The Ancient Minstrel

by Jim Harrison

  His son and twin girls were students at the University of Michigan. Mona had said they were typically perky rich kids. On the phone Ziegler said that one daughter was a problem and arranged to meet Sunderson on a street corner three blocks away. He was careful about appearances and didn’t want people to see him consorting with a private detective. Sunderson met Ziegler’s Lexus at the corner. He was obviously transfixed by two girls doing wheelies on their bikes at the intersection. One was a sprightly, handsome girl, the niece of the president of the university, and the other was Barbara, her light short skirt flipping up to her waist. Legs to die for, he thought. He knocked on Ziegler’s window and got an irritated look then was beckoned into the car.

  “I’d give thousands for a night with that one.”

  “Which one?” Sunderson teased.

  “Don’t fuck with me. I want those legs around my neck.”

  “I think she’s underage. She lives three houses down the street from me.”

  “I don’t give a shit. I’d take the chance. That’s what lawyers are for.”

  “Her father is on the city council.” Sunderson said this with an air of threat.

  “I don’t care. I can buy those little chickenshits for lunch.”

  Barbara rode close to the passenger seat, looked in the open window. “I’ll be over in a little while after I pick up lemons for lemonade, darling.”

  “Why the fuck is she calling you darling? Why is she coming over?” Ziegler exploded.

  “We’re friends. She takes care of my flower garden.”

  “A big tough detective with a beautiful pussy weeding his flowers. That doesn’t add up.”

  “A medium-size ex–state police detective with ten black belts in karate.” He added the latter as manly decoration. Ziegler was restless as they danced around the main business.

  “Here’s the killer. I sent one of my daughters, Margaret, a check for three thousand to buy duds because she got all A’s at the university. She signed over the check which was cashed by an organization called the Circle of Heaven and Hell. I had an old friend in the athletic department check it out. It’s a Zen Buddhist group headed by a California kook. Now I’m not so dense that I don’t know that Zen Buddhism is a time-honored group. But this cucaracha floated in with a costume of black robes and picked up a bunch of strays. He has them howling like monkeys.”

  “Monkeys?” Sunderson played dumb. Ziegler’s wife had engaged Sunderson to look into the group when all three of the kids were involved, and he wanted to avoid reminding the man that he hadn’t taken it all that seriously. He wondered why the athletic department.

  “Yes. That was the report I got. I want you to look into this. Obviously I pay well.”

  That took care of that. It should be easy. He’d begin with Mona. She had looked into it before and he was sure she’d be up for it again. Meanwhile Ziegler implied he’d like to come over in order to see Barbara again. Sunderson, wanting privacy for his voyeurism, said that he had too much work to do.

  “What does she wear?” Ziegler asked plaintively.

  “Soft khaki short shorts. She’s working on a tan.”

  Ziegler looked up at the sky through the windshield as if some answer might be there. He shook Sunderson’s hand.

  “Let me hear from you ASAP.”

  “Of course.”

  Sunderson walked hurriedly home to assume his upstairs perch. He reached the front porch just as Barbara pulled into the yard with a sack of lemons. He waved her into the house and followed her down to the hall into the kitchen with a sharp eye on her wagging butt cheeks.

  “I’ll work an hour or so then make lemonade. It’s all that I’m eating. I’m trying to drop a few pounds.” She patted her perfect butt as if it were overweight.

  “Don’t lose an ounce. Your butt is perfect.”

  “How do you know? You’ve never seen it. Maybe it’s covered with acne,” she said with a teasing grin.

  “I’d appreciate a glance,” he mumbled.

  “I have to deal with my conscience. You don’t. A divorced man is asking to see my ass. It seems harmless.”

  “It’s an aesthetic exercise,” he interjected.

  “Oh well, Mr. Sunderson needs help.” She turned and bent slightly, pulled down her shorts speedily, no undies, and then back up. “First you see it, then you don’t,” she laughed.

  He had concentrated on taking an imaginary photo with his eyes. The butt was superb and he felt breathless with his heart pounding. “Once more, please.”

  “Not a chance. Maybe after my lemonade when I take my shower. I’m going sailing this afternoon.” She was holding a pair of knee pads for weeding. “Let’s make a deal. You get another look at the butt if you squeeze the lemons, and if you can help me with something I’m doing for a friend.”

  “Fair enough,” he said as she hurriedly left the kitchen and went out the back door. Through the screen it was fetching when she bent over to put on her knee pads. A cautionary note flickered in his brain but failed to shine brightly. Toward the end of his relationship with Monica he had a drink with the prosecutor to discuss a case of vandalism at the local marina, where he’d done several big investigations in his time, and toward the end of the meeting the prosecutor had used the old expression “a word to the wise” which meant a bomb of some sort would drop. The upshot was the prosecutor claimed that he had received several complaints about Sunderson living with an underage girl. Her parents were both dead and that was why the case raised suspicion with local busybodies. Monica was actually nineteen, so there was no crime, but the prosecutor seemed to keep an eye on him after that.

  Now here he was looking out his bedroom window at Barbara through binoculars. She was on her knees in the dahlias with her butt arched up like a beautiful house cat. He recalled that stupid song “Yummy Yummy Yummy (I got love in my tummy).” He felt suitably absurd. He recently had a lovely dinner with the new librarian for the solid pleasure of talking about books as he used to do with Diane. Now like a feeb he was waiting for another possible bare-butt viewing of Barbara when she had her lemonade. He felt a trace of shame. Act your age, he thought, but simply enough he didn’t want to. He was an old boy on the loose again.

  He called Mona in Ann Arbor, didn’t get her, and left a long message until her voice mail lost its patience and cut out. Could they really howl like monkeys? He supposed he’d find out soon enough. Mona would enjoy snooping into this case.

  The librarian hadn’t excited him except for her mind. Of course she would be a far wiser seduction then Barbara. If he had been warned about Monica they were ready for his next misstep. He suspected a junior member of the police force of possibly stirring up trouble. He was known as the “Kid” because he looked very young and had been hired as liaison to the area’s young people, something which he had trained for in college. The Kid had told Sunderson that his own thirteen-year-old sister had been sexually abused. Sunderson was curious because the Kid was obsessed with sexual abuse where there didn’t seem to be any suggestion of it, much less evidence. He called a friend on the force in Saginaw from which the Kid hailed and found out there was in fact no sister. There was an early complaint against the Kid in high school from the mother of a neighbor girl who claimed that the Kid had tampered with her daughter. Sunderson’s friend remembered this though no charges had been filed. He said that the Kid weepingly denied everything and although he was cleared he entered a long depression afterward. The Kid’s father was a sergeant on the local force and not above beating the shit out of his son. Sunderson had no conclusions, only suspicions, but found ironic the Kid’s zeal on sex cases and he had to be reprimanded for bringing so many cases with a very low conviction record.

  Right now Sunderson was in a race against time. His fishing gear was packed near the front door and Marion was due in less than a half hour to go steelhead fishing on the Saint Marys River ove
r in Sault Sainte Marie. Meanwhile, he had quickly squeezed the lemons and was aching to hear the downstairs shower shut off which would mean he was closer to another view. The thing she’d needed his help with was a hundred-dollar contribution to her friend’s abortion fund. They were poor folks but her friends were raising the money so the mother could take her daughter down to Mount Pleasant in central Michigan for the procedure. Suddenly the shower went off and she was at the counter mixing her lemonade. He boldly reached out and palmed a buttock. His cell phone rang obnoxiously. He turned it off noting it was Mona in Ann Arbor whom he could call back. Barbara drank deeply and went into the living room, sitting down in a big red T-shirt she’d borrowed which came all the way down to mid-thigh. He knelt before her confidently pushing the shirt up to her waist. This was the world peace he was thinking about and he was right there when it was happening. He put his hands behind her knees and pushed them toward her chest. He put a big wet kiss on her vagina boring in with his tongue until she made a small squeak and said, “Oh my goodness” over and over. And then they heard the steps on the front porch and Marion called out for Sunderson. Marion later admitted that the sight of the girl’s bicycle in the yard slowed him down a bit. Sunderson jumped up and nearly lost his balance falling backward. She deftly turned on the clicker tuning in one of many Saturday college football games. She pulled down the shirt and tried vainly to tidy herself.

  “Hello, Barbara!” Marion practically exploded. Then he turned to Sunderson. “Barbara helped out in my office as a sixth grader. Now here she is almost all grown up.”

  Sunderson noted that Marion put an emphasis on “almost” then glared at him.

  Barbara seemed nearly frozen in place. She smiled at Marion. “I took a shower after working in the garden. Now I’m getting dressed so I can go sailing with my friends.”

  Marion was polite enough to go into the kitchen and Sunderson followed after noting a wet spot on the back of Barbara’s T-shirt. She rushed off while they stood in the kitchen drinking some of her lemonade.

  “Let’s go. We’re burning up the day. I packed some pot roast sandwiches for a late lunch.” While they loaded Sunderson’s fishing gear Barbara said goodbye, throwing a lovely leg over the bicycle seat. Sunderson winced at his coitus interruptus.

  In the car headed east toward the Soo Marion seemed a bit cool and critical. He had graduated from college in psychology and of course had been a teacher and principal for decades. Sunderson expected a lecture. They were barely out of Marquette on Route 28 when it began.

  “Monica was one thing. Everyone found it scandalous but she was nineteen so you slid under the wire. Barbara is a totally different matter. She’s fifteen. You’re my oldest friend and I want you to exercise care so you don’t end up in jail. There’s no fishing in jail. She’s a good kid and has no business wearing nothing but your T-shirt on the sofa. I can only guess what you were up to.” Sunderson hurriedly told the story of his contribution to the abortion fund which made Barbara innocently affectionate to him.

  “Oh bullshit,” Marion exploded. “All the years I’ve known you you’ve had an eye out for young stuff. If I find out there’s anything going on my next call is Barbara’s parents and you’re headed for the slammer. May I remind you they relate your syndrome to the unlived life? I know that in high school you were a wrestler and a bone-crunching linebacker. All the pretty girls like quarterbacks, running backs, and nice clean basketball players. You were left out by the pretty ones and even late in life you’re hot on their track. Stop it. Period. Pursue Diane for Christ’s sake. Or the neighbor lady. I don’t care. Just don’t let your dick lead you to jail or more likely prison.”

  They checked into the Ojibway so Sunderson could watch the ships pass through the huge Soo Locks, a longtime obsession. On the river there was a hard cold rain. Sunderson fished for an hour until he was shivering and soaking wet. He caught one six-pounder, enough for a good chowder. Marion had better rain equipment so he took Sunderson back to the hotel where they ate their delicious pot roast sandwiches with pickles and beer. Then Marion left to go back fishing. Sunderson ordered a pint of whiskey from room service to avoid walking back out in the rain to a liquor store. He remembered with fondness the lovely room service at the Arizona Inn in Tucson, also the breakfast at the Carlyle where he had set the stage to blackmail the rich mother of a rock musician who was dating Mona.

  Thinking of Mona’s rock ’n’ roller who was now in a French prison after being caught with two underage girls made him nervous indeed. The most loathsome criminal of all was the pedophile. Sunderson considered fifteen years the cutoff, an adult woman in most of the world but America, except Louisiana. He could always go to New Orleans on the remaining supply of blackmail money but wasn’t that admitting he was a sick cookie? He called Barbara out of impulse. She was on her bike but said she could talk. He said he was sorry they had been interrupted and she said, “Me too, I was really getting off. Of all people it was Principal Jones! I still owe you one.” Sunderson, who was in bed to get warm, got an instant hard-on which proved to him that he might be hopeless. He was desperately afraid of prison. As a detective he had made a number of visits to Jackson Prison with its five thousand inmates, and to the local high-security prison in Marquette where the prisoners complained bitterly about the cold darkness of winter. He couldn’t imagine anyplace more dismal. Out barred windows you could see stormy Lake Superior, often iced over in winter, not an attractive escape route. The solution was to fish and travel the rest of his life and avoid all young women. Stop now. Period. Maybe allow himself one more session with Barbara. But self-indulgence was always the problem—an ex-detective thinks he can get away with anything and soon he hasn’t stopped at all. He needed to get a bird dog and return to hunting grouse and woodcock. But suddenly he was pondering the view with his photo image of Barbara’s delectable crotch as he went down on her on the sofa for a few minutes. The thought was needlessly electric and he despised his sense of being out of control. It was still months away from New Year’s when an effective resolution might be made.

  There had to be an escape route from this obsession. He loathed his mind’s startling capacity to raise up an image of Barbara naked below the waist. Marion’s lecture had given him a knot in his throat and his eyes were misting with frustration. He remembered the name of a mind doctor that Diane had given him. It might be time to bite the bullet and go, but would the man hold his information in confidence? It was hot info if it could send him to prison. What was it about our sexual impulses that demolished us and how did he end up with his ass in this sling? He had seen Barbara dozens of times on the block so why was he suddenly a witless ninny? Dante and Beatrice? Petrarch and Laura? A voice in him said, “Don’t flatter yourself.” A lovely girl is perched daintily on her haunches while he splices her bicycle chain and he is struck dumb, poleaxed, while looking up her legs. It was like peeing on an electric cattle fence which invariably knocked you to the ground, something city dwellers were pranked into doing while visiting their country cousins. Fistfights often followed.

  He finally reached Mona. She was writing a paper about Machado, a Spanish poet she adored. Her look into Ziegler’s situation revealed a striking mess. Mona had gone back into the group and reported that while one twin had lost interest and left the group the beloved pet daughter Ziegler had mentioned lived with the teacher-master and did the cooking, an important position in the community. The three grand her father sent doubtless went for food as the master was quite a trencherman. Sunderson had also checked things out with his ex-wife Diane who he remembered had been a Zen student in college, purportedly a serious and traditional student compared with the goofies in Ann Arbor at whom Diane took serious umbrage. Sunderson knew from Diane about Mona’s many mental issues arising from college, her distant father and worthless mother, and her rock ’n’ roll ex-lover. With Diane’s encouragement Mona had become interested in Zen as a way to try to resolve some of this. M
ona didn’t mind deferring to authority which was part of Zen, really more a total attitude than a religion. However, Diane was rather strict on observances of over a thousand years of tradition, stricter than her own Zen training in college from what Mona told him. There was an American tendency to try and adapt everything to our lack of customs. If Mona said she was going to sit on her zafu for a full stick of incense Diane expected the total of forty minutes. So Diane was furious on hearing that Ziegler’s daughter was having an affair with the “master.” Under no condition should a teacher have sexual relations with a student. Diane was vehement about this.

  Sunderson could see that he would be regarded by the group with strong suspicion. Mona had expressed interest in joining the group so she could hang around there more, and suggested that she volunteer his services as a janitor in the church basement, fortunately pretty well soundproofed, where they met. Everything was organized around volunteer work but Americans aren’t enthused about the janitorial so it would be easy for her to get her “uncle interested in Zen” in as the group’s janitor.