Hunter's Moon

by Chuck Logan

  “Yeah. I’m bushed,” said Harry as he inhaled the vinegary steam of venison and peppercorns mingled with fresh perked coffee. On the island, two stainless steel bowls were covered with damp, swollen dishtowels and the heavy scent of baking apples and brown sugar wafted from the oven. A radio played country western down low.

  Jesse relaxed her erect posture and leaned back on the island between the bowls of rising dough. The stove-moist air was tactile and crowded with fumbling, yeasty fingers. Standing three feet apart, it felt like they were touching all over.

  Physically, she implied tremendous leverage. A straight line and a few simple, perfect curves. Harry was moved.

  Her hands were vigorous and efficient, the fingernails trimmed, unpainted, used to work. He found himself wanting to see the firm clean flesh of her upper arms.

  “Becky, get the man some coffee,” said Jesse. Harry turned. The girl had reappeared and had changed into short, cut-off Levi’s and a T-shirt that had the neck, sleeves, and bottom scissored out. She wasn’t wearing a bra. The muscled

  28 / CHUCK LOGAN

  dent of her navel showed an inch above the shorts and her thighs rippled smooth along the ragged denim fringe. A serious runner or a swimmer.

  Becky poured coffee and handed the cup to Harry. Bud came into the kitchen, picked up the telephone, dialed a number, and began to talk to somebody about plowing the roads. Jesse’s posture took on an erect propriety.

  “You want something in that to warm you up?” asked Jesse. She reached for a pint of Jack Daniel’s that sat next to a spice rack on the counter. Harry hadn’t been this close to a pint bottle in years.

  “I don’t drink,” said Harry.

  “Up here everybody drinks. Unemployment and long winters don’t go together real good,” she said.

  “Mom’s a bartender. People who don’t drink are bad for business,”

  said Chris.

  “I just helped out at the local VFW, part time. More straightening out their books,” said Jesse curtly, raising her chin and giving her son an indignant glance.

  Harry nodded politely. She was a regular sensual crowbar. Maybe just what Bud needed to rebuild his life. Or demolish it. Chris looked like a crippled Mowgli, the wolf boy. Becky, the forthright Amazon, seemed to have inherited all the mother’s strength.

  His eyes drifted to the table where Chris turned the knife in his fingers, staring along the gray honed edge.

  “You ever see one of these?” Chris asked, boldly engaging Harry’s gaze.

  Harry walked over and took the knife away with a firm snap of his hand. It was a K-Bar. A marine fighting knife. As he thrust it into the scabbard that lay on the table he noticed the initials BM carved in the frayed leather. “Yeah,” said Harry, returning to the kitchen.

  He opened a drawer and dropped the big knife out of sight.

  “You know what it’s for?” Chris asked, all of a sudden smiling sweetly. Harry tried to stare him down. The dark eyes didn’t waver.

  HUNTER’S MOON / 29

  “It’s for cutting the Gibionici,” Chris grinned. “You know what Gibionici is?”

  “Nope,” said Harry.

  “It’s what’s in the oven,” said Chris.

  Becky laughed, a sweet girlish sound at odds with her mature body. “You ain’t from around here, are you, boy?”

  “Like an apple turnover. My Serbian mother,” explained Jesse, meeting his eyes. They both had high wide-set cheek-bones and a trace of tannic spit to their skin that shed age. Her Serbian mother flirted with his Slavic father about the Mongol ponies that had raided in their blood.

  Chris got up, walked to the drawer, took out his knife, and went back to the table.

  “Plow’s on the way,” said Bud, hanging up the phone. Automatically, he plucked the pint bottle off the counter, unscrewed the top, took a quick nip, and then tucked the bottle into the inside pocket of his vest. No one seemed to notice except Harry.

  “Bud’s got pull,” said Becky, letting her tongue drift lazily along her lower teeth. She had put on a kind of white waxy lipstick that Harry hated and too much purple eye shadow bruised her face.

  “Push and pull. He gets things done. Don’tcha Bud?”

  “Mind your manners, smarty pants,” said Bud.

  Pulling away, Becky sideswiped Bud with a hip.

  Bud sat down across from Chris. “Put that away,” he said. Chris put the knife down on the table and spun it. The point stopped ambiguously, aiming out toward the lake.

  The knife and the way Becky threw herself around put Harry on edge. Too hot in the kitchen, too many sharp things, too much of the girl’s flesh exposed. He took his coffee to a chair in the den and sat with his back to the wall.

  Jesse punched the bread dough down and formed it to fit in loaf pans. Bud talked to Chris about tomorrow morning. Becky set the table and tossed an iceberg salad.

  Jesse didn’t strike him as a disorganized person, so it surprised Harry the way everything proceeded backwards.

  30 / CHUCK LOGAN

  Jesse took the pastry from the oven and Chris cut it into steaming strips with his big knife. Dessert came before supper. Then Jesse ladled out bowls of venison stew. They ate it with the salad and cornbread that had been in the oven with the pastry.

  The electricity wavered and the radio signal cut out. In the sudden darkness, the wind leaned an icy shoulder to the lodge: a roof timber creaked.

  “Candles…” said Bud.

  Then the lights came back on. For a brief second, all the faces around the table were unmasked in tableau. Jesse and her children tensed in their chairs, staring at Harry. The muscle in Harry’s left cheek twitched.

  Silverware grated on plates and reminded Harry of the spooked expression on Cox’s face.

  Jesse moved quickly into the vacuum. “Bud says this is your first time hunting?”

  “First time in Minnesota,” said Harry.

  “You’ll never get that deer unless you go out in the dark,” said Becky. “You can’t see him in the daylight. And he only shows himself to certain people.”

  “You are so full of shit,” said Chris.

  “I showed you where he is. You get lost in the woods even with a compass.”

  Chris snorted. “Only good thing about the woods is the road leading south to the Cities.”

  “You drop out of school, the only thing you’ll find in the Cities is a job taking orders at McDonald’s.”

  Brother and sister exchanged tight smiles.

  “I know why you go hunting,” Becky announced.

  “Why’s that?” asked Bud. Smiling. Oblivious.

  “To get away from women,” said Becky.

  Jesse’s lips turned down in a savvy expression. “Men don’t have to go anywhere to get away. They’re gone sitting right next to you.

  Most of them.”

  “But I know why,” said Becky, her agitated fingers jerked in conflict with her bright smile. Awkwardly, she took one of HUNTER’S MOON / 31

  her mother’s cigarettes, popped a lighter, and held it experimentally between her thumb and index finger. She stared pointedly at Harry until she had his full attention. “Are you circumcised?” she asked blankly.

  “Gross,” muttered Chris through a suppressed giggle.

  Harry’s face flushed under her bold scrutiny.

  “It’s common for men to be circumcised today,” said Bud quickly.

  “For hygiene reasons.” Like a man performing a repetitive task, Bud had the pint out, splashed a shot into his coffee, and whisked it back out of sight.

  “That’s what they tell you,” said Becky. “But the real reason is it’s a thing from way long ago, this kind of memory from when men sacrificed their genitals. Cut them right off. Even today, there’s these primitive tribes in some parts of the world where the men have their penises cut up so they look like vulvas and they squat to pee.”

  Becky spoke self-importantly with her chin tilted up. The brightest kid in the class.

&n
bsp; “Vulvas?” ejected Chris in feigned ignorance.

  “That’s pussy to you, dummy,” said Becky, flicking cigarette ashes on her plate.

  Jesse watched her daughter carefully. “Where’d you hear that?

  On Donahue?” she asked.

  Becky explained. “I read it in a book that Bud gave me. The mutilation of genitals is a holdover from an earlier time when women used to run the world. When men tried to make themselves look like women.”

  “Look like women?” laughed Chris.

  “It was their religion, and everyone ate vegetables. The men rebelled and went off hunting,” said Becky.

  “Our pussy who art in heaven,” Chris quipped.

  Harry watched Bud wolf down stew and cornbread, all aglow with Jack Daniel’s paterfamilias, presiding over native intelligence emerging from the trash of the popular culture.

  “Well, that clears that up,” said Jesse. “Now you guys do the dishes,” she ordered her kids. She turned to Harry. “C’mon, I’ll show you where you sleep.”

  32 / CHUCK LOGAN

  Harry picked up his duffel bag and followed Jesse down the hall past the kitchen that ended in twin bedrooms. Midway, another bedroom faced the bathroom. They went in. “You’re in here. Chris’ll sleep out on the couch,” she explained and tossed her head toward the kitchen. “Sorry about Becky. They skipped her a grade in school and she’s enjoying being precocious. She’s worse since Bud’s been around. He encourages them both to talk. Becky more than Chris.

  You know Bud. He means well.” She punctuated her last sentence with a searching glance.

  Harry stood flat-footed. A huge print was framed on the wall over the bed. Another Goya. But this one was a particular horror. A mad-eyed titan held a limp decapitated naked body to its ravenous mouth.

  It was called “Saturn Devouring His Son.” Harry turned to her.

  “I drew the line on that one being out where people could see it,”

  she said. “So Chris brought it in here. Kinda fits in with David Bowie and the Sex Pistols, don’t you think?” Her eyes scanned the room.

  A cheap boombox sat on a desk next to dusty schoolbooks. Another IBM PC rested on a side table in a litter of floppy disks. The walls were papered with posters from contemporary rock groups. An iron cross hung from the light cord.

  “Yeah,” said Harry noncommittally. He threw his duffel bag on the rumpled bed.

  She lingered at the door. “You’re a surprise,” she said very directly.

  “Funny, when Bud said he was bringing a friend up, last minute and all, I didn’t figure someone like you. You’re real different from him.”

  Harry shrugged, aware that neither of them knew what to do with their hands. She put hers on her hips. Seemed like a good idea. He put his the same way.

  “Bud showed me some of the things you used to draw,” she said.

  Harry nodded politely. It was conversation. “It’s more computers now,” he said.

  “It resembles you, the way you draw.” She cocked her head. “Kinda quiet and nice to look at but there’s an edge…”

  HUNTER’S MOON / 33

  Her eyes softened and it would have been a sweet moment if she wasn’t the new bride of his once best friend. Something ran deep and artesian in her and Harry couldn’t tell if it was loneliness or cunning.

  Her eyes pried him open. “I know stuff about you. Bud told me, about Minnesota Harry and Detroit Harry. How he found you in the gutter drifting toward an open manhole and dried you out.”

  “Well, you know Bud. He gave me a hand,” said Harry.

  “Riiight, now maybe you’re thinking about returning the favor, huh?” Her sporting laugh had a bitter trickle and Harry went with the loneliness. She’d never see thirty-five again and she had yet to be discovered.

  But her smile was pure heroin. Once you had it, you wanted more and nothing else mattered. “Yeah,” she mused, “I know Bud all right.

  I only got an idea about you.”

  She left a shiver of physical intrigue in the room and if there was an open manhole she was it but he couldn’t stop himself from going to the doorway to watch her walk away down the hall.

  Damn.

  7

  Jesse plus one hour and counting: the raw dirty copper taste started in Harry’s mouth that signaled that his nerves were acting up, so he took a shower to soak out the chill of the road, then he resorted to an old nervous habit. Dripping dry in front of the bathroom mirror, he worried at his teeth with a toothbrush.

  He meditated on the tabloid disorder that was Bud; with his body out of control and his life out of control and all that bread like helium gas that allowed him to drift above the law of gravity.

  Well, that was the booze for you. Met her in a bar. Hadda be shitfaced drunk when he married into this bunch. Harry 34 / CHUCK LOGAN

  tasted blood. Too long, too heavy with the brush. He took it out and grimaced at the red-tipped bristles.

  He ran his finger along the line of his lips. Then he grinned, revealing the straight, even teeth. His face relaxed into a modestly handsome grin. Cost five grand at the orthodontist to straighten out Detroit Harry’s crooked teeth. Cost Bud. A gift to commemorate Harry’s first year sober.

  And Bud had dragged him off the street. And into AA. And sponsored him in every sense of the word; had arranged his late-start break in the straight world with the job at the paper.

  So he owed Bud. The way he saw it, he owed Bud honesty.

  The bathroom door swung open and Chris stood in the doorway.

  “Oops, sorry,” he said, as his eyes traveled boldly over Harry’s body and stopped at hip level with intense scrutiny.

  Harry slammed the door shut. That did it.

  He dressed quickly and went down the hall. Bud sat at the dining room table, staring at a sheet of paper. Chris had joined his mother and sister and they stood, heads close over the sink, whispering, watching Bud.

  “C’mon, we’re going out. I need to buy some smokes,” said Harry.

  Bud squinted at him, then out the windows. “You kidding?”

  “That place we passed down the road should be open. Get your coat on.”

  Jesse, Becky, and Chris eyed Harry suspiciously.

  For emphasis, Harry gripped Bud’s elbow. Tight. Bud winced.

  Harry insisted. “Let’s go. We gotta talk.”

  It was still snowing, but the wind had backed off. Harry had Bud’s keys in his parka so he drove. At the end of the driveway they watched a road grader with a V blade smash a swath down Highway 7. Harry steered in behind it.

  Bud hunched in the passenger seat. He knew what was coming.

  Harry turned on the radio and caught some Northland HUNTER’S MOON / 35

  news: the worst of the storm had passed to the southwest, warmer air was moving in.

  The store looked deserted but the lights were on. There was a large maple tree next to a swayback garage with a ladder placed against the thick trunk. Ropes dangled from the branches.

  Going in, Harry jerked his head at the tree and quipped, “They going to have a lynching?” His serious voice did not carry the joke.

  Bud winced. “For deer.”

  Inside were big round oak tables and mismatched chairs, dry goods, and cooler to the side, kitchen in the back. A sturdy woman in jeans and a blaze-orange shirt was counting receipts at the cash register. “Not a good night to be out, Mr. Maston. The heat off at home?” she crooned with a sly smile.

  Bud crumpled into a chair. Harry went to the counter and selected a pack of Camel straights from a slotted shelf and ordered two cups of coffee. He brought the coffee back, sat down, and slit the cellophane on the cigarettes with his thumbnail.

  “Time to go to the Camels, Bud.”

  “Fuuck.” Bud drew it out. Going to the Camels was an AA ritual they used to have that preceded straight talk.

  Harry placed his Zippo on the table with a firm click. Bud reached out reluctantly, fumbled with the pack, and raised the ligh
ter. His hands shook.

  “You quit going to meetings, didn’t you?” Bud asked.

  “I think I figured it out. Don’t put it in your mouth,” said Harry.

  “That’s Detroit Harry talking, doing it on guts,” said Bud. His smile turned down at the corners and he looked away.

  An elaborate silence separated them. Harry was more visceral and direct. Prone to act, to use his hands rather than words. Bud was always the more verbal, traveling circles in his head. Reluctant to offend.

  Bud had dubbed him Detroit Harry after Harry had taken what is known in AA as a Fifth Step: Admitted to God, to 36 / CHUCK LOGAN

  himself, and to another human being the exact nature of his wrongs.

  Under the seal of AA, Harry had confided to Bud why he’d left Detroit in a hurry. That was ten years ago, in a glibber time, when Minnesota was the first M in the MMPI. In the reborn zeal of sobriety, Harry had signed on for the whole extended-warranty Minnesota therapy jive package; treatment, AA, stress groups through the VA.

  Now Bud owed him that kind of honesty in return.

  “What the fuck is going on up here? How long you been drinking?” Harry asked.

  “Shit, ever since I…left town.”

  “Dammit. Why’d you isolate yourself and wait a year to call?”

  “You knew where I was, you could have called,” Bud shot back.

  Harry unburdened himself of a long-standing resentment. “Right, when you were playing bigshot you started treating me like the hired help.”

  Bud’s voice dropped to a whisper. “You think this is easy. Letting people who knew me see me like this. I finally just panicked, I guess.”

  “You just got married. People get nervous, but panic?”

  Bud drew in a sharp breath and gritted his teeth; his eyes glistened and his distended body arched in his chair.

  Harry said it for him. “You were drunk when you got married, am I right or wrong?” Bud dropped his eyes. “Now you’re thinking of getting out but she’s a wolverine and you don’t know how to drop the bomb.”

  A tear crept down the rust of freckles on Bud’s cheek. He shook his head from side to side and his eyes drifted, became dreamy, the way they used to get when he looked out from behind a podium and microphone, into the lights across an auditorium. He shook his head. “I came up here thinking Buddha was right, man. You don’t solve human suffering through direct action. Politics was an ego trip…” Bud grimaced and his voice was a whisper. “But I miss the action. I miss it real bad.”