Jim Harrison - The Great Leader

His temples tingled in embarrassment as he finished the first half of his sandwich. Once a Lutheran, forever a Lutheran, his family’s nominal faith, which mostly meant the women and children went to church and the men stayed home Sunday morning, went fishing or did yard work or shoveled the snow. Religion was merely there like cod liver oil, taxes, the beginning of school.

Now he heard a vehicle coming up the miserable road from the compound, a two-track that only sportsmen with 4WDs would gamble on what with getting stuck being a central facet of the U.P. experience. Sunderson was irritated because he had called and requested that an Ontonagon County deputy secure the crime scene with a piece of yellow tape across the road. He had made the call the day before but his real motive had been that he wanted to wander the full section of cult land, 640 acres, in solitude unbotched by grouse hunters or the bow hunters who had an early deer season or those who drove their junkers around on Saturdays working on a case of beer and pretending they were looking for a big buck for the oncoming gun season in November.

It turned out to be a realtor and client in a spiffy but now mud-spattered newish Tahoe. He flipped his expired badge in his billfold and they got out of the car, the realtor reddening, and the client, a man in his fifties, yawning in his expensive Orvis-type sporting wear.

Sunderson was fatigued with protocol and simply said, “What’s up? You violated a crime scene.”

The upshot was that the deputy had neglected to tape the entrance to the cult compound. The confrontation became civil out of necessity. The realtor said he had received a phone call asking him to show the property.

“Who was the owner?”

“A guy named Dwight Janus.”

“From where?”

“I don’t know,” the realtor said then began fiddling with his cell phone. “The area code is five-two-zero.”

“That’s the Tucson, Arizona, area code,” the client said gazing north down the two-track. “What a frightful road.”

“What would you do with the longhouse?” Sunderson asked.

“Sit in it with my English setter and forget the world. You have any idea of grouse and woodcock populations in the locale?”

“Should be good. The cult shot and ate everything except birds. The Great Leader proclaimed that killing birds was taboo. He called them avian messengers.”

“How delightful. It will be odd to buy a section of land for less than a pathetic house in Minneapolis.”

The realtor was beaming. The recent financial collapse had brought his best efforts to a standstill and he had a son and daughter in college.

They all shook hands. Sunderson gave the realtor his own numbers to pass along under the pathetic idea that Dwight might call him. He was pleased to see them drive away and imagined the effort the client would make putting up NO TRESPASSING signs, which would be ignored by locals. He stood there at high noon with the eerie feeling that only his curiosity was still ambitious. It would be a pleasure to never arrest anyone again or write a report beginning with, “The stolen ’73 Dodge was found abandoned two miles SW of Gwinn. The perp or perps left behind eleven empty beer cans and someone had shit on the backseat.” Crime did pay but usually very little. He began smiling with the thought of his lovely library and then the fact that Dwight’s most recent alias was Janus, a double-faced, fascinating prophetic figure from mythology. It was nearly as good as his claim that his mother was named Nokomis from Longfellow’s doggerel Song of Hiawatha. Behind his pomp the Great Leader had a sense of humor. Historically the mysteries of religion, sex, and money tended to accumulate pontifical phlegm rather than humor. And as a student of history Sunderson had been mystified since college with the particularities of the relationship between money, religion, and sex-in fact, obsessed.

When he reached the gate of the cult’s property he felt a curious lightness descend upon him. He was properly suspicious of moods but figured this one had a pretty solid base. Since childhood he couldn’t remember ever having been free of multiple obligations and here on an early Saturday afternoon in late October he had no more duties than a cedar waxwing, in their case, to fill their tummies and head south.

The trees were leafless and he intended to head up the creek to check for beaver ponds for possible future brook trout fishing but first he had to check out the longhouse. Three of the four doors were lockless and open but the fourth door in the back had its lock broken. What was the point? The fresh tracks in the moist earth told him that the realtor and his client had entered by the southward-facing front door. The broken lock was senseless and therefore worthy of investigation. The interior of the longhouse was cooler than the balmy outside air and the floor was covered with the discouraging remnants of domestic life: sneakers, baby shoes, unmatched socks, plastic dishes, cut-rate skillets, cotton gloves. In a food cache there was a case of canned peaches apparently deemed not worthy of hauling out and a few broken sacks of white flour, rice flour, and rice. Three mice looked up at him from deep in the bag of rice. The only thing he could determine that had real value in the long rectangular room were the six big potbellied stoves each with a large wood box beside it. Some local human scavengers were sure to carry off the stoves, which were easily worth a grand apiece. The last stove at the back was the nearest to Dwight’s quarters where the door with the broken lock was opened to the river thirty yards away down a slope. Dwight’s wood box turned out to have a false bottom and he cursed himself for not having searched the abandoned longhouse the week before. Someone had beat him to it, pushed the logs aside, opened the hinged boards, and rifled the contents. All that was left were environmental books and a stack of journal notebooks unused except for one that had a name and address inside the front cover: Philippe Desarmais, 13 rue Arenes. Sunderson recalled that Roxie had found a map of Arles on the computer and that particular street led to a coliseum still in use after two thousand years. With the help of a French teacher at the local Northern Michigan University Sunderson had written a letter of inquiry to the Arles municipal authorities and had received an answer in faultless English saying yes, the American Desarmais had created a modest stir in the area before being “urged” to move on. He had rented halls and gave well-attended speeches (free wine, cheese, and charcuterie) proposing the overthrow of the government of the United States, which, during the first term of Bush Jr., did not seem irrational. Dwight wanted the 512 tribes of Native Americans to be able to reclaim their ancestral land and the capital of the U.S. government to be reestablished in the more central location of Chicago. According to the Arles authorities Dwight had been there in April, out in the Camargue watching migratory birds returning from Africa. During an interview with an operative from French intelligence and representatives of local police Dwight, who seemed to be a bit drunk at the time, would not disavow the possible use of violence. With European financial help he planned on arming Indian tribes. The police, who had noted that Dwight spoke good schoolboy French, had him pack his bags and then put him on the train to Marseilles, which was being indulgent of international riffraff.

Back home in Ontonagon someone had also taken the bearskin and other fur decorations from the longhouse and Sunderson wondered idly about the still enduring human preoccupation with fur. Once he and Diane had made love on a bearskin in a friend’s cabin and the fur seemed to invigorate him.

Sunderson stood at the open back door leaning against the wall next to the doorjamb and noted a small latch on the wall. He popped the latch and there was a tiny closet containing a stack of bird books and, of all things, a dozen expensive, lacy nightgowns.