The Great Leader

He was nearly to his vehicle when he turned to have a last look at the bathhouse. He believed in thoroughness rather than hunches or intuition and it occurred to him that if Dwight’s members survived on wild meat and foraging plus the usual staples of rice and flour there should be some indication of hunting like ammo or shell casings. Dwight was wise enough to limit the hunting to a half dozen Indian employees who had tribal rights in the area. They were doubtless aware of Dwight’s phoniness. Sunderson had talked briefly to a game warden who had done some snooping and had said the cult was circumspect in this matter.

In the bathhouse were thatches of dried wildflowers hanging from the walls that pretty much absolved the place of the odor of human sweat. He turned on a shower that kicked in a demand generator for the pump. There was no hot-water tank so he presumed that they had settled for cold showers. There was a potbellied stove to keep the pipes from freezing. Even with the reputed free-for-all sex it must have been a dismal place in the winter. He had heard that Dwight made three-hour speeches in the manner of Fidel Castro. Dwight had told him that monotheism was destroying the world and that his people worshipped dozens of gods like many ancient societies. On the verge of leaving the bathhouse he lifted the lid on one of the box benches noting that the piles of expensive towels were the name brand favored by his wife. He dug deep under each of the three benches and on the third came up with an M-16 rifle wrapped in oilcloth. On close inspection he noted this one was full automatic, making it a highly illegal weapon. It was easy to shoot a deer with this because you could fire off a banana clip of thirty cartridges in seconds. What to do? Nothing. He was no longer a cop but a curious citizen and gun laws are widely disregarded across America. His friend Marion who had been a marine told him that a good shot could stand at the end of a runway and conceivably bring down an airliner by firing a full clip of an AK-47 into the undercarriage beneath the pilots where the plane’s brain center was located. Sunderson had known many cops who owned illegal, full automatic weapons and it was hard to take the law seriously when owners were overwhelmingly nonfelons.

Sunderson finished his lunch and had his last cup of lukewarm coffee. He glassed a distant hill with his binoculars. There was a mob of northern ravens circling and the hill was reachable from an overgrown two-track near the gate. This was doubtless the location of the cult’s gut pile and boneyard for the game they shot. He decided not to visit primarily because of the queasiness engendered by his hangover. Along with the modest ill feelings, he did not want to see a pile of desiccated deer carcasses, probably a few beaver, raccoon, even porcupine thrown in. Marion had once made a porcupine stew that was quite good if a little fatty. He doubted that there would be any bear skeletons as the more traditional Chippewa (Anishinabe) were hesitant about killing bear for religious reasons. It had to be done just so.

The vagaries of a hangover included gratuitous guilt and he speculated at the speed the news of his misbehavior the night before would spread. As he hit the uncomfortable muddy potholes on the way out he could imagine that everyone at the party except Marion would be busy sending out the news of his coupling with Carla over the woodpile. Men in general were far worse gossips than women. There were a dozen or so Munising-Au Train area retirees out in Tucson and it was not unlikely that his iron mother would hear the story. She thought of herself as very religious but she loved bawdy gossip as long as it wasn’t connected with a member of her own family. He didn’t want to imagine his arrival in Tucson for Thanksgiving if she knew the story, which he suspected she would. The comic aspects of a sixty-five-year-old man being intimidated by his eighty-seven-year-old mother were not lost on him.

On the drive home he pondered his confusion about whether or not to learn how to operate a computer. Roxie had been badgering him on the issue because she would no longer be at his service. She figured she could teach him the essentials in a couple of weeks during the evenings but he was resisting on the basis of not wanting any more obligations. The phone was bad enough and he had noted the general slavery of e-mail in people he knew. His neighbor Mona, the goth hacker, had told him he could just do research and avoid e-mail. She needed pocket money and had offered to help him for ten bucks an hour. There had been a confidentiality issue but now that he was retired it was no longer relevant.