Free The Big Seven by Jim Harrison

havoc in a new location. It was easy to figure out who did it with Simon the only one in town who had dynamite. He felt justified because his worthless rental house was unheated. It was a cold spring. April isn’t reliable that far north and sometimes brings the last of the year’s blizzards, and his family was uncomfortable not getting enough to eat. Simon illegally shot a couple of deer for meat plus one of the recently bought calves died so they ate it. The meat of the sick calf made them ill so they gladly returned to venison. It was soon after World War II and he drove way over to Escanaba and loaded up on war surplus blankets to keep from freezing. None of this really explained his blowing up the landlord’s car. It was us against the world in the small community, a tradition of self-righteousness that criminal families share with each other, and they were off to a solid start. The family now living in the houses were all sons and grandchildren of Simon Jr., who by all accounts was even meaner than his father. None of the adults cared for their children. The kids got along fine with playmates and so did the daughters who made themselves useful sewing and cleaning the houses of the town’s few prosperous families. The daughters, unlike the sullen and irascible sons, were pleasant and popular.
    It occurred to Sunderson while reading that likely the bad Ames blood emerged from this vicious grandfather. Now there wasn’t an Ames male that would suffer even a teaspoon of regret if he shot Sunderson. They were a “live free or die” kind of family and the only real horror in their lives was the prospect of jail or prison. The dumbest of Simon Sr.’s sons drove to Iron Mountain, robbed a bank, and was promptly caught, receiving a sentence of fifteen years downstate in Jackson State Prison. He got out during the recession of the 1970s, robbed another bank over in Superior, Wisconsin, got caught, and this time got twenty years. No one ever visited him over which he was quite bitter.
    The bank robber made a strong impression on a young nephew, the youngest of Simon Jr.’s five sons. Ten years after the uncle was sentenced, his nephew took to robbing a handful of banks and later bars throughout the U.P. He was quite successful until he was caught in an ambush and wounded a prison guard moonlighting for bank security over in Sault Ste. Marie, which got him twenty years. He was now in his fifties. He had gone away again five years ago for a couple of years for parole violation and had been released only recently. Sunderson determined that he was the smallest of the Ames men. Oddly, by reputation he was thought to be smart because he had done so much reading in prison and was an excellent “jailhouse lawyer” which proved useful to his miscreant family.
    Simon did well in the beef grazing business. There was a plenitude of green grass between the stumps and his cattle quickly got fat and sassy. The family did well up through the Korean War when a couple of the sons were arrested for dodging the draft. They avoided prison by joining the navy and had a wicked time in the South Pacific in the months after the war ended.
    The beef business was excellent in the postwar years and the family had built the three big houses by the time the sons came home from war. Simon was now old and couldn’t keep pace among his sons so the two thousand acres were split in three sections to no one’s satisfaction.
    The sons fought physically and one shot the other in the leg in a local tavern but got away with it by claiming they were “horsing around” and the pistol misfired. Even the shot man didn’t want his brother to go to jail. After old Simon’s death in the late sixties the brothers settled down. Other than try to cheat each other on the fenced borders there was peace between them for a while but not their children who had learned violent play from the parents. All three wives left eventually for parts unknown due to wife beating.