by Chuck Logan
“Let me catch you,” said Harry.
“Uh-huh. It was a test, to see what you’d do. You could have murdered me and stuck my body in the bottom of the lake.”
“Like I ‘murdered’ your brother?”
She looked away. “You didn’t kill Chris on purpose.”
“Then why’d you do this to my face?”
“At the time I didn’t know. But I’ve thought it all through and now I know.”
“You saw us that morning. You swept the tracks so your dad wouldn’t…”
“Uh-huh. Mom’s got enough trouble without that.”
Harry seized her jacket and pulled her forward. “For Chrissake, Becky, quit screwing around—”
“Watch it. Dad could be out there, but Mitch is there for sure watching you through a rifle scope,” she cautioned as her eyes roved confidently toward the treeline. Harry sat back and opened his hands to show they were empty. She smiled. “Sorry, I have to do this my way and I have to trust you more.”
“How do you propose to do that?”
HUNTER’S MOON / 237
She shrugged. “Tell me about yourself.”
“Like what?”
“What was your mom like?”
“She taught me to read and to draw. She died when I was young.”
“What about your dad?”
Harry took a breath and it just came out; because he was sitting on a mountaintop talking to a kid, he figured it was all right. “He was an officer in the army—he was in Europe and Korea and Vietnam. Now he’s a writer.”
“Poor Harry,” said Becky as she stood up and dusted damp bark from the seat of her trousers. “Just then, you reminded me of Chris—afraid to face the truth.” She chastised him with an intelligent frown. “You lied. Bud told us all about you. Your father was in the army all right, but they were going to send him to jail for being a coward and he died drunk in a bar. Bud said that’s why you never quit once you start.”
Harry sat perfectly still, not even reacting when he saw Mitch Hakala step from the trees 50 yards away wearing illegal gray tree bark camo and carrying a scoped rifle.
“You’re a pretty smart kid,” said Harry.
“I’m pretty smart, period,” said Becky. “And I need to know exactly why you’re here, but it looks like you still haven’t figured it out for yourself.”
“Why’d you get me up here?”
“To tell you to go see Miss Loretta. Take her a present when you go. A carton of Pall Malls.” She turned and walked toward Mitch and the trees.
“What? Who’s Loretta?” he shouted after her. But she and the boy were gone. Harry sat alone on the gnarled roots of the twisted tree and watched the sunlight play checkers on the vast plain of Superior.
You’re eight years old and you creep to the edge of the stairs in a rural Michigan farmhouse and listen to your uncles drink 238 / CHUCK LOGAN
their beer and tell their war stories and you hear a few words and suddenly you’re more alone in the world.
You learn how your dad really died in the war, how your dad could savage other men in the ring and beat your mother when he was drunk, but when it came to the German army…
Learn how your uncles and your dad went to fight Hitler as brand-new paratroopers in the same company of the 82nd and when the time came, how your dad chickened out in the door and refused to jump into Sicily.
So they brought him over to the invasion beach on a boat and sent him to the line, to the Biazza Ridge, where his company was dug in and he took one look at the panzers of the Hermann Göring Division and he deserted his buddies and ran away.
Back in England, waiting on a court-martial for cowardice, he got himself stabbed to death in a drunken bar fight over a whore and you weren’t even born yet.
Harry threw pebbles over the drop, one after another. His sense of physical fear had always been acute by a factor of imagination squared, but he’d also had his dad’s reflexes, so he went into Golden Gloves and the factories and streets of Detroit and then the jungles of Vietnam to put his blood through the hairiest strainer he could find to cleanse the coward gene and he never ran away.
He dropped his chin on his chest. Except from his wife and kid.
Except from Linda Margoles and his whole goddamn life.
He didn’t plan it, but he wound up coming down through the low ridges and the swamp where the shooting happened.
When the deer snorted in the thicket, he didn’t even break stride.
Damn deer was laughing at him from deep inside the rhubarb-colored briar patch.
He walked an arc around the brush and the deer started its stamping and blowing. Arrogant fucker. Serve him right if I put one up his nostril.
Harry trudged back to the lodge. Karson. The schoolteacher, Talme. Now Miss Loretta? The list was getting longer.
HUNTER’S MOON / 239
Not even halfway through the morning and he was beat. Should have bought that bottle.
40
Stanley High School was near the hospital in the hilly streets above the town. The spacious tented halls echoed with departed iron wealth.
In the principal’s office Harry asked the secretary, “Where would I find Karl Talme this hour?”
She gave him an officious once-over. “Are you a parent?” she asked.
“Yes,” said Harry. Which was true, but not accurate under the circumstances. “It concerns a student.”
“You must be new?”
“Yup. Just moved in.”
“People are moving out, not moving in,” she said dryly. Talme taught Senior English the next two hours. He had a break between classes in twenty minutes. She gave him the room number and craned her neck over her desk as he walked back into the hall.
On his way out to the parking lot, he passed beneath Bud’s photograph enshrined above a brass plaque commemorating the new gym. The old Bud, Huck Finn playing Citizen Kane, his face radiating civic virtue and noblesse oblige.
Steam came from the grille of the green Jeep Wrangler parked next to Bud’s Jeep. Mitch. His car hadn’t been there when Harry pulled into the lot. He smoked a cigarette, watched two firemen flood a skating rink on a snowy athletic field, and kept an eye out for Mitch Hakala. Back inside, he quick-stepped at the bell to get to Talme’s room before classes changed, found the room number, and glanced through the glass-paned door. Talme sat at his desk. Students filed past him picking up assignments.
Not that many students. Even during class change, the halls were half empty. Harry let the sparse herd jostle him. When the room was empty, he went in.
240 / CHUCK LOGAN
Talme had the build of a fireplug that liked to eat a lot. Comfortably powerful. He rearranged his thick glasses to focus on Harry.
“Mr. Talme, could I have a few minutes of your time? My name is…”
“I know who you are. You disrupted the funeral, you called my house the other night. My wife said you were rude on the phone.”
His tone was matter-of-fact. Competent, grounded guy.
“You were Chris Deucette’s homeroom teacher…”
Talme cut him off. “Don Karson told me he was talking to you.
He runs his mouth too damn much.”
“Yeah, he does. How about I buy you a cup of coffee and we talk about it.”
Talme’s sigh conveyed an appreciation of the absurdity of life.
“Sure. What the hell. You know where the Timber Cruiser Cafe is?”
Harry nodded. “Meet me there at noon.” Talme dropped his heavy eyes back to his study plan.
The students moving through the halls parted around an immov-able object ahead of him. Mitch Hakala wore a varsity jacket with a shoulder patch. Hockey. The word Captain was stitched across it.
His hunting boots dripped melted snow.
“Hiya,” he said.
“Hello, Mitch.”
“You want to know about Chris Deucette?” Mitch asked.
Harry nodded. Mitch’s eyes were serious as ball bea
rings and Harry absolutely believed they had been tracking him through a rifle scope up on the ridge.
“Talme won’t tell you all of it.” The incorruptible temper of hard youth was in his face and it reminded Harry of a whole generation of other young faces. GIs.
“So?” said Harry.
“C’mon,” said Mitch, “I gotta take a leak.” Harry followed him down the hall and into a tiled lavatory that smelled nostalgically of stale cigarette smoke. Mitch pointed to the toilets. “In there. Middle stall.”
Harry entered the stall, lowered himself to the seat, and HUNTER’S MOON / 241
closed the door. The interior had been freshly painted. A crude drawing of a vagina was laboriously sketched with pencil over the toilet paper dispenser. The walls were scarred with eroded graffiti beneath the paint.
One of them had been scratched deeply into the metal of the door with a sharp object. He angled around to use the light to see the scratches in relief.
CHRIS DUCETTE SUCKS DICK.
Mitch waited in the hall. He inclined his head, “You wanna talk?”
“I’m staying out at Maston’s,” Harry nodded.
“I’ll let you know when I’m coming,” said Mitch.
Karl Talme canted his shoulders sideways to fit through the door to the cafe, came to the booth where Harry sat, and tossed down a high school yearbook. Last year’s. A paper marker stuck from the pages. “Go on. Open it,” said Talme. A slender waitress brought coffee. Ginny Hakala was nowhere in sight.
The marked page showed small pictures of the sophomore class.
Harry scanned the young faces. “He’s not here,” said Harry.
“Sure he is, his name’s there.”
Harry found the name and backtracked through the block of pictures. His eyes raised to Talme. The picture, even in small scale, was not the Chris he’d met. The boy had shorter, tidier hair and a wry, devilish smile on his face.
“Here’s the class picture he handed out,” said Talme, putting the picture on the yearbook page. The resemblance to his sister was pronounced in the bone structure and the wide intelligent eyes. No raccoon circles. No morbid druggy smirk.
Talme lit a pipe and puffed while Harry flipped the picture over and read. “To Mr. Talme. Huzzah! For showing me the difference between commas and semicolons. Next year on to the ablative.” It was signed Chris “Hemingway” Deucette.
242 / CHUCK LOGAN
“Next year, on to the ablative…” Harry’s lungs caved in with a long sigh. “Not the kid I met,” he said.
“You killed,” said Talme. His smile was phlegmatic. “I’m not judging you, Griffin. The law does that, and they found you—what?—a victim of tragic circumstances.”
“When was this picture taken?”
“Over a year ago. He was my best sophomore English student. I have some things he wrote at home, if you’re interested. He had talent.”
“Where was he living then? I mean, who was his mother with?”
“Jesse.” Talme said heavily. A sound to conjure with. He sucked on his pipe.
“Who?”
“Larry Emery.” Talme struck a match and relit his pipe.
“Were they ever going to get married?” asked Harry.
“That’s one of the big local mysteries. They did go to Don’s church together.”
“Church?” Harry raised his eyebrows.
Talme studied the bowl of his pipe over his glasses. “I know what you mean,” he said. “She has a quality of animal magnetism. Or you could say she’s a cunt.”
“They broke up,” said Harry.
“On a regular basis. She started tending bar at the VFW. To spite Larry.”
“You know Jay Cox?”
“Drifter…good carpenter.”
“Jesse take up with Cox?”
“They were never an item. Cronies maybe. Chris was close to Cox.
They did things together.”
“Did Emery try to get her back?”
“Larry’s our local paradox. He’s solid as a wall. But he lets Jesse walk all over him.” Talme shrugged his sloping shoulders. “When Chris was living with Emery he was an A student. Then Jesse moved out and he grew his hair and started wracking up C s and D s. Played rebel.”
“Bud Maston arrived,” said Harry.
HUNTER’S MOON / 243
“Exactly,” said Talme. “Our own hundred-proof millionaire. He had the biggest house in the county and a lake to boot. Jesse saw him coming a long way off.”
“That simple?”
“No, in fairness, she blossomed at first with Maston. They were going to change the world, those two.”
“Karson told me about their plans for the mill.”
“Then Maston quit on her. Just went to hell.”
“And the kids?”
“After Jesse moved to the lake, Chris really went off the deep end.
Truancy. Drugs. Maston couldn’t enforce discipline, you ask me.”
“What about Becky?”
“Genius-range. Four-point-oh grade point average. Maxed the SATs. She’s talking to Carleton College about a scholarship. Becky will land on her feet.”
Harry leaned forward. “Will she? She’s gone missing.”
“Maybe,” said Talme. “Or maybe she’s just grabbing for attention.”
He busied his stumpy fingers, digging at his pipe bowl with a shiny tool. “Oh, she’s comfortable with being bright. It’s puberty she runs from.”
Harry cocked his head.
Talme shrugged. “Just my admittedly chauvinist opinion. Now that she’s developed tits and an ass, maybe she’s nervous that her mother will hatch out in her hormones.”
“And Chris?”
“The opposite. Becky has her negative role model to measure herself against. Chris had confusion.”
Harry waited for a full minute. Talme fixated on his tool, folding it and twisting it.
“Something turned in Chris. He developed a…hatred for everybody who tried to help him,” said Talme softly. “It was a horrible thing to see in a boy.”
“He pulled a gun on you?”
Talme raised his shoulders. “Ah, yeah. About a month ago. He came to school stoned in the middle of the afternoon. I grabbed him and pushed him into the teacher’s lounge. He
244 / CHUCK LOGAN
stuck the gun in my face and said if I ever touched him again, he’d kill me.”
“What’d you do?”
“I took it away from him.”
Harry raised an eyebrow.
“I teach Judo,” Talme said simply.
“You had many kids pull weapons on you?”
“Once a boy took out a knife. But he was showing off and I talked him into putting it down.”
“So Chris wasn’t showing off?”
“No. Chris had a reason for carrying that gun.”
“What reason?”
“Why do you carry a gun, Griffin?”
Harry was silent for a moment. “For protection,” he said. “The other kids? They pick on him?”
Talme exhaled. “This is really more Don Karson’s province.”
“Why Karson?”
“School retains him to counsel students in certain situations. He’s got a master’s in psychology—”
“Talme, how far out in the woods are we? Do people up here say gay or do they say faggot?”
Talme took off his glasses, pulled out a handkerchief, and slowly cleaned them one lens at a time. “I guess they’d prefer not to talk about it at all. Which is the problem.”
“What happened?”
Talme cleared his throat. “There was an incident involving Chris and another student. The student handled it quite well, but it was overheard by other kids and—”
“Give me a date,” said Harry.
“Last June, end of the school year. Chris propositioned another boy. Here at school.” Talme grimaced. “The boy came to me for advice. We didn’t deal with it well. We thought we did at the time, but now, think
ing back, we didn’t—”
“Run it down,” said Harry.
Talme spread his hands. “We didn’t bring in the parents.”
HUNTER’S MOON / 245
“When you say ‘we,’ who are you talking about?”
“I called Don in and we kept it between us. I would have gone to Emery but Don convinced me to let him deal with it. He has this notion that kids are entitled to their privacy same as adults.” Talme shook his head. “Nothing’s private in this town. Emery knew and he and Don had quite a scene. Now, after the shooting, Don’s real nervous. You know, what if there’s a grand jury and Emery uses it against him somehow.”
“There’s not going to be a grand jury. So why’s Karson antsy?
Minister? Pillar of the community?”
Talme exhaled. “Don used to have a big church in a fat suburb down in the Cities. There was a scandal. He’s up here doing pen-ance. We’re his hair shirt.”
“A scandal with boys in it?”
“A perception of impropriety among tight-assed members of his congregation. He smoked a joint—the kind you set on fire, not the kind you pee through—with some kids on a retreat. Emery dug it up and accused him right in church in front of God and everybody, as it were.”
“So Karson looked for something on Emery?”
Talme’s gaze deflected, explored the middle distance. “It goes back and forth. Don likes to play politics. There’s this…animosity between him and Emery. This clash of styles. Almost as if Don was gleeful that Chris was experimenting with sexual adventure. Like it was a repudiation of Emery’s moral standing. He won’t admit it. Hell, he’s not even aware of it. But I think, when he counseled Chris, he was trying to turn him against Emery. Whether they meant to or not, those two turned that boy into a battleground.”
“This have something to do with those groups you go to in Duluth?”
“Hell,” Talme rumbled. “I’m just curious. I even tried Tai Chi once.
Wasn’t built for it. But Don gets pretty deep into that men’s group stuff.”
“So he sees Emery as the old-fashioned, two-fisted macho man?”
“Wish it was that simple, Griffin.” Talme peered into his 246 / CHUCK LOGAN
coffee cup. “It’s about a certain kind of credentials that gives someone authority. Don’s an intellectual. He gets furious when I talk like this.