Sundog (Contemporary Classics)

by Jim Harrison

  Reverend Blank was away in Kampala at a mission conference for a few more days, which proved to be a piece of questionable luck for me. There was an old black woman who lived in a hut behind the Reverend's house. She cooked us dinner—rather heated up some tinned stew. Sharon advised me with a twinkle that the Reverend wouldn't trust anything that didn't come out of a tin or a jar. Even the drinking water was bottled, and we were only allowed to run the generator for lights for a single hour after dark. My room had a toilet, but the only shower was in her apartment.

  We had coffee outside, and Peter strolled off to his village a half mile down the road. It was twilight in midsummer, and there was a sweet, dry-grass smell in the air. I could stare off across the vast Loita Plains, dotted occasionally by that curious geological formation, the hill of rocks known as a kopje. On our way out from Nairobi during my intermittent dozing I had seen a few giraffes, some deerlike creatures, and now I heard my first coughing, harsh grunt, that is, a lion's voice.

  “Holy shit,” I said. My hair stood on end.

  “It's just a lion. They won't bother us.”

  Peter had showed me a ten-gauge shotgun and some buckshot shells in my room. He said they had only used it once on a lung-shot cape buffalo that had trotted into their compound blowing blood all over. I knew guns well enough to understand that the weapon would only be useful at perilously close range.

  Despite her apparent loneliness, Sharon sent me off to bed at dark—my extreme fatigue was showing itself by my calling her Violet twice. There was a striking similarity physically, but also in attitude: Sharon told me later she had been terribly happy when I turned out not to be a “Bible-thumping nay-sayer.” I reminded her immediately of a forbidden high school boyfriend, a football player and beer drinker she could only see in secret. When I slept that night, I had one of those embarrassing dreams that delight analysts. Violet and I were at that lake I told you about—we were naked in shallow, warm water and all greased up with butter, for some reason, and she kept making me enter her in all possible places, over and over, rolling over and over in the shallow water like animals.

  It was a real hair-raiser, waking me before dawn with semen all over the place. I lit an oil lamp and studied the rather simpleminded blueprints for the building. I would dig the footings and put in the foundation, gather all my materials, and then, if my tools hadn't arrived, I would see about driving a new well. The current well no longer delivered potable water, according to Sharon, though the natives still drank it. Hence much of the dispensary practice was doling out antispasmodics and other stopgap measures for dysentery and ulcerated colitis. My blueprint study was broken by a lion's roar, the volume of which made the beast seem far closer than it was. I tried to load the shotgun, but the shells were bloated with humidity, and there was only one that fit into the chamber. I began a shopping list that included shells. When you're in my business, sloppiness of any sort can be fatal. Look at me now. Look at my legs. I forgot a prescription for Tagonet in Caracas because I was chasing pussy, pure and simple. We had gone to a Villa Lobos concert, and the music had swept me away. I forgot.

  Anyway, I was up at first light with my binoculars to make sure the lion was gone. I took a stick out of the fence and wedged a shovel out of the supposedly snake-infested shed. I didn't have my tape measure, but the intended building was small enough that I could eyeball a line for rough footings while I waited for my transom. After a few hours of hard digging, I was wishing for a cup of coffee. Earlier the landscape had killed my hunger; what an unspeakably immense, dun and bruised-colored landscape Kenya offers in the dry season. How would I have known this world was here all of the time? In this part of Africa all life processes, birth to death, are an open book one is forced to read every day. It fills one with melancholy, but it is a melancholy you owe to life, enshrouded as it is with magnificence. Some people think you can extrapolate all of life from one place. That was Thoreau's mistake, though a very minor one. It's simply not true. The only way to extrapolate the spirit of Africa is to be in Africa.

  About midmorning Sharon came out in a robe. She hurried to the Reverend's quarters, saying she would make coffee after she called someone on the radio. It had become so hot that I went into my room and put on a pair of khaki shorts before I went back to my digging. It was Saturday and everyone's day off, but I wanted to work; the rhythm of physical labor can be very peaceful, removing difficult questions such as, What am I doing here? I am building a school and dispensary for the United Nazarene Mission. Sharon's robe had been blue like one of Violet's. There was a certain despair in the beginnings of a hard-on while digging in that sun-baked, rocky soil. Finally she came up behind me with a cup of coffee and a glass of lemonade. She was crying and used the sleeve of her robe to dry her tears.

  “Don't mind me. You may as well know I have this boyfriend, this English doctor in Nairobi. On Saturdays he drives out and we have a picnic somewhere in the country because he's married. He's not coming today, so that's why I'm crying. I hope you won't think I'm too much of a sinner, because everybody gets lonely.”

  “I'm not in the judge business. I'm just over here to work.” We squatted down in the dirt near my footings. I could see up her legs, so I looked off in the distance and drank my coffee and lemonade while she continued crying.

  “That motherfucker tried to stop me from putting up a gravestone for my dog in here.” She gestured at a large rock in the middle of the school area. “I was in Nairobi for the night, and he was supposed to put the dog in my room for the night. It was a Dalmatian this paleontologist up in the Rift Valley gave me to keep away the snakes. People think Dalmatians are for firehouses, but they're the best snake dog in the world. So I come home the next day, and a hyena or a leopard has eaten my dog, and that miserable little shit-head said he was in prayer all evening and forgot my dog. I loved my dog!” She screamed and stomped off to her room.

  Naturally, I was a little shocked by her language. I stood there for a while, brushing away flies and wondering what to do. Her rumpled hair and wild eyes had made her attractive, and I have always been an easy mark when it comes to compassion, deserved or not. Her lover hadn't showed up, and the Reverend, through negligence, had allowed her beloved dog to die. I walked over to her screen door and listened to her sobs, which were punctuated by the pumping of the blood in my temples. I called out her name but got no answer, so I went in anyway.

  She was on her stomach in bra and panties, which made me an ambivalent victim, somewhere between pity and lust. I put my hand on her shoulder and massaged her neck. She turned over and squeezed my hand against her face, which was a blend of anger and grief.

  “I'd like to stake that shithead out on the plains and let the lions eat him. Maybe I'll catch a snake and put it in his bedroom! There's an idea for you.” She traced her finger through the sweat on my bare chest. To avoid looking at her body I stared at the full bookcases but somehow couldn't see the titles. “We're breaking the ice in a hurry, aren't we? I wish the Reverend could see us now. He can kiss my ass. I bet he'd love to, somewhere back in his weasel mind. I bet he'd like to get right down and bury his face in my ass. My doctor boyfriend thinks I've got a beautiful ass, but his thoughts aren't doing me much good today. I've worked as a nurse at different missions for ten years, and this preacher we got here is the worst little prick I've ever run into. My dad was one of the biggest farmers around Stevens Point, Wisconsin, and he was glad I was going to be a medical missionary. He had plenty of money, and I was going to go to medical school, but my mother decided being a nurse was good enough for a girl. Fuck her, too. I'm never going back. Dad is dead, and I get these fucking, lamebrain, whiny letters from my mother whom I no longer need. Dad fixed her and left me some money she can't touch, so when I get a furlough I go straight to France. I love France, and what's more, I speak perfect French.” She emphasized this by quoting a piece. Now I was sitting on the edge of the bed while she was up on her knees sitting on her heels. “I learned that lovely quote
by a French poet who wanted Christmas on earth, you know, every single day. This poet lived up in Ethiopia for years, but got gangrene. Your arms and chest remind me a lot of Louis. You called me Violet last night, but I looked at your papers and know your wife's name is Emmeline. I bet your secret lover is Violet! Louis was Catholic, and I was Baptist, so we had to sneak around. I let him fuck me on our high school senior trip down to Chicago. He knew how religious I was so he tried to do it against me with my panties on, but I took them off.” Now she put her arm around me and began singing “Mares eat oats and does eat oats and little lambs eat ivy,” of all things. I was at a loss what to do, so I turned away from the bookcase and looked at her directly. Come to think of it, no one is ever prepared for this kind of thing. My heart went out to her, but I didn't have any idea what to say. “I don't want you to think I don't love the Lord. I love the Lord by helping to cure the diseases of these people. I just can't stand this small-minded shit anymore. You're looking at me finally. Since you called me Violet, I'm going to call you Louis. We'll organize some drama around this place. I love to read plays. Can I call you Louis?”

  “May as well. Of course you can.”

  “Okay, Louis. Now call me Violet.”

  “I'm not sure I can call you Violet.”

  “We're just acting in a play, darling Louis. Call me Violet, and I'll make you happy, Louis my dearest.”

  “You're very pretty, Violet. I've never seen anyone as pretty as you.”

  “Louis, you're going to find out in a few days that the Reverend doesn't allow shorts at his mission. He wants you to have skin funguses on your legs. Let's get those shorts off right away.”

  She prodded me, and I stood up immediately. You might say I was developing a sense of drama. She peeled down my khaki shorts and underpants with a professional air and fondled me.

  “Louis, this is a coincidence, but you have an identical cock!” She threw herself back on the bed laughing, then deftly removed her bra and panties. She sat back and put as much of my cock in her mouth as was possible, then took it out. “You've probably never made love to a grown-up woman, have you?”

  “Guess you could say I haven't.”

  “Well, the rule of thumb is to put your heart in it.”

  I looked at the slowly floating ceiling fan, then out the screen door at Africa. I was trying to think of a sentence to assure her that I would put my heart in it, but she drew me down on top of her. God, how I loved that woman! I never loved anyone or anything like I loved that woman. I only got to love her a month. Thirty-one days of love before she ran off with her doctor friend to England. Oh, dear Jesus, how I loved her, and she almost killed me, and I didn't care. We had three days before the Reverend returned, and I've never had three days of love like that. Someone asked, “What have we done with the twin that was given us when we were given our soul?” It was a frightening love that I embraced and she ran away from.

  CHAPTER XIII

  * * *

  I had to subtly enforce a break here, after catching an appalled glance from Eulia from the kitchen. Strang had jumped abruptly from talking about Sharon to an odd disquisition on the Comsat satellite photos of the Amazon basin and the other river systems he had worked in. He insisted I study this book in order to understand the way in which all of the water on our planet “moves.” Being given to picture books, I readily made the promise. There was more than a tinge of the Ancient Mariner to this speech, almost oracular, with some of the rhythms of an evangelist. It came in the middle of my changing both tapes and batteries, but in most respects the speech was of only pathological interest. He started with Violet bathing him in a creek as an infant, then they would walk up the sandy-bottomed creek on hot summer days, sitting in the water where it gathered in a small pool. About ten minutes later, he ended with the nature of the great ocean currents and rivers such as the Humboldt, the Gulf Stream, and others. It was all shape, nature, volume, velocity, behavior around obstacles, temperature, quantity of oxygen, quantity of sediment. I must admit I had never paid more than cursory attention to the subject, but I'll say he made it come alive until I felt a certain vertigo. It seems that water never stops: It is always in movement up into the air, or down into the earth where there are, of all things, underground rivers.

  Eulia's alarm increased when Strang lunged upward from the chair and grabbed the edge of the fireplace mantel. He tossed me a small photo album and directed me to a page where, en face, I found photos of Violet and Sharon. In the process I couldn't help but notice a photo of Eulia at about age twelve, holding her schoolbooks. There was an eerie resemblance between Violet and Sharon. Both were far more attractive than I had somehow anticipated, though not as full-figured as Strang had described. Was his point of comparison the slender Edith? Sharon was sitting jauntily on the wounded cape buffalo that had wandered into the mission compound and had been dispatched. There was an inscription: “To Corve. Beauty and the beast! With all the love I can summon on earth, your very own Sharon.” Violet was in an awkward flower-print dress, sitting in one of those tire swings you see in the yards of farmhouses. There was an air of deep handsomeness and health, not as showy, but somewhere between Gene Tierney and Grace Kelly. Unfortunately for her, there was a specific touch of the otherworldly.

  “Where is Violet now?” I couldn't help but ask.

  “She's under the ground. Dead a few years back. She had a fine life, teaching at Indian reservations all over the West. She died in Hardin, Montana, while teaching at the Crow Agency. Marshall flew me out, but she was dead when I arrived. Those people really made a fuss over her. She had bothered to learn their language, which is rare, I understand.”

  “I can't bear this any longer.” Eulia snatched the photograph album. “Every day this talk of the past. What are we going to do?”

  Strang seemed to think this was very funny. I had watched this ability to parry direct challenges with grace before. “What are we going to do? Have a little lunch, then I'm going to swim a few hours while you do your dancing exercises. I'm real eager for the future. Maybe you should go in town to the beach and take a break if you like. We're going to guts it through, as they used to say.”

  “You're such a great bullshitter,” she said, kissing him.

  It was true. There was a smooth, somnambulistic quality to his voice at times that gave the impression, despite his pathetic condition, that he was totally in control. I don't mean there was anything magical or mystical in the man—none of that hokum—but rather a capacity to be all of one piece at any given time. Perhaps he knew that frenetic behavior would increase his suffering, but there was some indication that he had always been that way. As I gathered up my gear to leave, he said he wanted to show me something. He nodded to Eulia, and she brought in two crude walking staffs from the porch. He made his way around the room with these staffs, his face at the same time beaming and contorted with effort. His progress was unimaginably tortured, twisting, shuffling, a drunken, crablike movement.

  * * *

  Tape 6: I'm enjoying the satellite photos of earth for the same reason I like to look at the paintings of John Marin, Kandinsky, Poons, Frankenthaler, Syd Solomon, Motherwell et al. If NASA takes a writer aloft it should be Mr. Mailer, who would profit the most from the experience. Meanwhile I think Strang's books will mean more to me later in the same fashion that I only really read Shakespeare after I got out of college. Right now I crave the topical, the ephemeral. I often think of the days of the week and month by what new magazine is available, and there is nothing of that up here. It's been unnaturally hot for the area, with south winds blowing steadily over the baked pine barrens. There is some worry about forest fire, as a fire several years back burned over fifty thousand acres. An old man at the bar said his grandmother had survived the great Peshtigo, Wisconsin, fire that incinerated twelve hundred people.

  Putting on my khaki shorts I think of Strang's trip to Africa, the curious freshness of it that reminded me of my first stay in NYC, where I had gone du
ring a summer college vacation to become a bohemian. I discovered garlic and willing ladies, despite my clumsiness, both in short supply in the Midwest. But there was also that ineffably sweet sense of adventure where everything seen, met, heard, was new. There is also the humor in the difference in what sex is supposed to be like and the actual nature of what happens. This is usually presented in a harsh, comic light. Strang and Sharon are comic, but I scarcely had the chuckles when I heard the story. The attractive photo makes me sort through the tale again. . . .

  * * *

  I was interrupted by the arrival of Eulia, suitcase in hand, and a smile on her face. It seems that Allegria, the ostensible mother or stepmother or whatever—in any event, Strang's second wife—had arrived from the Marquette airport via taxi, which must have cost a pretty penny as Marquette is more than a hundred miles away. Eulia somehow made me dither around like a bachelor who is also an only child. We set things up a certain way and aren't very elastic about surprises. There was a smallish spare bedroom, separated by a bathroom from my bedroom. She hoped I wouldn't mind, but she couldn't stand the thought of three nights in the motel. I still hadn't looked her in the eye for some reason. While she unpacked, I fixed us enormous fruit and rum drinks; it hadn't occurred to me yet on the conscious level, but rum might be the secret key to her heart, a ghastly euphemism. I became more conscious when I saw her wiggle into a pair of shorts through a few inches of open door.