Hunter's Moon

by Chuck Logan

  There were sepia pictures like the ones in Hakala’s office. Lumberjacks. Miners marching under a CIO banner. Deer hunting expedi-tions. A 1920s shack with a crudely lettered Hakala Lumber sign next to a proud proprietor. A brass Wurlitzer squatted next to the door.

  The red-leather stools along the counter, the booths by the windows, and the tables in the back were empty this morning except for a lanky blonde waitress with milk-white skin who lounged on a stool next to the cash register. Olympic Nordic legs spilled from her miniskirt and tapered down to bobby socks and sneakers. The two top buttons of her blouse were unbuttoned to ease the strain of her breasts.

  170 / CHUCK LOGAN

  She looked up from the book she was reading and her bee-stung lips smiled self-consciously. Longish teeth broke the spell. With lidded eyes and two moles—one on her left cheek, the other at the corner of her left eye—she straddled an intriguing, willowy line right between horsey and gorgeous; an inch either way and she’d be someone else.

  She set a bookmark in her place, put her book aside, and sauntered down the counter.

  “Coffee, black,” said Harry, opening a menu. “Oatmeal.

  Grapefruit—”

  “Only got the canned slices,” said a breathy voice as her gray-green eyes took in his ripped face and she sniffed the whiskey on his breath.

  “Naw, give me a big orange juice.” Booze loosened his tongue and his smile as he watched her sing the order over the counter into the kitchen. The cook had a blaze-orange knit cap perched on his head and balanced a two-inch ash on the cigarette in his lips.

  Harry turned over the book she had been reading. Functions of the Unconscious, lectures in psychological astrology.

  He got up and went to the jukebox. The antique selections matched the decor. Harry dropped in a coin and punched “Un-chained Melody” by Al Hibbler.

  She set his coffee down and blew a strand of hair out of her eyes.

  Electric with Jack Daniel’s, Harry found her scent sensual and exhilarating on this morning. A scoop of rich vanilla ice cream after sex.

  A pickup with a three-wheeled all-terrain scooter in the back pulled up. Three ruddy youths climbed out, swaddled in orange hunting duds. Their loud young voices drowned out the jukebox as they tumbled into a booth. High-school boys.

  “Hey, Ginny,” one of them yelled, “Mountain Dews.”

  Ginny swung her stuff as she rounded the counter with three green cans and glasses on a tray. She stood with one hip slanted at an angle as she took their orders. Her tight skirt molded the panty line against her buttocks.

  HUNTER’S MOON / 171

  Harry turned on his stool, waited for a lull in the conversation, and asked. “Have any luck?”

  “Ah,” said one of the boys, “you can’t see nothing out there.”

  “You guys go to high school here?”

  They studied his torn face. Their apparent spokesman appraised Harry. “Yeah, so?”

  “They let you off school to go hunting?”

  “Just the first few days,” another piped up.

  A third boy put his hand across the table, palm down, in a warning gesture. “That’s the guy,” he said. “Becky did that to his face. And that’s Bud Maston’s Jeep out there. Remember, Saturday, at the hospital…”

  Conversation dried up.

  “Any of you know Chris Deucette?” Harry asked.

  One of them giggled. “Nope, we all got girlfriends.” The boy next to him elbowed him sharply. “Funeral’s today, you dweeb.”

  “So I guess you’re not going to the funeral, huh?” asked Harry.

  “Guess not,” said the spokesman. They all hunched their shoulders and looked at their glasses. Harry spun around on his stool. One of the boys griped, “Christ, Ginny, when you gonna get some decent music on that damn ole jukebox?”

  “Nice kids,” said Harry, spooning brown sugar on his oatmeal. “Real friendly.”

  Ginny wrote out his ticket and placed it on the counter with a shrug. “You heard ’em. You’re the guy.”

  Harry blew on a spoon of oatmeal to cool it, then took a taste.

  He made a face, put down the spoon, and eased the bowl aside.

  The oats and orange juice couldn’t occupy the same space with sour mash. Ginny watched him concentrate on his black coffee.

  Then she reached under the counter, pulled up a folded front section of Sunday’s outstate edition of the St. Paul 172 / CHUCK LOGAN

  paper, and held it casually against her hip. She tapped his picture.

  “It’s a small town, mister.”

  Harry pointed to the book she’d been reading. “You believe in that stuff?”

  “Must be something to it. It’s been around for a long time,” she said.

  “You do charts on people?”

  “Sometimes…” She drew her fingers down an errant strand of hair.

  An indolent heat swung in his belly. Maston County was a magic place where he had rediscovered women. “How do you do that? I mean, what do you need to start?”

  “Exact time of birth and where.” She crinkled her eyes. “You interested in astrology?”

  “Could be.”

  The orders for the kids at the booth came up and Ginny carried them to their table. When she returned, she sat one stool away, near the cash register, and turned back to her book. Halfway through his coffee, their eyes met. She lowered hers and a slight flush crept above her collar. Her hand floated up and lightly touched her hair.

  Harry finished his coffee, stood up, and went to the cash register and handed her a twenty. As she made change, she asked, “You come up for the funeral?”

  “Why?”

  “The suit.” She dropped her eyes. “Did Becky Deucette do that to your face?”

  Harry nodded. Their fingers touched when she handed him his change. He dropped a five next to the register. “You know Jesse Deucette?” he asked.

  Her mobile lips turned down. “’Course. She’s better’n the soaps on TV.”

  “She been around lately?”

  “Hard to tell, the way she switches her ass from bed to bed so fast.”

  “I have something for her.”

  “She figures every man does.”

  HUNTER’S MOON / 173

  Harry eased the divorce petition out of his pocket, unfolded it, and held it in front of Ginny long enough for her to read the names.

  She glanced toward the church, then back at Harry. She relished a smile. “I’d like to see that.”

  “Check you later,” said Harry.

  She came around the counter and put herself in plain view for his appraisal. “You staying in town?”

  “Out at Maston’s.”

  She held out her hand. “Ginny Hakala.”

  “Like in big Mike, the prosecutor?”

  “He’s my uncle.”

  “Harry Griffin,” he shook her hand.

  “I know,” she said. “It’s in the paper.”

  Harry drove back down the jetty and waited for the service to end.

  Finally, the church doors opened and the pallbearers slowly descended the steps and loaded the casket in the back of the hearse.

  Snowmobiles started the cortege, outriders, their lights piercing the gloom. The sheriff’s Blazer led the procession, its blue flasher turning slowly, silently. Harry waited until they passed, then made a U-turn and paced them out of town.

  The cemetery was up Highway 7, back toward the lodge, off a road past the old mining company housing. It took several minutes for the caravan to reach its destination, creeping along the winding gravel path. The vehicles parked in an L-shape and left their lights on. Fog seeped in beams that crossed over a fresh grave.

  Harry parked back on the road and walked in. The front of the cemetery was set aside for a miniature Stonehenge, sixteen stones in a circle around a tall granite boulder. The Stanley Massacre. This was one local attraction the Maston family didn’t bankroll. The United Mine Workers put in the rock. Mike Hakala had the pictur
e of the dedication on his office wall.

  The date, 1933, was chiseled in the stone. Pinkertons with 174 / CHUCK LOGAN

  machine guns faced unarmed striking miners. Names: Slovak, Croat, Swedish, Finnish, Italian. His eyes focused. Three Hakalas. Two Emerys. One Deucette.

  He walked slowly among the burial plots toward the gathering.

  Tall arbor vitae lined the path and Harry stepped behind one of them 20 yards from the grave. Black figures arranged themselves.

  Six of them assembled behind the hearse.

  His breath caught in his throat. Jesse Deucette stood next to the grave, fastened in spokes of light. A mud-spattered backhoe crouched over a pile of earth behind her with the digging arm frozen in apex above her head.

  She wore a gray raincoat over a black dress. Harry couldn’t make out her expression, only the pale oval of her face under a black scarf tied babushka-fashion around her hair. She held white roses.

  Now we’ll see who’s who. Do it.

  Harry on parade. Shoulders squared, chin up, his muscles oiled with 90-proof resolve, he marched down the arcade of light, straight at Jesse. Her color turned as pallid as the roses in her hands as she watched him approach. Don Karson detached from the crowd of mourners, a scurry of black robes, quick toward the grave.

  The only sound was the creak of the hearse suspension as the pallbearers wrestled the coffin.

  Cox and Sheriff Emery stood sergeant-straight, first in line on either side. Cox’s hair was severely ponytailed, his cheeks blue as sandpaper from a clean shave. The narrow lapels on his shiny suit were twenty years old.

  Emery projected massive dignity in a tie and black cloth. Mike Hakala hulked behind Emery. Three other guys manned the back.

  One of them could have been Jerry the deputy.

  They all saw him at once and everybody froze. Something wrong with the waxworks? He glanced around. Where was Becky? Then he saw her, standing back next to the green Jeep Wrangler. She wore a red high-school jacket with athletic awards pinned to the front.

  Her face was pinched and white

  HUNTER’S MOON / 175

  and dark purple lipstick bruised her lips. Her hair was unkempt and she looked like she’d slept in her soiled gray wind suit and Nikes.

  Mitch Hakala, also wearing a high school letter jacket, stood protectively at her side.

  Hanging way back there. Why not up with her mother?

  Harry stepped up to Jesse.

  She came forward ever so slightly, rising on her toes, as if he were going to ask her to dance, and Harry felt the strange premonition that their breath was linked.

  Face to face with her, his voice shook. “I want to express my deepest sympathy for your great loss.” He extended his right hand.

  Jesse, captive to ceremony, adjusted the flowers and cautiously reached to take the handshake.

  He was not prepared for the moist rush of hope that crowded the wary realism and grief in her eyes. He almost balked. Then she smelled the whiskey on his breath and her outstretched hand arched, fingers pulled back, tendons prominent. Swiftly, Harry brought his left hand from his pocket and placed the papers in her hand.

  She read them in a glance and a bitter smile yanked the strings of her face—the joke’s on me—and her eyes were struck with so much sadness that Harry felt a surge of emotion to hit her or hold her.

  What have I done?

  Jesse regained her poise in a rush of tears. She struck him across the face with the papers. “You!” she sobbed, swinging again. She hurled the flowers at him. They sailed past his shoulder. Harry looked back. The bouquet hit Emery in the face.

  “Larry! Jay! Mike!” she demanded. “Do something!”

  Cox let go of the coffin and leaped at Harry. Emery, tiger quick, threw an arm to restrain him. He stopped Cox. He also lost his hold on the coffin handle.

  “Shit,” yelled Hakala as the weight of the coffin twisted in his grip.

  The other three men bringing up the rear swayed as the long box tipped. A woman screamed and the coffin dropped with a dull thunk on the cold ground. A gasp issued

  176 / CHUCK LOGAN

  from the crowd of mourners and became a muffled growl when the latch popped and Chris Deucette’s cadaver flopped stiffly into the muddy snow and rolled over.

  Karson darted forward, grabbed Harry by the arm, and walked him swiftly away. Harry was aware of Emery manhandling Cox.

  Hissed words. The other pallbearers struggled with their unbalanced load, the body out on the ground, the clothing ripping in their hands as they tried to shove it back in.

  Jesse shouted, berated, “Somebody make him pay. Aren’t there any men around here?”

  No one moved. Emery held them in place, hands raised. Harry examined the fear in Karson’s expression, felt the minister’s hand tremble on his arm. “Who you scared of Karson?” he asked. “Which one?”

  Jesse surged forward. Karson let go to ward her off. He comforted her in his arms. “Jesse, Jesse,” he soothed.

  “Jesus Christ!” she sobbed. “Somebody pick him up and put him back in the damn box!” Emery knelt and gently did her bidding.

  Harry walked swiftly back toward the road. Becky darted in front of him with her head cocked and a crooked smile. The Hakala boy hovered, hands out defensively, eyes warily watching the crowd.

  Not Harry.

  “You’re the only one with the guts to stand up to them,” said Becky. She turned suddenly and sprinted with the boy for the Wrangler. They jumped in and sped away.

  Before Harry could figure out Becky’s odd behavior, Emery over-took him. Sober this morning, he moved with relentless grace. Absolute calm.

  This is where I get arrested.

  But Emery just looked at him. Harry, his heart pounding, stared back at the visage of beaten bronze, into the man’s deadly, patient, hunter’s eyes.

  “You,” said Harry. Not Cox, not Jesse, but you.

  “Get the hell outta here,” ordered Emery with the authority of Old Testament wrath.

  HUNTER’S MOON / 177

  30

  They’d come after him now. Good. Get it out in the open.

  He felt hollow. Famished.

  He drove back into town, wheeled into the IGA parking lot, and went in among bright aisles and waxed floors and grabbed on impulse and dropped $200 on a grocery-shopping binge. He laughed at the headlines at the checkout: GHOST OF ELVIS FATHERED MY

  TWO-HEADED SON.

  Standing in the parking lot, he saw the dirge of headlights wind down the ridge and a clean thrill of fear squeegeed his stomach.

  Let ’em come.

  Turning up Highway 7, he passed the end of the cortege. Eyes straight ahead, he stepped on the gas.

  When the bottom falls out: cook. The kitchen was the strong cradle of his childhood. He was, in fact, a better cook than Linda Margoles. He hauled the food inside. Started a fire. First you had to clean up. He scoured the stainless steel sink and washed down the butcher-block counter and bleached it with white vinegar.

  Grandma had used vinegar for everything. Bowls throughout the house to capture odors.

  Apple cider vinegar in the summer, mixed in ice water, dippers of it sweating on a hay wagon. Swizzle, they called it.

  He turned on the radio and scanned the dial past polkas and country until he found some bluesy, ’60s ballads. The station drifted in and out.

  He found a sharpening steel and honed a long kitchen knife and slapped down a slab of lean sirloin on the clean countertop. Casting aside the butcher paper, he saw his fingerprints smeared in red whorls against the white crackle. He mashed the paper in a ball and hurled it into the trash.

  He cut the steak in narrow strips, marinated it in vinegar, Worcestershire, red cooking wine, and Tabasco. Doused it with pepper and paprika, then set it aside in the fridge. Exhaled, lit a cigarette. Laid out vegetables.

  178 / CHUCK LOGAN

  Jesse. Real suffering on her face.

  But Emery was cool. So cool.
r />   They all feared Emery.

  Me, too.

  He drove the heel of his hand down and splintered a head of garlic. Then he mashed each individual clove and peeled away the husk. The sticky power of the herb smudged his fingers.

  Maybe he was a fuckup, but so were they. They were hiding something. Something about Chris. About themselves. Becky, hanging on the edge of the ceremony. Find her. Talk to her.

  You’re the only one with the guts to stand up to them.

  Papercuts of fear. Cox had a screw loose. He wasn’t cool, could be out there, working up to it. He’d make a move.

  Harry’s wet hand hovered over the whiskey bottle on the dining room table. Square away. Arm yourself. Even back when he was fucked up, he’d never mixed booze and guns. The one time that he did…

  He dumped Jack D down the kitchen sink, started the coffee water, and went into the main room. He came back from the oak cabinet with his arms filled with guns.

  He laid the two shotguns, the .45 Colt automatic, and the rifle on the dining room table. Went back for boxes of shells.

  The pile of weapons stared at him as he rinsed the vegetables.

  Sliced the onions, mushrooms, green peppers, enjoying their shape and color and their innocent scent. And as the knife went snick-chop against the maple grain the thought of Jesse ran like a thief under his skin. She stole all four directions, up and down, right and wrong…

  “FUCK!!!” he shouted. As if the word, the sound, presented with enough force, could make her materialize in the kitchen right before his eyes.

  For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge. Knowledge, knowledge who’s got the knowledge.

  Karson. Becky maybe.

  He wiped out a deep Wagner cast-iron frying pan. Shook HUNTER’S MOON / 179

  in some olive oil and turned on the gas. Threw in the garlic and the sliced steak. Watched the strips of beef singe and curl in the spatter-ing oil. Then he tossed in a double handful of loosely sliced onions.

  While the meat browned he opened cans of tomatoes, tomato sauce, and paste. Deep breaths to inhale the steam of onion, meat, and garlic.

  Chris. Doll face in the muddy snow with a massaged-in mortuary smile, rouge, and makeup. Somebody had grabbed at him, tried to catch him, maybe Cox, spooky old Cox, had pulled his suit coat up over his shoulders so his skinny white chest…