by Jon Jackson
Mulheisen led Wunney to a room like the den below, except that this was all books and CDs, a stereo system, and no television. “Would you like a beer?” Mulheisen said.
“Ah . . .,” Wunney hesitated, then replied, “. . . got anything, you know . . . stronger?” He wiggled his big, thick fingers in a kind of gesture that was meant to suggest hoisting a shot glass.
“Sure,” Mulheisen said. He opened a nearby cabinet and extracted a bottle of Irish whiskey—the good stuff, to privately atone for his snobbishness about Wunney’s coat. He poured two inches of the whiskey into two glasses, handed one glass to Wunney, and lifted his own in a kind of toast. They sipped, sighed, and Mulheisen waited.
“Your mother’s been hurt,” Wunney said, weighing the empty glass in his hand.
“How bad?”
“Pretty bad. She’s at Henry Ford. She’s stable now, but you better go. I got the car, if you don’t want to drive, but you might want your car there.”
“Pretty bad . . . she’s expected to live?” Mulheisen said. He felt unnaturally calm. When Wunney shrugged, he added, “What’s the nature of her injuries? Bleeding? What?”
“Might be internal bleeding,” Wunney said. “But no visible injuries except some scratches. She was in a vehicle, a bus, and a bomb went off nearby. Up at Wards Cove, the municipal building. They think it’s Arabs. Terrorists. Five people killed, including the driver of the bus and apparently some people in the building. Your mother was the only one in the bus besides the driver. The other passengers had gone into a public meeting in the building. Your mother went back to the bus to get something. They think the bomb was in a car or a pickup that drove up just minutes before and pulled in front of the building, in front of the bus.”
That was it. Things changed like that. One day you’re sitting in your study, listening to old jazz records and perusing a manuscript sent to you by an amateur historian in Ohio, concerning a contemporary report on Pontiac’s Rebellion. Then a man like Wunney comes to your door. Within a few days, Mulheisen wasn’t a policeman any longer. He was a nurse, a son, a caretaker.
Cora Mulheisen lived. Spring and summer passed. Mulheisen no longer lived upstairs from a lively—possibly too lively—woman named Becky. He had moved back from that house to his childhood home in St. Clair Flats to look after his mother. She had not spoken a word in the interim. She was passive, sat when guided to a seat and gently pressed on the shoulder, capable at last of walking, shuffling rather absently along if held by the arm and directed.
This is what Mulheisen did now. He had assistance. A nurse came every day to help wash, dress, and feed Mrs. Mulheisen breakfast and lunch, but the nurse left at five. Mulheisen would feed his mother supper, then put her to bed. She would lie in the bed staring at the ceiling, but soon enough her eyelids would close and then it appeared that she slept. Mulheisen would sit with her for a while and then he would move to his old room nearby, where he could hear any noise that might issue from her room. None ever did. He couldn’t even hear her breathing, and at first he had been like a new father, going into the baby’s room at night and putting his head right down to those lips to detect a sign of breathing, or placing his hand on his mother’s chest to feel the slight rise and fall.
Lately, acutely attuned to his mother’s condition, Mulheisen thought he detected some rising viability, perhaps a minute increase in awareness. He might be imagining it, but he had taken to sitting her in a chair in his room in the evening. He would play music, mostly CDs of Bach’s piano music or Haydn’s string quartets. Nothing loud. And he would read to her. He read the paper, at first, but then bits of books—stories, essays, even history . . . inevitably, passages from Peckham’s Pontiac and the Indian Uprising.
Through all of this Cora Mulheisen would sit with her hands in her lap, dressed in pajamas and a robe, socks and slippers, her eyes half-closed and anyway unfocused, gazing before her.
She was an old woman, looking her age, at last. She weighed only eighty or ninety pounds. According to the doctors, she was surprisingly fit. She had recovered readily from the trauma of the bombing. At first, she didn’t seem to have her physical senses in order: she could see and hear, but she couldn’t or wouldn’t speak. She reacted to physical stimuli, like the familiar tonk on the knee with a mallet. MRIs, CAT scans, all the available tests had shown no damage to the brain or the rest of her system. But she wasn’t functioning properly. Within a couple of weeks, however, her brain seemed to have sorted out what may have been some crossed wires and it was evident that she could see, smell, hear, and at least make noises in her sleep. Still, her aphasia persisted—she was unable to speak, or, to be precise, she showed no interest in speaking, which is another matter.
Because of her age, there was no intense program of rehabilitation. But the doctors strongly encouraged Mulheisen to see that she got regular and frequent exercise, just gentle walking about the house for a few minutes. Later, he began to take her on slow, easy walks around the yard, if the weather was fine. By now, they could walk as far as the old barn, sometimes a little ways along the path that led to the channel where the great ships came up from Lake St. Clair to enter the St. Clair River for their run to Lake Huron. As yet, they didn’t go quite to the riverside. Mulheisen was curious to see if his mother, an enthusiastic bird-watcher, would react to the flying sparrows, gulls, and other birds, or hearken to their cries. She didn’t seem to.
Immediately following the bombing, Mulheisen had taken a leave of absence from the department. He’d spent most of his time in the hospital room. When it became apparent that she would be discharged, he’d moved back to his old home and announced to the department that he was taking early retirement. Other than his friends, of whom he had many, including some in high places, the police department didn’t seem to care if he left or not. His retirement was facilitated. He surrendered his badge, his gun, and his files.
The most amazing thing, as far as his associates were concerned, was his absolute lack of interest in the bombing incident that had so damaged his mother.
His erstwhile landlady, Becky, was of course properly concerned about his mother’s disaster. Yet when the old lady was out of danger, and Mulheisen stayed on at home and announced he was leaving, Becky had gone a little sour. It wasn’t something that Mulheisen could concern himself with, but he couldn’t help noticing a veiled attitude of disapproval from Becky, almost jealousy, as if he was leaving her for another woman. But what could one do? It wasn’t as if the relationship between them had progressed so very much during the few months Mulheisen had spent in her house. They’d been intimate a few times, always at Becky’s choosing. Mulheisen had felt, in fact, a little baffled and frustrated by it all. He wasn’t sure how he was supposed to act. He liked Becky very much and the sex was great, but beyond that he had no desire for marriage or even an extended partnership.
As a matter of fact, Mulheisen could not suppress a vaguely shameful sense of relief to be home, almost as if he were escaping from Becky and the slightly uneasy relationship. And within a few days after the move the “Becky episode” was so firmly behind him that it was almost as if it was ancient history.
He fell into the routine of being a caretaker with a certain pleasure; a calm and contemplative lassitude overtook him. When the nurse was present he would go out for long walks down to the channel—the river, as he’d always known it as a boy—ostensibly to smoke a cigar.
His favorite walk took him across the grassy field in the warm summer sun and he would turn toward the lake and walk to the very end of the path, from which he could see down the lake, toward Detroit. From here, he could easily see the Canadian side, of course, but looking to the southwest it all faded away in the haze off the lake.
One small problem, he found, was that it wasn’t easy to have a cigar. His mother’s general health not being all that good, he had quit smoking in the house. She’d never complained about it before, but he’d also not done it much when home. At Becky’s, it was no problem. S
he loved the smell of cigars. She’d been in the business. And she’d fixed up his quarters with an excellent ventilating system that miraculously wafted away the odors. At home, when he found himself in residence, as it were, with his mother, it was a minor nuisance. A cigar takes too long to smoke and they cost too much to toss away after a few puffs. So the walks had been the main occasion for having a cigar.
Also, there was the matter of listening to music, once she’d gone to bed. He didn’t like to disturb her. But he also didn’t like having to keep the music so low. He’d hit upon the excellent idea of building himself a small study. They had plenty of land. He’d begun to think about where such a place would best be sited, and how big it should be. At present, of course, he needed to be in the house to attend to his mother. Later, if her condition continued to improve, he supposed the study would be an ideal place to repair for an evening. He could hook up an intercom system, perhaps, some way of monitoring what was going on in the house, some instant communication. Oh, there were lots of possibilities.
In the end, he decided that a small cottage might be the best idea. After all, the day would come, probably sooner than later, when he’d have the house to himself. What to do then with a small study? It would be a pointless expense. Of course, if it were small enough, inexpensive . . .
Out by the barn would be a good location. Finally, he decided to build a small house, which could be sold, or rented, at some future date. The project intrigued him. He began to sketch pictures of ideal houses and look at magazines that featured dream houses, studies. Shortly, he engaged a contractor and they began to plan. Soon enough, they were actually building. In the meantime, he could smoke his cigars on his walks.
One day he was standing on the river path as usual, watching a couple of freighters passing each other just beyond the entrance to the channel, when a man approached. That was unusual. Rarely did anyone use this path, only locals, sometimes boys fishing or exploring. This man was somewhat older than Mulheisen, who was now about fifty. He wore city clothes, a nicely tailored jacket of some kind of silk and linen blend, a white shirt, a tie, slacks, and low-cut shoes. Mulheisen was in his customary baggy khakis, a light nylon jacket over a short-sleeved checkered shirt, and his feet dry in green rubber half boots. Mulheisen was taking this opportunity to smoke one of his favorite cigars, a locally made brand called La Donna Detroit.
“Smells pretty good,” the stranger said. “Cuban?”
“Oh, no,” Mulheisen said. “I think the tobacco is probably Dominican. Care for one?” He offered a leather cigar holder.
The man declined. “I like the smell, but I never got the habit, somehow. You don’t remember me, do you? We met . . . oh, maybe a year ago. Vern Tucker.” The man offered his hand and Mulheisen shook it, warily.
“I remember,” Mulheisen said. “You’re with the FBI, aren’t you? Or was it the DEA? Colonel Tucker?”
“That’s right,” the man said. “I think we share an air force past, if I’m not mistaken. You were in AACS, I think.”
Mulheisen nodded, his interest moderately piqued. “You were a pilot, I think you said. F-105s. Wild Weasels.”
“Very good,” Tucker said, pleasantly. He clasped his hands behind his back and stood looking at the lake. He was not a large man, certainly a head shorter than Mulheisen. He nodded toward the ships and asked, “What ships are those?”
Mulheisen said, “Oceangoing. Probably foreign, trading to and from Chicago, or Milwaukee, Duluth maybe. I couldn’t make out the logos or the names. I used to know all the lake boats. Cleveland Cliffs, Ford, but you don’t see them anymore. There’s an old guy comes out here once in a while, brings a chair and a notebook, binoculars. He used to keep track of all the names of the companies. That was a long time ago, come to think of it. I haven’t seen him in ages. Maybe he’s died, by now.”
“Why would he keep track of the ships?” Tucker asked.
“Who knows? He was interested. Maybe it’s like collecting stamps. He collected ships.”
Tucker shook his head, as if dismissing the silliness of that. “What’s that island, way down there?”
“You can see that?” Mulheisen asked. “You must still have pilot’s vision. That’s Peach Island. It’s at the head of the Detroit River. That’s what the locals call it, it’s on the maps, but it’s really Peche Island . . . the fish, not the fruit. There were never any peaches on that island, but they say that Pontiac, the Ottawa chief, used to hang out there in the summer. He had a fishing camp, probably. People still go out there and camp in the summer, I guess. I haven’t been out there in a long time, since I gave up my boat.”
They chatted about boats for a bit. Tucker wasn’t too familiar with them. He was from a dry country, he said, a river country, where the idea of a boat was a canoe or a rubber fishing raft. “But imagine,” he said, “Pontiac used to hang out there. A little bit of history.”
“See that island over there?” Mulheisen pointed to a nearby island, across the channel, not more than a few hundred yards distant. “That’s where the Chippewas ambushed Sir Robert Davers and Lieutenant Robertson and their party. They killed Davers and Robertson, and supposedly they ate Robertson.”
“Ate him! My god!” Tucker stared across the narrow channel. “Cannibals! I had no idea that they practiced cannibalism.”
“Well, who knows?” Mulheisen said. “His body was never found, although Davers’s rifle and Robertson’s powder horn were given to one of the French settlers in Detroit. This was in 1762, about two hundred and forty-some years ago.”
“Who was this Davers, anyway?” the colonel asked.
Mulheisen shrugged. “A tourist,” he said. “One of those odd Brits. He was just traveling around, apparently, learning the Indians’ language, sightseeing.”
Tucker gazed at Mulheisen, a good-sized man with thinning, sandy hair, almost homely but attractive in a way. When he smiled, which wasn’t often, he bared rather long teeth. This was a feature that had given rise to his street cognomen, “Sergeant Fang.”
“You seem to know quite a bit about this stuff,” Tucker said, “but I suppose it’s from living around here.”
Mulheisen shrugged. “I’m interested in the history,” he said. “Pontiac was a crucial figure in American history. Where are you from?”
“Me? I’m an American. Oh, you mean . . . I grew up in Montana, up near Great Falls.”
“Great Falls? I’ve been there. Butte, too. Well, you’re from Injun Country, as they used to say in the movies. I’m surprised you’re not more interested.”
“Who says I’m not interested?” Tucker sounded almost indignant. But, in fact, he wasn’t interested. He’d seen plenty of Indians in his youth, been to school with some. There was a Blackfeet reservation not far from his folks’ ranch. Several Blackfeet had worked on the ranch, from time to time. One of them in particular, Albert Sees Crow—or was it “Seize Crow"?—had been fairly important to him at one time. (It was funny, now that he thought about it, he’d never considered that Albert’s name could have been Seize Crow.) Indians didn’t seem exotic or especially fascinating to him, but he supposed that it might be different for someone like Mulheisen, growing up in industrial Michigan.
Mulheisen said, “Are you familiar with the period?” He gestured toward the channel, the lake, as if history were lying there. As a matter of fact, that was often the way it seemed to Mulheisen, like a not quite visible panorama or tableau.
“Not very,” Tucker said, hesitantly. He wasn’t prepared to hear a long presentation about an obscure episode. Mulheisen had the air of one of those enthusiasts, an amateur who had immersed himself in a subject and was not above bending one’s ear with his theories. “I’m sure it’s fascinating, but as it happens I came out to see you for a reason.”
“I assumed you did,” Mulheisen said. “Shall we?” He gestured toward the distant house and they turned to walk back.
“It’s about the bombers,” Tucker said. “The ones who almost killed your m
other.”
“I don’t think she was the target,” Mulheisen observed.
“Oh, no, of course not,” Tucker hastened to agree. “An innocent bystander, fundamentally. But I thought you might be interested. We have begun to develop a different line on them.”
“Really? I thought it was some Muslim group,” Mulheisen said. “The terrorist was killed in the explosion. Isn’t that right? Do you know who he was?”
“That’s the point,” Tucker said. “We thought we had an identification. This group that claimed responsibility—a Gulf group—even provided the name of the so-called martyr. But now it looks like that was just an attempt to make us believe one of their key operatives was dead. It’s a useful ploy, not uncommon. The man whose name they put forth is still in action, in Germany, we think.”
“Hah. That’s clever, sort of,” Mulheisen said. “So who did do it?”
“We’re not sure, but we suspect it wasn’t a Muslim or even a foreign group at all. We think it was homegrown.”
“Locals?” Mulheisen asked. “You mean, Detroit people? Arabs? Some other group?”
“Actually, more homegrown than that. A right-wing American group, radicals.”
“Hah. Like the Oklahoma City bombing?”
“Something like that,” Tucker said. “There was a Michigan connection in Oklahoma City, you’ll recall.”
“Oh, yes.” Mulheisen stopped. They were halfway back to the house. He looked over at his study, now already closed in, although the roof wasn’t shingled. He started to point it out, then decided the man wouldn’t be interested in his domestic plans. Instead, he shook his head with a rueful grimace, then looked up and around. “I’ll be damned.”
Tucker stood by, watching him.