by Chuck Logan
Harry couldn’t stop shivering, even after a hot shower. He inspected the road-killed pumpkin of his face in the bathroom mirror and groaned.
HUNTER’S MOON / 303
Got my nose.
One of the few things he’d been proud of was that his straight nose had come through the first half of his life undamaged. He plastered a thick strip of adhesive over the swelling and smoothed the ends under his puffy black eyes.
Be honest. You’re scared. Everybody you ran into today frightened you. Jesse hatching out of her vamp cocoon into a basket case.
Cox—saving your ass—that was really creepy. Christ, the two of us couldn’t handle Emery. If Jerry hadn’t showed up…Okay, so you’re on a snipe hunt with Franz Kafka. You been there before.
Talk to Mike Hakala. Showdown, nothing wild. Find out what happened in October and why in the hell he let Chris slide by making threats and hauling a gun to school. Get him to…what? Lock up the sheriff?
Not thinking clearly. The way to shake the fear was to do something. Anything. Just go into town. Get directions. Find out where Hakala lives and have it out.
He dressed quickly, snatched up the .45, and fishtailed out of the drive.
Highway 7 greeted him with raving cadenzas of snow that streamed down like the quadrillion of all his fears. Snug inside Bud’s Jeep, though. The heater whirred reliably. The radio popped on at the touch of a finger and the Ojibway Tabernacle Choir beat their goddamn drums.
The shape war danced out of the dark, up out of the swirling white ground. Harry stabbed the brakes and the deer froze in the headlights.
Big goddamn buck. Long left tine.
Chris’s deer, mocking him like everything he didn’t know, standing there, a statue in the headlights. With a yell, he stamped on the gas.
The deer scrambled, hoofs slipping on the icy asphalt. Harry drove off the shoulder and struck the animal a glancing blow with the left fender. The buck rolled over stunned and lay in knee-deep snow.
Groped for the .45 next to him. Fumbled, knocked it down between the seats. Reached into the back. Box with jumper 304 / CHUCK LOGAN
cables. Tools. His hand closed on the wooden handle of the army surplus entrenching shovel. He sprang out the door and slid in the snow. The deer had his hindquarters up and planted his antlers as a fulcrum to push his body upright.
Harry skipped around the struggling animal and the ditch blazed in a jukebox frenzy of high beams, dome, and dash lights and the snow came on like fever in the galloping drums and the shadows of man and deer jumped huge against the snow-truncated trees.
Savagely, he stepped in and swung two-handed and hit the antlers with a stinging clang of steel on bone. Damn deer was up! Seriously up on all four feet.
Face-to-face. Harry felt the hot breath snort from the buck’s nostrils and saw its neck swollen, thick, lowering, aligning the horns.
Harry stared into the wild eyes of the thing he didn’t understand, that he was trying to kill, and saw its beauty and its fury.
Thirteen tines of cruel bone sliced the air and ripped the shovel from his hands. With a hysterical laugh, he dashed back behind the car door. The buck pranced once, turned sideways, and disappeared into the night.
Time out. Call it a day, man. What was he doing in a world where he wound up going hand-to-hand with jealous sheriffs and wild fucking animals?
Harry turned off the radio and as his breath returned to normal he watched the snow quietly smooth out the wrinkles of the bizarre encounter in the ditch. He found the shovel, dug out the mired wheels, put the Jeep in four-wheel low, backed out of the ditch, and returned to the lodge.
49
The blue Escort was parked next to the burned hulk of his Honda and Jesse sat on the steps, smoking HUNTER’S MOON / 305
a cigarette. He climbed out of the Jeep, still shaking from the damn deer.
A scarf hid her hair but her face shone in the yard light with a bags-packed, leaving-on-a-jet-plane smile.
Harry opened the door. Jesse removed her coat. She wore a pleated blue dress, low snowboots. She pulled the scarf from her head. She’d been to Duluth, he’d bet. Her hair bounced, waved with the pampered coif of a beauty salon. Had her nails done, too.
Her lacquered fingers were cool as dice on his chin. “Jay told me,”
she winced appreciatively at his swollen nose and eyes. “One of these days Larry’s drinking is going to lose him his job,” She reached in her purse. Took out a present wrapped like a party favor, twisted on the ends.
“What’s that?” he asked.
“For you. Open it.”
Sunglasses. Expensive Ray-Bans.
“Put ’em on,” she coaxed. “Do wonders for your eyes.”
He placed the glasses on the table by the door. She reached back in her purse. “They go with this.” She handed him an airline ticket.
“Thought this was for Cox.”
“Jay?” She blushed. “Nah, Jay’s got other plans. That ticket was for Becky, but she’s still playing lost. What about it? A month on the beach. We could heal up. Forget about…winter.”
She kicked off her boots and walked into the den area, unconcerned with the wreckage of the bookcases strewn on the carpet.
Distracted, she walked past the orange glow of her son’s story on the computer screen and punched the CD player. Harry trailed her and slipped the .45 under the scattered paper on the table.
She twirled back into the main room, improvising a few dance steps to the piano and guitar riff of “Riders on the Storm.”
“How much are you going to get?” Harry asked.
“The basic deal. I’m out of here. On my own for a change so I won’t owe anybody…”
306 / CHUCK LOGAN
Harry furrowed his brow, which hurt. “What’s Jay get?”
She ignored him and glanced at the faint leftover scrawl on the wall: IS A FUCKER. She walked around the mattress spread in front of the fireplace. “Is this where you sleep? On the floor?” she asked.
“So when does it happen?”
“Tomorrow. He gives me a check, I sign some papers. I don’t even have to come to court when it’s final. One-stop shopping.” She stretched her arms and fell backwards onto the couch. Whee! Like a kid.
“What about Becky?”
“Larry’ll watch her.”
“She’s out in the woods, freezing!”
Jesse tidied her new hair. Minded a Cretan spit curl that curtsied over her forehead. Blew it aside. “Becky,” she said, “is out there having a ball. Being the main topic of conversation. She’s fine. Larry taught her. He used to run the winter survival course in the army, up in Alaska before he went to Vietnam. Probably what fucked up his head, the abrupt temperature change—”
“Jesse. Emery’s out of control.”
She shrugged. Brightened again. “So what do you say? Day after tomorrow, high noon, be standing in front of the Timber Cruiser Cafe. I’ll pick you up and we’ll drive that old rusty Escort to Duluth and leave it to rot in the airport parking lot.”
“Why the hell would I do that?”
She curled her legs under her on the couch. The firelight licked the curve of her calves. She wound the springy, errant coil of hair around her finger.
“Chemistry. In case you haven’t noticed, we have something…”
She shifted her haunches. The pleats flowed across her thighs and carved knees. “And not just sex, Harry. This only happens to people once.”
The phone rang. At the third ring Jesse inquired, “You going to answer it?”
“Uh-uh.” Harry stared directly into her eyes. “If I did, we both might disappear.”
HUNTER’S MOON / 307
She softened when he said that, shucked off an entire layer. “It’s Bud.” She pursed her lips and cocked her head. “You don’t owe him anything.”
“You here. Be hard to explain—”
“Do me a favor?” she asked. “Don’t say his name for the rest of the night, okay?”
<
br /> “Okay.”
The fire crackled and a tongue of flame shot up. Jesse shivered and hugged herself.
“You all right?” he asked.
“Feel like that piece of wood. Like you’re going to burn me up.
Felt that way the first time I saw you.”
He took a small taste of the optimism that radiated from her eyes.
She was so good, so believable. Tip Kidwell believed. Bud believed.
Somewhere out there Emery was loading a gun.
“We’d be great,” she said.
“You don’t say,” said Harry.
“Just knew this was going to happen the minute you walked up the steps,” she said.
“This,” said Harry dryly.
“Yes.” She slipped off the couch and approached him. Their hips touched. She inclined her head, her large dark eyes tilted up, and the Barbara Stanwyck hairdo tumbled across her face. “So you going to burn me up or what?”
His hands melted into the warm firmness of her shoulders. She felt so good…
“Undress me,” she said.
Harry thought about it.
Her, lying there naked in the firelight. Once he got that far, he wouldn’t be able to imagine her anywhere but in a bed close to him.
This was the art of her changeling energy, to have this effect on a man.
Her face in the firelight was upturned, open, and guileless. Just like that first morning in the woods under the horned moon. Isn’t it supposed to be like this, her wide eyes prompted. Like magic?
308 / CHUCK LOGAN
Their bodies would consume each other, as hot and graceful as the flames, and drop by drop the fire would dry their sweat.
But most magic is just tricks. She was recruiting him for the Flying Scrotums, her high-wire sex act. A pyramid of men with her at the center designed so that at the last second they would all collapse and she would be left standing. Don’t buy into those dewy eyes.
Those are Aztec eyes.
She drew her finger down his chest, indolently circling his heart.
“What’re you thinking about, Harry?”
“Evil. It’s just like love. You need two people to make it work.”
“That’s the truth.”
“You fucked them all, didn’t you?”
“I know you all. And none of you know me because as soon as your pricks get soft you go blind.”
“We never talked about precautions.”
“Don’t worry. I’m not fertile. The pill made me swell up. And I never trusted those IUD things. Diaphragms always struck me as something you see hanging on a rack in an auto parts store.” She took a deep breath. “And getting a guy to wear a rubber is like getting a kid to eat broccoli. So I had my tubes tied. Now when my period comes, it’s like empty cars going by.”
He moved back, wary of the power of her sincerity.
She locked on to his reaction, stepped forward, closing the distance. Touched his cheek. “Tell me what you want, Harry…”
Her fingers plucked at his belt, undoing it. She popped the buttons of his jeans. “Okay then, I’ll tell you. You want what you all want.
To be forgiven,” she said. “For all your crimes, all your sins, and your dirty little thoughts.”
She knelt, easing his jeans down over his hips, tethering him at the knees.
Her hair grazed the skin below his navel. “Why is it,” she mused,
“that when men want to be forgiven I’m the one winds up on my knees?”
HUNTER’S MOON / 309
Something about the way her fingers moved, fluttering across the scar on his left hip.
Like she’d done in the dark bathroom that first night.
Like Ginny Hakala. Checking him out.
Rough, his hand seized her hair and pulled her head up. “What is it?” He growled. The wet smile on her lips froze into shock.
“What?” She wavered.
Harry wrenched her to her feet, hauled up his pants, and dragged her tripping across the main room, up the steps into the den. With his free hand, he scattered the piles of paper on the dining room table. She saw the Colt lying there and pulled away.
“Jesus, Harry, now wait a minute…”
He found what he was looking for. The David postcard and under it the snapshot of Chris with a hard-on, displaying the cherries tattooed on his hip. He thrust it in her face.
“What is it?” he demanded.
“My God,” she muttered, wincing, averting her face from the drugged smile, the aroused nakedness of her son. She shut her eyes.
Her throat muscles gagged. Harry shook her.
“Tell me, goddamnit!”
“I don’t know. Where’d you get… that?”
She could fake anything. Palpable horror. The tears coming to her eyes. Anything.
“You people,” he hissed. “What did you do to that kid?”
She shook her head. “Stop it, Harry, you’re…scaring me.”
He pulled her to him, bearing down on her wrists. There’d be bruises.
“That hurts!” she cried. Defiance crowded the pain from her eyes.
She surged, fighting him. Her fists hammered his chest. He raised his hands to defend, but somehow his arms wound up around her and they embraced and it was like he’d never kissed a woman before and she was crying, kisses full of salt all over his face.
“Hold me,” she cried.
310 / CHUCK LOGAN
“No.” The muscles in his arms and shoulders cracked and burned with the strain of pushing her away.
“We only got this one chance. We gotta take it…”
He shoved her away and she fell to the carpet. She sobbed and pounded the floor. “I only want what’s due me, goddamnit. I worked my ass off and I’m still driving that goddamn Ford with a loose muffler. Bud and I had an agreement! He lied. You all lie to get what you want!”
“I don’t believe you.” He kicked the picture at her. It skittered off her knee.
She began to cry again. “It all went to hell when you showed up!
I don’t know what happened to Chris. Now everybody’s acting crazy.
Jay. Larry. I don’t know where Becky is or what she’s doing. I’m scared, Harry…I know I did some things wrong. I’ll make it up.”
She reached for him.
This is how she lives with Emery. She expects to be taken back.
“Stay away from me,” he yelled at her.
“Please,” she pleaded. “Let’s get a motel room. Away from all of them. Just stay with me till it’s over.”
He couldn’t deal with it. If she stayed around, he’d melt down.
He went to the main room, grabbed her coat, boots, the airline ticket. The ridiculous sunglasses. Stuffed them in her purse. Opened the door, threw them past the porch into the snow.
Then he pulled her up. She clung to him. “Harry, look at me!
Please see me,” she pleaded.
“No!” He manhandled her to the door and pushed her out. She stumbled back and forth barefoot on the tilted porch with her hands tangled in her new hair. Then she began pounding on the door. He shut his eyes and turned his back, wincing each time her fist slammed the wood. Finally, exhausted, she grabbed her things and went to her car. For a few more agonizing minutes she idled in front of the steps, face slick with tears in the yard lights. Snow poured silently.
“Get out!” He shouted. Sheer will. Go out there, kiss away the tears. Don’t trust it. He wanted to believe her.
The Escort lurched down the drive. He dashed outside. “Wait,”
he yelled after her lights as they turned onto the road.
HUNTER’S MOON / 311
His heart caved in when he saw her boots crumpled where he’d thrown them. He picked them up and ran after her, down the driveway out onto the road. Her taillights disappeared around a bend.
Lifted him right out of his life. Right, wrong, up, down. Didn’t cut shit with her.
“You crazy, vulgar beautiful bitch!”
he shouted hopelessly to the blowing snow and with the words, fear scooped his chest. Shit!
Desiring her was an incantation that would summon Emery out of the storm like that goddamn buck.
He ran for the lodge and snatched up the Colt. A few minutes later, the phone started ringing. He ignored it and switched off the lights. Embers glowed in the fireplace. Deep wood’s eyes. Emery’s eyes.
He hugged the pistol to his chest and waited.
Got a problem? Call a cop. Harry laughed dryly.
Damn. He wished Randall were here.
50
Must have nodded off when the phone jarred him upright and, fumbling for the pistol, he cracked open crusted eyes and very clearly, he recalled standing face-to-face with the deer.
Damn deer kicked his ass. Just like Emery.
Then Jesse…
Ring-ring-ring.
“Stay in your own goddamn lane,” he yelled. Finally the ringing stopped.
He tried to bring up spit but he came up bone dry with an 800-pound mongrel thirst gnawing on him with sloppy salivating gums, yellow teeth, and a huge wet tongue.
The pain radiating from his nose had been fluid and hot and now it set in his neck and shoulders like cold cement. He lurched to a sitting position and discovered that his whole body had the muscle flu and he had cardboard for skin.
312 / CHUCK LOGAN
The phone again. Fuck it. Jesse’s voice could cast a spell. Wasn’t going near it. He’d get his head straight. Then go find Hakala. He made coffee. Had to rebuild himself block by block.
Came to believe that we were powerless over alcohol…
Christ, back to square one. I pray the Lord my soul to take…
Screw that. Too late for that. He slapped a Doors CD on the sound system and turned up the volume. Harry put himself back together with Jim Morrison, coffee, and cigarettes.
The phone rang intermittently and he ignored it and he was on his second pot of coffee, and the third time through “Moonlight Drive,” sitting at the computer in the den, worrying his teeth with his toothbrush, staring at the orange type of Chris’s strange story, trying to make it all fit, when he heard tires in the drive and saw the flash of lights.
Automatically, he reached for the Colt.
Jerry Hakala climbed out of the police Blazer and, with a noticeable sag to his usually athletic gait, his boots crunched through the broken glass and creaked up the porch boards. His square fist banged urgently on the door. Harry yanked it open.