The Great Leader

  “I’m not at liberty to say.”

  The man drove off with a conspiratorial wave. Sunderson headed down the road on foot hoping for undetected surveillance. He took his cheap binoculars along, pausing at the place he had been stoned and noting the dark markings of his blood on the rocks here and there. He felt a newfound energy from having had something real to eat. He peeked around a boulder and saw two men disassembling a small stone hut, their newish blue Ford pickup nearby blasting loud rock music. Through the binoculars he could see one was a sallow young man who wasn’t working very hard but then there was also Clayton, a mixed-blood Chippewa he had met at the longhouse in Ontonagon County. He had checked Clayton out: he had had a few minor scrapes with the law and was evidently on the payroll, not being a religious type. Clayton was a renowned brawler with a thick chest and big arms so Sunderson approached with his revolver drawn. The young man saw him first and took off running up a hill toward a thicket. Clayton grinned leaning on the pickax he was using to dislodge the stones of the hut walls.

  “Hey, boss. Good to see someone from home. I didn’t throw stones at you.”

  “What’s up?” Sunderson put the revolver back in his holster and looked toward the hill where the young man had run. “Who was that?”

  “He’s the Leader’s main pussy scout. It’s a legally sensitive job.” Clayton laughed. “The Leader’s name is Daryl now. He’s into shape changing, you know, playing Indian.”

  “I figured that. You get paid in cash?”

  “Why?” Clayton was nervous.

  “You don’t want the IRS after you. Give me Daryl’s address.”

  “Of course.” Clayton was relieved that so little was being asked of him. There was more than a trace of despair in his face. “The money is the best of my life but I’m getting the fuck out of here. I’m going home. This area is too fucking weird and violent. When I was at a lumberyard in Douglas getting supplies this Apache told me he was going to cut off my big nose. And then these big Mexican guys come along and tell us to move on. This is a drug route, you know. I’ve seen groups of guys carrying bales of pot and whatever over that way.” He pointed in the direction the young man had run.

  “I know.” Sunderson sniffed the air smelling something painfully familiar. He walked around the stone hut and in the back there was a Dutch oven iron pot on a small bed of coals. It was a venison stew.

  “The deer meat down here ain’t as good as back home. Want some?”

  It became absurdly like old home week with the two men sitting on boulders and eating bowls of venison stew, reminiscing about the U.P., mostly fishing and hunting and eating fried whitefish and lake trout.

  “This is a foreign country down here,” Sunderson said, helping himself to another tortilla wrapped in aluminum foil and another portion of stew.

  “No shit. That’s why I can’t wait to get home. I went into a grocery store and they’d never heard of rutabagas.”

  Sunderson headed for Tucson, stopping at the airport to exchange the SUV for a less expensive compact. He stopped at the diner hoping to see the girl who had directed him to the fire camping site. She wasn’t there and he felt a specific pang of disappointment. He left her a thank-you note that included his cell number. Back in his car he suddenly realized that the address Clayton had given him for the Great Leader was a street near the Arizona Inn. It wouldn’t do to let his immediate presence be known but he gambled on a drive past. Dwight-Daryl was in the side yard of an expensive house playing doubles badminton with three girls well under eighteen. On the way out of the cult site he had grabbed the day pack he’d eyed and was eager to look at the contents. He mulled over the whole, deep mud bath of human sexuality admitting to himself that you surely didn’t see the best as a cop. Returning to Tucson his thinking had been confused by the sheer number of attractive women walking around, especially near the university, after a week in the wilds in which he had only seen the one female at the Conservancy cabin. The fresh look reminded him of the nondirectional yearning he had felt toward females in high school when the excitement of simply hugging a girl had made him dizzy. In the expensive market he stopped in before leaving the city he lamely pushed his cart around behind a knockout in her thirties but then she caught on, turned, and frowned and he reddened. He bought steak, shrimp, and a pile of fruit and vegetables. Everything looked delicious after his week of stupid privation. At the checkout register the woman he had stalked pulled her cart in behind his and he raised his hands in a mime of apology. She smiled shyly which relieved him of his immediate sense of being a fool.

  Back in Patagonia it wasn’t quite drink time so he made a cup of instant coffee and thought over some plans he had made. He was thinking about calling Lucy in New York and trying to get her to come to Tucson and infiltrate the cult in the guise of a wealthy woman. The drawback was that she was a tad unstable. He tried to dismiss the question of how long his ex-wife would follow him like a ghost and whether there were other Diane doppelgangers like Lucy? Probably.

  He slowly unpacked the contents of the cult bag. There were a half dozen issues of Barely Eighteen, which he leafed through with no particular interest, not being turned on by photos. A spiral notebook with Dwight-Daryl’s handwriting was a severe disappointment. The first page was titled, I Am Many, but the following pages were in code which he would have to FedEx to Mona, or maybe just take back home as he was thinking of hightailing it after Thanksgiving. Comically there were a number of small bottles of Viagra, Levitra, and Cialis to keep the Leader’s pecker up. It added up to not much but then he shook the magazines to make sure and eureka the third contained a printed-out e-mail and digital photo in between the pages featuring Candy the High School Dropout. The photo was an electrifying one of Mona on a sofa with her skirt raised and no undies. Sunderson blushed and turned the photo over on the table. The e-mail was from Carla and read, “Dearest, here’s a photo of the creep, which might turn you on though she’s a bit old for your taste. I went down on her for an hour which you would have liked watching. Love, Carla”

  Sunderson began to sweat and reached for the absent whiskey bottle. How could he have forgotten to buy whiskey or wine? Mona had said nothing had happened that evening. One of them was lying and he hoped it was Carla. In any event he had a fine piece of evidence, perhaps not enough to convict but plenty to cause a heap of trouble. He brooded as he made a salad not wanting to fry a rib steak without having a bottle of wine to go with it. The loaf of French bread was fair and he was inclined to feel virtuous even though he had simply forgotten the whiskey. He finally stored his groceries and was amused to see his cell phone in the refrigerator. He had assumed it wouldn’t work in there but he was of course wrong. What the fuck, he thought, being electronically ignorant. He took out his notebook and jotted down messages from Berenice for the Thanksgiving dinner, one from his mother telling him that he was, as always, a disappointment, a cheery one from Marion, and three from Mona saying that someone had broken into her house and stolen her computer. To his surprise there were five messages from Melissa, which frightened him because of Xavier’s threat at dinner. He called anyway feeling a memory-driven nut itch.

  “I want to see you,” she said.

  “I don’t want to die.”

  “Xavier is at his apartment in New York City because there’s a war between everyone. His people are hiding out down in Obregon. Anyway it causes too many problems to kill an American.”

  “How nice. Why do you want to see me?”

  “Companionship. Everyone else is afraid of me.”

  “The Wagon Wheel bar ASAP,” he said, pressing the off button then calling Mona.

  “I’m sorry about your computer. I’ll buy you a new one.”

  “Everything’s in there. I feel like I lost my past.”

  “I can’t do anything about that.”

  “No shit. Can you still turn a doorknob? Where the hell were you?”

  “Camping in the wilderness without my cell. Cooling off. I found t
hat raised-skirt photo of you in the Leader’s day pack. He can be nailed for possession of child pornography.”

  “I’m a child? I better tell the guy that fucked me an hour ago.” She laughed.

  “That’s not funny,” he said lamely.

  “It was fun. Why should I be faithful to you? You won’t touch me no matter how much I tease you. I don’t really like to do yoga at dawn. Everything was for you, darling.”

  He hung up. Now he really needed a drink. He called Berenice and said he’d be there for Thanksgiving dinner and turned off the phone before she could get started on his week’s disappearance.

  The first double shot and Pacifico at the bar made him glow. Alcohol beat the shit out of the Shroud of Turin as a miracle though the fair-sized crowd of drinkers didn’t look merry.

  “Where you been, cutie?” Amanda asked.

  “Camping.”

  “Oh bullshit. A pretty Latino named Melissa is looking for you. Also a guy named Kowalski although he didn’t look like a Kowalski. He wondered if you had left town. He doesn’t know that I know his name but he’s a low-rent P.D. from Rio Rico. Mostly divorce cases.”

  “Thanks.” Hearing Kowalski’s name made him glad he had the photo and Carla’s e-mail in his sport coat pocket. It occurred to him that Kowalski must have been retained by Dwight-Daryl. He decided to kick his ass if he saw him again.

  All of the men in the bar had turned to the door while Sunderson was rehearsing violence and refusing to recognize the abrupt limitations of his age, the way the years drew closer daily, and the fact that Kowalski, being much younger, might very well kick his ass. Where is the considerable strength of yesteryear? Mostly gone.

  He finally turned and saw Melissa at the door, impatient to be acknowledged, wearing a blonde wig and a waist-length fur jacket. The outfit didn’t work but he still felt a tingle. What’s with blonde hair and black eyebrows? It looked silly and vulgar. He beckoned her toward the side table farthest from the jukebox, which was playing a Latino lament. He had been avoiding gringo stations on the car radio in favor of the Latino, finding it remarkable how often the word corazon was used. Amanda brought him another double and a beer and Melissa a predictable white wine.

  “What’s a corazon?” he asked.

  “It’s the heart, stupid. I’m taking you to Spain on Xavier’s dime.”

  “I couldn’t accept that.”

  “Of course you could. We’d meet in Barcelona. I lived there a year when I was nineteen. Xavier keeps saying that he’s lost a lot of hard-earned money on the market. Isn’t that funny?”

  “I suppose so. I need you to do me a favor.”

  “Then let’s go to your place.”

  “I don’t want you to know where it is. I don’t want my severed head found in the toilet bowl.”

  He went on to ask her to stop at the Leader’s address and pretend she was interested in the cult. She was fascinated and agreed saying that she would try it tomorrow if he’d keep his cell on. She said she and Josefina had to move to Tucson anyway because Xavier felt that Nogales was too vulnerable a place for his sister while the drug wars raged.

  “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 nurs
e. 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.