The Great Leader Read Online Free PDF

on her but she turned her back and leaned against the woodpile. In a moment he was in like Flynn as they used to say and she whispered, “Slap my ass,” which he did with gusto. It was a brief mating and then she ran off to her car. He stumbled and then sat down heavily on a pile of wood to light a cigarette. A number of men waved from the cabin windows but he didn’t wave back now feeling a rush of embarrassment. Oh well, he thought, and when he managed to make his way back into the cabin the men absurdly sang, “For He’s a Jolly Good Fellow.” Sunderson poured a tumbler full of whiskey and drank it with another bowl of caramel ice cream after which he chewed on a bloody beef bone. In technical terms he was not fully conscious. Marion said, “You’re entitled,” thinking him morose rather than dumbstruck. Normally he was no more spontaneous than barbed wire.
    His temples tingled in embarrassment as he finished the first half of his sandwich. Once a Lutheran, forever a Lutheran, his family’s nominal faith, which mostly meant the women and children went to church and the men stayed home Sunday morning, went fishing or did yard work or shoveled the snow. Religion was merely there like cod liver oil, taxes, the beginning of school.
    Now he heard a vehicle coming up the miserable road from the compound, a two-track that only sportsmen with 4WDs would gamble on what with getting stuck being a central facet of the U.P. experience. Sunderson was irritated because he had called and requested that an Ontonagon County deputy secure the crime scene with a piece of yellow tape across the road. He had made the call the day before but his real motive had been that he wanted to wander the full section of cult land, 640 acres, in solitude unbotched by grouse hunters or the bow hunters who had an early deer season or those who drove their junkers around on Saturdays working on a case of beer and pretending they were looking for a big buck for the oncoming gun season in November.
    It turned out to be a realtor and client in a spiffy but now mud-spattered newish Tahoe. He flipped his expired badge in his billfold and they got out of the car, the realtor reddening, and the client, a man in his fifties, yawning in his expensive Orvis-type sporting wear.
    Sunderson was fatigued with protocol and simply said, “What’s up? You violated a crime scene.”
    The upshot was that the deputy had neglected to tape the entrance to the cult compound. The confrontation became civil out of necessity. The realtor said he had received a phone call asking him to show the property.
    â€œWho was the owner?”
    â€œA guy named Dwight Janus.”
    â€œFrom where?”
    â€œI don’t know,” the realtor said then began fiddling with his cell phone. “The area code is five-two-zero.”
    â€œThat’s the Tucson, Arizona, area code,” the client said gazing north down the two-track. “What a frightful road.”
    â€œWhat would you do with the longhouse?” Sunderson asked.
    â€œSit in it with my English setter and forget the world. You have any idea of grouse and woodcock populations in the locale?”
    â€œShould be good. The cult shot and ate everything except birds. The Great Leader proclaimed that killing birds was taboo. He called them avian messengers.”
    â€œHow delightful. It will be odd to buy a section of land for less than a pathetic house in Minneapolis.”
    The realtor was beaming. The recent financial collapse had brought his best efforts to a standstill and he had a son and daughter in college.
    They all shook hands. Sunderson gave the realtor his own numbers to pass along under the pathetic idea that Dwight might call him. He was pleased to see them drive away and imagined the effort the client would make putting up no trespassing signs, which would be ignored by locals. He stood there at high noon with the eerie feeling that only his