“Oh for Christ’s sake Mom, lighten up and stop bullying him.” Roberta had had a hot temper since she was a baby and was the only one of the four children that their mother had never been able to push around. Sunderson was four years older than Roberta with her having arrived a scant year before Bobby in a birth control error. Those two had been a tight little unit and had been good at defending themselves against the rest of the family who were always considered by them to be possible enemies. Sunderson had thought of them as from another generation.
His mother launched into a fresh caterwaul about her lack of grandchildren.
“You have to learn a new song, Mom,” Roberta said, then suggested that she and Sunderson take a walk. They weren’t a half block down the street when they turned melancholy.
“How is it with you?” she asked.
“So-so at best.”
“You got the shit kicked out of you. Nobody told me why.”
“I’m not sure why. I’ll find out pretty soon.”
“You won’t back away, will you? You’re a bit long in the tooth for physical bravery.”
“That’s why God made guns,” he tried to joke but it was lame.
“You know I keep in touch with Diane. You also know her new husband is dying. Any chance of you two getting back together?”
“None whatsoever. What’s wrong with me then is still wrong.”
Roberta suddenly stopped and looked around in puzzlement at the uniform beige stucco homes and absurdly uniform lawns.
“I’d rather retire to the south side of Chicago,” she spit out.
“Me too,” he agreed.
“Think how Bobby would have hated this place. He was always using the word bourgeois. Think of it. The only man I could ever love was my brother.”
Sunderson’s feet became glued to the sidewalk. She walked ahead for a few steps then turned shaking her head with tears in her eyes. Looking at her he felt his own tears well up uncontrollably. He moved toward her and they embraced, his heart thumping with this inconsolable love.
He was too overwrought when he got back to Patagonia for either a drink or a nap. He swerved off a side road, forded Sonoita Creek, and walked out around the Conservancy property again. His mind was swollen by his sister and the evidently vast quantity of love that was beyond sexuality and its simpleminded merging of genitalia. He wondered if religion was partly the love for an imaginary parent and whether any steps to make contact with this parent were justifiable. People sought out an intermediary like Daryl-Dwight or any sort of priest, preacher, swami, or guru in order to shortcut the search. As questionable luck would have it about halfway through the loop path he ran into a rather eerie young woman he guessed to be in her early thirties studying a bird book. Her skin was too translucent for his taste as if there was a danger of seeing her skull underneath the skin. He could see the blood of life pulsing lightly in her temples. She pointed out a bird in a mesquite tree about twenty yards away. It was disconcertingly colorful as if it had been painted by numbers.
“Elegant trogan.”
“Yes it is,” he agreed.
“No, that’s its name. It’s a male and it’s a new life lister for me.”
“Congratulations.” He had an urge to escape but she put a hand on his arm.
“You look like you’re having a hard time,” she said, staring at the bird through her binoculars.
“You’re right on the money.” He was becoming frantic.
“Me, too. That’s why I look at birds instead of inside my head. Good luck.”
She walked off in the opposite direction and for once the idea that this woman had a nice butt was irrelevant. She obviously possessed information that he needed. His brain began to perk with exterior landscape rather than interior.
He was driving down the alley to his quarters when he saw Kowalski, the fake cop, driving hurriedly out of the driveway. Sunderson didn’t give a shit unless the man had left a bomb behind. Kowalski had put a note on top of the folder of Daryl-Dwight research that Mona had sent. The note read, “Why don’t you just go over there and shoot the cocksucker?”
Sunderson couldn’t nap and a drink still seemed inappropriate. He felt that his concerns were levitating him an inch above his bed. The primary result was homesickness. He thought of the bird woman he had met in terms of something that Marion had said about his own obsession with paying attention to the natural world that already was, rather than himself. Marion was totally without self-concern, thinking that as a human he was essentially a comic figure.
