1. On the map of Ann Arbor I note a park along the river where I can walk in the morning. Television weather says it will be unseasonably warm. 2. In e-mails with Carla, Mona has discovered that within Dwight’s followers there are seventeen couples with daughters of eleven, twelve, or thirteen in age. Of course historically cults are often involved in illegal sexual license. This was possibly true in the Waco affair and the recent activity of the Mormon apostasy group on the Arizona-Utah border. 3. Boiling it down what truly angers me is Dwight using fake Indian material to fuck young girls. Given my knowledge of the suffering of American Indians for five hundred years this is doubly monstrous. It’s been a decade since I could bear to read about this suffering which only talking to Marion puts into perspective. 4. Carla said that all the women in the cult dance naked around the bonfire while the men beat on drums after which Dwight selects one or two of the young ones for his “blessing.” This happens every evening. 5. How could the parents allow this except through the delusion of religion? Carla said that in Arizona Dwight threatened one mother with his pet rattlesnake. She was trying to hide her daughter who had been made “uncomfortable” by Dwight’s big dick. 6. This all sounds like a bad dream but it’s reality. I have to put a stop to this. The irony is that I wouldn’t have all of this information without the criminal Carla-Mona connection and Carla’s belief that I could get her sent to prison. 7. I just now leafed through Snyder’s The Practice of the Wild and read, “Walking is the exact balance of spirit and humility.” I am unsure of what he means except that in a walk of a couple of hours the first half hour is full of the usual mental junk but then you just zone out into the landscape and are simply a humanoid biped walking through the snowy hills and forests or along Lake Superior’s frozen beaches. You don’t bother trying to comprehend this immense body of water because you’re not meant to. 8. Mona still not back and it’s eleven. It helps to write it down. Why? It makes it concrete. D. H. Lawrence on the subject of Indians is very irritating but I have to remember that this stuff was published in 1923, nearly ninety years ago. He thought the demon in our continent was caused by the unappeased ghost of the “Red Indian,” the inner malaise that brings us to madness. What am I to make of this? 9. I have to do a little reading to figure out again what Christianity is. It certainly cooperated in the destruction of approximately five hundred tribes. 10. Back to Dwight: he is using Indianness to enact his pathological sexual desires. This is unforgivable and deserves death, but his is unlikely.
He shuffled from the small desk to an easy chair where Mona woke him up at midnight. He had gotten pretty cranked up over Keith Olbermann but not enough to keep him awake. He had spilled his drink on his crotch which made it look like he pissed his pants. His Uncle Bertie, a commercial fisherman, used to say that any day you don’t puke or shit your pants is a good day so Sunderson was ahead of the game.
“I was worried about you,” he muttered.
“I just walked around town and had a couple glasses of wine with some students. I love it here.”
Sunderson decided to let sleeping dogs lie rather than begin an interrogation. She was standing in front of him and his eyes focused on her visible, protuberant belly button between her sweater and jeans. There was an urge to lick this mystery. She pulled him out of the chair and led him to bed, helping him disrobe down to his boxer shorts.
“Get outta here,” he said, following her to the door and locking it.
On the way home a day and half later he was happy because Mona was happy, perhaps the happiest he had ever seen her. For the seven-hour drive home he had packed a cooler with the three hundred bucks worth of stuff he had bought at Zingerman’s Delicatessen, a place where Diane had gotten FedEx food for special occasions. A thaw had caused the spending binge. Fifty-five degrees in December! And after shopping he had ordered what was to be the best sandwich of his long life, a real pile of brisket on rye slathered with the hottest horseradish possible so that tears of pain and pleasure came freely. The moon was to be nearly full and when they reached Marquette he intended to take a couple-hour moonlit walk out to Presque Isle.
