The Big Seven (10 page)

“Where you taking her, fucker?” he muttered in pain.

“I’m sending her to my sister in Tucson tomorrow morning.” Sunderson was pleased with the lie.

“Who is going to cook for us?” Sprague whined.

Sunderson was stunned. Was this all about food?

“You’ll have to take cooking lessons,” Sunderson said lamely. “Meanwhile you want a ride to the hospital?”

“I doubt that it’s that bad. Give me a ride home.”

“Not a chance. You can hoof it.” Sunderson imagined that anything near an Ames house could bring fire from a .30-06 rifle.

“You’re a dead man,” Sprague bellowed.

“I’ll take that chance.” Sunderson shoved his pistol in Sprague’s mouth and cocked it. Sprague’s eyes were wild with fear. Sunderson walked back to his car and consoled the sobbing Monica.

“You should have killed him,” she said.

“It would have been too much of a mess afterward,” he said. “Filling out papers. That sort of thing. Death is very bureaucratic.”

She slumped in the seat and tried to calm down and doze. Her skirt was well up her thighs which didn’t help his driving. He leaned far forward for a craven look upward. God never made better thighs. Or butt. What a lucky old fool I am, he thought.

They reached Marquette before 10:00 p.m. and the kitchen at the bar at the Landmark Inn was still serving food. He talked to the chef extolling Monica’s abilities and he went back to the office and got a blank job application which Monica held as if precious. Sunderson had his favorite fried whitefish tail sandwich and a beer.

At home he put Monica in Diane’s lovely private upstairs room. He had moved a single bed in there and the toilet and shower were next door. She wanted a shower so he went downstairs and poured a modest drink. At first he felt nervous putting her in Diane’s precious room but then she had abandoned it when she left him. She came downstairs in one of Diane’s huge expensive towels. They had a quick one on the sofa and the immediacy of sexual desire surprised him. A moron friend sophomore year in high school used to say, “If we didn’t fuck the world would get empty.” Everyone doubted that the boy had done the deed but it turned out his neighbor, a great big senior girl, was screwing him often for her own purposes. When she got pregnant she was too embarrassed to admit he was the father but he told everyone who would listen. He was proud. Sunderson was amused remembering this. There is someone for everyone.

It was pointless to get too analytical about sex, and no one had done so satisfactorily that he knew of. They liked to say “it’s in the brain” but where else would it be, down the street? He was ill equipped in the sciences anyway. He was just curious at the electric effect Monica had on him not to speak of Diane in the past. The very thought of Diane filled him with unrest and even the next day he wandered around the yard to check on this and that on his list of tasks to be done. He always disliked yard work having done it so cheaply as a youth. His neighbor was hanging up clothes in a sexy robe. There it was again! They chatted a moment. She was wondering where he spent so much time and he told her about the fishing cabin. She hoped that sometime she could go along. They were from Ohio and quite unused to the natural beauty that she was seeing in the Upper Peninsula. Her name was Delphine, a name he’d never heard before. He couldn’t imagine her husband letting her go off to his cabin while he worked but perhaps they were a “modern couple
.
” He had heard of such things but not locally. Besides his plate was full with Monica.

Marion stopped by and had a cup of coffee. He seemed delighted to meet Monica who was getting ready to go off and look for work. Marion was going to help Sunderson look for a used compact to buy for her. Sunderson was too impulsive and dumb about cars and needed help. She left, borrowing Sunderson’s car after the two men gave her tips and directions to likely restaurants where she might find work. She was worried that people might know about her background but they thought this unlikely. When she left Sunderson told Marion about the Sprague story. He was not amused and wondered if the Ameses might invade Marquette to get their cook back by kidnap. Sunderson said that Lemuel had promised to call and tip him off if he saw any movements in this direction. Marion was still full of doubt. Nothing was beyond these people in his opinion. Marion suggested he keep himself well armed and Sunderson agreed.

Monica stopped back briefly with groceries so he could have lunch. She hastily made him a bowl of pasta with lots of garlic at his request. He meant to do some minimal work in the yard since she was using his car and he couldn’t drive around aimlessly which he liked doing. He weeded and trimmed Diane’s herb patch and perennial beds. His neighbor stopped over and gave him advice. When she stooped he saw up her legs clearly and blushed. He reminded himself again, “Stay away from this one.” He also said to himself, “Act your age,” but this was quickly followed by the question
why?
Everyone says it and surely there were some absurd older men. He had once arrested one in Escanaba for consorting with a fifteen-year-old poor girl. The man refused to admit to doing anything wrong. He was sixty-eight and said that in the “old days” he would never have been arrested. Sunderson merely said that these were no longer the old days. He had always thought this would never be in his character. What had he become? His neighbor however must be in her early forties, the prime of life.

He went inside for a rest after his dizzying work on his knees. Lemuel called to say there had been some talk led by Sprague about recapturing Monica and getting good food again. Bert, her father, was the only one who agreed. The others maintained that kidnap was too serious a charge to play with. Sunderson was painfully aware that at nineteen she was just barely an adult and they could accuse him of kidnap instead, but he couldn’t imagine the Ameses going to the police.

He was in an agitated state despite knowing Bert couldn’t simply grab Monica if it involved what police call “a breach of the peace” which it certainly would. The times Bert had tried to fuck Monica when he was drunk would look bad in court.

Monica came back at about 5:00 p.m. and began preparing dinner, a meat loaf and baked potato. She was jubilant having got two jobs for a total of sixty-five hours a week. “What about me?” thought Sunderson though he acted pleased for her. The one in the kitchen at the hotel bar was as sous-chef six nights a week from five to eleven. The other was at a diner Sunderson considered worthless. He spent the evening arguing that the hotel would be enough and was a classy place good on a résumé. The diner would only be slinging workingman’s hash and do nothing for her. She wanted to save money to move to New York City and work in a famous restaurant and leave her family far behind. This utterly appalled Sunderson. He claimed that he had lived there though it had been mostly in a hospital and rehab clinic. He had forgotten that he had told her exhaustively about his experiences and she said that his life in New York was scarcely typical. He quickly offered her a hundred bucks a week to cook for him and take care of his house. That would take care of turning down the diner job. She said she would sleep on it. She didn’t think he could afford it but he told her otherwise. He couldn’t bear the idea of her being gone sixty-five hours a week plus commuting time but what was he really offering except money.

Monica had spoken of suicide several times which frightened him. It was the old saw that if they talk about it they might do it. Sunderson had known three suicides in his life with one being flatly justified, a schoolteacher with the always fatal Lou Gehrig’s disease. The first one had been in high school, a girl he liked a great deal. She was kind to everyone expect herself. She seemed very intelligent but lonely with her only good friend moving downstate and her own parents going through a nasty divorce. She had hung herself, a violent and too often unsuccessful form of suicide he had learned. It was in the tenth grade when all girls are too sensitive. The whole class was saddened and perplexed except two boys who joked about it and whom Sunderson had beat up during noon hour. Later he realized that the suicide had embarrassed them into humor. He apologized but it was not accepted. The third suicide was a successful local businessman. It seemed incomprehensible though later he heard that the man had gay tendencies he didn’t want to surface and also his wife was having an affair plus he wasn’t nearly as successful as he appeared to be and the walls were closing in. Many were upset because the man was such a pleasant person. Sunderson wondered about how rarely we truly know each other but then perhaps it’s right that we remain essential mysteries to one another.

Chapter 9

The next morning reading over his Seven Deadly Sins material he found that he had been less than completely honest. Why lie to yourself? Why fool God if there is such a creature? His father used to be quite irate with the Catholics who he believed were trying to monopolize Christianity historically. His own Christianity seemed nominal but despite his education being limited to high school he was very well read and a Library Friend with Marquette’s splendid Peter White Public Library being a wonderful resource. On winter weekends Sunderson’s father would drive them over to Marquette and go to the library, the origin of Sunderson’s own love of books. Diane was amused because as an adult Sunderson’s book buying often exceeded the cost of their mortgage. After the library they would stop at a bar and have large delicious hamburgers which never tasted that good again in his life. His dad would have a couple of beers and on the way home they would stop in front of St. Michael’s, the huge Catholic church, a monument that Sunderson found very impressive though he had no idea what went on inside. Parked in front his father would rant about Catholicism, especially what he saw as the malformation of the New Testament in Lyon in the eighth century when some apocryphal gospels were left out. In his mind the appearance of Luther should have destroyed the Church. He had a love of the scholarly gossip about the sexual promiscuity of some early popes. Sunderson was taught to think of them as the biggest businessmen in the world. His father believed that all churches should pay property taxes excluding the Lutherans. Sunderson made no effort to try to understand the parameters of his father’s beliefs. His ranting had a definite entertainment value. His own father, Sunderson’s grandfather, had been a schoolteacher against whom he rebelled by refusing to go to college. It was a regret and made him strongly urge Sunderson to go to Michigan State. He had heard that the University of Michigan was full of snooty rich people and as a populist and left-winger that wouldn’t do for his son. His own life had been somewhat blighted, he thought, by an early family and hard labor.

He was in a funk thinking of rewriting his Seven Deadly Sins when Lemuel called warning that they were leaving late that afternoon to retrieve Monica. Fine, Sunderson thought, she would be at work at the Landmark Inn. He called the detective who had replaced him, Smolens, and described the situation. Smolens knew about the Ames family and whistled. He said that he would be there by four with two patrolmen and wait it out. Sunderson got out his pistol in case they arrived early. He started rewriting his lechery portion because that was the most interesting.

Lechery
. In my work we kept lists of people for when we would tell sexual malefactors that they needed “professional help,” ministers and psychologists and one psychiatrist and suchlike. I rarely could imagine them going but would tell them the judge would go more lightly if they were seeking help.

At one point, early in our marriage, Diane had suggested that I was a sexual obsessive and should definitely see a psychiatrist. I wanted to screw her butt which she wouldn’t allow saying it was perverted. I was hurt and tried to show her literature that said it was a fairly common practice. This meant nothing to Diane who was adamant. I did not show her a rather racy piece in a men’s magazine saying that the practice was popular with Brazilian girls who wished to save their virginity for marriage. This boggled. I was in my randy thirties at the time. What was stopping me from going to Brazil except I was married with a job? I thought of trying it when she was sexually carried away but didn’t dare.

He was unable to concentrate on the Seven Deadly Sins given the mortal threat he was under. Smolens and the two officers arrived promptly at four. He made a pot of coffee for them thinking that a drink would be more appropriate. While fussing over the coffee he took a gulp from one of his many hidden pints in the kitchen. The men selected their hiding places, Smolens in the entry cloakroom, one officer in Sunderson’s study around the corner, one in a dining room closet. Smolens told him to offer the Ameses a drink or a cup of coffee. He also told Sunderson to put away the pistol he had left out on the dining room table but Sunderson forgot to do so what with feeling the deep warmth of his gulp of whiskey. He was also amused that this whole thing was basically about food. They had lost their only good cook and couldn’t get by. The wives had lost interest in it after a lifetime of being brutalized. If your husband ties you up in the hot sun you’re unlikely to make him a nice dinner. If your husband is drunk why slave at the stove. Steady Monica had just kept on cooking because she loved it despite Sprague punching her because his eggs were chilly when he was late for breakfast. John was the earliest and sometimes ate all the sausage before the others arrived. No niceties were observed. Simon had complained about the grocery bills but she bought the best sausage that he loved. John was the biggest and strongest of the brothers in physical terms but slow moving and often tired when he worked which wasn’t much. His essential good humor could turn radically sullen in a second. Sunderson was sitting at the table feeling a fast and irregular heartbeat and staring at the pistol when there was a knock at the door. He opened it and Sprague barged in shoving him out of the way. He was followed by John and Bert who acted less aggressive.

“Where’s Monica?” Sprague shouted.

“She’s at work,” Sunderson said quietly.

Sprague looked as though this wasn’t part of his plan which was
Get Monica and take her home
. He looked at Sunderson’s revolver on the table and pulled his own.

“You promised no guns,” John said.

Sprague was swaggering around the table. “Where is she working?”

“I’m not at liberty to say. A long ways, actually.” Anything to discourage them though you could walk there in five minutes.

Sprague was obviously enraged. He pointed his gun from a close distance at Sunderson’s head. “You’ll tell me right now or you’ll be dead. You guys go outside and turn the car around for a quick escape.”

“Don’t do it,” John begged.

Sprague looked at him with scorn. “I said get out. I don’t want you to witness this.”

Sprague’s left arm was in a sling from where he had been shot. He came close again pointing the pistol at Sunderson’s head. “I’m counting to five. At five it’s goodbye to you unless you tell me where Monica is.” He got to four and then Smolens shouted, “Drop your weapon!” causing Sprague to turn the gun toward him and cock it. A hail of bullets from the three policemen twisted him this way and that. He screeched out and dropped his revolver which Sunderson grabbed. The three men came out of their hiding places and looked down at the riddled body.

“I didn’t want to do it. But this nutcase had it coming. Get the other guys.”

Sunderson nodded in agreement as the two policemen rushed to the door with their guns still drawn. Sunderson followed with his revolver. John was sitting peaceably in Diane’s porch swing. “Sounds like my brother is dead,” he said, holding out his hands to be cuffed. Bert was leaning against the muddy pickup smoking a cigarette and drinking from a flask. They approached him cautiously but he took a last gulp and held out his hands.

The ambulance and coroner came fairly quickly. Sunderson poured himself an ample drink and stared at the blood on the floor. The coroner stayed by the body and said, “You can’t weep over an Ames.” They loaded up the body so they could do an autopsy and left after Smolens gave them a brief statement promising to write it up immediately. A newspaperman arrived and Sunderson turned him away saying, “Please get the fuck out of here. Police business.”