On the long walk back to the campsite he passed openly on the trail through the Conservancy property and was accosted by a young man and a woman who were hanging up clothes in the yard of the cabin. To avoid any problem he blithered out pidgin Italian he remembered from the trip he and Diane had taken to Italy. The young man was embarrassed and merely pointed the way east off the property. The young woman grinned as if catching on to his ploy. Her brown legs emerging from her blue shorts gave him a nut buzz. When you don’t see a female in five days a plain Jane can be striking. As he walked on down a two-track she nagged on him in unison with his need for a cigarette. He only had seven cigarettes left and wanted to stay for a full week, which meant two more days in his somewhat helpless addictive purgatory.
On the sixth day his feet were so sore he mostly sat at the campsite staring at the creek and pondering his next move. He checked the small calendar card in his wallet and noted it was two days until Thanksgiving when he would force himself to grace his mom’s dining table. His mind kept raising the image of Melissa’s bare butt wagging near the lake. He wanted to see her again but he also wanted not to be dead.
The day had become warmish and he had a disturbing nap with a brief dream wherein the natural world became too vivid to become tolerated. This mood continued on waking. The untitled birds around him had the eyes of snakes, their ancient relatives, and the surrounding foliage became livid. He smoked several of his remaining small cache of cigarettes and decided his mental distortions were due to hunger and loneliness. He cooked up an insipid freeze-dried concoction called Spanish rice but only managed to eat half before his gag reflex began to tickle. He saw a slight movement among the rocks about fifteen feet across the creek. It was a small rattlesnake, perhaps a foot and a half long. He aimed his revolver but couldn’t pull the trigger because he didn’t want to hear the noise. He would zip up his floor tent partway tonight. For the first time in nearly six days he felt an urge to read a book. When darkness fell he made a plan, a map of war, before a roaring fire. He had been offered at least temporarily the clarity of breaking a habit.
Chapter 11
Before dawn he sat waiting impatiently for enough light to reach his car. He was packed up and studying the single cigarette he had left, which he held in the palm of his hand. He felt pretty clearheaded about his intentions and was amused wondering what level of enlightenment the Great Leader might consider him. He thought that in some otherwise intelligent people there must be an improbable religious yearning that would make them give up their savings and livelihood to the Great Leader. Again, did he actually believe in what he was preaching? Maybe on alternate days. Sunderson recalled that when he was thirteen and his father had a minimal heart attack he had prayed in the Lutheran church with his mother. His prayers were diverted in their intensity by the sight of a girl named Daisy across the aisle. A friend had heard that she had given a blow job to a guy from Shingleton for two beers and a joint. Meanwhile his family cut back on their comparatively meager expenses so that Dad didn’t have to work twelve hours a day six days a week. There it was, Sunderson thought while dousing his campfire, sex and religion and money.
It took an hour to reach Willcox. He bought cigarettes and gas, and had a bowl of red chili and beef at the truck stop, then headed south to see the Great Leader, his revolver unbuckled in the shoulder holster.
To his surprise the gate was open and there was a pile of sleeping bags, packs, pads, and several garbage bags full of trash and belongings. He sorted through the pile that they probably planned to come back for as some of the sleeping bags were expensive models. He was tempted to swipe a smallish day pack that was full of papers and magazines but decided it would be wise to wait until his way out. He was pleased to note that a batch of magazines were issues of a soft-core porn rag called Barely Eighteen that he had seen in convenience stores and truck stops in the Upper Peninsula. He had watched hunters and fishermen buy this magazine along with the old standards Hustler and Penthouse on the way out to their camps.
He was alarmed to hear a vehicle coming down the canyon toward him and felt for his unbuckled revolver but it was a green-suited Forest Service ranger at the wheel, swerving to a halt.
“May I help you?” He was clearly pissed.
“Looking for a possible felon.” Sunderson flipped his expired badge from a half dozen feet away.
“Those jerks flew the coop for Tucson. They leased forty acres here from a rancher but didn’t comprehend their boundaries and built a permanent structure on federal land. They’re cleaning up the site to avoid charges.”
“We’re contemplating serious charges in Michigan,” Sunderson said, diffidently looking around and wishing the guy would go away. “How many are in there?”
“Just two. What charges?”
“I’m not at liberty to say.”
The man drove off with a conspiratorial wave. Sunderson headed down the road on foot hoping for undetected surveillance. He took his cheap binoculars along, pausing at the place he had been stoned and noting the dark markings of his blood on the rocks here and there. He felt a newfound energy from having had something real to eat. He peeked around a boulder and saw two men disassembling a small stone hut, their newish blue Ford pickup nearby blasting loud rock music. Through the binoculars he could see one was a sallow young man who wasn’t working very hard but then there was also Clayton, a mixed-blood Chippewa he had met at the longhouse in Ontonagon County. He had checked Clayton out: he had had a few minor scrapes with the law and was evidently on the payroll, not being a religious type. Clayton was a renowned brawler with a thick chest and big arms so Sunderson approached with his revolver drawn. The young man saw him first and took off running up a hill toward a thicket. Clayton grinned leaning on the pickax he was using to dislodge the stones of the hut walls.
“Hey, boss. Good to see someone from home. I didn’t throw stones at you.”
“What’s up?” Sunderson put the revolver back in his holster and looked toward the hill where the young man had run. “Who was that?”
“He’s the Leader’s main pussy scout. It’s a legally sensitive job.” Clayton laughed. “The Leader’s name is Daryl now. He’s into shape changing, you know, playing Indian.”
“I figured that. You get paid in cash?”
“Why?” Clayton was nervous.
“You don’t want the IRS after you. Give me Daryl’s address.”
“Of course.” Clayton was relieved that so little was being asked of him. There was more than a trace of despair in his face. “The money is the best of my life but I’m getting the fuck out of here. I’m going home. This area is too fucking weird and violent. When I was at a lumberyard in Douglas getting supplies this Apache told me he was going to cut off my big nose. And then these big Mexican guys come along and tell us to move on. This is a drug route, you know. I’ve seen groups of guys carrying bales of pot and whatever over that way.” He pointed in the direction the young man had run.
“I know.” Sunderson sniffed the air smelling something painfully familiar. He walked around the stone hut and in the back there was a Dutch oven iron pot on a small bed of coals. It was a venison stew.
“The deer meat down here ain’t as good as back home. Want some?”
It became absurdly like old home week with the two men sitting on boulders and eating bowls of venison stew, reminiscing about the U.P., mostly fishing and hunting and eating fried whitefish and lake trout.