The Great Leader

He turned and looked at the huge Catholic church on the hill and received a modest jolt in his frontal lobe, not really a clue. The year before the divorce they had taken a vacation in northern Italy and his wife had been in a serene trance over religious art and architecture while he as an historian mostly saw the parasitical nature of the Catholic Church. This was what truly goaded him about Dwight who had managed to get seventy people to give up their lives and money. By living in primitive conditions in the “past before the past” as Dwight called it they would have a wonderful future. Was this any more cockamamie than the Mormons, or the Catholics for that matter? The idea that something so obviously stupid worked with people irked him. They beat on their drums, chanted in tongues, danced, and hunted and fished. As the members spiritually matured their pasts would reshape themselves. Dwight seemed to utterly believe in what he was doing and then one day he didn’t and would move on. The little information Roxie had gathered on the Great Leader’s activities seemed to center on the Mayan calendar, the nature of which Sunderson didn’t yet understand. He suspected that it was true Dwight had had sexual relations with the twelve-year-old daughter of a cult member but there was nowhere to go with this. Sunderson was concerned that when you looked into the history of religion those in power generally devised a way to get at the young stuff, which seemed also to be a biological premise in other mammals. This was scarcely a new idea as Marion had noted. Just as Sunderson’s hobby was history Marion, as a mixed blood, was obsessive about anthropology.

Chapter 2

It was Saturday morning and the miracle was upon him through the open window of his upstairs bedroom. There was a balmy though brisk wind from the south and it was sixty degrees, much warmer than it had been in two weeks. Marion had told him about the incoming weather when they drove to the party at a big log cabin on a lake near Au Train but Sunderson barely took notice so great was his anxiety and irritation over attending his own retirement party. He had a fantasy temptation about jumping on the afternoon plane to Chicago, staying at the Drake, and spending a leisurely Saturday at the Newberry Library. He certainly wasn’t a party animal and shouldn’t his feelings have been regarded? Of course not. Diane was paying for the cook who normally only handled occasions for Marquette’s upper crust and certainly no one at the party had ever tasted her cooking. His ex-wife had also sent two cases of fine wine and a half case of top-shelf liquor to Marion who as a recovering alcoholic could be trusted with the bounty, he was so steadfast. This was a lot for fifteen men to drink but then the Upper Peninsula was a region of heavy drinkers and most of the men who were involved in law enforcement had arranged to be picked up by designated drivers. The entertainment was arranged by a younger officer whom Sunderson had originally disliked but then sympathized with over his rejection by the FBI because of a college prank. The FBI had altogether too many stiffs who couldn’t think, in that pathetic euphemism, out of the box. A little old lady FBI agent had seen 9/11 coming and had she worn a necktie thousands of lives might have been saved not to speak of the grotesque governmental aftermath wherein the constitution was sadly bruised and the fraternity boys realized their ambitions about torturing brown people. There were thousands of bright career tracks for sadists who knew no more about the Middle East than a Lubbock insurance adjustor.