The Big Seven

  The three Ames places were virtual triplets about a mile from one another: two-story fair-sized farmhouses the color of weathered wood from lack of paint, ramshackle outbuildings and decrepit porches, the edges of the weedy yards covered with rusty farm machinery and autos. Country people keep old cars believing they’ll use them for spare parts though in fact that is a remote possibility. On the second of the three farms the main beam of the barn had collapsed sinking the roof. It wouldn’t last long. He understood that five brothers inhabited the three houses along with their families. The youngest brother was childless, but the other four had something like nine kids, some of whom had kids of their own.

  The village wasn’t much: a small grocery that doubled as a post office, a rickety house, a couple of occupied trailers, a small closed elementary school. The tavern was a big well-built cement block building with burned timbers in the vacant lot from which Sunderson deduced that the previous tavern had burned. Such taverns are the social center of small communities with kids playing in the corner and told not to bother anyone, a small pool table, several pinball machines, and a jukebox. There were three pickups parked in front for those who needed a noon beer or two. Sunderson’s first irritating thought was he would have to ship food from home. As a detective he had been in dozens of such bars throughout the U.P. The info about the families came from a newspaper article he recalled that talked in terms of Hatfields and McCoys, though in this case it was Ames and Ames and a long history of mayhem over the years.

  In the tavern half the stools at the bar were taken. Sunderson sat down nearest the door, a reasonable precaution if the cabin’s previous owner wasn’t exaggerating. The floor was filthy and there was a heavy fetor of sweat and manure. In short, a farmer bar. A young man a few seats down stared at him. “You buy the Sims place?” The young man turned out to be a girl in Carhartt farm clothing.

  Sunderson merely nodded yes not wanting to start a conversation.

  “You going to keep it posted?” she persisted.

  “Haven’t made up my mind. I don’t like the signs.”

  All of the men nodded in agreement. He guessed they were Ameses.

  “A lot of deer on your south end,” she said.

  “I hunt over east near Michagamee,” he said, not wanting them to picture him as a competitor.

  “You can fish our water if we can hunt your land,” she said.

  “I’ll think that over,” Sunderson hastily finished his shot and beer and left with a nod.

  When he reached his car he felt he had done okay. Keep noncommittal he reminded himself. He had sensed a general hostility. If he had been in Alabama he would have run for it before getting shot, or so went the superstitions of those in the North about the Deep South. He had often wondered in his detective work if there was a genetic quality in psychopathology. Criminal behavior often ran in families and you came to the conclusion that it must be in the genes. You can’t separate nature from nurture but in this family it seemed obviously both. The shallow genetic pool must have worn out and there was a Brownian movement to berserk behavior. His police work had taught him that poverty was always of consequence but less so in areas where everyone seemed poor. In the area of his cabin there was no mining, just poor farmers on bad land and pulp cutters, loggers who cut small inferior trees for the paper mills. This was terribly hard work at poor pay and tended to produce bad tempers. These were strong men and their fights tended to be long and gruesome. Some he had been able to stop only by firing a pistol in the air.

  Easter was late this year and he had dinner with Diane and Mona who was home from rehab. Easter had been his favorite holiday as a child. It was without the acquisition and confusion of Christmas in a relatively poor family. Rich kids in his class would get new bicycles or sleds or toboggans and he might receive only a pair of bedroom slippers. On Easter they had a big breakfast with caramel rolls his mother made that he loved. They would go to church, festive on Easter, and then have a big ham dinner which he also loved. At church they’d sing, “Christ the Lord Is Risen Today” which he believed. He still believed in the Resurrection but figured that was because he never got around to not believing in it. If there wasn’t too much spring snow they’d drive up to the cemetery as they did on Memorial Day. He would drift by the grave of the little girl from the hospital then find the graves of his grandpa and grandmother plus all of the many Sundersons who had died in Lake Superior in commercial fishing. The young are often ready-made martyrs. Death is a mystery not yet real and graves are perhaps temporary traps. It horrified young Sunderson to learn that the bodies of sailors most often didn’t float to the surface because Lake Superior water was so cold that the natural gases from decomposition didn’t form to cause them to float. The graves of many drowned commercial fishermen were in fact empty. They lay on the bottom of the deep lake forever. At the shipwreck museum near Whitefish Point he had seen a photo of a cook in the galley of a freighter that went down in the 1880s. A hundred years later a diver took the photo and the cook was still perfectly preserved except that his eyes were missing, likely eaten by minnows. The sea was cruel indeed.

  During Easter dinner he had made the mistake of describing the Ames family to Diane who was horrified and became worried that Sunderson would get himself shot. He should have kept his mouth shut rather than giving Diane an additional worry. Her smile when she greeted him was tight and she talked to him without her usual warmth. She had talked to University of Michigan and they were willing to let Mona back into school for the spring and summer terms. Mona disliked the idea of missing summer in Marquette but agreed. Diane offered to fly her up for weekends, an expensive proposition, which led Sunderson to wonder just how much money Diane’s parents had left her. They had always kept separate books and his salary had covered their expenses and what she saved from salary and inheritance was intended for retirement. She had offered to pay for his cabin before she knew about Mona but he had said no. He had never told her about the blackmail cash which would only be another worry. He had never asked how much money she had and she never mentioned it. Inheritance had certainly never existed in his family and when his father died and his mother moved to Arizona even their house was considered fundamentally worthless. His sister Roberta had rented the house to some poor people who never paid the rent but she was too softhearted to evict them because the husband had Parkinson’s. Sunderson had been frugal since childhood. Thus his horror that a martini in New York could be up to twenty dollars when the same drink was three dollars or less in the U.P. Local bartenders told him not to order a martini which was more expensive than a double top shelf vodka on the rocks. Why pay an extra buck for the vermouth that they rarely had.

  On the way home he drove slowly to study the landscape and three Ames cars passed him at blinding speed, speed being a habit of many backcountry people. He had been thinking of the long ride home from France. Mona was withdrawing from heroin and was intensely restless but luckily he had some strong narcotic pills, oxycodone, left over from his back pain, which calmed her. She slept six hours and then he gave her some more. He knew it wasn’t strictly legal but she was in such pain. She still delighted fuzzily in the fact that her ex-boyfriend had been arrested.

  When he got back to the cabin he was startled that the roughly dressed girl from the bar was sitting at the kitchen table. She told him her name was Lily and explained she had a key because she had cleaned the cabin for the Sims family twice a week. He thought “why not?” and hired her on the spot since he was a slob. He took her phone number to tell her when he was coming so the cabin would be spick-and-span. She reminded him that cell phones didn’t work five miles south. He offered her a ride home but she took off by foot cross-country. He took a nap which was a bit eerie because of new surroundings, waking up unsure of where he was. He suited up for fishing, slowly trying to regain his balance. He tied on a clumsy muddler minnow fly and immediately caught a brown trout of about fourteen inches in
a deep pool on the bend of the river. This thrilled him to an ineffable degree and his skin tingled. This was what it was all about, to own your own cabin and catch a nice fish practically in the front yard. He would tell Marion about it because there weren’t many brown trout near his cabin and Marion loved the speckled beauty of brown trout. He released the fish and heard Lily who had snuck up behind him say, “I would have eaten it for breakfast.” He said, “Be patient,” and quickly caught two brook trout of ten inches, fine eating size, went ashore and gave them to Lily to fry. Back in the cabin she looked nice with her coat off in a worn green blouse. Sunderson felt a slight pinch in his groin. He didn’t want to but her butt looked nice in Levi’s.

  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.