Hunter's Moon, Chuck Logan [i am reading a book TXT] 📗

the sooty maw of the fireplace and he’d cut his lip on the wine bottle and a dribble of blood made a crimson thread down his wet chin. “The thing I loved about Nam, man. No fucking women. Well, except for the gooks, but they were more like monkeys chattering. But a rifle company.

It’s this perfect thing. There were times when I felt like Leonard fucking Bernstein with the New York Philharmonic. Just raise my baton. Andante. Allegro…” Bud sketched grace notes in the air with his hand. “It was beautiful.”

“Sounds like officer talk to me,” Harry mumbled.

Bud grinned at him and put his arm over Harry’s shoulder. “That’s because you were always a lone wolf. Special Operations. Out there playing Lord Jim with Tim Randall. You never had to submit”

“P-p-paid my dues. Sat still for a lot of shit—”

“No, you never really accepted discipline. You’d be so good if only you could. But there’s something in you that resists it”

Harry tried to focus his strength. Words blew out his lips like soap bubbles. “Called being an American, you asshole.”

Bud shook his head. “You’ll always be a member of the mob. You never were a soldier. You were just a thug from Dee-troit City. I had some men like you in my company, they wouldn’t accept discipline…they were flawed. Like your crooked teeth were a flaw, Harry.

You had this dynamite body and then those teeth. I’m so glad you had them fixed.”

HUNTER’S MOON / 349

Harry started to pour sweat and Bud was going in and out of focus. “Slipped me a mickey, you devious fuck—”

“You’re so hard on people, Harry. You make people hide because you hide from yourself. 1 could show you who you really are if you’d let me” Bud sighed. With a flourish, be drained the bottle and the wine squeezed through his thick knuckles.

“You called me…that night. Phone booth…. needed me,” said Harry.

“It was a dream, Harry. Like this is a dream,” Bud towered, thick, powerful, smiling. “Did you really think that I was…weak?”

Bud stooped, grimacing slightly with pain, one hand going to his wounded side. Harry didn’t want his lips to be smiling. Didn’t want his reflexes spread around him in a soft, silken puddle. Bud’s fingers were in his mouth, placing something against the back of his tongue.

Harry started to gag. Bud gently massaged his throat.

“You’re having a dream, Harry. One of those double-scream backcrawlers. Flashback City, my man.”

“Wha…?” Harry’s tongue was lolled. His eyes rolled.

“Sorry, buddy. This time you’re not running interference. So I’m giving you a little cocktail. Some Thorazine, to go with the ludes and a little filthy yellow Mexican heroin I found lying around. All packaged in neat gelatin time-released capsules.”

Gently Bud massaged Harry’s throat until he swallowed. He sputtered, gagged, coughed. But far away. It was all happening far away.

“Just take a little nap.”

“Bud’s face filled his vision as florid as a marbled cut of meat. But getting thinner. Soon he would be handsome again. Sleek. Up at a podium surrounded by microphones in the spotlight. He caressed Harry’s face. “Do you know your Shakespeare, Harry?” he crooned.

“Henry the Fifth? No, of course not. Thugs don’t read the classics.

Well, there’s this part the night before the battle of Agincourt…when fear is all around…”

350 / CHUCK LOGAN

Bud’s voice rolled, rich, warm, baritone:

“His liberal eye doth give to every one,

thawing cold fear; that mean and gentle all

behold, as may umworthiness define,

a little touch of Harry in the night.

And so our scene must to the battle fly.”

It seemed that Bud laughed. It seemed that he bent down and kissed Harry on the lips.

57

It smelled like a dog had been rolling in guts and deep in his burning insides a little red fire engine of adrenaline managed to leave the station.

Slumped forward against the Jeep’s steering wheel. All sticky.

Vomit caked his throat and chest. Throwing up must have woke him up. Snow whirled against his face. Get up. Get up. He lurched and looked around. Car door was open, groaning in the wind. Snow blew all over the leather seat.

Eyes weren’t turned all the way on yet. Banging sound. Bang.

Bang.

Blood—felt like slick snot ropes of it on his jeans and something hard. The .45 made a steel cramp across his belly. He shuddered.

Sounded like a scream. Definitely a scream and the sound jellied his muscles and all the slipknots were sliding and Harry pissed his pants.

He gritted his teeth and willed his sphincter into a tight fist.

Light out Or was it? Tin-pan sun as pale as the moon in the snow, streaming past a grove of birch with long twisty trunks jointed like knuckle bones…

Sparks crashed inside his head. Eyes hooking up. Qkay. The banging sound was the door of Jay Cox’s trailer swinging in the wind. The scream came from…his own mouth.

He saw. Becky. She ran out the trailer door and fell to all HUNTER’S MOON / 351

fours. What the hell was she doing? Stuffing her mouth with snow.

Her nose. Trying to smother herself?

He was back in the fucking blood swamp with the jack-in-the-box and fear savaged him into focus and he fumbled the .45. Sniffed the breech. Inhaled the baked metal crisp of cordite. He took out the magazine, pushed his grisly finger against the spring-loaded bullets.

Three or four missing. Think? It had been full. Reloaded, pulled the charging handle. Used up all his dexterity.

Where was Bud? Harry took a deep breath and it popped open for him and he finally got the big joke.

He staggered from the Jeep. Cox’s truck was there. Jesse’s Escort.

Snow filling in other tire tracks. At least one other vehicle had pulled in, backed up, and turned around.

Stilts not feet. Sleepwalking past Becky…

She trembled violently. Couldn’t be helped. Her eyes plunged at the snowy woods, then at the trailer. Her lips made a silent O. No.

Harry turned his back on her. Saw Cox’s black cap and a bloody drag-trail in the snow that led to the trailer door. The pistol fell