The Great Leader Read Online Free PDF Page B

curiosity was still ambitious. It would be a pleasure to never arrest anyone again or write a report beginning with, “The stolen ’73 Dodge was found abandoned two miles SW of Gwinn. The perp or perps left behind eleven empty beer cans and someone had shit on the backseat.” Crime did pay but usually very little. He began smiling with the thought of his lovely library and then the fact that Dwight’s most recent alias was Janus, a double-faced, fascinating prophetic figure from mythology. It was nearly as good as his claim that his mother was named Nokomis from Longfellow’s doggerel Song of Hiawatha . Behind his pomp the Great Leader had a sense of humor. Historically the mysteries of religion, sex, and money tended to accumulate pontifical phlegm rather than humor. And as a student of history Sunderson had been mystified since college with the particularities of the relationship between money, religion, and sex—in fact, obsessed.
    When he reached the gate of the cult’s property he felt a curious lightness descend upon him. He was properly suspicious of moods but figured this one had a pretty solid base. Since childhood he couldn’t remember ever having been free of multiple obligations and here on an early Saturday afternoon in late October he had no more duties than a cedar waxwing, in their case, to fill their tummies and head south.
    The trees were leafless and he intended to head up the creek to check for beaver ponds for possible future brook trout fishing but first he had to check out the longhouse. Three of the four doors were lockless and open but the fourth door in the back had its lock broken. What was the point? The fresh tracks in the moist earth told him that the realtor and his client had entered by the southward-facing front door. The broken lock was senseless and therefore worthy of investigation. The interior of the longhouse was cooler than the balmy outside air and the floor was covered with the discouraging remnants of domestic life: sneakers, baby shoes, unmatched socks, plastic dishes, cut-rate skillets, cotton gloves. In a food cache there was a case of canned peaches apparently deemed not worthy of hauling out and a few broken sacks of white flour, rice flour, and rice. Three mice looked up at him from deep in the bag of rice. The only thing he could determine that had real value in the long rectangular room were the six big potbellied stoves each with a large wood box beside it. Some local human scavengers were sure to carry off the stoves, which were easily worth a grand apiece. The last stove at the back was the nearest to Dwight’s quarters where the door with the broken lock was opened to the river thirty yards away down a slope. Dwight’s wood box turned out to have a false bottom and he cursed himself for not having searched the abandoned longhouse the week before. Someone had beat him to it, pushed the logs aside, opened the hinged boards, and rifled the contents. All that was left were environmental books and a stack of journal notebooks unused except for one that had a name and address inside the front cover: Philippe Desarmais, 13 rue Arenes. Sunderson recalled that Roxie had found a map of Arles on the computer and that particular street led to a coliseum still in use after two thousand years. With the help of a French teacher at the local Northern Michigan University Sunderson had written a letter of inquiry to the Arles municipal authorities and had received an answer in faultless English saying yes, the American Desarmais had created a modest stir in the area before being “urged” to move on. He had rented halls and gave well-attended speeches (free wine, cheese, and charcuterie) proposing the overthrow of the government of the United States, which, during the first term of Bush Jr., did not seem irrational. Dwight wanted the 512 tribes of Native Americans to be able to reclaim their ancestral land and the capital of the U.S.