High Hunt

by Eddings, David

  "Just hang tough," I said. "The point of this game is that the person who takes the next to the last drink out of his glass — not the last one, but the next to the last one — has to pay a penalty of some kind."

  "What kind of penalty?" Sloane asked.

  "Any penalty we decide. Everybody gets to kick him in the butt, or he has to go outside and bay at the moon, or he — or she — has to take off one piece of clothing or —”

  "Hey," Helen said, "I like that last one." Some how I knew she would. "That sounds like a swell game."

  "That's a pretty big glass," Jack objected.

  "That's the point," I explained. "Nobody can just chug-a-lug it down. You can take a big drink or a little one, but remember if the next player finishes it off, you gotta peel off one item of clothing — a sock, your pants, a bra, or whatever."

  We haggled a bit about the rules, but finally everybody agreed to them. We all discarded our shoes to get that out of the way. I caught a glimpse of Sandy's face. It seemed completely indifferent. We pulled our seats into a kind of circle and began passing the glass around.

  Sloane, of course, polished off the first glass, and Helen, with a great deal of giggling and ostentatious display of leg, peeled off a stocking. I think that mentally she was still at the "You show me yours, and I'll show you mine" stage of development. Then Jack caught Sandy, and she mutely followed Helen's example.

  It went several rounds, with Sloane, Jack, and me pretty well able to control it — simply because we could take bigger drinks. I hadn't dropped it on Clydine yet.

  "Come on, crumb," she hissed at me. "I'm beginning to feel like a virgin." Helen was down to her panties and bra, and Sandy was in her slip. I'd lost one sock and both Jack and Sloane were down to their slacks and shorts. I was trying not to look at Jack's tattoos.

  "How much have you got on under that?" I asked Clydine. She had on a dark jersey and a pair of slacks. No sox.

  "Just panties," she said. "I want to beat that dim-witted exhibitionist down to skin." Her competitive spirit was up. It was a silly game, but we were all drunk enough to start taking it a little seriously.

  So the next time around, I emptied the glass, Clydine stood up and slowly pulled off the jersey. Her little soldiers snapped to attention. I heard a sharp intake of breath from Jack. Clydine took a deep breath, and Sloane choked a little.

  "Come on, come on," Helen snapped, "let's get on with the game. That's not the only set of boobs in the room." What a pig!

  Sandy lost her slip, and then Helen's bra went. She thrust her breasts out as far as she could, but they were pretty sorry-looking in comparison to my two little Mends. It's a funny thing about nudity. Helen looked vulgar, but Clydine didn't. My little Bolshevik was completely natural about the whole thing. After the first shock wore off, her nude breasts were almost an extension of her face — pretty but not vulgar. Helen's face stopped at her neck with the sharp line where her makeup left off. Below that she was obscene.

  I lost my other sock, Jack lost his pants, and Sandy's bra went. There was a sort of simplicity, almost purity in the way she numbly exposed herself.

  "Break-time," Sloane giggled. "My kidneys are awash." He hustled on back to the can with Jack right behind him. Clydine wandered around a little, looking at the furniture, and Helen sat sulking. She was obviously outclassed; Sandy had a great shape, and Clydine, of course, was out of sight.

  "It's not much of a game really," I said apologetically to Sandy.

  She lit a cigarette, seemingly oblivious of her own nakedness. "It doesn't matter," she said. "It's only for a little while, so it doesn't make any difference." I was suddenly disgusted with myself for having come up with the whole silly idea. Why does a guy do things like that?

  "I'm not being nosey," I said, lying in my teeth, "but why do you hang around with Jack anyway? You know there's no future in it for you."

  "Oh, Jack's all right," she said. "If it wasn't him, it would just be somebody else. It's only for a little while anyway."

  She kept on saying that. Nobody was that cool. Maybe it was just a way of keeping things from getting to her.

  "I like your little friend," she said, suddenly flashing a quick smile toward Clydine. The smile made her face suddenly come alive, and there was something just under the surface that made me look away.

  Sloane and Jack came back, and the rest of us trekked back one at a time to use the facilities.

  The game continued in a fairly predictable way, with all the girls winding up totally nude, and Sloane, Jack, and me in just our shorts. Despite some fairly obvious suggestions from Helen about where the final penalty should be paid, each couple retired to a separate bedroom for the last stages of the party.

  As I said before, Clydine and I had both gotten pretty well worked-up the preceding night, and we went at each other pretty hot and heavy the first time. The booze, however, took its well-known and pretty obvious toll. I wasn't really making much headway the second time around, just sort of trying to entertain a friend, so to speak.

  "It's not working, Danny," she said softly. "We're both too tipsy. Let's talk."

  I started to roll over.

  "No," she said, locking her legs around me, "just stay there. It's kind of nice, and this way I'm sure I've got your attention."

  "Oh, gosh, yes," I said, mimicking Carter. "This may add an entirely new dimension to the art of conversation."

  "Just relax," she told me. She pulled me down.

  "We're not for keeps, Danny," she said after a moment. "You know that, don't you? I'm saying this because I keep having this awful impulse to tell you that I love you."

  I started to say something, but she squeezed me sharply with her legs.

  "Let me finish," she said, "while I've still got the courage. I know you think it's silly, all this — well — political stuff I'm involved in, but it's awfully important to me. I believe in it. I wish you did, too. Sometimes I just wish you'd believe in something — anything, but you don't."

  I started to say something again, and she gave her pelvis a vicious little twist that damned near emasculated me.

  "I'm going to do that every time you interrupt me," she said. She had a long memory. I don't think I've ever been so completely helpless before or since. She had me — as they say — at her mercy.

  "In about a month," she went on, "you're going back up to the U, and I'll be starting to go to class here in a couple of weeks. You're going to be gone for ten days on this hunting expedition of yours. Between now and the first of October — less than ten days — is all we've really got. Am I getting maudlin?"

  I didn't dare answer.

  "If you've gone to sleep, damn you, I'll cripple you."

  "I'm here," I said, "don't get carried away."

  "Have I made any sense?" she asked.

  "I'm tempted to argue," I said, "but I think you're probably right. If we try to keep it going after I get to Seattle, it'll just the on us anyway, and we'd both feel guilty about it. It's easy to say that it's only thirty miles, but the distance between Seattle and Tacoma is a lot more man that really."

  "It's a damned shame," she said. She rocked her hips a few times under me, gently. "When it comes to this, you're just clear out of sight, but that's not really enough, is it?"

  "Not in the end, it isn't," I said sadly. "At first it is."

  "Let's give it another try," she said. "I want to say something silly, and I want you to be too distracted to hear me."

  This time we made it, and just as we did she said, "I love you," very softly in my ear.

  I whispered it back to her, and then she cried.

  I held her for a long while, and then we got up and got dressed.

  Sandy was standing at the kitchen sink with a cigarette and a glass of whiskey, still nude, looking out the window at the moonlight.

  "We have to run, Sandy," I told her softly. "Tell Jack, OK?"

  She nodded to me and smiled vaguely at Clydine. "He's asleep now," she said. "He always goes
to sleep. Sometimes I'd like to talk, but he always goes to sleep. They all do." She took a drink of whiskey.

  "It'll be all right," I said inanely.

  "Of course," she said, her voice slurring a bit. "In just a little while."

  Clydine and I went on out and got in the car. I backed on out to the road and drove on down toward Fife.

  "She kept saying that all night," I said. "'It's only for a little while.’ What the hell is that supposed to mean?"

  "You're not as smart as I thought you were," Clydine said to me. "It's as plain as the nose on your face."

  "What?"

  "She's going to kill herself."

  "Oh, come on," I said.

  "She'll be dead before Christmas."

  I thought about it. Somehow it fit. "I'd better tell Jack," I said.

  "Mind your own business," she told me. "It hasn't got anything to do with him."

  "But —”

  "Just stay out of it. You couldn't stop it anyway. It's something that happened to her a long time ago. She's just waiting for the right time. Leave her alone."

  Women!

  "Let's go back to your place," she said. "I want us both to take a good hot bath, and then I want to sleep with you — just sleep. OK?"

  "Why not?" I said.

  "Seems to me you said that was the worst reason in the world for doing anything."

  "I'm always saying things like that," I told her.

  11

  The following Wednesday, the first of September, we were all going to get together out at Carter's to make sure we had everything all set for the hunt. We were going to be leaving on the ninth, and so we were kind of moving up on it.

  Stan had finally committed himself to going along, which surprised me since I figured that Monica would just flat veto the idea. I guess maybe she figured that that would be too obvious — or maybe she'd tried all the tricks in her bag, first the nagging, then the icicles, then crossing her legs, and none of them had worked. Stan was pretty easygoing most of the time, but he could get his back up if the occasion came along. I'd gotten a vague hint or two about the kind of pressure she was putting on him, but he was hanging in there. Then, quite suddenly, she seemed to give in. She got real nice to everybody, and that really worried me.

  The other guys had decided to bring their wives on out to Carter's to kind of quiet down the rumblings of discontent which were beginning to crop up as a result of our frequent all-male gatherings and planning sessions. I'd asked Clydine, but there was a meeting of some kind she wanted to attend. Besides which, she told me, she'd about had the establishment types and their antics. I'd wanted her to meet Claudia; but, all things considered, it was probably for the best that she didn't come. Jack and Cal would have been as jumpy as cats with her around after the little orgy on Sunday. I knew she could keep her mouth shut, but they wouldn't have been so sure.

  Anyhow I was over at Mike's that afternoon finishing up the rifle. Maybe it was just luck, but the thing was coming out beautifully. I hadn't really taken pride in anything for a long time, and I was really getting a kick out of it. Mike came out when he got home from work and sat on the edge of the workbench with a quart of beer while I put the last coat of stock-finish on the wood. I'd finished bluing the action the day before. All that was left was a last rubdown on the wood, mounting the sling swivels and assembling the gun.

  "Man," he said admiringly, "that's gonna be one fine-looking weapon. How much you say you've got into it?"

  "About seventy-five bucks altogether," I said, "and about thirty-forty hours of work."

  "Beautiful job," he said, handing me the quart. I took a guzzle and gave it back.

  "Now I just hope the son of a bitch shoots straight,” I said. "I never fired it before I started on this."

  "Oh, I wouldn't worry," he said. "That old Springfield was always a pretty dependable piece of machinery. As long as you can poke one up the spout, she'll shoot."

  "I sure hope you're right," I said, carefully leaning the stock against the garage wall to dry. I scoured my hands off with turpentine and began working at them with some paste hand-cleaner.

  "Betty says you're staying to dinner." He finished the quart and pitched it into a box in the corner.

  "Yeah," I said. "I'll have to start paying board here pretty quick." I had been eating with them pretty often.

  "Glad to have you," he said, grinning. "It gives me somebody to swap war stories with." Mike and I got along well.

  "Hey," he said. "I hear that was quite a party Sunday."

  "It was an orgy," I said. "You ever met Helen — that pig of Sloane's?"

  "Once or twice."

  "Then you've probably got a pretty good idea of how things went."

  "Oh, gosh, yes." He chuckled. "Jack was telling me that little girl you brought has got quite a shape on her."

  "You can tell that she's a girl."

  "He said he didn't much care for her though."

  I laughed about that, and then I told Mike about the little confrontation.

  "No kidding?" He laughed. "I'd sure love to have been able to see the expression on his face."

  "What face?" I laughed. "It fell right off."

  "Was Sandy What's-her-name there with Jack?" he asked.

  "Yeah. Quiet as ever."

  "She's a strange one, isn't she?"

  "Clydine — that's my little girl-chum — says that Sandy's gonna kill herself pretty quick." I probably shouldn't have said anything, but I knew Mike had sense enough to keep his mouth shut.

  "What makes her think so?"

  "I don't know for sure — maybe they talked or maybe my little agitator is relying on the well-known, but seldom reliable, intuition women are supposed to have."

  "Maybe so," Mike said thoughtfully, "but I've heard that girl say awfully weird things sometimes. If that's what she's got in mind, it would sure explain a helluva lot. You tell Jack?"

  I shook my head. "He wouldn't believe it in the first place, and what could he do about it?"

  "That's true," Mike admitted. He slid down off the bench and looked ruefully at his belly. "Sure is gonna get tiresome carryin' this thing up and down mountains. God damn, a man can get out of shape in a hurry." I think we both wanted to get off the subject of Sandy.

  "Beer and home cookin'," I said. "Do it to you every time." I washed my hands at the outside faucet, dried them on my pants, and got my clean clothes out of my car. We went inside, and I changed clothes in the bathroom. After we ate, Mike and I had a couple beers and watched TV while Betty cleaned up in the kitchen. She sang while she was working, and her voice was clear and high, and she hit the notes right on. There's nothing so nice as a woman singing in the kitchen.

  Jack and Marg showed up about seven with a case of beer, and we all sat around talking. Marg looked like she'd gotten a head start on the drinking. She was a little glassy-eyed.

  "How'd you get tangled up with this Larkin guy, Dan?" Jack asked me. "He seemed a little standoffish when I met him the other day."

  "Oh, Stan's OK," I said. "He's just a little formal till he gets to know you. He'll loosen up."

  "I sure hope so."

  "We shared an apartment for a while when I was up at the U," I said. "We got along pretty well."

  "He done much hunting?" Mike asked.

  "Birds, mostly," I said. "I've been duck hunting with him a few times. He's awfully damned good with a shotgun." I told them about Stan's triple on ducks.

  "That's pretty good, but I'll bet I could still teach him a thing or two about shotgun shootin'," Jack boasted.

  "Here we go," Margaret said disgustedly, "the mighty hunter bit." Her words were a little slurred.

  "I'm good, sweetie," Jack said. "Why should I lie about it? I am probably one of the world's finest wing shots. Every time I go out, you can count on pure carnage."

  "You know what's so damned disgusting about it?" Mike said. "The big-mouth son of a bitch can probably make it stick. I saw him bust four out of five thrown beer bot
tles one time with a twenty-two rifle."

  "Never could figure out how I missed that last one," Jack said. "Must have been a defective cartridge."

  "You're impossible." Betty laughed. Nothing bothered Betty.

  "Just good," he said, "that's all. Class will tell." Jack smirked at us all.

  "When you guys get him out in the woods," Margaret said dryly, "why don't you do the world a favor and shoot him?"

  We drank some more beer and sopped up dip with potato chips. Mike and Betty had a comfortable little house with furniture that was nice but not so new as to make you afraid to relax. It was a pleasant place to talk.

  Sloane and Claudia drifted in about eight with some more beer and Sloane's ever-present jug of whiskey.

  "Hey" — he giggled —”is this where the action is?" He bulked large in the doorway, the case of beer under one arm and his hat shoved onto the back of his head. Claudia pushed him on into the room. They looked odd together. She was so tiny, and he was so goddamn gross. It dawned on me that she was even smaller than my little radical cutie. I wondered how in the hell she'd ever gotten tangled up with Sloane.

  With him at the party, of course, any hope of quiet conversation went down the drain. He was a good-natured bastard though.

  "Wait till you see what Dan's done with the rifle you unloaded on him," Mike said.

  "Get it done, old buddy?" Sloane asked me.

  "Not quite," I said.

  "Bring it around when you get done with it," he said. "I might just buy it back."

  "I believe I'll hang onto this one," I told him.

  Stan and Monica came a little later, and I could see the icicles on her face. She clicked that smile on and off rapidly as I introduced them to everybody. Stan seemed ill at ease, and I knew she'd been at him pretty hard again.

  "I thought Stanley said there were going to be six of you on this little expedition," she said brightly. "Somebody must be missing."

  "McKlearey," Jack said. "He's pretty undependable. Likely he's in jail, drunk, or in bed with somebody's wife — maybe all three."

  "Really?" she said with a slightly raised eyebrow. She looked around the room. "What a charming little house," she said, and I saw Betty's eyes narrow slightly at the tone in the voice.