The Big Seven (6 page)

He had to go home that afternoon to say goodbye as Diane needed him to drive Mona down to Ann Arbor to college. Sunderson surely did not want to make the long drive himself and was also quite nervous about being alone with Mona for fear of another sexual incident. The simple fact was that he did not trust himself with something as errant as sex. One moment you were a piece of retired dead meat and the next you were a teenage hard-on whose willy-nilly logic made no more sense than the bedlam of the Ameses.

As luck would have it Diane had managed a full day off and would take Mona south the next day herself. This gave him great relief and he had dinner with Marion who shocked him with news he’d heard on the radio that there had been a shoot-out among the Ameses back near the cabin. There were no details available so he called his old office and found out to his dismay that his house girl Lily had been killed in a duel with her cousin Tom who was badly injured with two shots in the thighs. They had stood off at fifty yards with AK-47s, a pernicious weapon, and opened fire. Lily had been shot three times in the stomach area and had died instantly. Both of Tom’s thighs had been blown apart and he had nearly bled to death. Sunderson called the number of the dead girl out of curiosity and got her sister Monica who asked if she could have the cleaning job. She wanted to earn money to take the bus out of town and get away from her terrible family. Monica told him she had told police that Tom had been sexually abusing Lily starting at age nine. She’d come crying because he had fucked her in the barn or out in a field. It occurred to Sunderson that Lily had died trying to get even and tears formed thinking of the improbable injustice of life. Monica was only nineteen but was sure she could survive elsewhere.

Sunderson drove to the cabin early one morning but as expected the area was still crawling with cops most of whom he knew from his forty years with the state police. An actual shoot-out is a rare thing in the Upper Peninsula where most crimes of violence are of an impulsive nature. Many began with someone shooting someone else’s dog but often dogs are virtually family members and shooting one violates something deep within people. It was unforgivable and if vengeance was not exacted immediately it tended to smolder for years and would always finally come out. The Sicilians say that revenge is a dish best served cold. Lily must have had years to think about her revenge, but perhaps the pressure point gradually rose and then there was an explosion.

He wasn’t at the empty, now spotless cabin for even an hour before Monica, Lily’s sister, showed up. He wanted to go fishing but talked to her for a half hour because she was grief-stricken. She was dressed better than her sister had been and was actually quite pretty. She said that if Tom wasn’t in the hospital with blasted legs she would shoot him herself, such was her sorrow over her sister’s death. They had been close for a lifetime and now she had thought of burning down her family’s three houses before she left. Sunderson cautioned her that violence begets violence and that someone has to truncate the cycle, though such a burning might be doing the countryside a favor. She began crying and fell into his arms. He cautioned himself against there being any real affection wanting to avoid another disastrous young woman in his life. In fact he felt his cabin should be kept safe from any sort of sexuality. He did note that she looked thin when she took off her farm coat but in his arms she felt pleasingly fleshed. She was too young, of course, at nineteen.

By the time she left in ten minutes he was erect in his pants and a little disappointed in himself. He wanted to take a nap and then go fishing but a nap was out of the question so he decided to drive to the valley and talk to a cop.

It wasn’t hard to find one he knew. They stood in front of the grocery store–post office and talked. “I think we’re charging the guy with murder one. The prosecutor said he organized the duel. He’d been fooling with her since she was a kid. The mother’s in the nuthouse and the father was in the marines. The whole compound are gun nuts. I’d watch myself around them. They’re volatile and have had a lot of assaults. How’s the fishing?”

Sunderson said it was fair rather than very good. He didn’t want any company other than Marion whom he had called about the brown trout thinking he might be past his distaste for the area. He was thinking again about the possible genetic factor in crime or was it simply learned behavior? He thought of the firm feeling of Monica’s butt when he embraced her. There was a modest jolt in his groin that meant he wasn’t safe. He went home and fished until dark and then made a clumsy dinner with a bottle of French red Brouilly that Diane favored. The wine saved the breaded pork steak and broccoli from the grimness it deserved. Diane wouldn’t drink California wine but preferred simple French vintages she bought at a local store. She wasn’t snobbish but confessed to a horrible trip to California in her late teens with a boyfriend. His parents she described as “horrid parvenu.” He didn’t know what this meant but it must have been pretty bad. They were furious at their son for refusing to go to law school. He was troubled but that was why she liked him. He finally turned out to be gay but they remained friends. He visited Marquette once and Sunderson thought he was wonderful and even told him what bar gays hung out at in Marquette.

Sunderson slept poorly, intermittently waking to think of Lily and become angry, not a good sleep aid. The bottom line was an unjust death. His late afternoon fishing was ruined, haunted by the unremitting vision of Lily sitting at the dining room table. He gave up trying to sleep before dawn, drank a pot of coffee and thought about vengeance, always a dismaying thought because nothing satisfactory could be done. When the outside got barely light he fished poorly for a couple of hours and kept one good-sized brook trout for dinner.

When fully awake he decided on impulse to visit Tom, the murderer, at the hospital in a nearby town. A cop had told him that Tom actually required better medical help but had no insurance. When he reached the hospital he flashed his expired detective ID and got right in. Tom lay in the hospital bed with his thighs in big casts. He was a total whiner complaining that the county wouldn’t pay for adequate care over in Marquette. It was as if he had forgotten that he had murdered someone or couldn’t care less. He said that Lily’s bullets had shattered his thigh bones. Without the correct surgery it was unlikely that he would be able to walk for a long time and then poorly. Sunderson listened with feigned interest resisting an urge to shoot him in the head. He was a strong young man in his early twenties but you could see the strength seeping out of him in the lassitude of the hospital. He further complained that no one in his family had visited him. The cop had said that Lily was liked by everyone and the opinion around town was that it was sad that Tom hadn’t been killed.

Before leaving Sunderson falsely assured him that he would see what could be done about his medical care. In fact he didn’t give a shit if the man rotted to death with his shot-up legs. On the way home Sunderson was amazed at the dislike he had generated for the man in a short visit.

Back at the cabin he needed a nap to purge him of the hospital visit. Monica was there at the stove saying she was making a little beef stew for his dinner which delighted him. She was in a blouse and short skirt and the rear view at the stove was enticing. He dozed for an hour and woke up with her beside him crying. She talked about Lily mournfully and he embraced her with his hands sliding down to her bare thighs. He quickly removed them and she asked him if he didn’t need some “affection.” He didn’t know what to say but she removed her shirt and his hesitation went out the window to live amongst the clouds. Her body was even younger than Mona’s and he was hesitant. Her breasts were small and pink nippled. He didn’t last long but they lolled around the bed talking until he was hard again. This time she was very active and he thought she must have a boyfriend who started her early.

She dozed and he lay there feeling mildly ashamed though it was she who had been persistent. Why didn’t he just hug her and console her with words? With all the hours he had spent brooding about the subject! The mystery was in the passion that suddenly overcomes one. One moment you feel normal and then it rages within you. You become stupidly breathless and erect. Afterward there’s a bit of “what was that all about?” In college he had made love a couple of times to a girl he didn’t even like but was sexually attracted to. She was a brash sorority girl, not the kind he was normally drawn to. She walked with a limp and they had nowhere to go so made love in the trees along the Red Cedar River with him on the bottom so she could avoid grass stains. When he saw her at a grocery store later when she was pregnant and married she broke out laughing hysterically near the meat counter. He asked her “what’s so funny?” and she only said “us” and walked away.

So what to think of his situation as a divorced retired detective of over sixty-five? No answer was forthcoming and why should he sexually fast when Monica’s body was so slender and lively. What about her was the question? Was he doing her any harm? What about her malevolent family? He didn’t want to get his ass shot off for sex but he doubted that anyone in her family cared about him except for the
NO TRESPASSING
signs he intended to take down. He had a sudden insight into the absurdity of sexuality. When you trout fish all day from dawn to dark and forget to bring along your sandwich by evening you are ravenous with hunger. You finally get home and you cram the first thing in the refrigerator into your mouth, even a piece of dry, stale bread. You are quaking and beside yourself with hunger. Sex is like that. The body is suddenly out of control and the brain has fled to parts unknown. You are young and stupid again and the body wants only to mount the woman. You are a mere animal his gonads told him. Sex is the first bite of something good when you are starving.

Monica told him to leave the stew on very low heat and left for home. She kissed him goodbye which he appreciated. He was tired of his mind but it was too bright and shiny for good fishing, so he went on a two-hour walk ripping down
NO TRESPASSING
signs on the property border. When he was young he hated such signs. A downstater would buy ten, twenty, maybe forty acres of woodlands and post it for no reason. It defied freedom of movement. While he was tearing off signs near the road a pickup stopped with two older Ames men he hadn’t met yet. They were pleased he was removing the signs because otherwise the game warden would kick them off the property. They offered him a drink from a flask which he took with pleasure and said they were burying Lily at the cemetery at five o’clock if he wanted to stop by. One man who said he was Lily’s father said he would shoot Tom but maybe his bad legs were enough. Sunderson said, “That boy isn’t going to be walking.”

Back home he was distraught at the idea of Lily in the cold, cold ground and took a restless nap, waking at four and having coffee, a little of the delicious stew. He got to the cemetery early but the funeral home hearse was already there. An old man leaned against the front door and said that he had known Lily through his wife’s activities as a 4-H leader. “She was a fine young woman and this is a damned shame. The whole Ames family should be locked up in a madhouse.” He huffed and puffed, reddening, sorely vexed. Sunderson noticed the grave had been dug in the sandy earth and the straps to lower the casket lay across it.

Soon enough the three Ames pickups crowded with people showed up. Country people believed in pickups not cars. The Ames men carried the casket across the rumpled ground and on to the straps above the grave. The funeral director said a few words for lack of a preacher. “Our dear friend Lily was taken from us suddenly. May God hold this wonderful girl to his breast and console her for the violent failures of life.”

Monica came over and stood beside him holding his hand. She sobbed and he hugged her shoulder. The other children wept while the Ames men were sullen and stony. None of them looked at him though Monica said they were pleased that he took down the posted signs. The south end of his property was a deer route, deer being creatures of habit which sometimes gets them killed. Being creatures of routine also gets other animals in trouble, like us.

On the way home from the funeral his heart sank into his belly. There is a dreadful finality when a casket is lowered ever so slowly. No one can imagine what comes afterward if anything and our sense of injustice gets full play. Why should people who have suffered all of their lives die without justice? The most brutally simple statement in the human race is “it’s not fair.” He readily recalled the old
Life
magazines his mother had saved and the photos of the Warsaw Ghetto and the prison camps. To the mind of a child the photos were incomprehensible. For untold reasons they are also incomprehensible to adults. Is it us doing such things? But as a student of history he knew you could barely turn a page without coming upon a new horror. A good portion of his impulse in becoming a detective was to lessen horrors. His friend Marion was an expert on the Indian Wars which he had pointed out were massacres rather than wars. The march of conquest across our land had a striking resemblance to Nazi Germany. They aimed their rifles low into tents to make sure they got all of the women and children not just the obvious warriors. The editorialists of the East were behind the notion of “kill them all and let God sort them out.” Sunderson found reading in this area unbearable partly because in Munising he grew up with many Indians so the deaths in books had human faces.

Chapter 6

When he got home he treated himself to a beer, a taste of the stew, and got out a notepad. Mona was a whiz at computers and had done a lot of work for him on the theory and practice of cults. Why not get her to do thorough research on the Ames family background? It was his understanding that they emerged from Boston but in their more recent past it was a remote part of rural New York State and also Frankfort, Kentucky. He sadly wished he could email her but settled for a phone call. He had steadfastly held out against the computer revolution but now thought of it as a stubborn mistake. His former secretary was relatively incompetent but Mona was an ace hacker and could come up easily with arcane information on anyone. He called and she said she was finally feeling well, walking a great deal, and pleased to have an assignment for which she would charge him a minimal amount. College was okay but a trifle boring and she spent much of her free time wandering the splendid library. After he hung up Sunderson worried about heroin. Ann Arbor was close enough to Detroit so it must be readily available.

Within two days he received an ample FedEx with her initial findings on the Ames family, an offshoot of the prosperous group who stayed in the East. It’s often forgotten that those who settled the West were doing poorly in the East. The progenitor of the questionable branch of the family was a man named Simon who had murdered a neighboring farmer but the court ruled self-defense. The dead man was popular and Simon was generally despised so he set off on a whim for Frankfort, Kentucky, with his young wife and three children. It amused Sunderson to read about this brute who shared his own much-loathed first name. Frankfort went badly with the only land he could afford being poor indeed. They held out for twenty largely miserable years with the accumulation of six children working at thoroughbred stables around Kentucky. Simon heard that there was cheap good land in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. It was cold up there but he had dreamed of fertile land at a low price. He had an old flat rack truck and built a cover for the back to house the kids. The two eldest stayed in Kentucky which angered him as he was losing free labor for farming. The oldest son to accompany him was his namesake, Simon Jr., who was twenty-one and had started his own family. The youngest was only eight. They headed north on a cold spring day. He bought three sections of cleared land from a lumber company for cheap. The problem was the hundreds and hundreds of stumps left over from the timbering. It took a couple of years to clear them with dynamite and a team of big Belgian mares he also bought from a lumber company that had no more use for them hauling logs. Simon put his family in a worthless abandoned house in town that he still had to pay rent on. He later blew up the owner’s car with dynamite and he wasn’t caught though everyone seemed to know he had done it. This started the Ames tradition of havoc in a new location. It was easy to figure out who did it with Simon the only one in town who had dynamite. He felt justified because his worthless rental house was unheated. It was a cold spring. April isn’t reliable that far north and sometimes brings the last of the year’s blizzards, and his family was uncomfortable not getting enough to eat. Simon illegally shot a couple of deer for meat plus one of the recently bought calves died so they ate it. The meat of the sick calf made them ill so they gladly returned to venison. It was soon after World War II and he drove way over to Escanaba and loaded up on war surplus blankets to keep from freezing. None of this really explained his blowing up the landlord’s car. It was us against the world in the small community, a tradition of self-righteousness that criminal families share with each other, and they were off to a solid start. The family now living in the houses were all sons and grandchildren of Simon Jr., who by all accounts was even meaner than his father. None of the adults cared for their children. The kids got along fine with playmates and so did the daughters who made themselves useful sewing and cleaning the houses of the town’s few prosperous families. The daughters, unlike the sullen and irascible sons, were pleasant and popular.

It occurred to Sunderson while reading that likely the bad Ames blood emerged from this vicious grandfather. Now there wasn’t an Ames male that would suffer even a teaspoon of regret if he shot Sunderson. They were a “live free or die” kind of family and the only real horror in their lives was the prospect of jail or prison. The dumbest of Simon Sr.’s sons drove to Iron Mountain, robbed a bank, and was promptly caught, receiving a sentence of fifteen years downstate in Jackson State Prison. He got out during the recession of the 1970s, robbed another bank over in Superior, Wisconsin, got caught, and this time got twenty years. No one ever visited him over which he was quite bitter.

The bank robber made a strong impression on a young nephew, the youngest of Simon Jr.’s five sons. Ten years after the uncle was sentenced, his nephew took to robbing a handful of banks and later bars throughout the U.P. He was quite successful until he was caught in an ambush and wounded a prison guard moonlighting for bank security over in Sault Ste. Marie, which got him twenty years. He was now in his fifties. He had gone away again five years ago for a couple of years for parole violation and had been released only recently. Sunderson determined that he was the smallest of the Ames men. Oddly, by reputation he was thought to be smart because he had done so much reading in prison and was an excellent “jailhouse lawyer” which proved useful to his miscreant family.

Simon did well in the beef grazing business. There was a plenitude of green grass between the stumps and his cattle quickly got fat and sassy. The family did well up through the Korean War when a couple of the sons were arrested for dodging the draft. They avoided prison by joining the navy and had a wicked time in the South Pacific in the months after the war ended.

The beef business was excellent in the postwar years and the family had built the three big houses by the time the sons came home from war. Simon was now old and couldn’t keep pace among his sons so the two thousand acres were split in three sections to no one’s satisfaction.

The sons fought physically and one shot the other in the leg in a local tavern but got away with it by claiming they were “horsing around” and the pistol misfired. Even the shot man didn’t want his brother to go to jail. After old Simon’s death in the late sixties the brothers settled down. Other than try to cheat each other on the fenced borders there was peace between them for a while but not their children who had learned violent play from the parents. All three wives left eventually for parts unknown due to wife beating. Somehow the brothers continued to find new women to marry or shack up with. Eventually they all moved away and Simon Jr.’s burgeoning family spread out to occupy all three houses, but the pattern of violence had been established. Young Tom, Simon Jr.’s grandson and the eventual shooter of Lily, was the worst. He abused all of the girls, not just Lily, and thought of himself as king of the hill.

Sunderson rechecked the source of the information, much of it from an odd long confessional and accompanying family tree–style notes in the police file and prison records Mona had hacked of the brother with the curious name Lemuel, Simon’s youngest son who had spent so much time in prison reading. Sunderson guessed that the twenty years or so away from the family might have done him some good but he was unsure.

Sunderson, quite fatigued with the Ameses, went fishing for two hours late in the afternoon, confident of his beef stew dinner. By coincidence he ran into a man he learned was Lemuel downstream, expertly casting his fly into a large pool in the bend of the river. They talked for a while. Lemuel turned out to be well spoken, the opposite of what he usually found in ex-cons who are habitually aggrieved, sullen, hurt as if crime had been visited upon their innocence. Lemuel said that he hoped to become a crime novelist as that was his only level of expertise. Sunderson wasn’t sure about getting further involved with the Ameses but he figured what harm could a writer do after reading his pathetic family history. Lemuel said what Sunderson had been thinking, that there was “bad blood” in certain families. He owned a small English setter being the only Ames who hunted game birds and everything the dog knew was apparently in its good breeding. It was born with the ability to hunt. He applied this to the criminal impulse and said that Simon had unleashed a criminal family on the earth. The seed was bad. He was heartbroken over Lily who had been his favorite member of the family. They had even spoken about marriage though it would have been illegal as he was her uncle. Once he had saved Lily who was being raped by Tom out in the woods by hitting Tom over the head with a big stick. Tom got up and beat the shit out of him, knocking out several teeth, but Lemuel said it was worth it because Lily was in such pain from Tom’s big penis. He and Lily had been close ever since, until her recent death. He hated Tom and hoped to kill him when he got out of the hospital. Sunderson pointed out that if he got caught he’d be spending the rest of his life in prison where there was obviously no fishing. Lemuel thought this over in silence then generally agreed though he thought he should avenge the love of his life. Sunderson joked that he could easily spend a lot of time making Tom miserable, tipping over his wheelchair and that sort of thing, and then his vengeance would be slow and deliberate. Sunderson said he should try to fall in love with the sister Monica and Lemuel interrupted saying that Monica was a young “nympho” fucking everyone in town including relatives. This made Sunderson feel a tad less unique though he didn’t really mind. He was curious about the idea that Lemuel would write a crime novel about his family.

When they finished fishing they had a pleasant beer at the cabin and Lemuel recognized the odor of Monica’s beef stew saying she was the only Ames who could cook, though one of the young cousins had promise. Everyone wanted to eat Monica’s food and the wives were jealous and nasty to her. He had advised Monica to wait another year until she was twenty to run away to Escanaba or Marquette or way over to Sault Ste. Marie. He would personally give her a ride in his old 1947 Dodge.

Lemuel left but to Sunderson’s irritation was back in a half hour in his Dodge and presented Sunderson with a dozen pages of his crime novel then left quickly in embarrassment. Sunderson normally had a little nap after dinner especially when he had been fishing but built a small fire in the fireplace because his legs were cold from wading the stream. He admitted his curiosity about the chapter. He was not optimistic about a new, inexplicable fiction writer and the chapter title, “The Deflowering of Lily,” was unpromising.
Deflowering
was an antique word and he guessed that Lemuel read some old-fashioned novels in prison, possibly George Eliot whom Sunderson disliked in college and Thomas Hardy whom he loved.

The Deflowering of Lily

It was a warmer spring afternoon and there were, I think, seven of us kids out in the edge of the woods playing hide-go-seek. Lily had matured early and at eleven or ten had a fine set of legs in her bright yellow short shorts. I mention this because she asked me to rub mosquito dope on her legs. I did so and it gave me a warm buzz in my tummy that I didn’t recognize. Tom was also out in the woods stringing barbed wire between trees to contain the cattle so they wouldn’t get lost in the deep woods that went on for miles. When I remember this wretched incident I recall that Tom spent a lot of time staring at Lily in her brief yellow shorts. Tom put down his fencing tools, walked over and grabbed Lily and ripped off her shorts leaving her nude from the waist down. He pushed her down onto a small pile of dogwood and pine branches and she finally started screaming. Before that she was in shock and didn’t know what was happening to her. He raised her ankles up to her shoulders and took out his big penis. At first it wouldn’t go in her but he kept ramming and it finally did at which she screamed louder. All the kids had come running but they just stood there, the boys were anxious but no one tried to do anything. Finally I picked up a big heavy stick, swung it hitting Tom on the side of the head. He collapsed off of Lily, knocked out cold. He had stared at me as the stick approached his head. The girls helped up the sobbing Lily and they all ran for the house with the boys behind them. I should have run for it too because Tom revived, got up and came at me. I didn’t have time for another blow. He grabbed the stick and knocked me down swinging it against my legs. He pounded me in the face with his fists until I had two black eyes and a couple of broken teeth. He finally quit beating me when he hurt his knuckles on my teeth. I walked home slowly with a bloody face and a broken nose which is still crooked.

All the three kids told the three sets of parents what happened but there was virtually no reaction. Lily’s father Bert was in a stupor but then he was the severest alcoholic in the big family of drunks. They bought vodka in bulk gallons which did not last long. Even the women drank far too much, probably in defense from their husbands. No one took Lily to the doctor even though she bled a lot. The real reason for ignoring Tom’s wicked violence is that he was the hardest worker in the families, taking care of the beef business himself except for branding and the October roundup when cattle trucks arrived to take mature cattle to the slaughterhouse. In short, no one wanted to offend Tom.

My weak defense of Lily caused a permanent bond between us. She put hot compresses on my wounded face though she could barely walk. After the experience she went without boyfriends in high school. We finally made love in my car the night we graduated from high school, very slow and gently. We didn’t do it regularly but at odd times her emotions dictated. This all explains why I have to kill Tom.

Sunderson noted that Lemuel had written as if he were Lily’s age. Was he delusional enough to believe this? The last sentence was more or less a confession of motive. True, it was a work of fiction but the sentence would turn on a reasonably good detective. The chapter had been short but hair-raising, fatiguing Sunderson. The death of Lily now loomed larger in Sunderson’s mental collection of injustices. He wouldn’t mind killing Tom himself.