The Great Leader

by Jim Harrison

  He threw on a jacket and bolted the house not wanting to make his way through the bottle of whiskey. He was wearing street shoes which were wet within a few blocks and he stumbled on a curb and nearly fell when the power of the big drink hit full force then he walked more slowly. He made it out to the city park, Presque Isle, for a gorgeous sunset which somewhat subdued his panic but not completely. He was brooding over a case that had preceded their separation and over which Diane had become very angry. In a small town far to the west three upstanding young men had seemingly kept a girl just over eighteen hostage in their deer cabin for three days. They had stowed her clothes outside and she was nude and hysterical when a visiting hunter came to the cabin. The perpetrators were out hunting and the girl had refused to run for it without her clothes. She was from a “trailer trash” family and when the local prosecutor talked to her father he said that she had always been “haywire.” It was a dicey case indeed and when he had described it to Diane she demanded a prosecution full-speed ahead. Sunderson was less sure. When he talked to the perps who were all married with young children they were remorseful and used the excuse that they had all been drinking too much, an excuse all too often honored by some judges with a “boys will be boys” attitude. The prosecutor and Sunderson had agonized over the matter and decided against going on with the case, which would permanently injure the young men with felony convictions. The girl was trying to withdraw the charges under the pressure of her parents. They could have gone ahead anyway with the initial charges but the prosecutor felt too vulnerable in the community and chickened out. Diane was enraged when Sunderson had stupidly said, “She’ll get over it,” then went on to explain he couldn’t continue without the prosecutor which was less than true. Oddly, in a follow-up inquiry the young woman seemed to be doing well having moved off to Duluth with a friend.

  He was utterly fatigued and wobbly when he completed the nearly two-hour walk home, much longer than necessary because he had made a wrong turn and had walked toward a small rented bungalow they had lived in during their happier times early in their marriage. He could barely acknowledge his mistake but then blamed it on his age rather than on a questionable mood.

  When he reached the house there was an unfamiliar car parked in front and the kitchen light was on in the late afternoon winter darkness. He walked across the yard then peeked around a maple tree and could see Diane and Mona chatting at the kitchen table. He stood there not wanting to go in his house and face the music but then realized there was no music to face. He slicked back his hair and entered through the porch door with a thoroughly fake smile. Get a grip on yourself, he thought.

  “My goodness but you look good. Mona said you’ve become a fitness buff.” Diane was grinning with no backspin.

  “Retirement is more complicated than I thought it would be so I’ve been walking a few hours a day.” He wished the open whiskey bottle wasn’t on the table. To his surprise Diane poured herself a shot.

  “I was wondering if you could drive Mona to Ann Arbor and then over to Kalamazoo to look into colleges? My husband is too ill for me to leave.”

  “Of course. I’d be glad to.” This was a lie. He had a peculiar fear of heavy traffic.

  They left to go out for dinner without inviting him. He wouldn’t have gone but was still slightly miffed in the manner of a girl who didn’t get invited to the prom. Before they left Diane said that she and her husband wanted he and Mona to come for Christmas. He accepted when he noted Mona’s eagerness though in truth he’d rather stay home and suck a dozen raw eggs. He sighed wanting a whiskey but decided to delay it for after he had done a little reading and cooked supper. Diane, always prim and proper, looked ten years younger than her age of sixty-five. Marion had observed that in the past decade women were staying younger much better than men. He wanted to talk to Marion but he was off in Albuquerque, New Mexico, with his wife for a meeting on Indian affairs after which they were traveling to Guadalajara in Mexico for Christmas vacation. He opened D. H. Lawrence’s Studies in Classic American Literature but something not clearly definable was nagging at him. He called Carla.

  “What are you wearing?” he asked impulsively.

  “A blue cotton skirt for work. White cotton short-sleeved blouse. It’s warm here. Robin’s egg blue bikini panties. You want to try some phone sex?”

  “Yes and no but not really.”

  “I want your thick fat cock in my mouth,” she laughed.

  “Never mind, please. We’ve tried very hard and Mona’s a computer whiz but we can find little information on King David’s past except some French stuff, and almost nothing on his childhood.”

  “You’re out of luck. I’ve known him the longest, three years to be exact, and he’s said very little except he was brought up in a bunch of foster families in California. He went to college a couple of years somewhere in Oregon to study acting and anthropology. He knows a lot about Indians. That’s about all I know. He’s certainly unfaithful to his lovers but you get used to it. I worry that he’s burning himself out with Viagra and Cialis. I know he has prostate problems. No wonder.”

  “Why does he go for the young stuff?”

  “Are you taping this?”

  “No. That would be illegal.” He was amused by this.

  “The young girl thing is theological. He sees himself as a god with a small g. It’s important a girl’s first sexual contact be with him if she is to live a powerful life. They are actually not of illegal age in most countries.”

  “I see,” he said, but he didn’t. He knew all of this in bits and pieces but it certainly didn’t make a cogent whole.

  “He thinks modern times suck and for health we must return to old-timey pagan life. We do a lot of drum dancing and free sex. He says that he is many persons.”

  “Do you believe this?” He was trying to ignore the mental image of Carla’s butt glistening under the porch light near the woodpile.

  “Some days I do and some days I don’t. I’m mostly in love with him which is hard work.”

  When he hung up Sunderson was mostly amazed at his own sloppiness. In his long experience his habit was to locate the problem criminals, “the person of interest,” as they are currently referred to, and then bear down hard. While unwrapping a piece of thawed venison and pouring a small drink it occurred to him that when he got interested in this case he was nearly retired and he likely subconsciously wanted to prolong it to give himself something intriguing to do. How could cult members willingly sacrifice their underage daughters? How could Abraham be willing to sacrifice his son Isaac? How did religion derange the human mind? Would the Shiites and Sunnis ever stop killing each other? Why did the Catholic Church want to ignore pederasty?

  He fried some spuds and then his slab of venison medium rare, still troubled that King David hadn’t committed a provable crime though he knew from cultural history that some of the grandest crimes aren’t technically against the law. They were simply the way people in power behaved.

  The venison and fried potatoes with an amber glass of whiskey would have been even better if it weren’t for his errant thinking. The year before his computer crime colleague had told him that there were four million child porn sites. This was hard to believe but there was no reason for the man to lie. About a week later as a favor to Marion he had appeared at a middle school “career carnival” and talked to an assembly about jobs in law enforcement. He had been amazed at how widely varied the sixth, seventh, and eighth graders were. Some looked like mature high school students but many were just kids. In the question and answer period a diminutive girl with thick glasses and braces had squeaked, “I don’t think you guys should shoot people. It’s not Christian.”

  “We don’t unless they’re trying to shoot us,” he had answered. “In forty years of law enforcement I’ve never shot anyone.” He did not mention a drunk man on his front porch aiming a shotgun at him. He was betting that the shotgun wasn’t loaded when the man’s very large wife jumped him from behind crush
ing him to the porch floor. Afterward Sunderson discovered the shotgun was loaded.

  Now at the table forking in the last of the nearly bloody venison he recalled talking to the little girl after the assembly was over. She said she was twelve and read a lot of mysteries because she wanted to be a detective when she grew up. The obvious point was that a girl that age was King David’s favorite prey and an adult male who tampered with such a girl should be permanently imprisoned as hopeless scum. There was a fairly specific theory and practice of law enforcement that gave an appearance of sane equilibrium until you put a particular human face in place and then your stomach would begin churning.

  He fell asleep a full two hours with his head on his arms on the table and then woke up and reheated some brackish coffee. He began reading D. H. Lawrence quoting Crèvecœur, “I must tell you that there is something in the proximity of the woods which is very singular.” And then hunters, “The chase renders them ferocious, gloomy, and unsociable; a hunter wants no neighbors, he rather hates them, because he dreads the competition . . . Eating of wild meat, whatever you may think, tends to alter their tempers . . .”

  With a bellyful of venison Sunderson was unsure of the complete truth of what he read though it was more true than not true. He went on to read about Fenimore Cooper and Lawrence’s strange speculations on Native Americans which were totally unpleasant and nearly deranged. Not wanting to be kept awake by this lunatic Englishman he pushed the book aside and washed the dishes after which he turned on the television for the eleven o’clock news, pleased to see the forecast for a foot of fresh snow. When the news segued to Afghan car bombs he flipped through satellite channels until he arrived at Co-ed Confidential. The young ladies didn’t look like coeds but certainly had nifty bodies. He was embarrassed when Mona walked in the unlocked front door and caught him at his movie. She looked distraught.

  “So what’s wrong?” he asked.

  “I don’t think Diane’s going to want you back when her husband dies.”

  “It never occurred to me she would.”

  “She doesn’t want to take care of another man. She wants to travel a lot.”

  “She always did. I was the slowpoke.”

  “It’s just that I was hoping you two would get back together. With Mom being such a ditz you were nearly my real parents.” Mona had tears in her eyes and slumped down on the sofa beside him suddenly grinning at the television. “Why watch these piggies when you can see me through the window?”

  “No comment.”

  “We’re in luck. I looked it up and they’re playing Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! in ten minutes!”

  She was sitting too close to him on the sofa but he decided to ignore it. He had a couple of nightcaps but each time he sat back down she drew closer again. She boldly lit a joint and offered him a hit which he declined. He also ignored the illegality of the joint though he was slightly troubled when he glanced over and saw a condom in the purse from which she drew the joint. The movie Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! was magnificently loathsome and trashy with three bathing-suit models punishing men for their lechery far out in the desert. They ran over men with cars or bashed them in the head with big rocks, an unpleasant reminder of his Arizona misadventure. Mona fooled with the clicker and on an adjoining channel was The Diary of Anne Frank. That’s entertainment, he thought. He fell asleep and awoke at 4:00 a.m. covered with an afghan. Mona had kindly turned off the television. The star of the Pussycat movie had been an actress named Tura Satana, likely not her real name.

  The morning’s mail brought a postcard from Albuquerque and a letter from Roberta which he pushed aside with consternation. He could count on one hand the letters received from Roberta. One about ten years before had been so abrasive it took him days to recover, the key sentence being, “Bobby only found true happiness in his life when he discovered heroin.” He had a bowl of nasty raisin bran to steady himself before opening the letter.

  Dear Big Brother,

  I must say that I thought you looked totally awful when we saw each other but Berenice said you were in much better shape than you had been the previous week before you went camping. The question is why an old man should unnecessarily put himself in harm’s way and get himself nearly stoned to death? Who do you think you are? You should spend a lot of time pondering this question. You should spend all of your time fishing and camping, your childhood passions, when you’re not reading. I remember a couple times when you took us camping a few miles south of town. Once you went off fishing and I stayed in the tent reading Nancy Drew. I think I was eight and you were fourteen. Meanwhile Bobby roasted a whole bag of marshmallows and puked and we had to drag him down to a creek and wash off the sticky marshmallow stuff that was even in his hair. Bobby and me were frightened that night when you crawled out of the tent saying that you heard a bear trying to get our food. You came back into the tent saying you had driven the bear away with a burning torch. I had peeked out and saw that it was a small raccoon but didn’t say anything because a bear made a better story. How I admired you back then. You were such a kind brother to Bobby.

  Now is a different matter. I have witnessed divorces in long-term marriages and one of the partners always falls in a hole like a well pit and it takes them about three years to crawl out, if ever. Diane didn’t make her profession her whole life like you did. Your moderate alcoholism makes you emotionally inelastic and you can’t seem to crawl out of the hole of your inevitable divorce. It makes me mournful to think you should have been a history teacher. You are a kind man not a tough guy. I would like to retire early, come back, and take care of you but I couldn’t bear to live in the area of my childhood.

  Love, Roberta

  Of course the letter made him angry. He dressed warmly in near tears and set off for a walk in the falling snow and was gone for four hours. By the time he reached Presque Isle in about forty-five minutes the anger had passed because he was able to admit to himself that she was right on every count. The idle idea of throwing himself off a cliff into Lake Superior amused rather than alarmed him. He had work to do.

  Two days later they were off for Kalamazoo and Ann Arbor. Diane and Mona had organized a precise itinerary including hotels and appointments. Diane had irritated Sunderson by renting them a nice Hertz car for the trip feeling that his twelve-year-old Blazer with a hundred and seventy thousand miles on the odometer was vulnerable. She had rented the car without telling him saying that it was a “treat.” As a civil servant from a relatively poor family he had chosen the path of ignoring their finances and when Diane had tried to involve his interest in her inherited money he had refused to cooperate. Any amount over a thousand dollars set off a red light in his noggin and that was what the rental car would cost for the four-day trip. Sunderson felt like one of the limo drivers he used to talk to at the Detroit airport early in his career when he was on surveillance for a mob hit man supposedly coming in from New York City. The drivers were there waiting for “bigwigs,” a name referring back to the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries when a man’s importance could be determined by the amplitude of his wig.

  They left an hour before dawn with Mona not excited about colleges but about a computer discovery: to wit, she had started over from ground zero in the investigative process. Instead of using the Peace Corps dead mother’s name, Atkins, she had tried the French father’s name, Peyraud, while surveying Carla’s clue of Dwight attending an Oregon college twenty-five years before. Bingo. Dwight had attended Reed College for two years in 1983 and 1984. Mona then managed to communicate with a retired anthropology professor who recalled Dwight with amusement and distaste. Dwight had been arrogant and overbearing though a brilliant student. He had had a Mohawk haircut, a thin strip of hair down the center of his skull, wore martial arts clothing, and had a cadre of male and female students following him around. Mona’s ingenuity depressed Sunderson. He and Roxie at the cop shop had clearly begun with the wrong name, the wrong presumptions. The sixteen-year-old neighbor girl was a b
etter detective.

  Mona typed on her laptop and listened to CDs of John Cage (which drove him batty), Pink Floyd, and Los Lobos, the latter with traces of rhythm that made him stupidly sentimental about his time on the border. His mistake in not searching Dwight’s father’s name kept reminding him of the term “unforced errors” in tennis. He had Mona reread the professor’s e-mail pondering the last sentence about Dwight’s disappearance during a summer visit to the Haida Indians on the Queen Charlotte Islands off British Columbia for a research paper. Sunderson recalled a few things about the Haida from talking to Marion. They believed that wolves and killer whales were the same creatures, taking up separate forms on land and water. Sunderson felt he should research native shape-changing since that seemed to be a continuing motif.

  Five hours into the trip at a gas station near Cadillac he abruptly demanded that Mona change from her short skirt to slacks. An hour before she had curled up and dozed and he could see her blue undies and a bit of pubic furze and had come up on a semi too fast. What was this thing about blue panties? Diane had always worn white.

  Mona returned from the service station laughing and waving the new Rolling Stone at him. She read a quote from the cover girl, an antic starlet named Megan Fox: “Men are scared of powerful, confident vaginas.” What in God’s name could this mean, Sunderson wondered. Had the starlet’s parents read this and been embarrassed for their daughter? He was unsure of parental emotions but then here was Mona, nearly a stepdaughter, who of course was capable of saying something this preposterous.

  “Imagine having a vagina as powerful as Arnold Schwarzenegger in his prime,” Mona laughed. “You could chew up unsuspecting men.”

  The city of Kalamazoo, their first stop, didn’t last long. He said the college looked homely but she said that he was looking at western Michigan. They drove to the top of a hill to Kalamazoo College but then Mona said, “Too small,” and demanded that they proceed to Ann Arbor.