The Big Seven (7 page)

There were nine more pages of another chapter but he hadn’t the heart to read it now. It was an introduction to Simon, the Ameses, and Simon’s tainted progeny. Sunderson was sick of the tainted and looking out at the beautiful landscape it was hard to imagine the violence that had taken place there. Marion had mentioned that the location of many Indian massacres had been quite beautiful and it had been difficult to imagine so many deaths. Sunderson had watched a movie called
Rabbit-Proof Fence
about mixed-blood Aboriginal children taken from their families and put in a wretched school. Three little girls spent six weeks trying to walk home across the desert. They made it but were seized again and sent back to the school. It nauseated Sunderson who was enraged far from the scene in snowy northern Michigan. It was like Mexican migrants dying of thirst trying to reach America while the leaders in Washington drank iced tea and entertained lobbyists to get rich.

He hoped sleep would heal his brain but it didn’t last long after he woke the next morning. Lily’s death was a canker sore in the brain that needed no probing to reactivate. For once he dreaded seeing Monica, reminding him as she did so strongly of Lily. He resolved not to make love to her anymore. He continued reading Lemuel’s description of the Ames brothers.

Bert, the father of Monica and Lily, was the oldest and since his early years a confirmed alcoholic, Lemuel wrote. He was easily the worst of the drinkers in a family of big drinkers. Even one of the women had fallen flat on the floor without her hands out and severely broken her nose and a couple of teeth. Bert was even worse but when he got messy or violent it tended to be directed outward. Monica had told Sunderson that her father had once tried to make love to her but he was so drunk she pushed him out of bed and he was still on the floor in the morning.

Sprague, the second son, was the quietest. He was lazy and seemed genial enough but had the meanest temper of the brothers. To the disgust of his father Simon he had gone to Missoula and gotten a bachelor’s degree that he never did anything with except substitute teach on rare occasions. He would sit in his bedroom and brood for days and then emerge from his bedroom acting as if he had been very busy. He had been married briefly but after six months around the Ameses his wife had fled back to Missoula, taken a graduate degree, and was now teaching over in Houghton. Sprague would drive over and visit her which ended badly and he always returned bereft. He clearly hated his father and they had rarely spoken. Sprague had the shortest rap sheet, possibly because he tended to take out his temper on women and children rather than in a fair fight. He had been questioned several times about brandishing his gun in public. Most of the neighbors thought he was the most likely to turn the violence on someone outside the family because he would fly into a rage so easily. Sprague was of limited use on the farm except he liked fencing which no one else did except Tom. Sprague was Tom’s father and the mother, whom Sprague had never married, was mean-minded and shrewish as well and Tom was always being beaten as a boy. They had two other children, a son who was turning out as nasty as Tom and a mousy little girl everyone feared for. “The blood was bad as I said,” Lemuel concluded.

Levi was taciturn but tough as a scorpion. He was obsessed with science, the only one in the family to have any aptitude except old Simon. They shared a subscription to
Scientific American
and bored the family with their science wrangles. Levi was a bit of a genius on hard sciences and the high school science teacher was bitter that Levi didn’t go on to college but Levi was stupidly stubborn, saying that he didn’t want to go to college, he just wanted to think about science while doing farm work. If you said hello to Levi you might get a lecture on quarks or neutrons. Wordless Ike was his son. Levi was compassionate about cattle and tried to invent mittens for them for winter. But cattle have thick hooves and don’t want mittens. He settled for building them an enormous storm shed to get out of the winter weather. At first they wouldn’t go in his shed despite a blizzard so he baited them with hay.

Levi and John both loathed their father who they believed didn’t get their mother proper medical care during her stomach cancer when they were quite young. Simon was too cheap and believed she was going to die anyway, not necessarily true as stomach cancer victims have a high survival rate and can live for years with proper care. Levi learned this when he got a little older and challenged his father, but Simon didn’t believe it. This added nastiness to those science quarrels. Ever since his mother’s death Levi drank more and was prone to getting in fistfights at the tavern. He always won.

John was the biggest of the brothers, quite mouthy and a glutton. Simon called him a genetic outcropping and joked that maybe his wife had “gone to the woodpile” with a passing bozo. No one thought this was funny. From early times John handled the two milk cows and would drink up to a gallon while milking which helped account for his size. The only triumph of his life came at the county fair when he won the dead lift at age eighteen with five hundred pounds, slightly astonishing to beat all the other “biggies” in the county. John’s wife was the best of the wives, partly because he was kind and gentle to her. In good weather they would go to the beach for picnics with their two children. Sometimes they would go camping way over to the Porcupine Mountains or the beautiful Keweenaw Peninsula. In other words it was no mystery why John had the only happy marriage among the brothers. John’s three sons had grown up to be just as big and had all gotten out of Michigan by joining the military, but one had left two young children behind to be raised with their cousins after his girlfriend died. None of the brothers was able to figure out why but they envied John.

“It all comes down to me,” Lemuel continued, “the unsuccessful bank robber but I don’t feel like talking about myself this morning. I want to write books about other people. I’ve forgotten about old Simon,
the keys to the kingdom
. It was an admitted relief to everyone when he finally died.”

Old Simon would sit in his easy chair, crippled with arthritis, every morning and give orders to his assembled sons on what work needed to be done. Afterward he’d have a glass of vodka and some aspirin. He could barely walk even with two canes. He cursed nonstop. Levi was the only son with a good idea of Simon’s past. You could say that Simon didn’t have an ounce of generosity in his system and that included concealing his past. Once during a drunken argument about a piece in
Scientific American
about deep ocean thermal temperatures Simon became rabid at the idea of water recycling at a thousand degrees when he was sure the maximum temperature was 212 degrees. They finally made peace and Simon waxed sentimental which he never did. Levi was amazed to learn that Simon Sr., his grandfather, had done two years at Harvard before getting the boot. This was because Simon’s father was remotely tied to the Eastern Ameses who always went to Harvard and had gone there himself. The closest Simon Jr. had gotten to an education after leaving Kentucky was his enthusiastic exploration of alcohol, whores, and blues clubs in downtown Chicago after the harvest. Lemuel wrote about Levi resentfully, and Sunderson wondered if he envied his relationship with Simon.

Sunderson was irritated that all Lemuel said about himself was that he was an “unsuccessful bank robber,” a poor choice in a sparsely populated area where everyone tended to recognize everyone. But there is an urge in all of us to have a somewhat secret life, some much more than others.

In his long career as a state police detective Sunderson had heard of a number of crime families dotting the vast wooded expanse of the Upper Peninsula but none so dramatic as the Ameses. He was sure that if you could get any of them to sit for an interview, an unlikely prospect, none of them would admit to accepting a single law. They were their own culture, their own civilization. Other than going to the tavern other people didn’t exist in any real sense. Much like grizzly bears trying to imprint the future of their race the Ames men kept an eye out for any pleasant girl reaching the eighth grade. They would occasionally attend the girls’ basketball games to keep an eye out for new talent. As one of the few prosperous families in an impoverished area it was easy to attract young girls with a little money. Nothing was too debased for this family. Simple rape was merely a joke on the girl for whom there was no recourse with the few decrepit local law authorities, the sheriff in his seventies who was only concerned about lobbying the county commissioner for an ample retirement plan.

It had occurred to Sunderson that maybe his curiosity about the western branch of the Ames family came from wanting to know how they got that way. He remembered a sociology class he had taken as a sophomore where they had discussed, mostly wrangled about, nature and nurture. Everyone in the class seemed obsessed with blaming their shortcomings on someone else. If you added the idea of trauma to the stew it became richer but messier. Everyone wanted a trauma, real or invented, to explain the inexplicable. A mere parental spanking in the past became being beaten to within an inch of life. Sitting on Grandpa’s leg was invariably sexual abuse. One attractive girl tearfully admitted that a stepbrother had begun screwing her at age seven. No one wanted to believe this because it trumped everyone. They questioned her veracity until she was a grim puddle of sobs. The teacher finally made them stop. One young man boldly confessed to screwing his cousin at age seven and she
liked
it. Sunderson with no youthful sexual adventures felt left out. After the knowledge he looked at the girl in class with great sympathy. Once they had coffee together and she told him that she intended to never have a sexual life. She was now nineteen and pretty but it seemed not to matter to her. He took her statement as a warning though they remained warm friends. She ended up marrying a gay friend, a convenience to please both their families who he hoped did not want grandchildren.

Sunderson reflected on the horrors we commit against each other, sometimes just verbal but they can loom large. He recalled an ugly incident with Diane during their marriage. He had a couple of big doubles which he needed at the Ramada Inn bar where they poured large, and at dinner Diane had the blues because a friend at work had died in an automobile wreck out on Highway 28 near Seney, a bad stretch. Sunderson was babbling about his wicked workday wherein he had answered a domestic abuse call from a professor’s wife. He got to the trim and tasteful little home near the campus and her face was bloody mush. Diane had asked him to
please
not talk about it but he couldn’t seem to stop. He had gone over and arrested the husband with his bruised knuckles right in the classroom. The man’s dignity was affronted or so he said. He and his wife had a little “quarrel” at lunch hour. “Yeah, you beat the shit out of her,” Sunderson replied putting cuffs on the man to further humiliate him in front of his students. When he had taken her to the ER at the hospital it was determined that she had received two facial fractures, one on each cheekbone. Sunderson had the urge to shove the man out of the speeding squad car but settled for taking him to jail which outraged the snot. Meanwhile Diane had tried to stop him telling her for the last time, left the dinner table in tears, and went upstairs to her small room, her private hangout full of art books which she could look at for days on end when he drove her crazy with his insensitivity.

Chapter 7

Monica came in with a casserole of ham and scalloped potatoes and put it in the oven for his dinner. She leaned over just so which turned him on so they made hasty love but post-orgasm he became depressed, remembering his vow to leave her alone. Out the window he watched Monica walk back home. He would have driven her but she always refused.

Mona had FedExed a large packet including the lengthy rap sheet for the entire Ames family which she had compiled via her computer, several pages each from police departments in several jurisdictions. Many were Fish and Game violations. One year an undercover agent determined that the Ameses had shot seventeen deer. There was a big fine but no jail time because an otiose judge figured the men were needed on the farm. Many of the deer were shot by Simon out his upstairs window in the remains of the garden. They always planted a couple extra rows of carrots to bait deer who loved them. There was also an apple tree they fed off which the family wanted for cider in the fall.

Sunderson was disgusted with himself. He had bought the cabin for fishing and now suddenly the table was covered with Ames-related papers. His curiosity was intruding on his fishing. He went fishing but quickly stepped in a beaver hole and cold water flooded in over the tops of his waders. He became very cold, got out of the river, slipped out of the waders, and lay in the grass in the warm sunlight. Getting soaked was the nastiest peril of trout fishing. He dozed in the warm grass with pleasure thinking of Monica’s pretty fanny which partly redeemed the abysmal family. He wished she was back here for an outdoor tumble in the grass with the bright sun shining on her lovely butt. Sunderson reminded himself he had yet to fish downstream through the Ames property, but then he didn’t want to get shot at for a joke.

He concluded that with the Ameses he was dealing as Marion had insisted with a human junk pile. With the possible exception of Monica and the good influence of Lily the young people were surly and foul-mouthed like their parents. If their lawlessness was down to nurture rather than nature, he suspected the complete absence of any religious training or impulse. There was no real explanation for his sick fascination short of observing life on another planet.

He understood that things had further disintegrated when Simon had died at eighty-eight shortly after New Year’s this year. On his deathbed he spent his last week yelling out “Why do I have to die?” Without Simon’s daily instructions at dawn every morning everything began to slide except Tom looking after the cows, the primary source of income. When it came to splitting up the money everyone, of course, thought Tom was cheating but in fact he was honest to the dime. Tom couldn’t help being cruel. It was simply in his blood like a bird dog hunting birds. Despite the pleas of the wives none of the three houses was ever painted and looked worse every spring after another arduous U.P. winter. The wives would occasionally paint an interior room, usually the kitchen where much of the life of the household took place. The pantries were stacked with cartons holding gallons of vodka which was mostly drunk at the kitchen table though each man kept a spare in his bedroom for middle-of-the-night thirst. The one bill Simon had never objected to was the large cost of the vodka supply because he needed several large glasses a day himself. Sunderson had never heard of a family more consumed with overdrinking. Tom, the murderer, was the lightest drinker but he used his light drinking to control the others. Much of this inside information about the workings of the family came from what Lemuel told his jailers. He seemed to feel little loyalty to his brothers and father.

The men were lazier but generally more relaxed after the death of their father. He had a high-pitched cracked voice that kept everyone on edge. He minutely went over the bills the family received and the cost of paint for the kitchen could bring on an outraged tirade so out of proportion that people hid. With Simon you had to believe in the old-fashioned word wicked.

Sunderson fished well for a couple of hours carefully avoiding the beaver pathways that would have got him wet again. He was ironically disturbed because he was thinking too much and trout fishing was supposed to be a total relief from thinking. He was wishing he was still married to Diane and had the pleasant, easygoing life they had carved out for themselves. Without her his life had become abrupt fits and starts. A simple trip to the grocery store could become a nightmare. He tried mightily to avoid the liquor store but often failed.

About halfway through fishing Sunderson wondered what the endgame was to this Ames business. Was he fascinated because their disarray was reflected in his own? With Diane it had been easy to control his behavior because their marriage depended on a certain solid etiquette as do most successful marriages. It was usually not the big things that destroyed marriages but the day-to-day treating each other poorly. He and Diane had mastered civility but finally his job and drinking had wrecked them. He was no fun anymore and didn’t read as much as previously and she missed their extended book talks. In the summer they used to camp a lot in lovely places which she thrived on but he became too tired from his job and alcohol, a huge consumer of energy.

Despite the pretty good fishing and pleasant ham and scalloped potatoes Sunderson’s evening was full of dark thoughts, premonitions in fact, which he had always disliked as they defied rationality. Life wasn’t organized so that the random future could be predicted. All of his life when he had had dark thoughts about the future he had ignored them. Along with the Ames rap sheet with a stupendous seventy-three violations Mona had sent a newspaper editorial that claimed the county would save money and time by incarcerating the entire family, including the children, two of whom had tried to set fire to the local school. The alert local volunteer fire department had minimized the damage but two Ames children were standing there smelling of gasoline watching the blaze with pleasure. It was hard for the county to press arson charges against the children when everyone was frightened of the parents. The Ameses had a habit of gratuitously beating up anyone who crossed them, in public and without warning. Few pressed assault charges for fear of future beatings.

Stormy weather arrived including late spring snow so Sunderson went home for a few days. He was delighted on arrival to be invited to dinner with Mona and Diane. As a putative parent he hadn’t acted like one, and he hoped the invitation meant Diane might be thawing out. Mona immediately told him she had heard that a French court had given her rock musician a sentence of seven years. He appealed but they denied him bail thinking he might escape to Brazil in a reverse Polanski move.

Diane had made his favorite pot roast, a beef chuck cooked slowly with potatoes, onions and red wine to which she had added rutabaga out of habit, a U.P. peasant food sturdy enough to grow in the wretched climate. Sunderson would tease her about her lack of peasant roots and she resented this so in went the rutabaga whenever possible. In fact, Diane disliked rutabaga but he and Mona loved it.

Marion had said on the phone that Diane seemed to have a lot of suitors. This was highly irritating to Sunderson who knew it was related to the rumor that Diane had private money, exciting to any bachelor who wanted to be supported. At dinner Sunderson told Mona that she could slow down on her Ames research and she repeated an ancient rumor obviously nerve-racking to Sunderson that early on in Kentucky Simon Sr. had fathered a child with his oldest daughter. He was prosecuted for this but the daughter went mad and couldn’t testify. Simon celebrated, then a local took a shot at him which winged his shoulder. Simon was all outraged innocence though most people stopped talking to him. He simply could not take his crime seriously though the daughter never recovered.

Sunderson continued to have premonitions through the largely happy dinner. Mona was up from University of Michigan where she was studying art history and musicology. Sunderson stupidly asked her what kind of job that would get her. She pertly replied that she planned on living in France on his retirement money going to museums and classical music concerts. She wanted to hear a famous organ down in Aix-en-Provence. Sunderson felt chastened by her answer. They talked late and when he got back to his house he noted that a raw chicken he had forgotten to put in the freezer was stinking and bluish. He threw it in the backyard hoping a stray dog would eat it. If he had put it in the garbage the whole kitchen would have stunk in the morning. He put an open box of baking soda in the fridge which Diane said consumed odors. The phone rang and he was tempted not to answer it but then it might be Marion. It was Monica who said that Tom had died that morning in the hospital from poisoning. The police said no one had visited him. The authorities refused to announce the murder for a while until the local police could get the state police up to speed. Sunderson remembered that Tom’s room was on the ground floor and that next to the large open window there was a blooming lilac bush, always a treat after winter. Anyone could have entered that way. Sunderson was embarrassed that he smiled about the murder but then he had valued Lily highly. He had glanced at Tom’s X-rays when he had visited and noted the femurs blasted to shreds by the AK-47 and thought it would be difficult to learn to walk again but now the asshole was dead, and he was sure meek Lemuel wasn’t the only person who’d wanted him gone. Any agile person could have crept in concealed by the lilacs and shoved some cyanide in his mouth.

When he drove to the cabin the next afternoon after spending Saturday morning with Marion he took along a cooler of fresh meat for his stay, including a big roasting chicken. He was still pleased that Tom was dead and something, presumably a dog, had run off with the stinking chicken in the backyard, two events of equal value in his mind. Rotten Tom, rotten chicken. His name would be on the register at the hospital and a cop visit was to be expected.

Marion was in fine fettle after fishing with the mosquitoes early in the morning. He cooked half a dozen brook trout for lunch with homemade bread and butter. His wife wouldn’t eat brook trout being Apache who he knew didn’t eat fish at all, but in their area they weren’t in large supply. The Great Lakes tribes were lucky. If deer were scarce you could eat five pounds of fish for dinner.

Marion did not share his curiosity about the Ameses. He said that in his reading every state seemed to have a couple of such families. Marion also explained that he grew up on a reservation full of malcontents so it was a family that behaved well that had his curiosity. Sunderson couldn’t argue with this it was so novel. Marion said that such people always seem to end with a virtual explosion and thought Tom’s death might be the first of many.