“She’s twenty-five. She’s a woman. Maybe a little young. You ever attracted to younger women?” Sunderson felt irritable.
“Never mind. I’ve tried but they can’t talk. The words are the same but now they mean something different. Meanwhile I stopped at your commune. I saw a lot of blood on the rocks. Why didn’t you press charges?”
“The perps, the rock throwers, were kids, girls. Maybe around twelve years old plus or minus. Charges wouldn’t work.”
“Yeah. They’ve started a school for troubled girls. Real teachers, however Daryl had a charge for underage sex.”
“Yes, in Choteau, Montana. Settled out of court. How come a guy like Xavier can cross the border?”
“His parents are Mexican but Xavier was born in Tucson when his dad was in college so he’s an American citizen. He’s always clean here. He’s in the yellow pages as a stockbroker.”
“That’s funny in this economy,” Sunderson suggested.
“Nothing about him is funny. Ironical maybe. We got Melissa work papers so she wouldn’t get caught in the crossfire down south.”
“She’s safe here?” Sunderson was surprised.
“Pretty much so. It’s considered bad etiquette for cartels to kill anyone north of the border.”
“I’m thinking of going home. This place spooks me but then so did Detroit.”
“That’s a good idea.”
“Maybe you could do me a favor and run Daryl out of here so he’ll go back north where I feel more comfortable.”
“Well, we’ve thought about pushing him out of Arizona. I know a local puta who’s nineteen but looks fourteen. The charge wouldn’t stick but we could scare him enough so he might run.”
Roberto stood up looking very tired. Sunderson offered him a drink and poured big.
“Delicious,” he said, downing it in two gulps. “I’ve lost two wives to this job.”
“I lost one. Every day you come home with shit on your shoes.” Sunderson paused trying to recapture his thoughts. “You know up in Marquette Daryl was named Dwight and was known as the Great Leader. What I’ve been thinking about is that it couldn’t simply be a con for money. He has to believe somewhat in what he’s doing.”
“Maybe every other day.” He pushed his glass across the table and Sunderson split the rest of the pint. Roberto’s face was slack with puzzlement. “I only talked to him for a few minutes but he reminded me of a schoolteacher, you know, the hottest teacher at a local school. His followers were staring at him as if he glowed.”
Sunderson was exhausted when Roberto left at midnight but was pleased at the ordinary aspects of the conversation. They were just a couple of law and order stiffs though Roberto had hunted for larger game in a far more violent area.
“I hope you feel better than you look,” Roberto had said when he left.
“I’ll get there,” Sunderson responded without conviction.
He fell asleep in his clothes on the sofa and awoke at nearly 3:00 a.m. thinking in his haze that he heard birds. The sound was coming from the area of the concussion in the back of his head. The birds continued when he turned on the lamp then slowly subsided. He considered this a message from a decade before when he had fished in the evening on the west branch of the Fox and when it became dark started a small fire, ate a sandwich Diane had made for him, and curled up in a sleeping bag in the open air after a single sip from his flask. It was near the summer solstice and he awoke a little after 4 a.m. to the first faint light that far north. There was a dense profusion of birdsong on the liquid dawn air and he had the illusion that he could understand what the birds were talking about in their songs. The lyrics were of ordinary content about food, home, trees, water, watching out for ravens and hawks. It didn’t seem extraordinary and the ability to understand the birds lasted right up until he stirred the coals and made his coffee. A day later when he told Marion after failing to figure it out Marion told him that he was lucky to have this religious experience.
Now in Nogales a decade later his homesickness was lessened by the fact that it was deer season in Michigan and a full five months from trout season. He got into bed naked and when he turned out the lights the birds resumed in the concussion sector of his head. He hoped he wouldn’t wake up as a baby. He certainly didn’t want to reenact his life. Where could such an idea come from? Anything that would purge the copness out of his brain would be welcome. There was a man at Northern Michigan University that taught a course in Middle Eastern history that would be good to audit, and another prof who taught human geography wherein one might learn why people lived in this particular hellhole of the world. Marion had said that he would qualify as a substitute teacher and it might be pleasant to correct widespread misapprehensions about American history. Anything to escape the copness that had driven his wife away.
