by Chuck Logan
But kids sense it in people.”
“And?”
Talme shrugged. “Kids like Emery more than they like Don. I mean, Don’s good to talk to—”
“But Emery’s the one who takes you deer hunting.”
“Yeah. Karson is Wonder Bread shipped from Minneapolis.
Emery’s the real thing in this county.”
“Except now the real thing is drinking a lot.”
“Yup. And everybody’s walking soft, scared shitless of what he might do. First Jesse marries another man. Then Chris.”
“What about Bud Maston?”
Talme laughed. “He’s sort of like the Goodyear blimp. He flies over us little people on his million-dollar skyhook. We wave.”
Harry put a five on the table to cover the coffee. Out on the street, they shook hands.
“He was a real sensitive kid, Griffin. Wrote, drew, played trumpet.
I can see him stealing those guns, but I don’t buy the part about him selling dope. At least, not in the winter. Dope shows up with the summer crowd. Everybody’s hooked on the legal stuff up here.
Liquid variety.” He shook his head.
“Why’d he do it, Talme? Your best guess.”
“Don’s got this harebrained theory, you know—that Larry Emery’s behind it, pulling the strings. He likes that conspiracy stuff. But I think Oswald and Chris acted alone. Chris was stoned. You read about it more and more. A parent tries to discipline a kid, the kid comes back with deadly force. Guess fresh air and pine trees are no insurance. Some shitty world, huh?”
“Yeah, well, thanks for the time.” They shook hands.
Talme held Harry’s hand in a vice of tendon and bone and as Harry narrowed his eyes, he added, “Jesse might fuck around and maybe she’s up to a gold-digger game with your rich friend. But Emery’s the one who really loves her.”
Harry nodded. Talme lowered his voice although no one HUNTER’S MOON / 247
was remotely within hearing distance. “Don’t provoke him about Jesse. Not when he’s drinking.”
Talme left. Damn. He meant to ask him who Miss Loretta was.
He went into the drugstore and bought a carton of Pall Malls. When he emerged, snowflakes littered down on the clean white slum of Stanley, Minnesota. Across the street, a chubby man in a blaze-orange parka, wool trousers, and hunting boots twisted a chain of yule boughs around an ornate light pole in front of the bank.
Then the man hurried down the street and joined a crowd of hunters forming in front of the sheriff’s office. Jerry Hakala stood in the bed of a pickup, his breath striking frosty commas in the air.
Harry walked close enough to hear snatches of conversation. Search party. For Becky.
Harry had just got the Jeep in gear when he saw Jay Cox’s blue truck drive by with Ginny Hakala sitting in the passenger seat. The truck made a right turn at the north end of town and drove out the jetty toward the Lutheran church. Harry followed it.
Cox went by the church and stopped in front of the Historical Society. He and Ginny each took a bag of groceries from the cab and carried them up the steps. The lady with the ramrod posture, the one Harry’d seen raise the flag the morning of the funeral, met them. She opened the door and Cox and Ginny carried the groceries inside. Then they came back out on the porch and Cox bent his head, listening, while the woman talked to them. Cox bobbed his head. She reached up and patted his scarred cheek. Ginny saw Harry first. She tugged on Cox’s sleeve.
Harry tensed behind the wheel.
Jay Cox did the strangest thing. He smiled at Harry. A simple straight smile. Then he raised his right hand and split the fingers into a peace sign.
Stunned and wary, Harry coiled in his seat as Cox ambled over to the Jeep.
“Owe you an apology, man,” said Cox, offering his knobby hand.
248 / CHUCK LOGAN
“I don’t get it, Cox,” said Harry, accepting the handshake.
“You ain’t supposed to, troop. Life is strange.”
41
Karson’s station wagon was parked in the Trinity Lutheran Church lot.
It was a time for caution. Too many jack-in-the-boxes were popping out of the woodwork in Stanley, Minnesota. Not a time to rush in.
Harry took the steps two at a time, shoved open the church doors, and entered a Germanic thicket of oak pews, pulpit, beams, and a choir loft. Stairs in the small lobby led to a basement common room.
Karson sat, head bent, pen busy at a desk in a glass-partitioned office thinly ruled with Levelor blinds. A secretary guarded his office door from behind a typewriter and telephone. Harry pointed at Karson.
“Do you have an appointment?” she inquired with enough blood rushing to her face that Harry figured she was hip to who he was.
“It’s all right,” said Harry, opening the door without knocking.
Karson’s eyes snapped up and he dropped his pen.
Harry tossed the manila envelope onto the desk. Karson saw his secretary talking urgently on the phone. Reassured, he opened the folder, looked at the page, folded it, and put it back. His eyes practically cracked the lenses on his horn-rims with the strain of keeping his face expressionless.
“Somebody nailed that to Maston’s door last night like Martin Luther nailed his edict to the cathedral,” said Harry.
“Not here, not now,” said Karson in a calm voice.
Harry plopped down into a deep cushioned chair in front of the desk. Comfy chair, comfy office. He had to look real hard among the piled bookcases, past the Native American pottery and Inuit stone carving to find a solitary picture of Jesus.
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Karson rose from his chair and closed the blinds. He returned, lit a Winston, and flipped on a Norelco clean-air machine next to his desk. “You have a very invasive style, Harry,” he said.
“You can’t have it both ways, Don. Either you keep confidences and let it all lay or you point fingers.”
“It’s not that simple.”
“Talked to your buddy Talme. Only straight guy I’ve met up here.”
He emphasized the word “straight.” Harry tapped the envelope.
“Why me? I might jump to some conclusions. That what you want?
Me going off the deep end because Emery and you have this feud?”
“I’ll deny having this conversation,” said Karson.
“And here I thought you and me had a dialogue going.” Harry shook his head. “So the squeeze is on, huh?” Harry’s eyes perused the bookcases behind the desk and stopped at a framed photograph on the bookcase behind Karson’s chair. He stood up, went behind the desk, and scrutinized the picture. “Well, no shit.” Karson and Talme stood arm in arm with Tad Clark, the men’s guru. Bud’s place in the background draped in summer maples.
Karson kept his eyes fixed on the wall clock. Harry removed the picture from the bookcase and dropped it on Karson’s desk. “The men’s movement?”
“You wouldn’t understand.”
“Sure I would. I was in a big men’s group, cut my hair short, wore green all the time, slept in the woods…”
Voices out by the receptionist’s desk. The door opened. Karson’s face relaxed.
The creak of cold leather announced Jerry Hakala. “Everything all right, Don?”
“I was just asking Griffin to leave,” said Karson.
“I’m a little worried about Don here, Jerry. I think somebody cut out his tongue,” said Harry amiably.
“He, uh, bothering you?” Jerry asked Karson.
“I just want him to leave.”
Jerry tapped Harry on the shoulder. “Why don’t you and 250 / CHUCK LOGAN
me step outside?” Harry picked up the envelope, winked at Karson, and followed Jerry out of the church into the parking lot. “Leave him be, Griffin, he don’t need encouragement spreading poison about Larry.” The young cop grinned and sunshine traced a faint webbing of scar tissue around his chin and eyebrows where he’d been massaged with pro hockey sticks.
Harry looked around. “Where’d you put Emery? In day care?”
Jerry smiled patiently and Harry pushed it. “I met your sister. She was just next door with Cox. Looks like they’re back together. When exactly did they break up?”
Jerry shifted his stance and cocked his head.
“If I’m such a pain in the ass, how come you guys let me hang around?” Harry asked.
“Just keep your nose clean and drive the speed limit, Griffin. Try not to annoy people.”
“Saw you in front of the police station giving a speech,” Harry persisted.
Jerry smiled, showing expensive bridgework. More hockey sticks.
“Becky Deucette hasn’t come home. Sheriff’s not too worried, but Uncle Mike thought it was time to organize a search.”
“Squared-away cop like you, doesn’t it bother you working for a sheriff who’s out hunting all the time, who smells like a bar towel?
You ever think of running for sheriff, Jerry? You have the name recognition.”
“Have a good day, Mr. Griffin.”
“Hey Jerry,” Harry called to him as he was getting into his Blazer.
“Who’s Miss Loretta?”
“That’d be Loretta Emery.” Jerry pointed to the Historical Society next to the church. “She’s in there. If you’re planning on bothering her, you’re on your own, brother.”
“Like in Sheriff Emery?”
“Everybody’s got a mother, Griffin.”
Jerry stood by his Blazer and watched Harry go to the Jeep, remove the carton of cigarettes, and wander out along the jetty, scuffing his boots against the snow-packed red shingle.
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He kicked at some gravel a plow had dredged up in frozen clumps like fat liver pills. He stooped, poked, looking for flat ones. When he found one he skipped it into the restless harbor. Looked over his shoulder at the Historical Society. Christ. She was Chris’s grandmother.
A hollow knock sounded behind him. Turning, he saw a shadowy figure hover in the bay windows of the old building, tap again on the glass, wave, and then draw an arm in a summoning gesture.
Harry mounted the granite stairs and crossed the porch. The striking woman who met him at the door was in her sixties and had deep Native-dark eyes and a remarkable trim figure in snug jeans.
A black leotard top pressed her still-full breasts flat against her chest and delineated the firm line of her rib cage. Her vigor brought the notion of yoga to mind.
Her face was smooth and doeskin soft, except for little gathers at the corners of her eyes, and where the curve of her jaw anchored to her ears. A hefty silver and turquoise barrette fastened the knot of her ponytail. She held a Phillips head screwdriver in her hand.
“Hello there,” she said. Her smile revealed even, slightly nicotine-stained teeth and drew faint stress lines, fine as thread across her cheeks.
Harry was at a loss what to say.
Swiftly, she rescued him. “I saw you throwing rocks. I’ve been watching boys throw rocks into the lake for…well, all my life. Would you give me a hand for a minute?”
Nervously, he handed her the cigarettes. She took them without comment. “Are you the…custodian?” He balked.
“Live-in caretaker. And you’re Bud Maston’s…house-guest. You’re the one who shot Chris.”
Harry lowered his eyes.
“Don’t look at the ground. Chris was trying to be strong. You were stronger and now you should know why. Come in. I’ve been expecting you.” She smiled warmly.
Nuts.
Reluctant now, Harry went in. The rooms were heaped with 252 / CHUCK LOGAN
antique junk like a circa 1900 garage sale. Storyboard pictures papered the wall. Men driving horses, pulling timber. Miners. Rafts of pulpwood behind tugboats. Stacks of musty newspapers, books, and magazines blocked a spiral staircase to the second story. A veil of dust covered everything. Motes sailed in the air. Harry spotted four cats in the first ten seconds.
A tall stepladder sat among the clutter. Above it, a new light fixture hung at a sprung angle at the terminus of exposed wires.
She set the carton of smokes aside on a table and asked, “Could you steady this ladder for a minute…” Harry gripped the ladder and she nimbly went up the steps. A spray of plaster dust sprinkled down as she attached the fixture with her screwdriver. “Ladder’s a little tippy,” she muttered from the corner of her mouth. “There. Go over and hit that light switch by the door.”
Harry flipped the switch and the light came on. Miss Loretta descended the ladder, brushed dust off her hands, and looked around.
“I used to keep it clean, but I just gave up,” she said. “Would you sign the ledger?” A book was open on a table next to a rolltop desk.
A hand of solitaire was laid out on the desk. Harry took the pen and signed. The last entry was a month before.
She studied his handwriting. “Slopes to the left. An introvert,” she said. “Griffin,” she mulled the phonetics. “That’s Irish, but you don’t look Irish.” She placed her fingers on his cheek. He drew back.
“Easy,” she said softly, exploring his face. She withdrew her hand.
“Hard to read the aura, could be classic Slav or…you could even be one of us.” She rubbed her fingertips together. “Suffering. Burns a little.”
She pointed to a table next to the bay windows. A carafe sat with two coffee cups, an ashtray, and a pack of Pall Mall straights. Harry sat down. She poured two cups of coffee. Then she held up the cigarettes.
Harry declined. “Too strong for me.”
She smiled merrily. “We invented tobacco to give you cancer.”
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“You’re Indian?”
“Enough so I don’t try to pass for white, like some people I know.”
“What tribe?”
“Hard to pick one.” She blew a stream of blue smoke. “My family got around a lot.”
Harry took a sip of strong chicory coffee. “Miss Loretta. This morning I was up on Nanabozho Point with your son—”
She made a distasteful grunt in her throat. “That boy and I haven’t been talking. I give up on him five years ago when he came back from Duluth with his dirty money and built the house for Jesse.”
“Becky Deucette was up there.”
“Ah, Becky,” she brightened. “Is she well?”
“Hardly. Your son—” She glowered at him. He rephrased. “The sheriff is trying to find her and question her. She’s off running through the woods like a—”
“Buck-ass wild Indian,” Miss Loretta said happily. “Good. I told her to stay clear of it. Silly damn business that’s been going on forever.” She leaned back and closed her eyes. “Ever since eighteen-forty when the first Hakalas and Mastons shot it out over a trapline.
All in there on the wall, you care to read it. They’ve been fighting back and forth more than a hundred years. When the Mastons found the iron, the Hakalas brought up the Reds to organize the union to strike the mine. My late husband arrived from Tennessee in the latter stages of that invasion. Latest round is Bud Maston closing the mill.
Doesn’t surprise me one bit Chris tried to shoot him.”
“Becky said I should talk to you,” Harry said uncertainly.
Loretta Emery smiled. “Yes, she wants me to take a look.” She pressed her finger to Harry’s chest. “To see what’s in there.”
Harry was trapped humoring a crazy old lady. “Becky knows something I need to know,” he began.
She smiled at his discomfort. “She knows that greed built Maston County. Now greed is going to tear it down.”
“I was looking to get a more specific description of things.”
254 / CHUCK LOGAN
Miss Loretta laughed. “Okay. I’ll tell you exactly. You say you were up on the point this morning. When you look around up there, what do you see?”
Harry shrugged. “Lake Superior.”
“What else?”
“The
ridge.”
She nodded. “You’re getting warm. And…?”
“The open pit.”
“Yes. The pit.” Her dark eyes kindled. She raised her finger. “You understand that if you ask for something, you might really get it?”
Harry sat politely. A shaggy gray tomcat arched its back against his leg. Out the window he saw Jerry Hakala lounging against his police car, arms folded. “Sure,” he said.
“Sure,” she chuckled and her eyes danced. An exotic granny Beatnik hanging out in musty piles of junk.
She put her hands behind her head and undid her barrette. With a toss of her trim neck, she shook out her hair, stroked her fingers through the thick graying strands, and pulled it down along her throat. She offered the Pall Malls again with ceremonial graciousness.
This time, politely, Harry took one. A cloud of smoke rose over the table.
“I will tell you a story about Nanabozho,” she said very circum-spectly.
“Pardon?”
“Indian fella you meet wandering up in those woods on the point.
Got to be careful with him. He’s the trickster. He was very strong around here at one time.”
“Uh-huh,” said Harry cautiously. Ojibway culture hero. Some local color mentioned in the Superior Hiking Trail brochure. Christ, coffee and smokes with Miss Loretta came with an obligatory oral history recital.
“Well,” she said, getting comfortable, “way back, he was out walking through the woods and he met the first white man. He’d never seen one before, so he was curious. They sat down and had a talk. The white man showed him a little piece of yellow metal.
Gold, of course. The white man was looking for it.
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“Nanabozho pointed out all the other things in the forest, the herbs, the trees, the animals. But the white man only had eyes for the yellow lump.”
Miss Loretta paused and her eyes held him with the power of deep forest. Empty, to casual inspection. Teeming, to the greater senses.
“Go on,” he said cautiously.
She nodded and continued. “Well, Nanabozho was puzzled. So that night when the white man was asleep, he pulled his chest apart, and removed his heart to inspect it. The answer was clear. A very big spider of a kind he’d never seen before had all eight legs tightly wrapped around the white man’s heart.”