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. Mona 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.
The master himself was to be called “Sky Blast,” his idea, and he came from San Francisco. He appeared one day in Ann Arbor, supposedly to visit an old girlfriend, and took up wearing his traditional black robes around campus. Sky Blast also loved zoos and it was at the Detroit Zoo where he came upon his idea of howler monkeys to which we are related though not nearly so closely as to chimpanzees. The master’s contention was that we were primates who began life howling. Mona was amused by this but found the howling unbearable compared with the traditional silence of meditation. Certain sopranos in the group were absolutely shattering. The howling was considered a privilege and on specific days only a few righteous students were allowed to howl and the others had to remain silent. There was one day of total silence per week and Mona wondered if they’d become suspicious if she attended only on those days. Security was taken to the utmost because early on there was an interloper who wrote a parodic exposé and played a recording of the howling when he was interviewed on a local radio station. Practice was early every morning after Margaret Ziegler served them a Tibetan breakfast. If you wanted to be holy no one could compete with Tibetans. Mona said the food was edible if you brought your own hot sauce. This was against the rules but members did it anyway.
During Mona’s first dokusan, a private meeting with Sky Blast, he had asked her to arrange her robes so he could see up under them. The same old, same old, she thought but did so out of a sense of humor. They were interrupted by his lover Margaret, who glared at Mona’s loose robes. Mona noticed later that Margaret was still peeved when she demanded that Mona peel extra potatoes for the communal dinner. Sky Blast said that he had been mourning for Tibetan refugees and needed to see bare thighs to save his spirits. He got an eyeful as Mona rarely wore undies. After that he managed to brush up against her suggestively several times. Ziegler’s son, Michael, was obviously the lout of the group. His sister had to keep an eye on him or he would drink schnapps.