impending doom that had come to many of his friends. Clyde, an ice fishing friend, had died of a heart attack spudding an ice hole on the bay in front of his house. Clyde always ate a whole package of raw hot dogs when they fished which couldn’t have been good f
or him. Also at breakfast before they fished Clyde would have a double order of sausage, three eggs, and biscuits with extra sausage gravy. His intelligent friends thought Clyde was a walking time bomb and it had proved to be true. The relentless northern march of biscuits and gravy, Sunderson thought, another vengeance for the Civil War. At the funeral Clyde’s wife who was morbidly obese wept profusely and told Sunderson that now that her husband died they were going to miss their planned trip to Hawaii. Sunderson told her she could go alone and she was outraged saying that Hawaii was a place for “romance” and it would be meaningless without Clyde.

  Death was in his thoughts as he rested up. He would settle for a quick trip through the galaxies as a substitute for heaven which sounded boring. Ever since the Hubble photos were published in all of their splendor he wanted to see the galaxies closer. The other day in the Detroit Free Press it said that black holes rotated at a speed of seven thousand five hundred miles per hour which would give the spirit a real quick trip. He had frequently worried about whether he would see Diane in the afterlife. Of course he wanted to but perhaps death made us not care about our worldly life. Would there be trout in heaven and birds? How could these wonders be left out? He had read that in the Middle Ages hell was thought to be a place without birds. And didn’t the Mormons believe that you remain married to your wife in heaven? He’d have to check this out. In their newspaper, the Heavenly Gazette, it is announced that a couple have been married for five thousand years, that sort of thing, and there’s of course no divorce in heaven. He couldn’t come to the conclusion that he had any talent for theology.

  Maybe he should write an essay on violence as the eighth deadly sin. Maybe he could become a late-blooming minister? His long experience as a detective had given him plenty to say about violence. Why do some men want to box women who can’t box back? He had seen some real bloodbaths. He had hated taking statements in hospitals. You couldn’t smoke in the hospital though he had run into a hall toilet for a quick puff. Nothing made you want a cigarette or a drink like talking to a purple-faced woman missing some teeth and with an arm in a cast. If they asked he always recommended divorce. If he beats you once he’ll beat you twice. There were an amazing number of repeat offenders. They had only a few cases of professorial wife beating, one an English professor who had severely flogged his wife for having an affair with a graduate student. Sunderson had gotten the idea that if the wife had had an affair with another professor it wouldn’t have been so bad but dipping low into the ranks of graduate students was contemptible indeed.

  Sunderson had stayed professional except once he tripped a handcuffed man walking off a porch who had beaten his ten-year-old son just short of death. The man hit the cement face-first. Sunderson remembered with pleasure the man flying through the air for a belly landing. In jail the man had sworn vengeance and Sunderson said, “Good, then we can lock you up forever.” Immediately afterward he looked nearly as bad as his kid. He had seen the man several times since this incident but the man had just looked away.

  As Sunderson got up and began fishing he laughed at himself for the minister idea but still thought of going to Michigan State or University of Michigan for a course in introductory theology. Why not, since he was so interested? He had an immediate fantasy, the first in months, about a little apartment full of college girls which seemed to disqualify him from Christianity. He clearly remembered a course in European history during the Renaissance. The professor was young and cynical and liked to talk about the criminal Borgias, especially Pope Alexander VI who was suspected of many crimes including adultery, simony, theft, rape, bribery, incest, and murder using arsenic poisoning. The young Catholics in the class were embarrassed into complete silence. The Borgias were enemies of the Medici family, an impressive enemy.

  Sunderson saw a big brown trout feeding close to a log and despaired of making an accurate cast. He tried half a dozen times without spooking the fish thinking that Pope Alexander had had a good time. To be sure he was evil and a pope shouldn’t be evil any more than a minister should screw his parishioners. But that was making it all American-style low rent. Diane had a book that followed the art collecting and patronage of both the Borgia and Medici families. When in doubt build another palace to house your art. The Borgias had enough money and power to get away with evil, a little like New York bankers and brokers in the recent nauseating recession. It was obvious that they didn’t care about the millions of families they destroyed. Sunderson felt it was obvious that they should set up a guillotine down on the Battery and execute these bankers and brokers, grind up their bodies and make them into elite sausage.

  While wading upstream for a better angle on the brown trout near the log he had to compare the Borgias and the Ameses up the road. The money and power of the Borgias gave them considerable versatility in their evil. The Ameses were born and bred and reminded him of William Carlos Williams saying the pure products of America go crazy. By any standard the Ameses were certifiably nuts, a severe genetic mishap. County government isn’t prepared to deal with such concentrated chaos. It was without purpose, haphazard. They were what they were. Even the total aggregate of six children under age ten showed signs of disaster except for one, a bright young girl. Lemuel was teaching her math early plus botany and bird watching. A good parent can easily make up for a mediocre school. Lemuel had a good library which meant everything. Sunderson remembered speaking to a class of ninth graders on a career day. Only a few showed signs of leading a life not monopolized by video games and television. Of course he didn’t even know what a video game was except that Marion’s nephews played them and he found the sound abominable. It was a magnification and concentration of the hospital sounds in New York, hundreds of gizmos beeping their mechanical anguish.

  On his seventh cast Sunderson hooked the brown trout, the largest of his life, and thought he was eating his heart. It swirled several times then dove deep in the hole where it bulldogged. His line was too light for him to be insistent so he simply let the fish exhaust itself in the deep while keeping a light tension. He finally beached the fish on a sandbar with trembling hands figuring it was at least five pounds. Twice the size of any brown trout he ever caught. He reached in his vest for a little camera Diane had bought him but found its batteries were typically dead. He stared at the fish to memorize it, then slipped it gently back in the water. It resumed its vigor and shot off for the deep hole. He was drenched with sweat and his flesh tingled in this holy moment in a long angling life. He lay back on the bank and was surprised to doze for a few minutes. He got up covered with mosquitoes and walked slowly the long way home.

  At the cabin he poured a big drink and called Marion to tell him about the fish. To his disappointment he couldn’t reach him. Monica called to ask if it was okay if she went to a staff party tomorrow night, the day he was coming home. He said of course, reflecting she would enjoy people her own age for company. He was still tingling from his big catch and the drink when a disturbing memory troubled him. When he had been home he had walked downtown thinking he might enjoy his old favorite bar. Monica, of course, had his car to commute to work at the hotel bar and restaurant. He was sure he had seen Lemuel’s car leaving the hotel parking lot but Lemuel never said anything about visiting Marquette and when Monica got home she didn’t mention it. He had repeatedly forced this from his mind until his will kept it out but this all put the ice of a conspiracy theory in his gut. A defense lawyer would say that there were hundreds of old Subarus around like the one Lemuel drove because they were good in snowy conditions, and Sunderson fully trusted Monica to tell him anything of importance, but the ounce of dread it caused persisted anyway. His detective’s mind wouldn’t let go of the fact that there had been no deaths without both of them being at large.

  Until today. He had gone fishing again in the late afternoon and when he got home Lemuel was there to say that Paul had died, also apparently of poison. Paul was Sprague’s son and an incorrigible and destructive
young man in his early teens. Everyone out of necessity had to keep an eye on him and he was the only one forbidden to carry a gun. When the truant officer had visited Paul had shot out the tires of his car which caused no end of problems. When Paul was in juvenile court Sprague had raised such a fuss, tipping over the table, the judge had sentenced him to a week in jail. Bert had driven him because Sprague’s driver’s license had been revoked and the cops were watching him. Anyway Bert was so angry over Sprague’s arrest he had rammed a police car parked in front of the courthouse with his own car. This cost him four thousand dollars and thirty days in jail. The sheriff hated to have any of the Ameses in jail saying that they promoted misbehavior among the other prisoners. He was happy when Sprague had died because Sprague had said he was going to “shoot the sheriff” because he liked the song, and the sheriff knew Sprague was perfectly capable of it. Under no condition would he visit the Ames property but always delegated the job to deputies. Paul looked to be following in his father’s footsteps and was cruel to the younger children, especially when he drank.

  Sunderson reminded himself that an implicit favoritism was often a stumbling block in the solving of a crime. The simple fact was that he liked both Lemuel and Monica very much which made him less likely to suspect them of anything. He was also aware that certain women could be guilty of the eighth deadly sin with a specific aplomb while men tended to make a two-fisted bloody mess. There did seem to be a corner of his dear Monica’s mind that was cool as a cucumber. She had actually asked him if she might find a man to support her which had disturbed him. He told her that she was better off with a job than trading her pussy for a living. Of course there were lots of women, and men for that matter, willing to loll around being supported. In college a popular guy borrowed money from everyone and it took a year for everyone to realize that they would get nothing back. Most people stopped giving him anything except a few rich kids who didn’t care. Sunderson who had been burned for twenty bucks, a lot for him at the time, asked why he did it. The reasoning was straightforward and simplistic: he didn’t want an onerous part-time job like everyone else. The idea of being kept seemed an atypical question for Monica who liked to work hard but then, he thought, look at her background. One evening she had admitted that Bert had raped her repeatedly when she was twelve, beginning with her twelfth birthday as if it were a magic number. She tried to say it casually but Sunderson was enraged. He should have shot him. Part of him wondered if Monica was trying to find a better father figure with him.