understand his brother is dead. They were nearly inseparable.”
In the twilight Sunderson saw in the distance a cop car driving across the field followed by the coroner’s car. Not a good job on a summer evening. There would have to be two cops to haul the body up the riverbank as the coroner would have a struggle just to lift his fat off a sofa. Monica called at midnight with the news that a dead coyote had been found nearby with the remains of the boy’s lunch, a clue that it was poison again. Sunderson immediately thought it was sad that a coyote had to die in this creepshow. He couldn’t recall having exchanged a word with the boy but had noted that he was tremendously surly like the rest of the Ames males. He also evidently started drinking vodka as a child under his father’s care.
Sunderson woke abruptly before dawn thinking about writers. He had learned to read at age four. His curiosity was about the adult world not children’s stories. Luckily when he was in sixth grade a school friend would steal his older brother’s Playboy and Esquire both of which transfixed him. During his long marriage to Diane he had been to dozens of arts and letters events at the local college, Northern Michigan University. They were always early in the evening and it was a struggle to keep awake after a long day of work but Diane loved these visits from novelists and poets so Sunderson pretended to, too. When he learned the full résumés of the visitors he thought it odd that they had full tenured positions at universities on the basis of a slender book of poems or a critically admired first novel. The poets read in strangely affected voices poems about their largely bourgeois daily lives. The novelists were worse, if anything. They would read a chapter from an upcoming work, never about crime or anything interesting, often about a boy who was too sensitive for words always with parents who misunderstood him. It was a little like having your mom read to you as a child. The peculiar thing about visiting novelists was their absolute self-obsession. There was one world and it was limited to their curious point of view. It was a real yawner and Sunderson wondered why they hadn’t spent more of their lives out in the world doing something interesting like running guns to Mexico or Mali. There was frequently a small party afterward to which he and Diane were always invited, and the novelists always flirted with her thinking there was a possible score and always looked hangdog when they left. The best he could say about the novelists was that they were better company than he expected, professionally curious about everything.
Lemuel was another matter. Was he doing the killing to add verve to his crime novel about the family? It was certainly logical if a little far-fetched. Sunderson searched his mind for any hidden clues. Monica had told him that Lemuel had had an affair, discreet, with her mother Silvia. The wife of a severe alcoholic is evidently fair game and when Silvia was attentive to herself she was quite attractive.
At first light Sunderson went out to pee in the yard but it was chilly, not quite forty, so there was no hurry to fish. He spent a half hour making himself a pan of fried potatoes. His eye caught movement far out in the pasture which told him that Lemuel was headed his way. He had been thinking that as a boy the nude photos in Playboy had been quite a shock. They were too monstrous to be desirable. The huge breasts troubled him reminding him of his mother and sister Berenice through whom he learned to dislike huge breasts. He liked Monica’s modest breasts which were nearly identical to Diane’s. He was reminded again of the Seven Deadly Sins. And when he saw a woman’s hairy pubic patch in those same magazines he got quite a jolt. He was slowly developing his own pubic hair but it hadn’t occurred to him that women would have it. It seemed vulgar.
His mind was muddy that morning and irked at Lemuel for
In the twilight Sunderson saw in the distance a cop car driving across the field followed by the coroner’s car. Not a good job on a summer evening. There would have to be two cops to haul the body up the riverbank as the coroner would have a struggle just to lift his fat off a sofa. Monica called at midnight with the news that a dead coyote had been found nearby with the remains of the boy’s lunch, a clue that it was poison again. Sunderson immediately thought it was sad that a coyote had to die in this creepshow. He couldn’t recall having exchanged a word with the boy but had noted that he was tremendously surly like the rest of the Ames males. He also evidently started drinking vodka as a child under his father’s care.
Sunderson woke abruptly before dawn thinking about writers. He had learned to read at age four. His curiosity was about the adult world not children’s stories. Luckily when he was in sixth grade a school friend would steal his older brother’s Playboy and Esquire both of which transfixed him. During his long marriage to Diane he had been to dozens of arts and letters events at the local college, Northern Michigan University. They were always early in the evening and it was a struggle to keep awake after a long day of work but Diane loved these visits from novelists and poets so Sunderson pretended to, too. When he learned the full résumés of the visitors he thought it odd that they had full tenured positions at universities on the basis of a slender book of poems or a critically admired first novel. The poets read in strangely affected voices poems about their largely bourgeois daily lives. The novelists were worse, if anything. They would read a chapter from an upcoming work, never about crime or anything interesting, often about a boy who was too sensitive for words always with parents who misunderstood him. It was a little like having your mom read to you as a child. The peculiar thing about visiting novelists was their absolute self-obsession. There was one world and it was limited to their curious point of view. It was a real yawner and Sunderson wondered why they hadn’t spent more of their lives out in the world doing something interesting like running guns to Mexico or Mali. There was frequently a small party afterward to which he and Diane were always invited, and the novelists always flirted with her thinking there was a possible score and always looked hangdog when they left. The best he could say about the novelists was that they were better company than he expected, professionally curious about everything.
Lemuel was another matter. Was he doing the killing to add verve to his crime novel about the family? It was certainly logical if a little far-fetched. Sunderson searched his mind for any hidden clues. Monica had told him that Lemuel had had an affair, discreet, with her mother Silvia. The wife of a severe alcoholic is evidently fair game and when Silvia was attentive to herself she was quite attractive.
At first light Sunderson went out to pee in the yard but it was chilly, not quite forty, so there was no hurry to fish. He spent a half hour making himself a pan of fried potatoes. His eye caught movement far out in the pasture which told him that Lemuel was headed his way. He had been thinking that as a boy the nude photos in Playboy had been quite a shock. They were too monstrous to be desirable. The huge breasts troubled him reminding him of his mother and sister Berenice through whom he learned to dislike huge breasts. He liked Monica’s modest breasts which were nearly identical to Diane’s. He was reminded again of the Seven Deadly Sins. And when he saw a woman’s hairy pubic patch in those same magazines he got quite a jolt. He was slowly developing his own pubic hair but it hadn’t occurred to him that women would have it. It seemed vulgar.
His mind was muddy that morning and irked at Lemuel for
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