Jim Harrison - The Ancient Minstrel

Right now Sunderson was in a race against time. His fishing gear was packed near the front door and Marion was due in less than a half hour to go steelhead fishing on the Saint Marys River over in Sault Sainte Marie. Meanwhile, he had quickly squeezed the lemons and was aching to hear the downstairs shower shut off which would mean he was closer to another view. The thing she’d needed his help with was a hundred-dollar contribution to her friend’s abortion fund. They were poor folks but her friends were raising the money so the mother could take her daughter down to Mount Pleasant in central Michigan for the procedure. Suddenly the shower went off and she was at the counter mixing her lemonade. He boldly reached out and palmed a buttock. His cell phone rang obnoxiously. He turned it off noting it was Mona in Ann Arbor whom he could call back. Barbara drank deeply and went into the living room, sitting down in a big red T-shirt she’d borrowed which came all the way down to mid-thigh. He knelt before her confidently pushing the shirt up to her waist. This was the world peace he was thinking about and he was right there when it was happening. He put his hands behind her knees and pushed them toward her chest. He put a big wet kiss on her vagina boring in with his tongue until she made a small squeak and said, “Oh my goodness” over and over. And then they heard the steps on the front porch and Marion called out for Sunderson. Marion later admitted that the sight of the girl’s bicycle in the yard slowed him down a bit. Sunderson jumped up and nearly lost his balance falling backward. She deftly turned on the clicker tuning in one of many Saturday college football games. She pulled down the shirt and tried vainly to tidy herself.

“Hello, Barbara!” Marion practically exploded. Then he turned to Sunderson. “Barbara helped out in my office as a sixth grader. Now here she is almost all grown up.”

Sunderson noted that Marion put an emphasis on “almost” then glared at him.

Barbara seemed nearly frozen in place. She smiled at Marion. “I took a shower after working in the garden. Now I’m getting dressed so I can go sailing with my friends.”

Marion was polite enough to go into the kitchen and Sunderson followed after noting a wet spot on the back of Barbara’s T-shirt. She rushed off while they stood in the kitchen drinking some of her lemonade.

“Let’s go. We’re burning up the day. I packed some pot roast sandwiches for a late lunch.” While they loaded Sunderson’s fishing gear Barbara said goodbye, throwing a lovely leg over the bicycle seat. Sunderson winced at his coitus interruptus.

In the car headed east toward the Soo Marion seemed a bit cool and critical. He had graduated from college in psychology and of course had been a teacher and principal for decades. Sunderson expected a lecture. They were barely out of Marquette on Route 28 when it began.

“Monica was one thing. Everyone found it scandalous but she was nineteen so you slid under the wire. Barbara is a totally different matter. She’s fifteen . You’re my oldest friend and I want you to exercise care so you don’t end up in jail. There’s no fishing in jail. She’s a good kid and has no business wearing nothing but your T-shirt on the sofa. I can only guess what you were up to.” Sunderson hurriedly told the story of his contribution to the abortion fund which made Barbara innocently affectionate to him.

“Oh bullshit,” Marion exploded. “All the years I’ve known you you’ve had an eye out for young stuff. If I find out there’s anything going on my next call is Barbara’s parents and you’re headed for the slammer. May I remind you they relate your syndrome to the unlived life? I know that in high school you were a wrestler and a bone-crunching linebacker. All the pretty girls like quarterbacks, running backs, and nice clean basketball players. You were left out by the pretty ones and even late in life you’re hot on their track. Stop it. Period. Pursue Diane for Christ’s sake. Or the neighbor lady. I don’t care. Just don’t let your dick lead you to jail or more likely prison.”

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.