The Big Seven

by Jim Harrison

  Marion showed up the next day to fish for brown trout which he couldn’t resist in a new Toyota 4Runner Sport model, a vehicle Sunderson had always wanted, built as it was on a truck chassis with a powerful V-8 engine, perfect for the rough rides out of doors that he favored. Marion handed him the keys.

  “This is a present from Diane. She’s calling it a loan so you don’t have to pay gift tax.”

  Sunderson felt a little dizzy as he had just been thinking about the inequity of the marriage. Marion had brought food which was good as he was down to roots and stems which is what dopers used to call shortages. They fished for a couple of hours well downstream driving the new car through the pasture, hitting a mud hole on purpose just to put it in 4WD and get out. Marion caught three nice browns though none as large as Sunderson’s. On the way home they stopped at the tavern so that Sunderson could refresh his pint. Marion wanted to go in saying that you could judge a town by the character of its tavern. Sunderson didn’t say anything because the place was utterly dismal. On the way into the bar Bert was sitting near the door and sucker punched Sunderson knocking him to the floor. Sunderson looked up to see Marion hit Bert with a right cross that sent him spinning and reeling into the corner table that no one ever sat at.

  Bert yelled in a slurred voice, “I told you to stop bird-dogging me!” He drew his .32 from a vest pocket and pointed it at Marion. The bartender leaned over the bar and knocked the pistol out of his hand. Sunderson pocketed it just in case it was the right one ballistically.

  “No shooting in here. This is a family place,” the bartender yelled. “Bert, you’re cut off for drawing a weapon. Get out.” Bert staggered around as if looking for his pistol then seemed to forget what he was doing and left. He had plenty. Sunderson looked at the pistol on his lap and was hopeful because it was an older model, which Smolens thought the right gun would be. They looked out the window to make sure Bert was gone but it wasn’t over yet. On the way home down the long driveway they took a bullet in the backseat. Sunderson swerved and turned to see an oak tree about three hundred feet up and stepped on the gas with Marion yelling “no.” He had seen movement and it was the only cover available. On the way they took two more bullets in the front, probably in the radiator. He drew his pistol from his vest and on the way past the oak shot Bert in the hip. He was aiming at his gut but a jounce in the car saved his life. He dropped as if poleaxed. Sunderson was furious that there were bullet holes in his new car. At the cabin he called the county police and poured a drink. The police didn’t want to come if it was an Ames but Sunderson said to bring an ambulance, the man was flat out on the ground. He called Smolens on his cell and luckily he wasn’t that far away in Escanaba. He’d come up to pick up the pistol and help on the Bert affair. Sunderson wanted to call the Toyota dealer to pick up his wounded car but then realized it was evidence and it would have to wait. Suddenly Sunderson was trembling wildly and Marion had him stretch out in the back.

  “Nice location you got here,” Marion laughed.

  “Sure is for brown trout. We’ll be fishing in the morning. I got rid of the worst one left.”

  Smolens and the slow-moving cops arrived at about the same time. Marion pointed out the tree and knowing local history the ambulance driver wouldn’t move without a cop with him. He gave Bert’s .32 to Smolens who was also pleased it was an older model. Smolens counted four bullet holes in the new car.

  “Your radiator is fucked,” he said.

  “Can I get it fixed or is it evidence?”

  “No, I’ve seen it and we would have the mechanic’s testimony. I’m going for attempted murder. Put this sucker away for a while.”

  “Good,” Sunderson said. “I really don’t want to see him again.”

  “What’s the deal with these Ameses? They’re nothing but trouble.”

  “I’m not sure. I heard the mother was good but she died early. The father raised them after that, and he was a mean-minded nutcase.”

  Smolens sighed deeply and looked at the sky as if there might be an answer there for the human horror to which he had been overexposed. He had recently got a week off because he had arrested a man for car theft and his wife had attacked with her long nails, digging his face into a bloody mess. He had needed stitches for a flap of flesh she had torn on his cheekbone. He still looked bad but dismissed Sunderson’s concern. “It comes with the job,” he said. “Did you hit her?” Sunderson asked, thinking the claw marks looked terrible. “A right cross,” Smolens admitted, the same punch used by Marion to demolish Bert. Unlike Smolens, Marion was immensely strong from his youth working on farms near the reservation where he grew up. He was barrel-chested with very large arms.

  Marion was making a Szechuan stir fry when Sunderson got quite a shock on the phone. It was his beloved Mona who told Sunderson she had been looking into Simon Ames, Sr.’s court activity in the later thirties, early forties. The Ameses by nature were always in court. The bombshell was that Ames wasn’t their real name. It was Arnett. Simon had adopted the name Ames as part of a scam in Frankfort, Kentucky. He was a putative Harvard man and would say, “My family made the shovel that built America.” Everyone had an Ames shovel so he won a great deal of credibility. He was busy selling large tracts of land he didn’t own on the path of progress near major cities. He was an expert at fabricating land deeds and would tell investors they’d end up living in splendor on Chicago’s Gold Coast. This especially enthused wives who were bored with Frankfort, Kentucky, and dreamed of being rich in the big city. He got away with it for two years but of course it caught up with him. A reporter who followed the case referred to him as “dapper” and “likable.” The judge was left wing and announced early that Simon was the sole support of a wife and three sons under eighteen. The judge in general also disliked the investors who had fought against his appointment. Simon got only a couple of years plus returning as much money as possible. Simon managed to squirrel away a quarter of it in a crooked bank over in Cincinnati and it was with this money that they moved north the next year. Mona had unearthed a few other scams in the names of both Arnett and Ames but Simon was gone with his family and they involved dirty politics that no one wanted unearthed.

  When Lemuel dropped by after dinner with yet another chapter Marion was fishing and Sunderson was dozing before fishing. Lemuel said Bert’s left hip bone had been shattered by the shot behind the oak tree. Sunderson was pleased and as a joke called Lemuel “Arnett.” Lemuel paled saying that the family was still being sought under that name by the estate of one of the investors. They could lose everything.

  “What did the investor lose?” Sunderson asked.

  “A lot,” Lemuel said. “Simon was good at it. But it would be a shame to lose the farm to rich people.”

  “You couldn’t save your house?”

  “Possibly. It’s in my name while the others can be traced back to Big Simon. They would go for that first.”

  “Everyone would want to move into yours.”

  “Not a chance. They’re out of luck. I’ve got no more sympathy except for two of the wives. I’d help get them settled, maybe in Escanaba. They’d be overjoyed to get out of this place.” Despite this, Lemuel departed with a worried look.

  Smolens called saying, “Bingo, that’s the pistol. The charges are increasing. He’ll be locked up forever.”

  “As it should be,” Sunderson said. “That is what we’re here for.”

  Marion was fishing and Sunderson still felt tired so he hastily read a chapter of Lemuel’s book in which an eleven-year-old girl, presumably Monica, was sleeping with her narrator uncle. She already loved to cook. Sunderson was shocked. It was a novel, supposedly, but Lemuel didn’t seem very imaginative and none of his manuscripts had seemed fictional so far. He recalled finding a shred of paper on the floor of Monica’s room that said, “Love, Lem,” nothing conclusive and likely the end of a friendly note. It had occurred to him that Monica an
d Lemuel were the only two competent beings in the entire Ames clan. Was it deranged to think that he might be a patsy, or the odd man out in a three-way love hoax? Monica was too young for him, but not of course as young as with Lemuel if fiction was actually fact. Nevertheless it made him uneasy with himself. Why would anyone but a deviant make love to an eleven-year-old even if she was extraordinarily precocious? There was a huge taboo written all over it. He had seen a wonderful movie about a girl who had been abused and then became a famous bandit leader throughout the countryside in vengeance. The old idea of two wrongs don’t make a right seemed wrong in this case. The theory is that the vengeance of the state slows crime. This was likely true for most but not the Ames-Arnetts. Bert didn’t know about the state. He knew cows and vodka. Sunderson had heard that the judge looked forward to the case, having wanted to nail him with something major for years. Sunderson would have to testify and it would be hard to keep a straight face when the sentence was meted out. He was betting on the range of twenty years. At his own age he would be unlikely to see Bert again. It occurred to him that there were never enough good women around to keep them away from the kids. Maybe it was that basic.

  Sunderson’s mind drifted back to Monica and Lemuel and the ancient expression played for a sucker. He had been a sucker a number of times in his long career as a public servant, even reprimanded by his chief for being too “easy.” Since he himself had always been averse to lying he could be quite gullible with others. A bad kid could whine about not wanting a record and Sunderson would occasionally let him go though the kid didn’t have the foggiest idea what a record meant to his future. Would Monica cheat on him? Perhaps on the right occasion whatever that might be. Thinking it over they had never “plighted any troth,” as they used to say. Would he, in fact, screw Delphine his next door neighbor if the occasion arose? Of course. Everything seems to be a sliding scale. He, however, couldn’t imagine a woman sleeping with a man who started her at eleven. Shouldn’t there be some resentment? The world of sexuality was mysterious indeed. The Detroit Free Press reported that the age of sexual awakening was getting lower year after year. Who knew? Who was being honest about such matters? Kinsey was long dead and Sunderson struggled to tie his shoes and had lost the grandest wife imaginable on the grounds that enough was enough. The fact that he couldn’t imagine Monica and Lemuel having an affair was no reflection on the possible truth. He felt disgusted with himself for being jealous. He resolved not to follow in her father and uncle’s footsteps anymore and to find someone a more appropriate age.

  Chapter 15

  Marion left the next morning so Sunderson went home too, mainly to get his car fixed by the original dealer. The towing charge to Marquette was five hundred dollars, so he got a local kid with a tow bar to do it for two hundred. If he wrecked the car sullied by bullets so be it. He called Diane on the way home to ask why she’d bought it for him, but after he mentioned the bullet holes she was too distracted to answer. It seemed she thought she owed him and somehow it would wipe the slate clean on their marriage.

  He had assured Marion that if he ever came back he was unlikely to see Bert again. Marion said that he had run into a number of bad people in his life and Bert was way up there. Sprague was worse thought Sunderson. But then Bert would be charged for contributing to the murder of the game warden and also attempted murder for shooting at Sunderson. It would add up to at least twenty-five years down in Jackson prison.

  Sunderson was upset lately the way his fantasy life had tended to dissipate. It likely was his age, he thought. Everything is going away as many older men had noticed, and it was impossible to believe that everything was within reach. The grocery store, where he always saw beautiful housewives, rarely brought on any craving. The snack shop for university kids down the street was mostly empty during the summer but he enjoyed it when the girls were in their late spring athletic wear. They certainly never noticed him which allowed him to stare at them with freedom.

  Late last summer he had sat on a bench outside the snack shop on a hot afternoon and watched eight scantily clad cheerleaders going through their routines. He should have been embarrassed but he wasn’t. It was too extreme to walk away. For a while Janis Joplin had been his favorite singer and he thought of her song “Get It While You Can.” When they left one of them waved goodbye to him and it was difficult to ascribe meaning to the gesture. Maybe it meant nothing. Maybe she was knowing age-old lust but that was doubtful. Maybe she was just a Friendly American. In high school of the four cheerleaders two were marvelous sluts bent on early marriage and two were prim as saints, also bent on early marriage. When he had seen them in later years they all looked like they had had too many pancakes after church, a tradition not to be broken. None of the husbands were successful but they all stayed married and had lots of kids.

  Of course he knew that the aging process was bound to kick in with full force but there should be a way to hold it off for a while. The only reliable trigger of lust in the past few months was when Monica came home from work and took a shower, wrapping herself in one of Diane’s big expensive towels. Monica was beautiful, not in Diane’s classic way but in a sort of American manner like a Big Ten cheerleader. He felt too lazy to cook and hadn’t told Monica when he was coming or she would have had something ready. He went for his old standby, possibly the sin of gluttony, and picked up half a dozen pasties, meat pies that he had been fond of since childhood, a local tradition among miners who would reheat them on their shovels for lunch. Diane used to drive him mad with desire but then he was in love with her, and probably still was. What he had with Monica was a lesser form of love.

  When he got home in the late afternoon he went to the backyard and sure enough there was his lovely neighbor crawling around in her flower bed. He went over to say hello and look at her at close range. She was wearing blue shorts again, and a halter top that barely controlled her breasts. She mentioned that her husband was in Lansing and she had to cook herself something. He said he had just bought six pasties if she would like to come over for a drink and pasties. “I love pasties,” she almost yelled so loud it startled him. “When?” “Now,” he said with a slight tremor in his voice.

  He poured her a whiskey in the kitchen but she wanted wine so he drank two whiskeys which he needed. She said she would run home to clean up since she was still in her garden clothes so he sped to the peek hole in his study and lo and behold he saw the entire person naked which churned his guts more than Monica.

  Here was an adult woman, now in green shorts and a different halter. At dinner the conversation was utterly strange to Sunderson. Delphine and her husband Fred were involved in “sexual freedom” to try to keep their marriage alive. As a teacher Fred’s opportunities were endless while she had to deal with a meager supply. Fred had to be careful as people no longer turned a blind eye as they had in the past, even if no one complained. They would visit their house late in the evening in secret and Delphine was expected to stay in her room so as not to upset the little dears. Throughout this monologue Sunderson sensed he was expected to stay silent and not utter any of the wretched witticisms that the situation called out for. They had tried everything to keep their marriage sexually perky: nude dancing, porn films which Freddy liked but she didn’t. “I’m not visual,” she said. They had gone to “swap parties” but generally didn’t like the people. Freddy, as a graduate of both Yale and Oxford, found them unbelievably vulgar. Sunderson had reflected on the idea that academic people found regular people disappointing.

  Delphine pulled her chair down the table next to him and flipped one of her breasts out of the halter and into his mouth. He nearly choked what with a mouthful of meat pie. By a miracle he managed to swallow the chunk of pasty, take a quick drink of whiskey, and suckle at her ample breast. Isn’t life wonderful, he thought stupidly. She felt his penis under the table which was responding properly to the onslaught. She had been occasionally discouraged by dicks that stayed soft under the most
outrageous stimulation. There was a bit of gristle to her nipples which he found intriguing. She stood up and pulled her green shorts down to her knees. He dove on her as if she were the most fascinating coral reef in the Keys. She leaned far over the table and he went down on her from behind. “Fuck me,” she said. Simple enough he thought. Unfortunately she twisted her butt wildly. This caused him to come off rather quickly. “There’s plenty more where that came from,” she laughed. After finishing dinner and an hour’s doze he managed one more and then he was tired, sleeping until Monica came home from work. He woke up barely enough to see her pull up her green shorts. He was feeling pretty lucky in his semi-sleep trance when she said goodbye and left by the back door. He was amazed by how sexy he found Delphine and the idea of a younger woman seemed a thing of the past.

  He felt like a true adult and obedient to the law which wasn’t technically accurate. He remembered the startled talk in saloons when Jerry Lee Lewis married his thirteen-year-old cousin. Was this where Lemuel was headed? Of course in the north there was a free-floating contempt for anything southern that could only be understood by a new academic term, geopiety. There were cities in Italy a mere thirty miles from each other that regarded the food and people of the neighboring city with contempt.