The Great Leader

“Jesus Christ,” Sunderson yelled, moving to a back window watching the figures become distant. He ran downstairs and luckily one of the ATVs he had cleaned was still parked near the corral. He took a few frantic minutes to figure out how to operate the machine but then he was off and moving. He could see that Dwight was still well ahead but Adam was gaining, while he was a full mile behind. The only reason that he didn’t want Adam to cut Dwight’s throat is he’d go to prison and leave Morning Star fatherless.

Now Dwight slowed moving up the initial slope of Crow Butte, slowing even more as the slope grew steeper. Sunderson could see him look back at the quickly gaining Adam then gun the powerful ATV, shooting up the steep slope until it became almost vertical whereupon the machine flipped backward in a big arc with Dwight clutching the handlebars until it hit earth landing on Dwight and both man and machine rolled down the hill so that Adam had to dodge on his horse. Adam dismounted taking out his knife.

Sunderson was yelling “no” over the roar of his machine as he came up the beginning of the hill. He feared flipping and jumped off still yelling “no.” Adam turned to him as he crawled and scrambled up the slope to Dwight’s side. Dwight was on his back with the left side of his chest clearly stoven in and a leg twisted under him. His head was also cocked at an impossible angle and was the only thing about him that moved. He yawped a primitive sound like a heron then gurgled up puke and blood.

Sunderson and Adam only looked at each other shaking their heads then turned away from the now bleating body.

Epilogue

Sunderson had only taken a few careful steps down the steep hill when he heard a howl that froze his soul. He turned in panic and saw that Adam had lifted Dwight high with his big rough hands around his neck and was shaking him like a terrier does a rat, not a fond memory for Sunderson, or Dwight for that matter.

Of course King David lived. No one has ever been able to kill the Devil. He is everywhere with us. The State of Nebraska and Sioux County were puzzled about a possible prosecution for attempted sodomy and rape. Should millions of dollars be spent incarcerating an acute quadriplegic with no operable parts except a head that talked in a language no one could understand? Morning Star had given frank testimony. Indian girls are generally tough what with living in two worlds. Sunderson skillfully minimized his own part in nailing Dwight. He presented himself as merely a retired Michigan state police detective looking for a missing person. He certainly didn’t mention the rag doll shaking incident. It wasn’t that the crime was swept under the rug, only that law enforcement and justice are as messy as life herself and why spend millions trying to punish an eggplant?

The Devil was medevaced to the big regional hospital in Rapid City where his condition was stabilized, the lowest common denominator, for a month or so whereupon he was flown to Santa Monica, California, where Queenie and Carla decided to live. Dwight was kept in a small guesthouse that was converted into a colorful hospital room. Young women can’t be expected to spend their lives on dead meat so there were around-the-clock attendants, three of them in eight-hour shifts, who played alternatively the kind of music Dwight loathed, heavy metal, rap, and country.

Sunderson drove home to Michigan by a circuitous route at a leisurely pace attempting to allow himself to decompress. He tried to avoid thinking about the big issues like love, death, freedom, or religion, much less money. He drove north to experience the emptiness of North Dakota knowing that an underpopulated landscape can draw off the poison. In a good if eccentric restaurant in Fargo he ate a big plate of barbecued beef ribs betting in his mind that the cult would dissolve as they usually do with the loss of the charismatic leader who could put a number on a member’s state of development. Some cult leaders have predicted Armageddon and are at a loss when the world fails to end and just keeps plugging along through the indifferent cosmos. There had always been a trace of a dog barking in Dwight’s voice and now he would bark no more.

He reached home in time for the opening of trout season on April 23, but it was largely a joke because half a foot of fresh snow fell. He fished anyway at a beaver pond near Marion’s cabin sensing the weight of the snow gathering on his hat. He caught two modest brook trout and fried them with bacon fat for lunch with bread and salt. He spent most of May at Marion’s cabin not quite ready for a steady diet of people.

By June and the beginning of the obnoxious bug season that would last at least a month he was back in his home study. There was simply no dealing with the mosquitoes, blackflies, and deerflies unless it was very windy at which point he would launch himself back into the woods.