The Great Leader (17 page)

“Tomorrow is Thanksgiving,” he said idly.

“I grew up without your pilgrims,” she laughed.

He bought a pint of whiskey from the bar and they took a ride down past the Conservancy and up Salero Canyon Road, pulling off on a two-track, behind a mesquite thicket. He was mortally disappointed when she said she had the monthlies and couldn't screw. He felt like a teenager sucking her breasts in the car. She began to blow him and then stopped.

“Do you want my back door?” She was laughing.

“Of course.” He had paused not quite comprehending. Other than feverish incidents late in high school and in college he hadn't had wide experience, what with his faithfulness in forty years of marriage to Diane. He felt tremulous and daring as they got out of the car and she leaned over the front seat, turning out the dome light and handing him a bottle of lotion from her purse. There was enough moon that her trim buttocks fairly glowed.

“Take it easy, kiddo.”

“I don't think I'm going to last long.” And he didn't mostly because a dog growled loudly behind them. He pulled out instantly and she shrieked and crawled across the seat. He scrambled in after her. Now she was laughing and he turned to see through the car window a big black dog not a dozen feet away. The dog jumped up against the car and started snarling in at Sunderson. Still laughing Melissa started the car and backed around throwing gravel as she drove out the two-track. Now the dog was chasing the car and roaring.

“It's the ghost of my father,” she hissed. “When I was twelve he caught Xavier doing that to me and beat him nearly to death. Do you think that's why Xavier became gay?”

“I have no idea.” Sunderson didn't want to digest what he was hearing. There was the discordant mental image of pilgrims fucking in their funny pilgrim hats. He unscrewed the pint and took a long, choking drink.

“You shouldn't drink so much,” she said. “I worry about your drinking.”

“I worry about your brother having me killed.”

“He won't do that. I asked him not to. He likes to say such things. Though of course he killed my husband with his plastic hand then complained about the expense of getting a new hand.”

Sunderson had looked forward to a real bed but later when trying to sleep found he missed the sweet outdoor night air, the sounds of nocturnal creatures, and even the lumpy pad under his cheap sleeping bag. And at dawn never had bad instant coffee tasted as good, as he planned his walking. He had opened the windows wide but there was still the slight smell of cleaning fluid in the room. All in all he was glad to not be dead and that the big black dog hadn't bitten him in the ass.

For twenty years he had been trying to dismiss a haunting night image. Back in March 1989 he had investigated a wife beating a few miles from Sault Ste. Marie. A diminutive woman who weighed less than a hundred pounds had been slugged by her husband with such massive force that it had driven her nose bone into her brain and she had died instantly. On the gurney her face looked like a plum from the subcutaneous bleeding. Her husband kept saying, “I only hit her once.” When Sunderson finally got home to Marquette that night he had wept over a glass of whiskey in the kitchen and Diane had gotten out of bed and comforted him. For twenty years he had to face this nightly plum image and after trying to dismiss it for a long time he'd finally given up. But now the little woman's face appeared normal and she was smiling. He was so startled he turned on the bed lamp. Had he gone daft? Nothing was amiss except that the nightcap he had poured sat untouched on the kitchen table. He wanted to feel good in the morning.

A rooster awoke him before daylight and he was pleased to be in a village that allowed chickens. Roosters were the sound of his childhood when he would awake early for his miserable paper route from which he made five bucks a week. He made coffee and quickly fried half a strip steak and two eggs that he put on toast. It was all uncommonly delicious. He was feeling positive for the first time in the month since his retirement and attributed it to the week far from the world of men. He had no expectations that it would last long but it fueled his walk nearly to the top of Red Mountain from which he could see over the top of a range to the south and far into Mexico. The landscape was too vast for a flatlander and seeing seventy miles or so unnerved him. He descended so hastily his shins ached. He had become quite abruptly homesick. He would go home as soon as possible and do something reasonable like shovel snow off his sidewalk and out of the driveway.

Back in his temporary apartment he noted that a fly had drowned in the glass of whiskey and that there was a message on his cell phone from his ex-wife. He felt light-headed when he called her back.

“Your mother is worried you won't show up for Thanksgiving. Please do so.”

“I'm heading over in a half hour for her special oven-dried turkey. How have you been?”

“I've mostly been a nurse. My husband is on hyper­aggressive chemo. How about you?”

“I went camping alone for a week. You would have loved the place.”

“I can't believe this,” she laughed.

“It's true. I was recovering. At this late date I'm becoming a boy again by camping.”

“Did it work?”

“Somewhat, except that getting away makes you want more getting away. I'm going to come home and spend some time at Marion's cabin to think over my pursuit of the Great Leader.”

“It's not a cabin, it's barely a shack. You'll spend your time cutting wood.”

“All the better.”

“Have you found companionship?”

“Of sorts. There's this young Mexican woman but she's a tad daffy. It seems nearly all women are daffy except you.”

After he concluded their chat he found he had a lump of grief in his throat. Life moment by moment is so unforgiving and I'm a slow study, he thought. It's hard to repair a boat after it's sunk. As he prepared to leave wishing he had some good wine to take along he was amused at his dread of the upcoming meal before which his mother, Hulda, would say a lengthy grace. Her annual Thanksgiving grace was traditionally a summing up of her spiritual fiscal year, more similar to driving nails than the polite “Thank you, Big Guy.”

Sunderson's peripheral consciousness had expanded and on the way out of town he guessed that a man sitting at the head of an alley in a white sedan reading a newspaper was Kowalski. In the rearview mirror he saw the white sedan pick up his tail as he crested the first hill out of town. He stepped on it and was well ahead by the Salero Road turnoff and then the serpentine turns through the canyon before Circle Z Ranch slowed him down. His compact was a slow dog indeed compared to his old Crown Victoria with which he got up to 150 miles per hour chasing down a car thief in the Seney stretch. For no reason except impulse and the fact that the gate was open which it never was he turned left at Three R, a narrow gravel road leading south into the mountains. Kowalski followed a quarter mile behind and Sunderson took out his
pistola
as it was known locally. He parked off to the side and Kowalski pulled up behind him and got out grinning. When Kowalski reached him and leaned against the compact Sunderson pointed the pistol.

“Your cell phone, please.”

Sunderson opened his car door violently, catching Kowalski's shins with the bottom of the door and dropping him like a tub of shit.

“You're annoying me,” Sunderson said. He turned the compact around and on the way past shot out both of Kowalski's front tires. Kowalski was sitting in the road with his eyes closed hugging his shins.

On the way to the freeway to Green Valley he stopped at the Safeway on Mariposa to buy a couple bottles of the cheapish champagne his mother favored on special occasions. He was surprised the store was open but then Melissa had said that Latinos didn't grow up with pilgrims and they could scarcely celebrate the conquistadors who were butchers at best. He didn't worry about her infiltrating the Leader's compound. She was a tough cookie.

Bob's glistening Escalade was parked out front and Sunderson wondered if he washed and polished it every morning, certainly a possibility. Expensive cars had always seemed loathsome. Those from the U.P., often called Yoopers, who had gone downstate and made good money would return in the summer and expect the locals to admire their new cars. They were largely out of luck.

Mom, Berenice, and Bob were sitting on the front porch and Hulda's lap was covered by the hideous family album. She had been extraordinarily handsome as a young woman and a lifetime later she had become a cranky crone.

“My remaining son,” she announced. She had been calling him this for thirty years because the death of his brother was still current news to her.

“Surprise!” Sunderson said, holding up the two bottles of faux-champagne that had cost ten bucks apiece.

“Cool it off Mister Bigshot. And make the brown stuff.” She was referring to a roux that Diane used to make to give the turkey gravy an appealing color. Diane had taught him and he found the process tedious.

“The Detroit Lions are playing the Chicago Bears in eighteen minutes,” Bob said.

“I'm a Packers fan,” Sunderson said.

“That's not patriotic. You should root for your home state.” Bob was in a huff. “I like my gravy dark brown. I always was a gravy man. Valerie will help you. She's my niece.”

“I'm cooking a twenty-two pounder. I put it on at daylight. We'll be eatin' on that sucker for a week. Put some juice on ice for me, son,” Mom cackled.

Sunderson dutifully kissed Hulda and Berenice on the forehead and shook Bob's clammy hand. He went inside and was pleased to see that a fairly chubby young woman had already started the roux and was setting the table. She looked good bending over the table in her short skirt. She introduced herself and said she was going to cooking school in Santa Monica.

“This fucking turkey's going to be dead as a doornail. And what's this?” She opened the refrigerator and pointed at a tomato aspic dotted with ripe olives and tiny marshmallows.

“That's Hulda's secret recipe from the Great North,” Sunderson laughed. He noted that the roux was a darker brown than he had ever achieved. “Nice roux,” he said wanting to pat her on her plump ass but thinking better of it.

“I'm here interviewing for jobs in Tucson restaurants but the economy is tits up. Uncle Bob said I could be an assistant manager at his trailer park in Benson. I drove over there and it's a suckhole. He says you're on the track of top-rung criminals.”

“He's on the money. I'm daily imperiled.” This was sort of true. He opened his sport coat flap so she could see the shoulder holster hoping to improve her questionable dank mood which was everywhere present in America.

“Oh bullshit, everyone's carrying in this state,” she said raising her eyebrows as he poured his mom a full glass of champagne on the rocks.

“It's the message not the delivery,” he said.

They finally arranged themselves at the table. He had meant to tell Valerie not to carve until after grace as the food would lose its heat. He knew that his mother got her ornate prayer language via the King James version of the Bible plus her bug-eyed little minister back home.

“Let us bow our heads and close our eyes in prayer. Our heavenly father we thank thee for our ample foodstuffs on this gladsome day. Whilst thou art in heaven with my husband and son sitting on your right hand we thank thee that we are still alive and kicking. As thou knowest it was a tough year with my stroke putting me on the fritz for a while. We thank thee for curing Berenice's sprained ankle which she got tripping over the hose Bob left on the front steps after he washed her car. We thank thee for Bob's prosperity which keeps our hides and hair together in these troubled times. We thank thee for getting Simon back on his feet after he got beat up by a Mexican gang. Lord, protect the borders of our country. We pray that niece Valerie finds a job and keeps her body pure for the hubby in her future . . .”

Sunderson opened his eyes a squint and saw the startled look on Valerie's face. Next to him Bob was text messaging on his cell in his lap. Berenice was staring up at a fly on the ceiling. The torpor was in full flood. Hulda paused to take a gulp of her iced champagne. He was bored enough to childishly drop his fork on the floor in order to catch a view up Valerie's legs. He leaned over and the view was dizzying what with Valerie abruptly giving her legs an extra spread. There was the fabled little muffin contained in blue undies. When he popped back up he blushed when she gave him a silly grin. Why was he such a fool? “To thine own self be true,” said Polonius but then his Shakespeare professor at Michigan State forty-five years before had said that Polonius was a parodic character blathering the street wisdom of the day.

“And Lord, we are in thine hands for better or worse,” Hulda continued with a champagne burp, “and of late it's been worse for my little retirement fund which as you know is handled by the Lutheran Brotherhood. It sure would be nice if you could see fit to let the market fly high like a balloon.”

And so on. Luckily Valerie reheated the turkey gravy in the microwave. Sunderson left as soon as it was vaguely polite to do so after Berenice's medley of pies, which apparently came from a bakery as they were without her vaunted lard crust. He was barely in the car when he got a cell call from Melissa.

“It was unpleasant,” she began, then paused. “He was wearing a red robe and we were alone in a den.”

“Yes. Go ahead.”

“He was like, you know, a slick fraternity guy at U of A. He wanted to see my butt and I said no. That put a stop to things so for you I quickly showed him my butt which because of you is sore today. So then he got friendlier. The ticket for me to enter the group would be fifty grand which would get me complete spiritual satisfaction and a transcendent mind whatever that is. I asked him why he needed so much money and he said he and his people were moving to Nebraska in the spring.”