Sundog (Contemporary Classics)

by Jim Harrison

  “You're too thin, Corve,” Emmeline said somewhat defensively.

  “I busted up my guts when I fell. They took out my spleen. I couldn't keep down food for quite a while.”

  “Our stepdad wanted to send over some flowers. He's a good guy, you know. He wanted to send over some flowers, but I said old Dad only likes wildflowers, so he picked these.” Aurora reached into the cavernous picnic basket and brought out violets and buttercups surrounded by watercress strands.

  “Please thank him for me.” Strang buried his face in the flowers long enough to make us uncomfortable. “You didn't know my sister Violet who died. She didn't like violets, but she liked buttercups.”

  Strang and Emmeline went to the cemetery to visit the graves of father and mothers, sisters and brothers, a custom still followed religiously in rural areas of our country. I clearly saw that Strang didn't want to go, but it was a palliative offered after some odd unpleasantness over business accounts. Robert Jr. had gone off to the car after the meal and returned with a pile of ledgers. I had followed Aurora's signal and moved to the riverbank, where we sat with Eulia and the dog. Eulia spoke eloquently to the dog in Spanish, which made me curse my ignorance of that language. I began talking with Aurora who, as it turned out, was stationed in Naples, Italy, with NATO as an information officer. We spoke rather excitedly about the food available in all the different regions of Italy and about Waverly Root's masterpiece on the subject. Eulia asked how we could possibly talk about food after an enormous meal.

  “Jesus, Eulia, give me a break. It's my favorite thing. Call me Miss Thunder Thighs. Luckily for me Italian men don't mind a little substance. One old goat calls me piccola mamma. Are you Dad's girlfriend?”

  “Of course not. I suppose I am his stepdaughter. He is my favorite man in a world of worthless pigs.”

  “Thank you, darling.” I suppressed an urge to oink, but was a little too hurt to respond comically. Aurora patted my arm, and Eulia kissed my ear, our first physical contact, and my ear burned with her breath. Meanwhile, I was practicing one of my minor, schizoid talents as a writer and listening to the conversation up at the picnic table with my cooler ear. Here is a somewhat garbled rendition.

  “Dad, you could at least look at the books. We busted our balls to make a go of this.”

  “I've seen some of the figures. The accountant in Miami sends me figures every quarter.” Strang was plainly keeping his low pitch while the other two voices were choked with emotion.

  “I just always thought we were doing our best for you. I mean, we always did real well because you put up the money—” Emmeline said.

  “That had nothing to do with it,” Strang interrupted. “Lots of money gets invested, and more than half of all enterprises go bankrupt. You both did well because you're smart and worked hard.”

  “I just thought you'd come back someday and be the head man or advise us, you know, when you retired. Now you're all busted up, and me and Bobby want to take care of you. We got plenty of money—”

  “I don't need any money, Emmeline. The company takes care of you when you're injured. Ted gave me the cabin. And you already have a fine husband to help run things. ...”

  “He don't know anything. He's a good guy, but he's got no sense. Mom runs the whole show.” Robert Jr. was red-faced and pacing.

  “I just always thought you'd come back someday and live near us and we'd see you. I know we wouldn't be family, but I would see you. I loved you so much my heart just breaks.” Her sobs were strong and full as her laughter had been.

  Robert Jr. strode off toward the forest. “I can tell you one thing, goddammit. I'm not taking your goddamn money,” he yelled.

  Strang slid down the bench and put his arm around Emmeline. Aurora joined them and ran a hand through his hair. Eulia buried her face in her hands, and I gave her a frantic pat on the shoulder.

  After Strang and Emmeline left for the cemetery, Robert Jr. walked out of the woods with an air between shame and embarrassment. Eulia had retrieved a bottle of whiskey and four glasses. We sat at the picnic table with all of them implicitly looking toward me and my seniority for wisdom. I passed.

  “I guess I fucked up. I never thought I'd yell at my own father. He probably won't want to see me anymore.”

  “Oh, nonsense, Bobby. You're always like that. If you stepped on dogshit in the middle of the night you'd think it was your fault.” Aurora had been out in the great world and was being sensible.

  “We built up a logging business, and a motel and restaurant on his money. Now he doesn't want any part of us. Do you think my dad's got all his marbles?” The question was on the money, however inelegant.

  “Not on the terms of nearly all of us,” I hedged, then tried to confront the issue. “I imagine he liked being paid well all of these years, but he has no particular use for money. As far as I can see, he's never slowed down long enough to have time to spend money. I'm sure the only regret he's had is not spending much time with those he loved, so he wanted them to live well.”

  “I just don't know. Maybe I can at least get him down home to see my new skidder.” Bobby talked as he fingered through his wallet and unfolded a clipping which he passed to me.

  It was an Associated Press piece printed in the Marquette Mining Journal a half dozen years before: “Upper Peninsula Man Overseas Giant Brazilian Dam Project.” It showed a photo of “head foreman” Robert C. Strang, rather shyly dwarfed by an immense dump-truck tire, and another of him pointing to a dam from the top of a powerhouse. I read it quickly and passed it back.

  “I'd say that there's a man who knows what he was doing.” Bobby drank down his whiskey with the air of a man who had made the winning point.

  “Bobby, remember when he brought us down to Miami to this big deal hotel? We were about ten. We waited a couple days for him and went swimming all day in the hotel pool because you asked if we could. Then Dad came into town in old construction clothes, and he just called the clothing store in the hotel and they sent up new clothes for him. You wouldn't eat lobster because you said it looked like the hellgrammites you used for trout bait.”

  “I always thought Mom should have just waited for him like he was off to war or something like that.”

  “That's not fair,” Eulia said. “My father went to Limón one day, and we never saw him again.”

  CHAPTER VIII

  * * *

  TAPE 4 : Back to my own cabin with an extraordinary sense of relief. My god! Confrontations and anxiety are the given in the big city, but they seem especially raw in a sylvan setting. Imagine a prolonged and vicious argument between lovers in a beautiful part of the forest. I will create one because that's my business, as it were. Strang caught me on the way out of the yard. He was plainly exhausted.

  “Beating a retreat, hey?”

  “You don't look so hot yourself. A poet named Lorca once said, ‘I want to sleep the dream of apples, far from the tumult of cemeteries.’”

  “That's a fine thing to say. Love and death tire a man out. You just can't answer any of these big questions, but you got to keep a weather eye out for them.”

  “You want tomorrow off?”

  “Oh, god, no. I thought we had some work to do.”

  There is a uniqueness to those who work very hard. Thoreau only pretended to loaf—every step of a walk was part of an idea. I remember reading about Rilke's pilgrimage to see Tolstoy. He told the great count that he wanted to be a writer. “Then write, for God's sake,” replied Tolstoy. It is built into the arts that her participants, except for a few, are waffling neurotics. The distorted prism is the source of the energy. What did Shakespeare feel like after a good lunch and a stroll along the Avon? I doubt he regretted the extra chop or he wouldn't have eaten it. The other evening I bought a local Indian a few drinks to see if he would reveal any secret lore. Nothing doing. We can be reasonably sure that not all of these people are mysterious. He did give me three illegally small lake trout. As opposed to the lake trout of the warmer waters
of Lake Michigan, the permanently cold waters of Lake Superior yield up a pink-fleshed, fatless fish. I poached the first, serving it to myself at room temperature with a fresh cucumber mayonnaise and a Sancerre. The second I broiled over wood and grapevine cuttings swiped from a grape arbor near the cabin. I basted it with lemon, butter and vermouth. By the dint of inordinate self-control I will save the third for tomorrow. Or not. Strang with his children: Real emotion can seize one with terror. As children we are guided around like little bears. We are taught essentials: not to piss our pants or bed, how to tie our shoes, to eat with our mouths closed, the reversal of which we practiced before the mirror to see what was so terrible about it. Mashed potatoes were interesting. But then many of us are released on the world as permanent orphans, or those who are only casually and insincerely, we feel, adopted. I have a few rich friends who were sent off to boarding school at age six. Mothers and fathers, listen! They never got over it, never. I was a hopeless bed wetter, then one morning I jumped out of bed at dawn and ran downstairs in dry pajamas. Mom and Dad, I shouted, I didn't pee the bed! They woke slowly but treated this accomplishment as a triumph. My life changed for the better that day. In New York, it makes everyone glad to see those nursery school tykes marching down the street connected by a long string. Some of them pause to watch a bum gurgling down a bottle of Tokay, and the string grows taut.

  Last evening I drove around the countryside—it doesn't get dark up here until after ten this time of year-with a set of topographical maps Strang loaned me. When we take breaks from his story, he is trying to teach me about geology, weather, natural history, physics and suchlike, including the basic shapes used in structural engineering. He confesses kind amazement at what little I know. We discuss humanism and my considerable knowledge of history, arts and letters, music. He is no slouch in this area, either. The textbook on dam engineering is the best tonic for insomnia I've ever possessed. He is an unselfconscious visionary of technology. He thinks the “nuke” boys haven't perfected their lessons, hence there will continue to be a need for the hydroelectric power. I was pleased when he said the Glen Canyon shouldn't have been built any more than we would allow NASA to dye half the moon pink for research.

  Stopped at the tavern for a nightcap. The bar owner whipped out that morning's Free Press for our discussion of current events over my bedtime toddy. We never got past an account of government research announcing that Michigan leads the country in alcoholism, obesity and hypertension. It is second in smoking to North Carolina. I light a cigarette and drop my lighter. My temples pound when I bend over to pick it up. I take a gulp of my drink and suppress a belch. Did I need that platter of roesti potatoes with my fish? Did the salad require two hard-boiled eggs, a tin of anchovies, and a half-cup of Parmesan? The bar owner is a tad burly like myself. He drinks coffee brandy with milk because of an ulcer. Oh, well. We promise to discuss this further.

  * * *

  A cold dawn with the wind shifting to the north in the night. I tried to scrape frost from my windshield with my fingernails. No wonder vegetable gardening isn't a big item up here, while the making of gravy is a science. I began to mull over my sexual deprivation when my eyes caught a movement ahead. It looked like a beige, medium-sized dog, and I recognized it as a coyote. I made a note to send my mother a postcard to announce my nature sighting.

  All was not well at the Strang cabin, and it took a while to get started. He was in great pain and had allowed himself a pill, which made him drowsy. Eulia was doing some stretching exercises in a flannel nightgown that revealed nothing. I fetched some wood for the fire and filled the tank of the ancient Kohler generator they used for power. The dog cornered a chipmunk but lay down as if puzzled by what to do with the prize. Back in the cabin, Eulia was heating something up at the stove that smelled delicious. One tends to approach the cookstove of another with hands behind the back like a tentative professor. It was a Spanish bean soup with sausage and fat pork and redolent with garlic. Despite a diet I had devised during a 3 A.M. spate of indigestion, I craved a bowl.

  “We had a difficult time.” Beneath her tan there were shadows. “After they finally left—I don't blame them, really—he was so exhausted he fell asleep on his river chair. I sat on the chair and brushed the mosquitoes away. Then I covered him with a mosquito net and came into the cabin and started this soup. Then later, out the screen door, I heard him crying, and I ran out there. Because of the net, he thought he was in Venezuela when his friend Jorge had his hand cut off. I heard the story. So when I made him realize he was at the cabin, he said we must send Jorge some money immediately. One day on a riverbank a peasant had come up behind Jorge and chopped off his hand because Jorge had made love to his daughter. It was almost dark, but there was a big moon and Robert wouldn't eat. He wants to get better because his company will start a dam in New Guinea this winter. So we drove up the road so he could crawl in the meadow in the dark and he becomes lost for several hours until midnight.”

  “I wasn't lost. I knew where the moon was and where it was going. I just forgot where I started out. I could always have followed the dog home.” He pulled himself up into his walker and made his way to the kitchen table where Eulia was serving the soup. “I went too far down in the swamp and lost one of my knee pads. Then the dog ran off for a while when she heard coyotes. But here I am, all alive and sparkling. Right? And Eulia has made my favorite soup.”

  “Did you see anything extraordinary?” I couldn't begin to imagine crawling around in the forest and swamp at night.

  “I just felt and heard things. I got my bearings when I found the river by the sound, and the spring a quarter a mile upstream. Then I was thrown off by the hairpin bend in the river where you hear it on both sides. This phenomenon can screw anyone up. Then there were northern lights, which by their intensity helped me determine the direction. When Dad got really crazy on his deathbed, we helped him out to the porch to see the northern lights. He said the northern lights were the blood of Jesus streaming in the firmament, which even scared the hell out of me. It went Karl's inventions one better. So I was down in the mire of the horseshoe bend, and the northern lights seemed to set off that bad herb I took. I sensed I was on a swampy island with a big river rushing all the way around it in a circle, which isn't possible. Finally I was able to listen to where the river sound was weakest and find the neck to higher ground. You flush a grouse before your nose, and it's thunderous.”

  This little rendition gave me vertigo. Eulia brewed some delicious but muddy Cuban coffee, and we made our way to the chairs before the fireplace. I could hear Eulia dressing in the loft but was too slow and preoccupied to invent a reason to glance around. Shakespeare himself would have twisted owl-like, knowing one had to seize the day, rather than creating reasons to seize the day. That came later. I began to feel a little dread at Strang's manic appearance.

  * * *

  When that grouse flushed up in my face, I was reminded of a hunting story that got me some pills from a doctor to subdue my seizures. You see, because of my illness I wasn't allowed to have a shotgun. I was a fisherman, which was what helped draw me to the water. Dad swore we didn't have enough money to feed a bird dog. Karl said he would pay for the food, but Dad put his foot down, saying there were no bird dogs in the Bible.

  This may sound a little bizarre, but I became Karl's bird dog, and it was the finest time of my life up to that point. I had a purpose to my life, other than my studies, for more than a month. I wanted to get Edith involved, but Karl said that one make-believe dog was enough. Dad was with Ted down in Manistique, building a school, or we might not have gotten away with it. Mom and the girls were all for it because they wanted me to get some pleasure from life. After my first few days running through the brush and getting my clothes all torn up, Mother fashioned me a canvas suit out of an army surplus puptent. Mind you, Karl wasn't taking advantage; we were partners in an operation that mixed the pleasure of hunting with profit. As with the berries, it was the lawyer's wife who bou
ght most of our kill, and our family ate the rest. She gave the birds as presents to her husband's associates in the Soo and Marquette, earning him a reputation in the U.P. as a great hunter. She cooked us some woodcock one rainy afternoon in what she called a French sauce. It was fine, but we liked them best the way Karl called Indian-style: He built a spit over wood coals in the backyard and roasted the woodcock and grouse basted with butter and pepper. Ted had bought this book for us by Ernest Thomas Seton called Two Little Savages, and it was filled with information about such things. When Dad came home, he did some theological hairsplitting and decided that, since the birds came from God's bounty, the project was blessed.

  Here was our routine: We'd find some good cover, usually strips of popple, which is what we call aspen, alder, dogwood, with lush groundcover of berries and wintergreen. Often this cover was around farms deserted during the Depression. We didn't waste our time if the area wasn't first-rate. We'd ride out in the morning on Karl's bike with me on the back and the shotgun and gunnysack strapped across his shoulders. I'd enter the thicket upwind of Karl so the birds would fly toward him. Game birds prefer not to fly into the wind. I'd give out a screech when a bird would flush and then hit the deck so I wouldn't get hit by the pellets. I would crisscross, casting back and forth across any patch of cover like a good English setter does. I carried a pair of gloves for when I'd have to crawl through a thorn-apple thicket, which grouse favor, because the thorns can go right through a hand. Once in a while I'd bark for the hell of it and to let Karl know where I was. I was thin and wiry but strong, and I can see and smell those thickets right now as surely as I can see you and Eulia.