The Great Leader

  Sunderson was nearly cheery walking the few blocks to the bar. The thought of pissing off his iron mother had been a powerful corrective ever since his youth. Near the motel he saw a young man wearing a turban above his bliss ninny face and asked Amanda at the Wagon Wheel about it. She said he was from the vegan cult up Harshaw Creek Road. Sunderson pondered the possible spiritual content of raw vegetables remembering the rubbery carrot and celery sticks on the grade school hot lunch program.

  “Maybe the raw vegetables release their secret powers,” he suggested polishing off his first double in a single long gulp.

  “Got me by the ass. I do know that when they get too pure the medevac chopper from Tucson has to pick them up,” Amanda laughed.

  By lucky coincidence an older, Mexican woman came into the bar selling fresh tamales for a buck apiece. Sunderson bought six, eating three immediately with a cold Pacifico beer. They beat any bar food he had ever had in the Great North. They were so good he didn’t feel up to another drink. He looked forward to eating the other three tamales for breakfast. On the walk home he idly thought of becoming a Mexican knowing a lot of Americans retired far to the south of the border where life was less dicey. Just before he reached his place down a dark alley he saw two men loading something in a pickup. They glanced his way and he pretended he hadn’t noticed them with his eyes straight ahead.

  “You’re looking for someone?” Amanda had asked when he left the bar.

  “I better not say,” he replied with an urge for mystery.

  Dawn, which is late in November, found him carving his first mango, sexual to the touch, but he didn’t care for it so maybe he wouldn’t become a Mexican after all. With his coffee he had read a chapter in Deloria titled, “Hobby Indians, Authenticity, and Race in Cold War America” and recalled a number of powwows he had been to in the U.P. while looking for perps, persons of interest. Once at the big winter powwow in Escanaba he had seen the renowned fancy dancer Jonathan Windy Boy and had gotten unwilling goose bumps at the man’s inconceivable grace. There were a few white dancers, usually awkward.

  Pushing the book aside he decided to start logging what he was doing in order to bring focus. He had logged notes in journals his entire career to prepare for the obnoxious reports he was obligated to write for the official record. Sunderson recognized good prose despite being unable to write it. Reading so many clunkers in the field of history didn’t help. Like scholars he tended to multiple qualifiers in order to be right without ambiguity. “Are we to believe, unlikely as it seems, that the perp only recently, perhaps in the month since his return from Milwaukee, came into possession of illegal ammunition, usable, mostly in illegal full-automatic weaponry,” that sort of thing. By contrast, Diane had written beautifully, publishing a memoir with Michigan State University of her father’s family adventures in the logging business. She wrote daily in a diary and only read fine nonfiction and literary fiction. He enjoyed Hemingway’s fishing pieces but failed to finish The Sun Also Rises, which was about a bunch of layabouts getting drunk and going to bullfights in Spain.

  He sat staring at an empty page of his journal, ballpoint poised, but couldn’t move a mental sentence. The most singular entry since his arrival in Arizona was, “I hurt all over,” written on the last full day in the hospital. It was true. A large rock had hit the crack of his ass while he was in a crouched position so that even around his asshole there was a big bruise.

  He took an hour’s walk up Harshaw nodding to an altruistic group of young vegan cult women. Marion had said that vegetarian women tasted better but Sunderson had never had an experience with a vegetarian woman.

  He left early for Green Valley wanting to get his grocery shopping out of the way before lunch at his mother’s. Afterward he knew he would want a drink and a long nap before going to Melissa’s. The highway went right past Alfred’s house and Alfred was in the yard so he stopped to say hello, a bad choice because Alfred was pissed off. Someone had broken into Sunderson’s apartment when he and Molly were out for dinner. No damage had been done except to the door’s lock. Sunderson offered him fifty bucks, which he pocketed.

  “A cop came but he didn’t take prints like on TV. Anyway, I saw a painted redstart this morning.”

  “Lucky you,” Sunderson said, knowing that the redstart was a bird.

  The Green Valley supermarket was a melancholy experience. Everyone in there was his age or older. Admittedly they looked better than retirees in the U.P. whose only exercise tended to be pressing the clicker for the television set. The women especially were tanned and sprightly while the men obviously spent too much time on their golf carts. There was a magnificent display of vegetables compared to back home where the pièce de résistance was always the pasty. To Sunderson vegetables were an obligation rather than a pleasure since Diane with her cooking skills had left. The coup was finding a package of frozen rabbit pieces, to make one of his favorite meals.

  His mother, Roberta, and Berenice were sitting on the front porch luckily without Berenice’s dipshit husband. The Escalade was gone but there was a gray Prius with an Obama sticker, obviously Roberta’s car.

  “Nice car. A little pricey,” Sunderson said accepting a glass of nasty California rosé that Berenice poured.

  “She’s a real success not an alcoholic sex fiend,” his mother said, her voice slurred.

  “All I wanted to be was a Podunk gumshoe,” Sunderson said with an edge to his laugh.

  “And you lost the world’s finest woman,” his mother continued.

  “Oh for Christ’s sake Mom, lighten up and stop bullying him.” Roberta had had a hot temper since she was a baby and was the only one of the four children that their mother had never been able to push around. Sunderson was four years older than Roberta with her having arrived a scant year before Bobby in a birth control error. Those two had been a tight little unit and had been good at defending themselves against the rest of the family who were always considered by them to be possible enemies. Sunderson had thought of them as from another generation.

  His mother launched into a fresh caterwaul about her lack of grandchildren.

  “You have to learn a new song, Mom,” Roberta said, then suggested that she and Sunderson take a walk. They weren’t a half block down the street when they turned melancholy.

  “How is it with you?” she asked.

  “So-so at best.”

  “You got the shit kicked out of you. Nobody told me why.”

  “I’m not sure why. I’ll find out pretty soon.”

  “You won’t back away, will you? You’re a bit long in the tooth for physical bravery.”

  “That’s why God made guns,” he tried to joke but it was lame.

  “You know I keep in touch with Diane. You also know her new husband is dying. Any chance of you two getting back together?”

  “None whatsoever. What’s wrong with me then is still wrong.”

  Roberta suddenly stopped and looked around in puzzlement at the uniform beige stucco homes and absurdly uniform lawns.

  “I’d rather retire to the south side of Chicago,” she spit out.

  “Me too,” he agreed.

  “Think how Bobby would have hated this place. He was always using the word bourgeois. Think of it. The only man I could ever love was my brother.”

  Sunderson’s feet became glued to the sidewalk. She walked ahead for a few steps then turned shaking her head with tears in her eyes. Looking at her he felt his own tears well up uncontrollably. He moved toward her and they embraced, his heart thumping with this inconsolable love.

  He was too overwrought when he got back to Patagonia for either a drink or a nap. He swerved off a side road, forded Sonoita Creek, and walked out around the Conservancy property again. His mind was swollen by his sister and the evidently vast quantity of love that was beyond sexuality and its simpleminded merging of genitalia. He wondered if religion was partly the love for an imaginary parent and whether any steps to make contact with this parent were justifiab
le. People sought out an intermediary like Daryl-Dwight or any sort of priest, preacher, swami, or guru in order to shortcut the search. As questionable luck would have it about halfway through the loop path he ran into a rather eerie young woman he guessed to be in her early thirties studying a bird book. Her skin was too translucent for his taste as if there was a danger of seeing her skull underneath the skin. He could see the blood of life pulsing lightly in her temples. She pointed out a bird in a mesquite tree about twenty yards away. It was disconcertingly colorful as if it had been painted by numbers.

  “Elegant trogan.”

  “Yes it is,” he agreed.

  “No, that’s its name. It’s a male and it’s a new life lister for me.”

  “Congratulations.” He had an urge to escape but she put a hand on his arm.

  “You look like you’re having a hard time,” she said, staring at the bird through her binoculars.

  “You’re right on the money.” He was becoming frantic.

  “Me, too. That’s why I look at birds instead of inside my head. Good luck.”

  She walked off in the opposite direction and for once the idea that this woman had a nice butt was irrelevant. She obviously possessed information that he needed. His brain began to perk with exterior landscape rather than interior.

  He was driving down the alley to his quarters when he saw Kowalski, the fake cop, driving hurriedly out of the driveway. Sunderson didn’t give a shit unless the man had left a bomb behind. Kowalski had put a note on top of the folder of Daryl-Dwight research that Mona had sent. The note read, “Why don’t you just go over there and shoot the cocksucker?”

  Sunderson couldn’t nap and a drink still seemed inappropriate. He felt that his concerns were levitating him an inch above his bed. The primary result was homesickness. He thought of the bird woman he had met in terms of something that Marion had said about his own obsession with paying attention to the natural world that already was, rather than himself. Marion was totally without self-concern, thinking that as a human he was essentially a comic figure.

  When it was time to get ready to go to Melissa’s for dinner he checked his cell phone, which had been turned off, for messages. Mona had called, sounding effervescent, to say that Carla had been busted for a pound of weed in her apartment and a dozen cartons of unstamped cigarettes. Out on bail Carla had screamed at Mona on the phone detecting the trail of her bust. Sunderson grinned. Something had worked. He also felt a trace of rejuvenation in the shower but was less than enthused about the upcoming dinner. Typical of his age he had not yet regenerated from the previous day’s sex. This was a case where the tired fountain does not overflow.

  Melissa had a smallish stucco house in a semigated community that wasn’t guarded. There was, however, a very large man sitting on her porch whom Sunderson recognized as being near the front door that evening at Las Vigas. The man’s heavy eyelids made it look as if his eyes were closed.

  “Señor Sunderson, of course,” he said not getting up from his chair.

  Sunderson sat with Melissa in a wildly flowered backyard drinking a margarita she had made fresh with tiny limes and a tequila that cost fifty bucks he had seen in the liquor store. She seemed scattered and a little cool, glancing at Josefina in the corner of the yard playing on a swing set with a nanny. He was wondering if she regretted making love to him the day before. When she had welcomed him at the door and guided him through the utterly elegant living room with its burnished copper walls and antique furniture he had thought again that nothing down here is what it seems to be.

  “What are you going to do?” She wasn’t looking at him.

  “I don’t know for sure. I’m thinking about moving over to Willcox or the Dos Cabezas to be closer to my enemy.”

  “If you don’t have a pistol I have an extra.” Now she was looking at him as if he were incompetent.

  “I have one.”

  “But I can tell you’re not wearing it. What good is a pistol if you don’t have it with you?” She kept checking her watch and then led him into the house. They sat down at the dining room table and Sunderson was disappointed to note that the table was set for four. Looking at her in her short green skirt had warmed him up after all. She explained the platter of ceviche, a Mexican fish dish pickled with lime juice and hot chilies. He loved the ceviche because it reminded him of the pickled herring of home.

  “You’re very nice but I worry that you will be killed like my husband,” she said furtively as the front door opened and Xavier arrived with an attractive young thing who looked 99 percent female but her Adam’s apple told Sunderson that she was likely a transvestite. Will wonders never cease? Melissa rose to kiss her brother but refused to acknowledge his girlfriend, or boyfriend, or whatever. Xavier was ebullient and placed three cell phones near his plate.

  “I keep one for Melissa but I have two new cell phones every day for my business. Sorry we’re late but I must make love after work every day to remind me that I’m human.”

  “Please,” Melissa said, blushing.

  “I have solved your mystery,” Xavier said, looking at Sunderson and pouring a white wine that Sunderson recognized as Diane’s favorite, Meursault. “My problem was that I said to myself, what are two men from Marquette, Michigan, doing in my area? One has the other nearly killed. They must be quarreling about money. Then I learned a lot of information about you. You are studying this man’s cult. I know you have a pension of thirty-two thousand a year, which is not enough. I know you take Norvasc for high blood pressure and Levoxyl for a deficient thyroid and your wife left you three years ago. And now you have moved to Patagonia. I thought you were snooping about me through my sister but now I think you are just another horny old man. Your enemy is camped on what I think of as my land with a hundred of his followers. Today I had him brought to me in Nogales for a conversation. He wasn’t very happy. I have been forced to tell him that he and his people must leave by Christmas. Why, I must ask you, are you fascinated by this lunatic?”

  Sunderson was unnerved by Xavier’s high metallic laughter. Melissa stared at Sunderson harshly as if to say, “You are imperiled. Be honest.”

  “My hobby has always been history,” Sunderson began slowly. “I became interested in the relationship between religion, money, and sex.”

  “Well, you are a fool or a scholar or both. They are one. They can’t be separated,” Xavier interrupted.

  “Perhaps, but this enemy was in my area, as you say. I didn’t like what he was doing to people.” Sunderson was developing a case of ice cubes in the guts.

  “I mean you can’t think of sex, religion, and money as individual building blocks. They have bled into each other until they are a huge unruly animal, quite vicious, really.” Xavier was enthused about the conversation as if he were taking part in a college debate.

  “My job until a few weeks ago was to protect the citizenry from those with criminal intent,” Sunderson said lamely, biding for time. He remembered reading William Blake way back in college who had said something to the effect of brothels being built with the bricks of religion.

  “You people haven’t protected shit. You’ve built little dams here and there. People are natural children of the beast.”

  They stopped talking for a few minutes and ate what Melissa called carne adovada, which was little chunks of pork cooked with hot chili. Sunderson was beginning to sweat and felt in his pocket to make sure he had his Gas-X.

  “I didn’t realize you were ranching in the area of the man who calls himself the Great Leader,” Sunderson teased, knowing full well that individual cartels control specific routes of import all along the nearly two-thousand-mile border.

  “You are becoming impolite,” Xavier said petulantly. “We are speaking as educated gentlemen. You may stay in the area through Christmas Day so you can have Christmas with your mother and sister in Green Valley. After that, go home.”

  “And if I don’t?” Sunderson’s heart swelled in anger.

  “You will
become menudo for the vultures and ravens,” Xavier laughed.

  “How inhospitable.” Sunderson’s ice cubes had become a solid block.

  “And don’t see my sister again. I can’t have you fucking her like a dog in broad daylight.”

  “Xavier!” Melissa screamed, getting up and going as far as the kitchen door.

  Xavier smiled and pointed a forefinger at Sunderson as if it were a gun. Sunderson got up slowly and walked to the front door, summoning his courage for a backward glance at Melissa but she was staring down at her feet. Now on the front porch there were three men that Sunderson supposed were there in case he presented a problem. He didn’t intend to.

  PART III

  Chapter 10

  Sunderson was dumbfounded by his fragility. He walked. And walked and walked, the only thing he could think of to do to leave what he had become behind him. He wrote a single entry in his journal, cryptic but on the money. “I am a very short man in tall grass.”

  After leaving Melissa’s he had stopped at the Wagon Wheel for seven double whiskeys, his favorite number. The whiskey had none of the desired effect. The barmaid Amanda wasn’t there and her replacement was clearly frightened of him as if he were one of the spate of vampires who had descended on the land compliments of television. A soused tourist lady had approached.

  “Are you Robert Duvall?”

  “No, I’m not,” he had responded gruffly.

  “Prove it. I know you’re Robert Duvall.”

  “Go fuck yourself.”

  She had shrieked and he left the bar. This Robert Duvall misidentification happened a couple of times a year. This used to amuse Diane who thought he should learn how to tango because Robert Duvall tangoed.

  Reaching the apartment he vomited in the backyard, the whiskey vomit stinging his nasal passages. This was clearly one of those rare times that alcohol was unable to do its job. His brain was fluttery rather than dulled. He spent a wretched night within a recurring dream of when at age twelve he had cut pulp during winter vacation to earn money for Christmas. His dad had dropped him off at daylight but it was ten below zero and he had skipped breakfast. He couldn’t get warm except for his hands which he pressed against the cowl of his Stihl chain saw, his proudest possession along with his green Schwinn bicycle. At midmorning he was still shaking and carried the saw out to the section road where after half an hour he had been picked up by a county snowplow driver who was a friend of his dad’s. The man said, “You got to eat breakfast if you’re going to work in the woods.” They stopped at a diner and Sunderson ate a hot roast beef sandwich with potatoes and gravy and then fell asleep in his chair. In the dream he had never gotten out of the woods but had grasped a beech tree to avoid shaking into pieces of frozen meat.