The Big Seven Read Online Free PDF

drinking.”
    In truth he had been drinking but very little, just to get him over the hump of sleeplessness. He had however bought a fifth of whiskey for the coming trip as he loved to sip whiskey before the fireplace in Marion’s cabin. He had mixed feelings about this. Complete sobriety seemed like nothing . There were no mood swings either bad or delirious, and his fantasy life had dwindled to nothing. A fantasy life is a big item for a man. When you have nothing and your mind can make love to the most beautiful woman in the world it can be grand. Or catch a big fish, make a bunch of money.
    Sunderson had hidden the money from his Peanuts bag in different books in his library, making a list of their titles. He was careful as he dreaded losing the list and having to sort through a couple thousand books to get his hard-earned, considering the injury, cash. He very much wanted to buy a small, remote cabin in the wilderness for his coming old age. He had read Thoreau but that wasn’t the whole impetus. Besides he wouldn’t be within walking distance of town like Thoreau. He wanted to be really out there and there were many areas in the Upper Peninsula that qualified. Maybe someone’s old deer shack he could fix up? It was the life of the wild that compelled him; a peopleless universe far away would console him from terrifying failures like losing Diane with his hundreds of mistakes. They say you can’t die from love but he almost had immediately after the divorce ending up facedown on the floor and then into the hospital with acute alcohol poisoning.
    Fishing repaired him somewhat but a peopleless sport is ill suited to a peopled world. Isolated people can become like the babbling prospectors in old Western movies. They come to town and everything is amiss except the taverns. Many of Sunderson’s old drinking buddies had died or generally disappeared and he drank mostly at home alone now which compounded his isolation. He couldn’t very well split up his life between a five-month fishing season and the rest of life. New York was the exception and he had certainly been dense and unprepared. Marion was right. He should have gone after the guy behind the tree in the park.
    Marion came over for the night before their departure and cooked his celebrated Hawaiian pork chops basted with soy, butter, ginger, and garlic. Sunderson thought that his own hastily prepared meals depressed him, another item on a large list of things he had to change. He looked at the ragged and tattered fishing vest he had been wearing since he was a teenager. Why not get a new one? Why be sentimental over an article of clothing? Marion kept his gear neat as a pin. When Sunderson had opened his fly box the other day all of the trout flies were in total disarray. He disgusted himself. Marion told Sunderson that back in his own messy alcoholic days he had left his best fly rod at streamside but when he went back to fetch it he drove over it in the grass, breaking it. He was heartbroken but he couldn’t afford an expensive replacement. Sunderson reflected on what made men so messy. It wasn’t just drinking but the corrupt spirit behind getting drunk, a general malaise of letting go of good sense and order in life. It was the deadly sin of greed that kept him swallowing. He couldn’t blame divorce because it had started way before and was part of the reason behind the divorce. Sunderson decided it was a faulty worldview that he would have to change. How to do so was a daunting challenge. Diane meditated a half hour early every morning before work. She didn’t make a big deal about it. She just described it as a half hour of total quiet so she would be ready for the maelstrom of life. Sunderson didn’t quite get that part. Life was just life, rolling on in inevitable disorder. Now, however, he was aware that he had to work his way up through the sludge that had accumulated in his life. It seemed compacted in his soul. He wanted the clear cool feeling