Sundog

by Jim Harrison

  So Marshall got me started again. First I went over to La Paz in Baja California to check out this reservoir for a few months. Then I was called off that job and sent to Costa Rica for the preliminary work on a hydroelectric project.

  It's curious to me that I never really got started drinking again like before. Perhaps I had exorcised the demon of Sharon by becoming too worn out for longing. I'd like to meet her now and start out all over again. I've never been partial to younger women because they're usually too full of themselves to talk about anything. It's amusing to me that everyone in town, not excluding Emmeline down in Manistique, thinks I sleep with Eulia! Even Allegria asked me. Eulia and I keep each other alive, that's what we do. She showed up at the hospital after I was flown up to Miami from Venezuela and said, “If you let yourself die, I'm going to die and I don't want to.” Perhaps this is something the peasants do to each other down there in the mountain country. I've never inquired, but it would be unthinkable for me to give up. It's commonly known that a friendly dog can keep a person alive. It reminds me of a profoundly sad woman I saw in my hotel lobby down in La Paz. The first day I noticed this woman, who was in her late thirties, she was arguing with two lady friends, but then I didn't see them anymore. One evening at dinner I couldn't stand her despair and I approached her table.

  “You shouldn't feel so bad. This is a beautiful place,” I said.

  “You could try minding your own business.”

  “It is my business. I'm a psychological counselor from Miami.”

  “No you're not. I'm a psychiatrist from Chicago and you're a construction worker. I asked a waiter. Please sit down.”

  “You caught me in a bald-faced lie. I'm not past fibbing once in a while to keep the spirit going.”

  She had come down to La Paz with two other recent Chicago divorcees and they hadn't thought the place sufficiently interesting. I took a day off and we had that, plus three fine evenings. At first she wouldn't let me make love to her because she was a tad plump and said I was just being nice. This was a subtlety I hadn't encountered before so I put her hand on my hard dick and told her to try to be nice to it. We were driving back from the beach at the time in a Volkswagen but we managed to make love right there in the car. Neither of us had made love for several months so we had a fine time. That was fifteen years ago, but we still keep in touch though we haven't met again.

  The years in Costa Rica were the best of my working life. I'm shocked you've never been there, because I'd say it's my favorite place on earth. I worked three years on that dam up in the mountains practically nonstop, but it was lovely and owned none of the usual tropical nightmare, the insects, heat and vermin. Few people know there's some pretty good trout fishing in those mountains. There's great beef and seafood, and dozens of kinds of fruit. It was the only job I've been on, before or after, that we didn't lose a man. If you got a day or two off you could go down to Puntarenas, then travel north or south on this overwhelming Pacific coast. Or you could go over to Limón on the Caribbean, an old banana town, where Marshall would stop to fish tarpon when he'd fly down for a visit. For some reason the rich of this world haven't discovered this country, but then they usually defer to their travel agents, rather than do any off the cuff wandering. Why does anyone want to know where they're going to sleep a month in advance? If you're civil, you can always find a bed and something to eat.

  I remember very well the day I met Allegria. It was summer, we were winding down the job, and I was down in Limón making sure our freight helicopters got packed on a ship for Brazil, my next destination. I was shaky, giddy with exhaustion and not a little with regret, but somehow in the prime of my senses, so that everything was fascinating without judgement. It was the feeling I used to get just before a seizure, that is, before I took medication. Even when I was frightened by those men and the approaching bird dogs in that thicket, there was a beauty and clarity to the dead wild flowers, and the leaves, and the dogs running with their tails outstretched. That day in Limón it was so hot the ocean herself had a scorched odor. Off the pier the horizon fell right into the ocean so that there was no differentiation between the sky and water. It was cooking up for the coming hurricane season. In a half-trapped eddy of the falling tide there was a deliquesced jelly fish or perhaps a fetus. I decided on jelly fish as I had just eaten lunch. It occurred to me that it must be ninety eight and six-tenths degrees because when I waved my hand around it was the same as the air. My lunch partner, a local civil engineer, said that it was believed thereabout that the ghosts of mad dogs roam the streets in such weather looking for their bodies. I asked him why and how people could believe such a thing, and he replied that it was a little less improbable than the Virgin Birth, a fact dear to the hearts of Christians. I was in my early thirties and it had never occurred to me to think about or question the Virgin Birth. Come to think of it, it's a strange idea. The real mystery among many mysteries, it seems to me, is that life exists in the first place, don't you think?

  Anyway, a chopper pilot took me back up to San José. Marshall had gotten me a fancy room at the Grand Hotel of Costa Rica, and invited me to an elaborate dinner he was giving for politicians and the top men on his own staff. My male secretary had even measured me for a tuxedo, which would be a first. To be frank, I didn't care about the dinner when I got up to my room at the hotel, which was actually two rooms. I had instructed the pilot to fly low through the mountains from Limón to San José, following the railroad bed all the way. It is characteristic of one age to forget the engineering marvels of another age and this railroad was a spectacular job. I had a rum and fruit concoction and fell asleep. At first it had the quality of a dream when I answered the door and there was this astonishing woman standing there in a ball gown. I was so drowsy I didn't realize I was buck naked. Well, she just came in, called for drinks, and told me to get ready for the dinner. She would be accompanying me and her name was Allegria. I was a little startled when she stood at the bathroom door while I shaved, and then helped me get into the tuxedo. I had assumed she was some sophisticated friend of Marshall's and didn't for a moment think she was a call girl or whatever. She was pleased that I spoke fluent Spanish and then tried her English out on me. It was a little rough so I told her I had a few days off before flying to Belem and would help her out. Her voice had a marvelous hush to it, like seeing a dull amber light across water. I thought we cut quite a figure in the hotel lobby.

  Well, Allegria seemed to know everyone at the dinner. It was a case where I was proud to have the most beautiful woman on my arm. She was very attentive to me and we left early at her insistence. I told the company driver we were taking her home but she said no, we wanted to go to the hotel. Then she gave me a kiss that blew my ears off. I asked her out to a concert at the Opera House for the following evening and she said she doubted she had the time, which was puzzling. It was quite funny and embarrassing back at the room when she explained the whole thing. Marshall had given her a large amount of money to take care of me and she meant to do so. We had a grand time. Once when we were up and down on each other I asked her opinion of the Virgin Birth for some reason, probably proximity. She was pissed off for a while because she's quite religious, then figured out that I actually meant the question. Allegria never had a heart of gold and I had to rent her time for years—until, by persistence, I got her to love me at least a fraction of what I loved her. You know the rest of the story. She'll be back early next week, at least I hope so. I'm also hoping she'll get along with Evelyn, who insists on coming tomorrow, no doubt with elaborate plans for me.

  Brazil was a grim contrast to Costa Rica, except for the few times I got down to Rio. When a key worker would start to go nuts in the Amazon Basin, or suffer from what's now known as clinical depression, we'd send him on down to Rio for a few weeks. I've never figured out the specifics on the curative power of this city; I don't much care for cities but Rio certainly took ahold of me. Off and on for years I've been studying a Portuguese grammar and dictionary in
case I want to go back. I've got some friends among the engineers at Eletronorte so I could always get work.

  Marshall's firm had a large consulting, troubleshooting contract in Brazil. Now Brazil has no oil reserves of its own so they properly decided to develop the hydroelectric capacity of the Amazon Basin to reduce the debt incurred by a dependence on foreign oil. There's a fine article by a woman named Caulfield in Natural History about the problems involved. Of course billions of dollars would have been saved had we known about the problems fifteen years ago, but this mammoth hydroelectric system in a tropical rain forest was without precedent. I can't imagine dams being built under more adverse conditions. It didn't seem necessary to clear the site of the vast forest, but when the water began to gather there was a sulpherous stench around the Tucurui and the Curuá Una for fifty miles. The water was rich with decaying matter which promoted the growth of the dread water hyacinth, which is choking Florida water-ways right now, and also ceratopteris, a water fern. There was a reasonable protest against the use of defoliants because that would have poisoned the river system, as we've seen in the aftermath of Viet Nam. It's a matter of some conjecture whether that country will ever get over the chemical onslaught of Agent Orange. Anyway the decay of the trees was slowed by the overlay of vegetation. The water, deprived of oxygen, became acidic and began to corrode the generators, which broke down. The huge reservoirs supported mosquitos, and spread malaria so that one of every five workers at Tucuruí had the disease. At certain dam sites the still water promoted the growth of the snail that spreads the disease schistosomiasis, otherwise known as bilharzia.

  I was in Brazil for over seven years before I got the disease. In a way, it was a repeat of India. Strangely enough, after Costa Rica, Marshall had given me a choice of Brazil or that huge project up in Quebec. Maybe I chose Brazil because of nearly killing Violet and mother in that snow-storm. Evelyn gave me that poem of Frost's about “Fire and Ice” when she treated me for bilharzia. Anyway, there I was, back at Jackson Memorial over ten years later. As usual the pain of the treatment is as bad as the disease, whether it's injection by sodium antimony tartrate, or you take lucanthone or niridazole orally. The side effects indicate the severest abdominal pain and nausea and temporary madness. The madness wasn't so bad because, just like now, I can endure what's going wrong in my brain, because the brain has a capacity to accommodate madness better then the body can illness. In a note of wonderful absurdity, Marshall told me that they recently have had good luck in Tucuruí with manatees, the big water mammal, that loves to feed on water hyacinths. Marshall, typically, is now involved in a manatee breeding experiment.

  I think I told you that it was during my bilharzia episode that I met Evelyn. She was interning at Jackson in tropical medicine. Anyone a mere foot to the left or right of us could have seen it was a bad match. The attraction of opposites you hear bandied about is suitable for short and intense love affairs rather than marriage. This is no less true for being so commonplace. Evelyn can't help herself any more than I can help myself when it comes to the inevitability of character. There's probably no creature on earth who is less susceptible to change than an only child who is also rich and brilliant. We had our talks, our books, and our lovemaking. Marshall was not so much against it as he was amused that two otherwise intelligent people would even try it. From the beginning neither of us had any intention of following the other around the earth so we immediately went our separate ways, as if that were the natural thing to do. In the entire brief marriage we only spent any real time together in Holland where she was doing postgraduate work, and I had been assigned to help on a subcontract for the Delta Project.

  The Delta Project is the only unique engineering marvel I've ever been privileged to work on. The idea was simple enough: dam the estuaries of the Eastern Scheldt south of Rotterdam and prevent a repeat of the 1953 storm that killed eighteen hundred people. Halfway through the project, the Dutch, unlike we ever do, changed their minds when they discovered the first two dams destroyed the rich marine life of the estuary, the mussels, cockles, and oysters. They spent nearly a billion more dollars to protect the eleven million dollar annual gross of the Scheldt seafood industry. This sounds a bit insane if you have the soul of the accountant. The engineers erected about sixty 25,000-ton piers with gates that slide up and down as a storm surge barrier. This was a visionary act, so much so that all the major equipment had to be invented. Where are you going to find a floating crane that can move that pier into place, actually half that weight as the pier is partly submerged. We've become friends, haven't we? You said you're going to Europe in November to eat? Well, promise me one thing; promise me you'll go up and see this project. The other thing, If something happens to me, promise you'll take care of the dog.

  CHAPTER XVIII

  * * *

  Naturally I agreed to both and, to my minimal credit, fulfilled both vows. The idea that the story was nearly over filled me with what is coyly known to all but the victims as free-floating anxiety. It can't end! What do we do when we arrive at the present? Strang spoke of alternatives but didn't mention particulars, other than an Egyptian waterwheel on a farm in Costa Rica. My god. We were interrupted so I could take Eulia down to Engadine to catch the bus. Strang would be left alone for a short while but Eulia didn't want to chance a meeting with Evelyn, whom she despised as a soulless manipulator. I took a short walk with the dog to allow them a proper farewell. Within fifteen minutes I became quite lost; I had been sunken in my thoughts and inattentive to landmarks. I sat down with the dog and drew out some possibilities in the dirt with a sharp stick. It was hopeless. Then it suddenly occurred to me that the dog knew I kept biscuits in my vehicle. I said “bisquit” somewhat tentatively and she lunged, slobbering all over me. I said, “Where are the bisquits?” and she trotted off with me in tow, reaching the cabin in less than five minutes. I hugged the dog vigorously and dumped out a half a carton of the biscuits for her, congratulating both the dog and myself for our ingenuity.

  * * *

  TAPE 8 : Eulia is gone, probably forever. It's extraordinary that at my age, forty-six, it can be literally too much bother to love someone. No, it's not extraordinary, it's ordinary. I'll stick to the facts despite this full bottle of whiskey. On my way back from Engadine, I saw Evelyn's cab entering town but she was looking the other way. She appears as out of place as everyone else that travels to that cabin except Emmeline. One afternoon they were upset at the tavern because a cab came and left without anyone knowing what passenger was dropped off. I suggested a hired killer, which was met with general interest, adding that I had interviewed a number of them years back and they all looked as solid as your average lawyer.

  In the hour's drive to Engadine Eulia was largely noncommittal, nearly forlorn. I had made a writer's classic mistake and entered fully into the lives of my subjects to the extent my skin was going to come off when I tried to get out. It would be any day now I sensed, and it likely wouldn't be as clean and melancholy as Strang felt when finishing a dam. There was the vertiginous sense that when we part, we let each other drift off rather aimlessly into the future. At least most of us do.

  Eulia's insistence on taking a bus still seems odd to me. She claimed she wanted to see the country and also stop and visit an old exchange student friend in Madison, Wisconsin. From there she would fly from Chicago to New Orleans, then on to San José. She certainly wasn't a bus-type person. She was wearing the summer skirt, now clean, she had muddied against the tire of Bobby's skidder. There was the urge to drive off on a side road, tell her I needed her, and make love. For some reason I chickened out. Back to business I thought.

  “Are you Strang's lover? I've never figured that out.” I croaked.

  “You are disgusting. You are a pig,” she shrieked.

  “But you said that in the hotel in Miami . . .”

  “God is blind to what you only do once out of passion. I'm leaving. Don't try to make me unhappy.” She leaned over and kissed my ear. I put my han
d on her knee and slid it up her thigh, but she shook her head no, and looked out the window. When she turned back, there were tears in her eyes. She didn't, however, pull her skirt back down. There was the odor of lavender, her scent, and I felt congested as if I were about to cry. I waited until after I flagged down the west bound bus on Route 2, and kissed her good-bye.

  I just fried my first hamburger in memory. It looked boring so I fried an egg and put it on top of the meat along with a slice of onion. I've finally run out of wine. I hankered for sweetbreads but this would have to do with a glass of whiskey. There was the unmistakable sound of Strang's truck in the drive though it was after midnight. Sweetbreads had made me think of Eulia's promise to visit me in New York, where I would certainly keep her away from my friends. I properly guessed the truck to be Evelyn. She barged through the door with scarcely a tap, and a smile that was resolutely false.

  “Still eating I see.” What a charmer!

  “Fucking right. Didn't Strang tell you? I've become a part time lumberjack.”

  “You're not fooling me in the least. You're killing him.”

  “Now why would I try to fool a nuisance? You haven't been around. I haven't had the occasion to remember you existed more than once or twice.”If she wanted a bitch-out I'm not exactly harmless.