The Big Seven Read Online Free PDF Page B

of a ten-year-old getting up at dawn for a hike around a lake. It was a purity of intent that he wanted rather than sliding from one confused day into another. He found himself envying true believers, those who believed in the Gospels and the Seven Deadly Sins that he found so murky.
    He had finished breakfast at 6:00 a.m., cooked himself because the Finnish girl was packing up to go home during his camping trip. Marion wasn’t due to pick him up until 8:00 a.m. so he decided to take a little morning walk. He argued with the Finnish girl who thought she should accompany him as per Diane’s instructions. He angrily said “no.” He wanted to be alone.

Chapter 3
    A block down the street on a fair late summer morning a runner passed him with a nod. It was a lovely girl in shorts, perhaps in her late teens. It was a warm morning and she was in tight shorts with a butt as lovely as Mona’s. He cautioned himself against thinking about Mona’s body now that he and Diane had adopted her. It had become the ancient taboo of incest which gave him a slight shudder. The running girl in the shorts had given him the first twinge of lust since his back was broken. This both reassured and confused him. What was he going to do with lust, certainly not return to his old girlfriend, his secretary? The thought of her and their absurd couplings repelled him. The fresh-looking girl with the delicious butt suited him though the odds against finding one were preposterous. He tripped on an uneven piece of sidewalk and fell on the lawn in front of Mona’s old house. He couldn’t seem to get up with his faulty back. A dapper man half dressed for work rushed out of his house, the yoga woman’s husband, and helped him to his feet. Sunderson explained his back surgery and they agreed to have a drink as neighbors. His wife came out in a scanty nightie and asked if he was okay. He said “fine” much taken by her body which was much sexier than at the vantage point of the window in her yoga contortions.
    He went back in his house thinking of the v shadow in the nightie. He rechecked his gear, had another cup of coffee, and felt lonely for the old days when he drank a lot and didn’t think much. Marion finally came, only minutes late but Sunderson was already irritable from his falling. His mood recovered when he spent a few minutes peeking next door and was delighted that the neighbor woman was doing yoga in her nightie which slipped up so that he saw her whole lower half nude. What good luck he thought with a sexual pang in his stomach as if he were ill.
    The twenty-mile trip to the cabin brought him back to earth. The last seven miles through the woods they were stuck briefly in a mud hole which was watery from the last winter runoff. They roared out and were delighted to see a fairly big bear near the cabin. Marion knew the bear and speculated that it had gotten much larger from eating all the deer that had died from cold in the hard winter. The bears normally reached their peak weight in late fall before the long winter but this spring they came out of hibernation to a sort of a waiting deep freeze with plenty of deer meat and had fattened up quickly.
    They were anxious to get unpacked and start fishing well before the midday sun and heat. They burned a large branch of cedar in the fireplace to sweeten the cabin air, an old Indian tactic.
    Sunderson began fishing where a small creek emerged from a swamp about a mile behind the cabin. Marion plunged into the swamp toward a beaver pond, his favorite place. The rough walking gave Sunderson a painful twinge at the site of his surgery so he sat under a tree to rest and took a painkiller. He hated knowing the pills would make him feel drowsy and goofy but the pain was a poor start to fishing. He felt better in half an hour and made his way, now more slowly, toward the creek.
    He caught a few small fish then missed a larger one that sensed his presence fleeing upstream. Maybe later when it calmed