The Big Seven (18 page)

His attention waned on the balcony because the approaching ship for the time being was more interesting than literature. He assumed that ships found their way in the dark the same way planes did. He hadn’t a clue about the nature of radar, imagining that the ship might speed up and collide with the shore with a tremendous crash. He didn’t want anyone to get hurt, but a part of him thought it might be exciting. He had a brief fantasy of running down the shorefront and saving victims. The whole fantasy matter became abruptly clearer. It occurred to him that sexual fantasies waned to the point of disappearance because age in itself is a diminishment of possibility. We come to a point that anything much beyond eating breakfast and going to the toilet is unlikely. The thrill of fishing was that given a modicum of skill you could still catch big fish as you grew older but the fantasy of catching a pretty girl in your sixties was patently absurd. When you were nineteen and your mind was agog with life’s possibilities even a resplendent Hollywood actress wasn’t out of the question. When Deborah Kerr was bound to the stake in her diaphanous robe in
Quo Vadis
he wasn’t thinking of religious matters but of cutting her loose and taking her camping. Monica, of course, was a fantasy come true. Perhaps it was all about the unlived life. It occurred to Sunderson that while he was working mowing lawns and digging post holes his friends were all free to chase girls.

Reality strikes its mortal blows against us all. Once he rushed over to the hospital where Diane worked to get her to sign something urgent. She was in a room talking to the parents of a prone patient, a beautiful girl who was hopelessly paralyzed from a car accident. It made you hate cars and his throat squeezed shut. Diane led him into the hall where he wept. Diane embraced him, signed the paper, and he rushed out, half blinded by his tears so that he had trouble with the doors. Once outside he could see down a long street to Lake Superior which helped a little. Seeing the girl he had only heard about seemed unfathomably unfair. When he said so to Diane she said, “We know from our jobs that life is unfair.” That was that, however true. Diane suggested that he stop by and talk to the girl. She enjoyed listening to people. She could talk haltingly and her reading machine hadn’t arrived yet, a breath-controlled gizmo that would hold a book and turn the pages. Sunderson said, “I couldn’t do that.” And Diane had said, “Darling, it’s your sensitivities that are paralyzed not hers.” He never did go and still regretted it. Before she died a few months later from pneumonia she had said in her last hour, “I think that it’s wonderful that I’m going to die.” The priest that was there said he nearly fainted. Sunderson was awed by her fearlessness. She had told Diane that she couldn’t imagine a life without making love to her boyfriend.

The freighter neared the dock and Sunderson had a last gulp of tequila. He hoped not to topple off the balcony into the black water below. He toasted a goodbye to fantasies for the last time or so he hoped. What did they fulfill? He thought, though, that reality could be unimaginative except in the good old days when he was peeking through the window at Mona. Delphine wasn’t in the same league crawling in her flower bed in shorts. And through the window her yoga lacked Mona’s grace. It wasn’t youth it was just pure grace. Monica when nude was frequently enlivening but less so than a grand fantasy. He was curious at what age his attraction to the female would disappear. It had to happen. He had not rehearsed the inevitable event but hadn’t the actor Anthony Quinn fathered a child in his eighties? He wasn’t sure. Diane had told him that Mona now had a steady boyfriend down at University of Michigan, a cello player. Sunderson thought this was fine because the cello was his favorite instrument, which he often thought of while trout fishing. He could almost hear it in the river. The sound of cellos and the sound of rivers went well together. So if Mona was with someone better a cellist than a boxer or rock musician. He still hoped her rock drummer was in prison forever.

He had no real idea about the French penal system except when young he had read a book about Devil’s Island, a tropical island off South America where the French often sent prisoners. The heat and insects were terrible and it was infested with vipers. Way back then he had sworn that if he had ever got to France he wouldn’t commit a crime because of his fear of Devil’s Island but then he supposed he had with Mona. That night he had never even thought of Devil’s Island, a thoughtlessness he recognized as typical of criminals, including the neighbors of his cabin. He knew that he was missing some good fishing, also he had dreamed of the ghost of the crippled boy floating up and down the river, moving freely at last. Very little had been done medically to improve the boy’s life. You couldn’t very well cut into the big vodka budget on which the family collectively thrived.

Chapter 19

Early the next morning he breakfasted solo on a piece of fish and
huevos rancheros
. He went back to bed for another hour until he heard Monica come out of the shower. He feigned sleep and watched her towel off and dress through squinting eyes. It was always a pleasure to watch unobserved. Once early in his career his chief had him follow a suspected bank robber from Detroit around for a week. He deeply enjoyed the job which started early morning in the parking lot of the Ramada Inn, upscale for a criminal where the disguise is often poverty stricken. Five days later he followed the goof into a bar taking the chance that he might get “made” because he wanted a drink badly, a Friday late afternoon feeling. The man had left his car running, possibly to save a low battery, but then he had a shot and a beer and left, walking across the street and into a bank. Sunderson finished his drink hastily and moved to the window of the front door. The man came running out of the bank with a canvas bag of money. Sunderson moved outside and yelled “halt” and then the man reached in his pocket and pulled out a pistol. Sunderson ducked behind the running car and shot out a back tire. The man’s single shot had broken out the big front window of the bar behind him. He peeked over the fender of the car and the man was still coming waving his pistol in the air. Sunderson fired four rounds peppering the cement around the man’s feet. He threw the money bag high in the air and went flat on the cement, raising his hands and dropping the pistol. Sunderson heard another shot and turned to see that the bartender was firing out the broken window. The robber was hit in the thigh by one of his shots. It was all a big event locally where no one remembered anyone ever firing a gun in a robbery. Sunderson won an award for bravery and jokingly passed it on to the bartender. Why not? He didn’t want an award. He wanted not to get shot and to have a drink in peace.

He and Monica visited the magnificent aquarium for a couple of hours in the morning. The fish all swam counterclockwise that day in an enormous pool encircling the building. Most of the species were unrecognizable to him though he decided that one day he must fish tarpon. The tarpon swimming in the aquarium were wonderful and thuggish, looking impossible to catch. He had seen a movie made by some hippie types in Key West and the fishing looked thrilling. They weren’t the kind of people you saw fishing up north but who cared? It was the fish that counted.

The interior of the aquarium was faux-natural and there was a movement next to his head that startled him. Some nearby children laughed when he jumped and yelped. It was a live toucan with a huge beak, a beak that could crush a Brazil nut. Kids grew up calling these nuts
nigger toes
up north when he was a boy, where there are still next to no blacks except on the university sports teams in Marquette.

When they got in the rental car for the drive up and over the mountains of Xalapa, Monica said Mona had forwarded him an email from Detective Smolens. “Be careful, you are traveling with a felon as is her boyfriend Lemuel. Call me.” He thought that Mona had been probably amused to send it, particularly ironic since it went to Monica’s iPhone. Monica stiffened when she read it and tears rose in her eyes. He decided to say nothing and had no intention of calling Smolens while he was on vacation. They were diverted by the spectacular drive up to Xalapa, the best of his life, with epiphytic orchids hanging from the phone and electrical lines living on the rich air. He also saw two of the huge monkey-eating eagles he recognized from Diane’s book of exotic raptors.

Despite being nearly blinded by beauty he couldn’t help but wonder how Smolens reached his conclusions. Did he threaten to revoke Lemuel’s parole? That would be a chickenshit move if you were trying to nail someone with a crime, especially a serial murderer. Diane had said she had seen Smolens several times in the Marquette hospital visiting Levi’s pretty young wife Sara, the mother of the dead crippled child. Her burns were being slowly treated and Sunderson assumed that she might be charged with fatal neglect but wasn’t sure. Sunderson was startled when he first spoke to her and she actually sounded elegant and intelligent. What was she doing here? It turned out to be the briefest college romance. His first wife long gone, Levi had gone back to try college after Ike went to war. He’d eventually quit school and gone home, then went back and collected her, convincing her she would love being a farm wife on a big acreage. She was beaten regularly, or so said Lemuel with whom she had a brief affair loaning her enough money to run away to Escanaba. Levi found her and brought her home bound and gagged. They had a little girl who died of leukemia, and then the son who was born crippled. The die was cast with Sara’s life taken over with his care. The story was so grim he could scarcely bear thinking about it but he supposed that Smolens had got her talking about her suspicions in the hospital. He wouldn’t be surprised having noted in his career that patients are often talkative out of boredom.

They didn’t reach Xalapa until midafternoon because they kept stopping so Monica could get photos of the splendid hanging orchids. Though quite tired they went straight to the Museo de Antropología de Xalapa, which swept him away. There were huge Toltec statues of stone somewhat resembling Buddhas though far less serene and reassuring. Sunderson thought they must have been sculpted to engender fear. An assistant said that they had been found and transported up from a swamp fifty miles to the south. There were literally hundreds of small works of the faces of women morphing into jaguars. Did they know something about women we refuse to admit he wondered? It all upset Monica who hurried outside. He soon joined her after asking the woman at the desk for a hotel close by. He didn’t feel up to driving all the way back to Veracruz on the coastal highway. She made the call for him and gave him directions in English. He was grateful as his Spanish was nil. He went outside where Monica was sitting on the spacious lawn leaning against a tree.

“Does it upset you traveling with a felon?” she asked.

“Not at all. I don’t believe it.” He sprawled on the grass.

“It must be Sara talking to Smolens.”

“Why do you say that?”

“She was guilty because I was always entertaining her poor son. Pulling him around in his red wagon, singing to him which he loved.”

“Is that all?”

Now Monica was embarrassed confessing something he already knew. “Once she caught me and Lemuel in bed and she was jealous. This was early on. Maybe I was thirteen. A day later we went for a walk and she said to me that I was lucky to have a lover because a woman has sexual needs and her husband hadn’t made love to her in years. He was always drunk which gave him what she called a
limp dick
. Is this true?”

“Likely. If you have a few drinks you’re fine. If you have too many your article isn’t in working order.”

“Well, she was happy when he was murdered. He would beat her at the drop of a hat.”

“Did Lemuel kill Levi?” Sunderson could barely get this question out.

“I doubt it. Lemuel’s the only nice man in the whole family. When he does have a drink he sits there smiling. He never shouts or hits a woman.”

“How about you. Did you kill him?”

“I wouldn’t know how.”

“What about that pamphlet on poisons I saw in your suitcase?” Sunderson was practically choking interrogating someone he loved.

She laughed and then said, “That was stuff I found on the Internet then sent away for it to help Lemuel on his novel. He asked me to help him do research.”

Sunderson wanted to accept her explanation, but he still couldn’t dismiss the ice in his heart. He let it go but something didn’t add up.

They walked up the hill to the hotel crossing a bridge over a deep gully. Far below women were washing clothes in a narrow river. Sunderson couldn’t quite believe his eyes but was charmed. He had the traveler’s temporary displacement when “Where am I?” became “Who am I?” They reached the hotel after a strenuous walk up the hill at which point lovely Monica remembered that they had left the rental car at the museum. He slapped his own forehead like the classic dummy. She took the keys and trotted off reminding him of the vast difference of their ages. Was he a fool? Yes, of course. The entire lobby was decorated tastefully in Mexican antiques and there was a burbling fountain in the middle. He asked the desk clerk for a drink and the man said that they didn’t serve liquor. Sunderson put an American five-dollar bill on the desk and the man quickly poured him a nice glass of Hornitos tequila from a bottle in the desk. Sunderson sat down in a chair near the fountain with a groan of fatigue. He sipped the much needed tequila and dozed. The desk clerk came over and refilled the glass with a smile.

He felt curiously displaced again. It seemed that nothing in his life turned out as expected. He had certainly planned on being married to Diane forever, however long that was. Her absence was similar mentally to a missing limb, waking each day and not hearing her below in the kitchen making her pot of tea. The dread of absence rose in him again. How can you fill your life without murdering your spirit? He had planned a long slow retirement of fishing and contemplating nature then ran into a buzz saw next door to his cabin. He meant to act out of ordinary compassion for Monica and now she was pregnant and with him in Veracruz, Mexico. Maybe the trip was also an act of compassion, outside of his planning as was the coming baby. It seemed irrelevant whether the baby was his or Lemuel’s. He would be sad to lose her, but it had to be taken care of. He couldn’t be a father now, no matter how nice it seemed. How could he stay remote from his good emotions? People do. He certainly was good at enacting his bad sexual emotions.

His overwhelming motive in life was to write out the eighth deadly sin. But who was he but an ex-gumshoe from a poor family in Munising, Michigan? His hubris frightened him as it got him into many messes in the first place. The sin of pride obviously. The question was how could he write the essay? He might start with the biblical quote “Cain rose up and slew Abel.” The Bible was full of sheer gore and certainly his job had given him a great deal of experience in the color of blood. Blood was the lubricant of history. Early on he couldn’t read about the American Civil War unless it was in the mannerly prose of Shelby Foote. The carnage was unendurable and even entered his dream life. Wars were like that to the innocents back home if a little imagination were applied. He knew his essay on the eighth sin of violence would be up close and personal because he didn’t have the writing skills to exceed that. Sometimes you couldn’t study history without first amputating your imagination. He had been still in high school when he read about the Siege of Leningrad. He recalled trying to fish when his mind was drowning in the idea that the world was a madhouse and had always been one.

This introduction to consciousness was unwelcome. Living in a remote part of the country the newspapers tended to ignore the bad news but in college he could walk into the smoke shop in East Lansing and buy the
New
York
Times
, read it with coffee, and his mind would immediately begin to whirl. And when the blood began to drench your own locale you became fearful. Must I shoot my way out of here? If Lemuel were indeed guilty maybe he hoped to gain peace and quiet by murdering the rest of his family. Progress had been made. It was clear indeed that he didn’t think his family was worthy of life. And what about Monica, beaten and raped since childhood? The most elementary forms of vengeance came to mind. Any dog remembers who beat it, all of its life it remembers. On the dog’s deathbed this person would draw a growl. He wasn’t thinking justifiable homicide but the mere reality of Monica’s life was undeniable. He had never been offended to the point of real vengeance but our minds readily imagine it in the manner that cats treat imaginary threats. They are always ready unlike us who are compelled to brood through our lives.