High Hunt

by David Eddings

  “Not unless we have to,” I said. “You got your .38 handy?”

  She took a deep breath, cocked one eyebrow at me, and gave me a long stare over her upthrusting frontage. “I’ve always got my 38 handy,” she said.

  “You nut,” I laughed. “Let’s go.”

  We went out to my car and began bar hopping back down the Avenue toward town. Some of the bartenders knew McKlearey and some didn’t, so it was pretty hit and miss. I still wasn’t sure which way Lou was going, and I couldn’t be sure if he was still on the Avenue or if he’d cut on over toward Parkland or what.

  “We’ll try the Patio, and then I’ll do what I should have done in the first place,” I said.

  “What’s that, Knucks?” she said.

  “Go back to my place and use the phone and the yellow pages.”

  “Clever,” she said. “I can see how you got your rep as the best private nose in the business.”

  “Eye, baby. It’s private eye—not nose.”

  “Whatever,” she said and then laughed. I guess she’d gotten over her mad.

  Lou was at the Patio. He was sitting in a booth alone, with a pitcher of beer in front of him. His left arm was in a sling, and his hand had a professional-looking bandage on it.

  “Hey, there, Lou,” I said with a heartiness I didn’t really feel. “How the hell have you been?”

  He looked up at me, his eyes kind of flat, as always.

  I introduced him to Clydine, and he invited us to join him. He had that gun on him. I didn’t see it, but I could almost smell it on him. I wished to hell I hadn’t brought my little Bolshevik along.

  “Where in hell have you been, Lou?” I asked him after the bartender brought the pitcher I’d ordered. “Nobody’s seen you since the hunt.”

  Something happened back behind his flat, empty eyes. Suddenly he was all buddy-buddy, friendly as a pup.

  “Christ, man,” he said, “I been in the goddamn hospital.” He waved his bandaged hand at me. “I picked up a damn good case of blood poisoning in this thing.”

  “No shit?” I said. “I knew it was giving you some trouble, but I never even thought about blood poisoning.”

  “Hell,” he said, “I had a red streak an inch wide goin’ up my arm all the way to the armpit. Man, I was flat outa my head by the time I got to that VA hospital up in Seattle.”

  “So that’s why you took off so fast,” I said, helping him along.

  “Shit, yes, man,” he said. “I was about halfway outa my skull even up there—with the fever and all. I knew damn well I was gonna have to get to a doctor in a hurry.”

  “Christ, Lou,” I said, “you should have said something.”

  “I didn’t think it was that bad at first.”

  Clydine was watching him closely, not saying anything. I think she was trying to fit Lou into all the things I’d told her about him.

  I passed Sloane’s message on to him, and he said he’d take care of it.

  “Hell,” he said, “as far as that deer goes, you guys can just go ahead and split it up. I don’t care that much about venison myself.”

  “I suppose we could give it to Carter,” I said. “After all, he didn’t get to go.”

  “Hey, there’s a good idea. Why don’t you just give it to Carter?”

  “Tell Sloane when you drop by the shop,” I told him, nailing down that point again. I wasn’t sure how much it was going to take to separate Lou from that gun. “Oh, Cal says to tell you he’ll let you have the pistol for what he owes you from the lot, but he’s gotta get the paper on it straightened out.”

  That seemed to make Lou feel even better. He got positively expansive.

  After about a half hour Clydine had to make a run to the ladies’ room.

  “I bet I acted pretty fuckin’ funny up there, huh?” Lou said while she was gone.

  “You weren’t raving or anything,” I said carefully, “but sometimes you didn’t make too much sense.”

  “It was the fuckin’ fever,” he said. “You know, from the blood poisoning. I can only remember about half of what went on up there.”

  “Hell,” I said, “it’s lucky you were even able to walk, as sick as you were.”

  “Yeah,” he agreed. “I was pretty far gone, all right. I bet I said a lotta wild stuff, too, huh?”

  “Most of it was pretty garbled,” I said. I was walking right on the edge and about all I had to defend myself with was a ballpoint pen.

  “Guy’ll say fuckin’ near anything when he’s out of his head like that, won’t he?”

  “Hell, man,” I said, “you were having screaming nightmares, and you were talking to yourself and everything. I’m not kidding, old buddy, we thought you were cracking up.”

  He laughed. “I’ll bet it scared the piss outa you guys, huh?”

  “Shit! We were waiting for you to start frothing at the mouth and biting trees.”

  “Yeah, I was really gone,” he said. “Did I ever say anything about the Delta?” He asked it very casually—too casually.

  “Nothing that made any sense,” I said. “You said something about how you used to think about snow when you were out there.”

  “Yeah,” he said, “I remember that—not too well, of course, but I remember it. Did I mention any names while I was out my head?”

  “I think so,” I said, “but I didn’t really catch them.”

  Clydine came back.

  “I’m gonna blow this town,” Lou said. “Winter’s comin’ and the rain bugs me.”

  “Yeah,” I said, “it can get pretty gloomy around here.”

  “And I gotta work outside, too. I can’t cut bein’ penned up inside. I think I’ll cut out for Texas or Florida or someplace. I just came back today to get my gear together.”

  “Be nice down South this time of year,” I agreed. “Make sure you see Sloane before you go though, huh? He’s pretty worried about it.”

  “Sure,” he said, emptying his glass. “Hey, tell Jack I’m sorry about givin’ ’im such a hard time up there, huh? Chances are I won’t get a chance to see ’im before I take off.”

  “Sure, Lou,”

  “I probably won’t ever be comin’ back up here again,” he said. “That probably ain’t gonna hurt some guys’ feelin’s.”

  “Oh,” I lied, “you haven’t been all that bad, Lou.”

  He laughed, the same harsh raspy laugh as always. “Look,” he said, “I’m gonna have to take off—if I’m gonna see Sloane and all. Just forget anything I said up there, huh—about the Delta or anything, OK?”

  “What Delta?” I said.

  He grinned at me. “You’re OK, Danny—too bad we didn’t get to know each other better.” He stood up quickly. I could see the bulge of the gun under his jacket. “I gotta run. You take care now, huh?”

  “So long, Lou,” I said.

  He waved, winked at Clydine, and started out. Then he stopped and came back, his face flat again.

  “Hey,” he said, “I owe you five, don’t I?”

  I’d forgotten about it.

  “Here.” He pulled out his billfold and fumbled awkwardly in it. He was carrying quite a wad of cash. He dropped a five on the table. “We’re all square now, right?”

  “Good enough, Lou,” I said.

  He poked a finger at me pistol-fashion by way of farewell, turned, and went out.

  “Wow,” Clydine said in a shuddery voice, “I don’t want to play cops and robbers anymore.”

  “I shouldn’t have brought you along,” I said.

  “I wouldn’t have missed it for the world,” she said. “He’s a real starker, isn’t he?”

  “He’s got all the makings,” I said, picking up the five-dollar bill. I looked it over carefully.

  “What’s the matter?” she said. “You think it may be counterfeit?”

  “Nobody counterfeits fives,” I said.

  “What are you looking for then? Blood?”

  “I don’t know,” I told her. “I think he was pretty cl
ose to broke when he came out of the woods, though.”

  “Maybe he went to the bank.”

  “That’s what worries me,” I said, still looking at the bill.

  “OK, Knucks,” she said, “I told you I didn’t want to play cops and robbers anymore. What’s on for the afternoon?”

  “Let’s go to Seattle.”

  “Why?”

  “I’m going to have to go house hunting.”

  “Oh,” she said. I don’t think either of us liked the reminder that I’d be leaving soon.

  36

  ON the first of October I moved to Seattle and began the tedious process of getting enrolled for classes and so forth. I’d found a little place the landlord referred to as a cottage but for which the word “shack” might have been more appropriate. Even when compared to the shabby little trailer I’d been living in, the place was tiny. The fold-down couch that made into a bed was perhaps the most uncomfortable thing I’ve ever slept in, but the place was close enough to the university to compensate for its other drawbacks.

  Even though Clydine and I had both been convinced that my move to Seattle would more or less terminate what some people chose to call our relationship, it didn’t work out that way. I kept coming across reasons why I just had to make a quick trip to Tacoma, and I think she made seven shopping jaunts to Seattle during my first month up there.

  I guess when you get right down to it, I got out of Tacoma just in time to miss the big messy bust-up between Jack and Marg—or maybe Jack just held off until I left town, though that was a kind of delicacy you just didn’t expect from my brother.

  About ten o’clock on a drizzly Saturday morning I came down the steps of the library with a whole dreary weekend staring me in the face. The bibliographical study for Introduction to Graduate Studies that I’d assumed would take from twelve to fourteen hours had, in fact, been polished off in just a shade under forty-five minutes. I spent another half hour trying to figure out what I’d done wrong. As far as I could see, the job was complete, so I left the library feeling definitely let down and vaguely cheated somehow.

  I had absolutely nothing to do with myself, so I decided, naturally, to bag on down to Tacoma. At least down there I should be able to find somebody I knew to drink with.

  The highway was dreary, but it didn’t really bother me. Without even thinking, I swung on over to Clydine’s place. Who the hell was I trying to kid? There was only one reason I’d come down to Tacoma, and it sure wasn’t to find somebody to drink with.

  I went up the stairs two at a time and knocked at the door.

  Her folks were there.

  “Danny,” she said in surprise when she opened the door, “I thought you had to work this weekend.” She was wearing a dress and her hair was done up.

  “I finished up sooner than I thought,” I said.

  “Well, come on in,” she said. “Meet my folks.” She gave me one of those smark-alecky grimaces that conveyed a world of condescension, sophomoric superiority, and juvenile intolerance. It irritated the piss out of me for some reason, and I made a special effort to be polite to them.

  Her father was a little bald-headed guy with a nervous laugh. I think he was in the plumbing supply business, or maybe hardware. Her mother was short and plump and kind of bubbly. I think they liked me because of my haircut. Some of Clydine’s friends must have looked pretty shaggy to them.

  I could see my little leftist smoldering in the corner as I talked about fishing with her father and Europe with her mother. I knew that about all I was doing was mildewing the sheets between the little nut and me and breeding a helluva family squabble which would probably start as soon as I left. I told them I had to run across town and see my brother and then left as gracefully as I could.

  I snooped around the Avenue a bit, but I really didn’t feel like seeing Jack yet, and the pawnshop had a whole platoon of guys lined up inside, so I took a chance and drove on over to Parkland to see Mike. Surprisingly, he was home, and the two of us went into his living room and sprawled out in a couple of chairs and drank beer and watched it rain.

  “Damn shame about Jack and Marg,” he said.

  “Yeah, but it was bound to happen, Mike. It was just a question of time really.”

  “I’ve never really been able to figure out what it is about Jack,” he said thoughtfully. “I like him—hell, everybody likes the son of a bitch, but he just can’t seem to hang in there the way most guys do.”

  “I think maybe Cap Miller came closer to Jack’s problem than anybody else really,” I said.

  “Oh?”

  “He said that the way he saw it Jack isn’t ever really going to grow up. Maybe that’s it.”

  “Not much gets by old Miller,” Mike commented.

  “It’s funny, too,” I said. “It’s the one thing Jack’s been obsessed with ever since I can remember—growing up. He used to think about that more than anybody I ever knew.”

  “Maybe he tried too hard.”

  “I think he tried too soon, Mike. Have you ever seen one of these girls who start going out on dates when they’re eleven—lipstick, high heels, the whole bit?”

  “Yeah, but what’s the connection?”

  “Have you ever known one of them that ever really grew up? I mean one who wasn’t still pretty damned juvenile even when she got to be twenty-three or twenty-four?”

  “I always thought that kind of girl was just stupid.”

  “Maybe that enters into it,” I said, “but there’s a kind of immaturity there, too.”

  He shrugged. “I still don’t get the connection.”

  “Well,” I said, “I’ve got a hunch that the patterns we set up when we first start doing something are usually going to be the patterns we’re going to follow for the rest of our lives. Now, if you start out trying to be grown-up—or adult, if you prefer that term—while you’re still physically and mentally a child, you’re going to start the whole business all wrong. You’ll start a pattern of playing grown-up. You’ll contaminate all of your adulthood with that juvenile pattern. I think that’s what happens to the little girl with her gunked-on makeup and wobbly high heels. She spends the rest of her life playing grown-up. I sort of think that the same thing happened to Jack.”

  “You mean he’s just playing?”

  “The worst part of it is that he doesn’t know he’s playing,” I said. “He just doesn’t know the difference. He’s impatient, he’s flighty, he’s self-centered, he’s intolerant—he’s got all the classic traits of immaturity.”

  “Shit, man”—Mike laughed—“you’ve just described about three-quarters of the people in the whole damn country.”

  “Including you and me, probably,” I said. “That’s another thing Old Cap said. I asked him when anybody really grows up, and he told me that if he ever made it, he’d let me know.”

  “Sounds like you and old Cap got along pretty well,” he said.

  “I don’t think I’ve ever met a man I liked or respected more,” I said, “except maybe my old man.”

  “He kinda hits a guy that way, doesn’t he?”

  I nodded. “Say, how’s Sloane doing? I was going to stop by the shop, but the place was mobbed.”

  “Christ”—Mike laughed—“you wouldn’t recognize the old fart. He’s lost thirty pounds and gone teetotaler on us. He doesn’t even drink beer anymore.”

  “He got a pretty good scare up there, I guess.”

  “It musta been pretty hairy.”

  “You know it, buddy. Between him and McKlearey it was a real nervous trip.”

  “Lou took off, you know.”

  “Yeah. He told me he was going to.”

  “That damned trip sure changed a lot of things around here,” Mike said.

  “I guess it was sort of a watershed. Maybe we were all due for a change of some kind, and the trip just brought it all to a head.”

  “I sure wish I could have gone along,” he said wistfully.

  “So do I, Mike.”

&nbs
p; We talked for another hour or so, and then Betty wanted Mike to take her to the grocery store, so I took off.

  I went on by the trailer court, but Jack’s trailer was gone. That’s always kind of a jolt. The damn things look sort of permanent when they’re set down on a lot with fences and grass around them, so you forget that they’ve got wheels on them. I dropped down to the trailer sales lot and Jack was sitting in the grubby, cigarette-stinking office with his muddy feet up on the desk.

  “Yeah,” he said, grinning tightly at me. “I moved Sandy in with me, and I didn’t want Marg to pick up on that with the divorce comin’ on and all.”

  “Oh?”

  “Yeah,” he said, lighting a cigarette. “We got things all kinda hammered out to where I don’t get nicked too bad for support money, and I don’t want her gettin’ the idea that she’s the aggrieviated party in this little clambake. I’m not about to get screwed into the wall with alimony payments.”

  “Where’d you move to?”

  “I’m in a court out toward Madrona.”

  “Where’d Marg go?” I asked.

  “She got an apartment out in Lakewood. Not a bad place. I found it for her.”

  “Sounds pretty civilized,” I said.

  He shrugged. “I didn’t want her gettin’ the idea she had any kinda claim on my trailer. I guess her lawyer was pissed-off as hell about it. I got her all moved out before he got the chance to tell her to stay put. Now that she abandoned me, it kinda cuts down on her share of the community property.”

  “You figure all the angles, don’t you, Jack?”

  “I been through it all before,” he said. “If a guy uses his head, he don’t have to get skinned alive in divorce court. Hey, you want a drink?”

  “Sure.” I didn’t care much for that particular conversation anyway.

  “Come on.” He got up, hauled on a coat and led me across the soggy lot to a fairly new trailer. “Try to look like a customer,” he said, leading the way inside. The trailer was clammy, but it was a little more private than the office. Jack went into the little utility room and pulled a fifth of cheap vodka out of one of the heating ducts.