culturally. Sunderson and Marion had been friends for over twenty years but Marion refused to talk about his own nativist religion, which he claimed shouldnât be subject to a white manâs idle curiosity even if it was a close friend.
Near Marionâs retreat shack back in the woods a half mile from any other dwelling there was a fine, if small, brook trout creek that began a mile upstream in a large spring and beaver pond. He and Marion had shoved a twenty-foot tamarack pole in the spring and hadnât reached bottom. Marion said that this was what was sacred about the particulars of the natural world. Sunderson said that some ancient Greeks believed that the gods lived in springs and Marion said, âWhy not?â Marionâs intelligence was peculiar. One evening the month before they had been surfing through the satellite channels after watching the Detroit Lions lose their thirteenth in a row and happened onto a program called Celebrity Medical Nightmares . Further on there was a soft-core porn channel playing Super Ninja Bikini Babes, and Marion remarked that in our culture both men and women were working toward enormous breasts, men by bench-pressing and women by surgery. He wondered what this meant and Sunderson was at a loss.
He was beginning to feel irritable about having to go to his motherâs for dinner down in Green Valley about forty miles to the south. The phone rang and it was the desk to say Monaâs faxes had arrived. He left the room in a hurry then slowed down when he saw a woman examining the extensive flower beds. He put a hand to his chest because his heart abruptly fluttered. With her back turned he was sure the woman was Diane but then of course not. Her hair was a lighter brunette and she was slightly shorter than Dianeâs five foot nine. He passed close enough to catch her scent, an unknown quality. She turned and smiled and he said, âGorgeous flowers.â She nodded then knelt beside a bed to examine the flowers more closely. She was faultlessly neat like Diane who had even folded her undies like one would handkerchiefs. Diane had always arrived at breakfast impeccably dressed for her job, then toasted her English muffin applying a scant amount of cream cheese and Scottish marmalade she got by mail order. She was always fresh as a daisy while he struggled to make passable sausage gravy at the stove. She even peeled fruit precisely while he had difficulties with something as simple as starting a roll of toilet paper. He had to abandon their king-size bed because his snoring kept her awake and he had refused to wear the antisnoring mask contraption his doctor had recommended. His doctor, who had moved up from Kalamazoo, was shocked at the number of men in the Upper Peninsula who thought of themselves in fine physical and mental shape when by any outside standards they were walking wrecks. Sunderson smoked and drank heavily and his cholesterol always hovered around three hundred. He was very strong for his age but this had nothing to do with his diminishing life expectancy.
Sunderson sat under a pergola on the hotel lawn, the official smoking area, and read the faxes with growing anger. He had no idea how many cult members had taken out home equity loans before the current financial plummet and turned the money over to Dwight. Mona had also discovered that Dwight had taken a Rent-a-Jet from Choteau to Albuquerque and then to Tucson for the exorbitant total of twenty thousand dollars. Mona had also written that Dwight had purchased five hundred peyote buttons in New Mexico. She found this out by prying into Queenieâs checking account, which used a simpleminded code for peyote. Sunderson thought idly that he might turn over this information to the DEA but then they were too busy tracking shipments of heroin and cocaine from Mexico to be interested in this peripheral drug mostly used by the Native American church, a widespread religious organization among
Near Marionâs retreat shack back in the woods a half mile from any other dwelling there was a fine, if small, brook trout creek that began a mile upstream in a large spring and beaver pond. He and Marion had shoved a twenty-foot tamarack pole in the spring and hadnât reached bottom. Marion said that this was what was sacred about the particulars of the natural world. Sunderson said that some ancient Greeks believed that the gods lived in springs and Marion said, âWhy not?â Marionâs intelligence was peculiar. One evening the month before they had been surfing through the satellite channels after watching the Detroit Lions lose their thirteenth in a row and happened onto a program called Celebrity Medical Nightmares . Further on there was a soft-core porn channel playing Super Ninja Bikini Babes, and Marion remarked that in our culture both men and women were working toward enormous breasts, men by bench-pressing and women by surgery. He wondered what this meant and Sunderson was at a loss.
He was beginning to feel irritable about having to go to his motherâs for dinner down in Green Valley about forty miles to the south. The phone rang and it was the desk to say Monaâs faxes had arrived. He left the room in a hurry then slowed down when he saw a woman examining the extensive flower beds. He put a hand to his chest because his heart abruptly fluttered. With her back turned he was sure the woman was Diane but then of course not. Her hair was a lighter brunette and she was slightly shorter than Dianeâs five foot nine. He passed close enough to catch her scent, an unknown quality. She turned and smiled and he said, âGorgeous flowers.â She nodded then knelt beside a bed to examine the flowers more closely. She was faultlessly neat like Diane who had even folded her undies like one would handkerchiefs. Diane had always arrived at breakfast impeccably dressed for her job, then toasted her English muffin applying a scant amount of cream cheese and Scottish marmalade she got by mail order. She was always fresh as a daisy while he struggled to make passable sausage gravy at the stove. She even peeled fruit precisely while he had difficulties with something as simple as starting a roll of toilet paper. He had to abandon their king-size bed because his snoring kept her awake and he had refused to wear the antisnoring mask contraption his doctor had recommended. His doctor, who had moved up from Kalamazoo, was shocked at the number of men in the Upper Peninsula who thought of themselves in fine physical and mental shape when by any outside standards they were walking wrecks. Sunderson smoked and drank heavily and his cholesterol always hovered around three hundred. He was very strong for his age but this had nothing to do with his diminishing life expectancy.
Sunderson sat under a pergola on the hotel lawn, the official smoking area, and read the faxes with growing anger. He had no idea how many cult members had taken out home equity loans before the current financial plummet and turned the money over to Dwight. Mona had also discovered that Dwight had taken a Rent-a-Jet from Choteau to Albuquerque and then to Tucson for the exorbitant total of twenty thousand dollars. Mona had also written that Dwight had purchased five hundred peyote buttons in New Mexico. She found this out by prying into Queenieâs checking account, which used a simpleminded code for peyote. Sunderson thought idly that he might turn over this information to the DEA but then they were too busy tracking shipments of heroin and cocaine from Mexico to be interested in this peripheral drug mostly used by the Native American church, a widespread religious organization among
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