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

that we left Martin up there. He was screaming and kicking Maston, but nobody was going. So he went back up there alone to help Martin, and Maston kept saying, ‘Don’t worry, it’ll be all right if we all stick together.’

HUNTER’S MOON / 371

“Whole place was lit up with flares and Martin was running the fire from his radio, bringing it in real close. All of a sudden this creepy quiet and we heard Martin scream, ‘All of you but one’…Over and over. The whole company heard him, they thought he was screaming about the gooks.

“Then Maston went back up there. We heard some shots and then everything was quiet. So we crept back up and got in our holes. Cox was real fucked up, shot to shit. When we put him on the medevac the guys in the chopper got out a body bag. Martin was dead. And Maston was wounded, shot bad in the leg.”

Hector sighed. “Well, shit, the colonel come out and the general come out and everybody come out and Maston didn’t say shit. Just sat there, refusing to be medevaced, in that hole with all them dead gooks Martin and Gunny wasted piled up around it. And everybody thought it was him out there running the radio, manning that gun that saved the company. So we all rode with it. It was, you know, officer shit. Maston got us safe gigs in the rear. He said he’d take care of us. We heard Gunny Cox died of wounds on the way to Japan. And Maston got nominated for the Congressional Medal of Honor.”

Hector flipped his cigarette away. “We didn’t think much of it.

Officers were always doing stuff like that, writing themselves up for medals. Nobody talked about it. Nobody wanted to hear Martin screaming up there.” He looked at Harry with a jerky smile and asked, “You think there’s a Hell?”

“I think we’re already there.”

Hector gnawed his lip. “Cox thought there was a Hell. He was legally dead for three minutes, he said. Went down to Hell. Said they sent him back for Maston. That fucker wouldn’t die. He showed up, a year ago. Tracked me through my address of record from the marines and got my Mom, in L.A., to give him this place. Man, he was intense. Been traveling the country tracking down survivors of the squad. He said him and me were it. All that’s left. The only witnesses.

“He showed me this Newsweek magazine story about Maston.

How he was going to run for the U.S. Congress in 372 / CHUCK LOGAN

Minnesota. Cox was like—driven. Had this picture thing in his old truck. He’d spent years putting it together. All these flicks of Maston, wrote all over to get them, he said.”

The silence became so dry and hot that the friction of two rough words could ignite the air.

“Then Cox tells me what really happened up on that ridge. How he was hit and feeding the ammo and Martin was staying on that gun bleeding to death and how Martin started screaming. And his screams got weaker and weaker and Maston came back and got down in the hole with Martin, stroking his face and not doing anything to stop the bleeding. But he did other things…and the guy was dying and that fucker was—”

“Steady,” said Hollywood, taking Hector’s arm in an iron grip.

“Fuck you, man,” Hector warned Hollywood, cautioning him with an extended middle finger. Hollywood put his arm protectively around Becky’s shoulder. “Riiight,” said Hector, “protect peaches and cream so she don’t know what it’s really like out there.”

It was quiet on the desert as they waited for Hector to find his voice again.

“Cox said that then Maston starts firing the gun. Maston starts calling in the artillery, blowing everything to shit. But all the gooks were gone. How he picks up an AK from one of the dead gooks and shoots himself in the leg—”

“Shit,” muttered Harry. He turned and looked at Becky. She regarded him with wide, solemn eyes and nodded her head.

Hector shook his head. “Goddamn Cox. Wanted me to go to Minnesota with him. Said we had to expose Maston and keep him out of politics. Make him confess what he did. How we had to go to the president and get Martin his medal, get it away from Maston.

“Fuck that. Who’s going to believe him? Or me. He’s got to check into a VA hospital every winter so they can change his Thorazine antifreeze. For the last five years he’s been mostly getting his mail in a lock ward. But damn if he didn’t go.”

HUNTER’S MOON / 373

Harry stood up and turned away.

“Hey,” called out Hector. “Did Maston ever run for the politics?”

“No,” said Harry. “Cox stopped him.”

“No shit. Gunny Cox did that, huh? Well I’ll be damned,” Hector shook his head. “He said he should kill the sono-fabitch, but he didn’t think he had it in him anymore.”

“He got some help. It was the wrong kind of help and it didn’t work out,” Harry said.

Hector perused Harry’s face. “You probably amused him. You musta looked real good to that sicko bastard. Like death warmed over.”

Harry walked off a few paces and squatted. He put a hand out to steady himself. Texas harvester ants scurried between his fingers.

They were sturdy and fierce-looking and as heavily armored as bronze warriors. The word marines formed in his mind as he picked one up between his thumb and forefinger. He hardly felt the sting.

Chris had tried to be the hero of his story after all.

Out of reflex, he reached for a cigarette. He understood the habit of smoking. As long as you had a cigarette you were never alone.

There were times when being alone with your thoughts could kill you.

Randall was next to him, his face braided in the heat. Harry stood up and Randall embraced him with iron strength in his withered arms. Then Randall stepped back. Dry-eyed, implacable. Randall’s generation didn’t show