“I didn’t realize you were ranching in the area of the man who calls himself the Great Leader,” Sunderson teased, knowing full well that individual cartels control specific routes of import all along the nearly two-thousand-mile border.
“You are becoming impolite,” Xavier said petulantly. “We are speaking as educated gentlemen. You may stay in the area through Christmas Day so you can have Christmas with your mother and sister in Green Valley. After that, go home.”
“And if I don’t?” Sunderson’s heart swelled in anger.
“You will become menudo for the vultures and ravens,” Xavier laughed.
“How inhospitable.” Sunderson’s ice cubes had become a solid block.
“And don’t see my sister again. I can’t have you fucking her like a dog in broad daylight.”
“Xavier!” Melissa screamed, getting up and going as far as the kitchen door.
Xavier smiled and pointed a forefinger at Sunderson as if it were a gun. Sunderson got up slowly and walked to the front door, summoning his courage for a backward glance at Melissa but she was staring down at her feet. Now on the front porch there were three men that Sunderson supposed were there in case he presented a problem. He didn’t intend to.
PART III
Chapter 10
Sunderson was dumbfounded by his fragility. He walked. And walked and walked, the only thing he could think of to do to leave what he had become behind him. He wrote a single entry in his journal, cryptic but on the money. “I am a very short man in tall grass.”
After leaving Melissa’s he had stopped at the Wagon Wheel for seven double whiskeys, his favorite number. The whiskey had none of the desired effect. The barmaid Amanda wasn’t there and her replacement was clearly frightened of him as if he were one of the spate of vampires who had descended on the land compliments of television. A soused tourist lady had approached.
“Are you Robert Duvall?”
“No, I’m not,” he had responded gruffly.
“Prove it. I know you’re Robert Duvall.”
“Go fuck yourself.”
She had shrieked and he left the bar. This Robert Duvall misidentification happened a couple of times a year. This used to amuse Diane who thought he should learn how to tango because Robert Duvall tangoed.
Reaching the apartment he vomited in the backyard, the whiskey vomit stinging his nasal passages. This was clearly one of those rare times that alcohol was unable to do its job. His brain was fluttery rather than dulled. He spent a wretched night within a recurring dream of when at age twelve he had cut pulp during winter vacation to earn money for Christmas. His dad had dropped him off at daylight but it was ten below zero and he had skipped breakfast. He couldn’t get warm except for his hands which he pressed against the cowl of his Stihl chain saw, his proudest possession along with his green Schwinn bicycle. At midmorning he was still shaking and carried the saw out to the section road where after half an hour he had been picked up by a county snowplow driver who was a friend of his dad’s. The man said, “You got to eat breakfast if you’re going to work in the woods.” They stopped at a diner and Sunderson ate a hot roast beef sandwich with potatoes and gravy and then fell asleep in his chair. In the dream he had never gotten out of the woods but had grasped a beech tree to avoid shaking into pieces of frozen meat.
He got up at 4:00 a.m. and drank coffee for an hour until he could call Marion at five, which was seven Michigan time.
“You sound pretty rough.”
“That’s a fair thing to say.”
“Maybe it’s because you had the necessary habit of work for forty years and now you don’t.”
“That must be part of it. I’m going to take a powder for a week or so. If Berenice or Mona call tell them I’ll be fine.”
“Are you sure? I could come down for Thanksgiving and we could talk it through.”
“No. I’m just going to walk and knock off the sauce and then maybe come home.”
“Sounds wise. Here’s a thought re: our Great Leader. I read a piece by this historian named Carter who claims religion is biological.”
“Jesus Christ. Why not? Give my love to Mona.”
“That’s not hard. She and this brother and sister have started wearing identical clothes. It’s upsetting the school authorities.” Marion laughed.
Despite repeated rinsing the whiskey puke odor was still in his nose. He turned off his cell phone and put it in the refrigerator for no particular reason. He strapped on his shoulder holster and revolver thinking that it would be fun to shoot Daryl-Dwight in the head but then the problem wasn’t the Great Leader’s but the world’s and the only real solution was to shoot himself.
He drove to the Tucson airport and exchanged his compact for an SUV. He remembered to have breakfast because he was going to the woods of sorts. A burly brown waitress in Birkenstocks saw his copy of Alfred’s map spread on the table and gave suggestions for camping places. She was the typical eco-ninny but pleasant. Her green shorts and brown legs indicated that she was an experienced hiker.
“I don’t want to see anyone for a week including myself.”
“You’re in a bad way,” she laughed. “Try the east end of Aravaipa Creek up near Klondyke. It’s north of Bonita between the Pinaleños and the Galiuros. Take the fork up Turkey Creek so the Conservancy assholes don’t hassle you.”
“Thank you and God bless.” Sunderson had never said “God Bless” before but Roxie used to after he screwed her on the clothes dryer.
“Drop by and let me know how it works,” she said going off to wait on other customers. She smelled wonderful like a hay field and Sunderson felt a touch of life. He went into a huge sporting goods store and bought a cheap sleeping bag, a tarpaulin, a primus stove, a bunch of trail mix and freeze-dried food, coffee packets and a pot, and a canteen. On the way out he looked at a display of bowling balls, which reminded him of Xavier saying that religion, sex, and money aren’t separable. He was likely right. A human is as indivisible as a bowling ball, a biological knot like any other creature, a distressing notion but then so was much of life.
Three hours later he was camped on a flat up Turkey Creek a half mile from his car. The beauty of the mountain landscape made him feel insignificant, which was the feeling he was after. The heavy weight of his personality needed to disappear for a while. Properly and openly perceiving the landscape made his currently dismal self vanish. He had been confused since leaving home in Marquette to a degree that daily seemed impossible at his age when he should have had things figured out.
He walked and walked. Turkey and Aravaipa Creeks were obviously without brook trout but he realized that was missing the point. The truly important idea is where creeks were, often in the most ignored and neglected parts of the landscapes including marshes, swamps, and deep gulleys, landscapes from which the human race couldn’t extract money and therefore they were mostly left to simply be themselves. Marion had said that we have eaten the world and puked it up and except in isolated locations what we have left is mostly puke. This idea was an unpleasant reminder of the tinge of whiskey odor still in his nose so he knelt and snorted some creek water then rubbed some juniper on his upper lip.
The first late afternoon and evening were hard without his habitual alcohol. He simply never missed drinking every day except when he had the flu and then he felt virtuous about not drinking. He had walked so far his legs trembled so whiskey would have been nice and sitting near his campfire he was fearful over how long the nights were in late November, close to fourteen hours at least at this latitude, and worse far north in Marquette. He and Marion always celebrated on winter solstice, December 21, when it turned around and the light began to increase in increments of a minute or so per day.