by Jim Harrison
They wandered around town until they found the zócalo. There was a bandstand set up which they approached from the backside. A rather ratty-looking American next to them said that it was called El Danzón and every Tuesday evening the city as a public service set up an orchestra so that the older people could dance old-style. Sunderson and Monica watched amazed at the elegant dancers, and shuffled a bit to the music on the sidelines. Some of the women were using antique fans against their faces to brush away the heat of the evening. One of the passing older women smiled at him and he felt a small jolt at her handsomeness.
He had made two mistakes during the layover at the Houston Airport neither of which he shared with Monica. He had called Lemuel with his cell and found out that after the second fire a crippled child, Levi’s son, had been found suffocated on the second floor. The mother had been having a couple of habitual morning drinks on the porch and her first thought was of saving herself. The fire was instantaneous and spread quickly due to the planted pans of gasoline. Once out the mother remembered her child and ran back inside in her robe. The stairwell was blazing and her robe caught fire. She ran back out and was helped to roll in the dirt but was severely burned. Lemuel had heard the casual comment that the child would have had an unhappy life as a cripple. Lemuel had once pushed the little boy along the edge of the woods in a wheelbarrow to see birds. He had taught him bird watching which had delighted him. Sunderson had an instant lump in his throat. He wanted to murder the arsonist with a blow torch.
His second mistake was to errantly read the second item in the Houston newspaper. A fourteen-year-old boy in a Houston suburb had shot a seven-year-old neighbor girl five times in the stomach with a pistol for borrowing his bicycle without permission. She died in the ambulance. He felt his soul wither with the little news item which was actually vast when truly penetrated with the mind. His thoughts drifted back to theology that had nothing to say on the matter. Lemuel had been with the little Ames boy when he saw his first oriole and had told Sunderson he began hooting like an uninvented animal. What about the eighth deadly sin? It should have occurred to someone long ago. He had never believed in capital punishment because too many mistakes were regularly made in conviction but what could you do about a fourteen-year-old boy who would commit cold-blooded murder? The paper failed to mention whether he was a Boy Scout or a junior member of the NRA. There were no clues other than the implicit one that he was a member of a culture dying of dry rot. Who was the father of the boy that gave him ready access to a pistol? Sunderson knew he could drive himself senseless pondering cause and effect in such a case. The girl dead with five bullets in the gut and he had the likely vain hope that the crippled Ames boy would be quickly reincarnated as an oriole. Back in the fifth grade each student had received a packet of Audubon cards resembling baseball cards but with photos of birds rather than players, and they were let out into the woods to match them to what they saw. An oriole was a prize sighting. Some boys cheated and sat around in the woods smoking cigarettes. He told his dad about this and his dad had said, “Once a cheat, always a cheat.” He had pondered what this meant and came up with not much because he had noticed that cheaters seemed to do well at everything and being one might well prepare you for a career in business.
On the way back from the Danzón at the zócalo Monica was crying softly and he thought she was happy.
“I love Mexico. It’s the opposite of how I grew up where no one ever danced.”
This embarrassed him because Diane had to force him to let her teach him to dance. Now he liked the illusion that he was moving well to the music.
Back in the hotel room they made love briefly. He was suffering from an emotional overload and began to lose interest partway through. Afterward he went out to the balcony and sat with a very old bottle of Herradura, a treat he bought himself for being a nifty fellow. It was delicious. Far out at sea at the entry to the wide harbor there was an enormous freighter headed for port. It looked like a small, well-lit city in the dark, somewhat melancholy as if it were laden with sadness in shipping containers from China. Despite resisting, his thoughts returned to the crippled boy and the girl with bullets in her stomach. It seemed horrible to die in an ambulance. Was it your soul wailing or the ambulance? He chided himself for not having started his essay. This tiny self-criticism propelled him into taking a large gulp of tequila. Maybe he hadn’t read enough about violence but had certainly lived it. He had read a brief smattering of Paul Tillich and Reinhold Niebuhr at the public library in preparation but they made him want to go to the bar. It seemed he had read nothing appropriate to the job. Elmore Leonard couldn’t help and he had read nothing else of note of late. One evening Diane had been reading Nabokov’s very complicated Ada and when he asked her she as a practical joke told him that he’d love it. To her surprise he did like it saying the book reminded him of a beautiful and senseless dream. At the time he had been particularly bored with academic prose, the 1, 2, 3 aspect of historical studies—“Therefore Europe fell with a resounding splat that quivered the civilized world like currant jelly,” and so on—whereas Nabokov was splendidly whimsical.
He couldn’t remember much of Ada now except Lucette’s wool bathing suit. From what he could figure there was a lot of well-veiled sex in it but not the kind that gave the reader a boner or had a woman panting. Nothing was as simple and appetizing as spaghetti and meatballs, one of his favorite dishes.
Anyway, he couldn’t have spent more than a half hour in the library looking at Tillich and Niebuhr but unlike the Michigan State library in college there weren’t any hordes of lovely women hanging out. He had checked out the Tillich to please the woman at the desk who was like a car salesman making a sale. Who would read theology (except him) if it was as dry as cremains?
What did you know after you had read that there were eight hundred thousand casualties at Verdun? His relentless reading of history proved disappointing in retrospect, perhaps why he wanted to write about violence as a sin. Eight hundred thousand was just a number in the most fatality-racked battle in human history. He used to idly wonder if a single transvestite had been involved, a young woman who desperately wanted to be a man at war.
In college he had become absurdly fascinated in a class with a girl who seemed to be the most depressed person he had ever met. They had a couple of perfunctory dates going to foreign films at the State Theatre, Bergman films, which seemed to push her deeper into her slump. She didn’t drink because it made her depressed so they had coffee at Kewpee’s, wretched coffee but a pleasant place after watching The Virgin Spring which broke a little ice within her. He tried without success to penetrate her mind but she would only say that “there’s nothing in my life worth talking about.” He had drawn a blank but a few days later on a fine spring day they had taken a long walk on the Red Cedar River and she became voluble. Her parents had died in an auto accident when she was twelve. The three kids were farmed out to aunts and uncles. Her uncle had raped her “a lot.” She told a teacher and he was prosecuted which made her whole larger family angry with her rather than at the uncle. This was mystifying to a young girl. After that she lived with the teacher, an older woman, and she studied hard and won a scholarship to Michigan State. That evening they ate a Chinese dinner and she loaned him several of her favorite books: Dostoyevsky’s Notes from the Underground, Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights, and Djuna Barnes’s Nightwood. As a junior detective he quickly read all three looking for a clue to depression other than death and rape. He admired the books but they certainly put him in a slump. How could anyone imagine the minds of any of them? Heathcliff for instance, or “I am a sick man, I am a spiteful man,” or Barnes spinning her tale of darkness. Of the three Barnes was the best stylistically for him to imitate in writing about his eighth deadly sin.
His attention waned on the balcony because the approaching ship for the time being was more interesting than literature. He assumed that ships found their way in the dark th
e same way planes did. He hadn’t a clue about the nature of radar, imagining that the ship might speed up and collide with the shore with a tremendous crash. He didn’t want anyone to get hurt, but a part of him thought it might be exciting. He had a brief fantasy of running down the shorefront and saving victims. The whole fantasy matter became abruptly clearer. It occurred to him that sexual fantasies waned to the point of disappearance because age in itself is a diminishment of possibility. We come to a point that anything much beyond eating breakfast and going to the toilet is unlikely. The thrill of fishing was that given a modicum of skill you could still catch big fish as you grew older but the fantasy of catching a pretty girl in your sixties was patently absurd. When you were nineteen and your mind was agog with life’s possibilities even a resplendent Hollywood actress wasn’t out of the question. When Deborah Kerr was bound to the stake in her diaphanous robe in Quo Vadis he wasn’t thinking of religious matters but of cutting her loose and taking her camping. Monica, of course, was a fantasy come true. Perhaps it was all about the unlived life. It occurred to Sunderson that while he was working mowing lawns and digging post holes his friends were all free to chase girls.
Reality strikes its mortal blows against us all. Once he rushed over to the hospital where Diane worked to get her to sign something urgent. She was in a room talking to the parents of a prone patient, a beautiful girl who was hopelessly paralyzed from a car accident. It made you hate cars and his throat squeezed shut. Diane led him into the hall where he wept. Diane embraced him, signed the paper, and he rushed out, half blinded by his tears so that he had trouble with the doors. Once outside he could see down a long street to Lake Superior which helped a little. Seeing the girl he had only heard about seemed unfathomably unfair. When he said so to Diane she said, “We know from our jobs that life is unfair.” That was that, however true. Diane suggested that he stop by and talk to the girl. She enjoyed listening to people. She could talk haltingly and her reading machine hadn’t arrived yet, a breath-controlled gizmo that would hold a book and turn the pages. Sunderson said, “I couldn’t do that.” And Diane had said, “Darling, it’s your sensitivities that are paralyzed not hers.” He never did go and still regretted it. Before she died a few months later from pneumonia she had said in her last hour, “I think that it’s wonderful that I’m going to die.” The priest that was there said he nearly fainted. Sunderson was awed by her fearlessness. She had told Diane that she couldn’t imagine a life without making love to her boyfriend.
The freighter neared the dock and Sunderson had a last gulp of tequila. He hoped not to topple off the balcony into the black water below. He toasted a goodbye to fantasies for the last time or so he hoped. What did they fulfill? He thought, though, that reality could be unimaginative except in the good old days when he was peeking through the window at Mona. Delphine wasn’t in the same league crawling in her flower bed in shorts. And through the window her yoga lacked Mona’s grace. It wasn’t youth it was just pure grace. Monica when nude was frequently enlivening but less so than a grand fantasy. He was curious at what age his attraction to the female would disappear. It had to happen. He had not rehearsed the inevitable event but hadn’t the actor Anthony Quinn fathered a child in his eighties? He wasn’t sure. Diane had told him that Mona now had a steady boyfriend down at University of Michigan, a cello player. Sunderson thought this was fine because the cello was his favorite instrument, which he often thought of while trout fishing. He could almost hear it in the river. The sound of cellos and the sound of rivers went well together. So if Mona was with someone better a cellist than a boxer or rock musician. He still hoped her rock drummer was in prison forever.
He had no real idea about the French penal system except when young he had read a book about Devil’s Island, a tropical island off South America where the French often sent prisoners. The heat and insects were terrible and it was infested with vipers. Way back then he had sworn that if he had ever got to France he wouldn’t commit a crime because of his fear of Devil’s Island but then he supposed he had with Mona. That night he had never even thought of Devil’s Island, a thoughtlessness he recognized as typical of criminals, including the neighbors of his cabin. He knew that he was missing some good fishing, also he had dreamed of the ghost of the crippled boy floating up and down the river, moving freely at last. Very little had been done medically to improve the boy’s life. You couldn’t very well cut into the big vodka budget on which the family collectively thrived.
Chapter 19
Early the next morning he breakfasted solo on a piece of fish and huevos rancheros. He went back to bed for another hour until he heard Monica come out of the shower. He feigned sleep and watched her towel off and dress through squinting eyes. It was always a pleasure to watch unobserved. Once early in his career his chief had him follow a suspected bank robber from Detroit around for a week. He deeply enjoyed the job which started early morning in the parking lot of the Ramada Inn, upscale for a criminal where the disguise is often poverty stricken. Five days later he followed the goof into a bar taking the chance that he might get “made” because he wanted a drink badly, a Friday late afternoon feeling. The man had left his car running, possibly to save a low battery, but then he had a shot and a beer and left, walking across the street and into a bank. Sunderson finished his drink hastily and moved to the window of the front door. The man came running out of the bank with a canvas bag of money. Sunderson moved outside and yelled “halt” and then the man reached in his pocket and pulled out a pistol. Sunderson ducked behind the running car and shot out a back tire. The man’s single shot had broken out the big front window of the bar behind him. He peeked over the fender of the car and the man was still coming waving his pistol in the air. Sunderson fired four rounds peppering the cement around the man’s feet. He threw the money bag high in the air and went flat on the cement, raising his hands and dropping the pistol. Sunderson heard another shot and turned to see that the bartender was firing out the broken window. The robber was hit in the thigh by one of his shots. It was all a big event locally where no one remembered anyone ever firing a gun in a robbery. Sunderson won an award for bravery and jokingly passed it on to the bartender. Why not? He didn’t want an award. He wanted not to get shot and to have a drink in peace.
He and Monica visited the magnificent aquarium for a couple of hours in the morning. The fish all swam counterclockwise that day in an enormous pool encircling the building. Most of the species were unrecognizable to him though he decided that one day he must fish tarpon. The tarpon swimming in the aquarium were wonderful and thuggish, looking impossible to catch. He had seen a movie made by some hippie types in Key West and the fishing looked thrilling. They weren’t the kind of people you saw fishing up north but who cared? It was the fish that counted.
The interior of the aquarium was faux-natural and there was a movement next to his head that startled him. Some nearby children laughed when he jumped and yelped. It was a live toucan with a huge beak, a beak that could crush a Brazil nut. Kids grew up calling these nuts nigger toes up north when he was a boy, where there are still next to no blacks except on the university sports teams in Marquette.
When they got in the rental car for the drive up and over the mountains of Xalapa, Monica said Mona had forwarded him an email from Detective Smolens. “Be careful, you are traveling with a felon as is her boyfriend Lemuel. Call me.” He thought that Mona had been probably amused to send it, particularly ironic since it went to Monica’s iPhone. Monica stiffened when she read it and tears rose in her eyes. He decided to say nothing and had no intention of calling Smolens while he was on vacation. They were diverted by the spectacular drive up to Xalapa, the best of his life, with epiphytic orchids hanging from the phone and electrical lines living on the rich air. He also saw two of the huge monkey-eating eagles he recognized from Diane’s book of exotic raptors.
Despite being nearly blinded by beauty he couldn’t help but wonder how Smolens reached his conclus
ions. Did he threaten to revoke Lemuel’s parole? That would be a chickenshit move if you were trying to nail someone with a crime, especially a serial murderer. Diane had said she had seen Smolens several times in the Marquette hospital visiting Levi’s pretty young wife Sara, the mother of the dead crippled child. Her burns were being slowly treated and Sunderson assumed that she might be charged with fatal neglect but wasn’t sure. Sunderson was startled when he first spoke to her and she actually sounded elegant and intelligent. What was she doing here? It turned out to be the briefest college romance. His first wife long gone, Levi had gone back to try college after Ike went to war. He’d eventually quit school and gone home, then went back and collected her, convincing her she would love being a farm wife on a big acreage. She was beaten regularly, or so said Lemuel with whom she had a brief affair loaning her enough money to run away to Escanaba. Levi found her and brought her home bound and gagged. They had a little girl who died of leukemia, and then the son who was born crippled. The die was cast with Sara’s life taken over with his care. The story was so grim he could scarcely bear thinking about it but he supposed that Smolens had got her talking about her suspicions in the hospital. He wouldn’t be surprised having noted in his career that patients are often talkative out of boredom.
They didn’t reach Xalapa until midafternoon because they kept stopping so Monica could get photos of the splendid hanging orchids. Though quite tired they went straight to the Museo de Antropología de Xalapa, which swept him away. There were huge Toltec statues of stone somewhat resembling Buddhas though far less serene and reassuring. Sunderson thought they must have been sculpted to engender fear. An assistant said that they had been found and transported up from a swamp fifty miles to the south. There were literally hundreds of small works of the faces of women morphing into jaguars. Did they know something about women we refuse to admit he wondered? It all upset Monica who hurried outside. He soon joined her after asking the woman at the desk for a hotel close by. He didn’t feel up to driving all the way back to Veracruz on the coastal highway. She made the call for him and gave him directions in English. He was grateful as his Spanish was nil. He went outside where Monica was sitting on the spacious lawn leaning against a tree.
