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

Chappaquiddick. How incredibly fucked up things get.”

“Don’t flatter yourself.”

“I’m not.” He exuded the confident sadism of a general reviewing the regrettable collateral damage. He sighed and stood up. “Nothing works the way it should anymore. Like, why aren’t you in jail?” He nodded at the Trooper. “See what

386 / CHUCK LOGAN

they did to my car? And the phone went dead.” Bud swung the shotgun in an idle arc. “Couple dozen of the fuckers out there round the clock. Just watching me. Jerry Hakala dropped in this morning.

Guess Emery’s going to be suspended…” Bud smiled.

“Unless he goes through drug-dependency treatment. They got him in the hospital,” said Harry with his own bleak smile.

“Where would we be without the self-help movement, eh, Harry?”

Bud said.

The butchery in the trailer screamed unanswered in the silence between them. Perhaps he thought their conversation was being recorded.

Bud grinned, reading Harry’s thoughts. “Apparently I’m being held in protective custody.” His brilliant blue eyes sliced the air.

“When I get done in court, this county will look like Carthage after the Romans were through with it.”

He arched his back, working the kinks out of his neck. “They’ve even got some kind of drum. Last night they were beating on it. Sub-humans.”

He tossed the Remington on his shoulder, walked to the Escort, and kicked a patch of rust on the fender. “She always wanted a new car. Bitch. Bitch. Bitch.” He turned to Harry. “So fill me in. Nobody’s talking to me.”

“We’re supposed to bring Becky in.”

“Where is she?”

“In the woods. They think you know where to find her.”

“Did you fuck her, Harry?” Bud smiled.

The muscle in Harry’s left cheek twitched.

“Not even just a little bit?” Bud grinned broadly. “Well, they’re right. We have to collect her. Loose end. She’s the smartest of the whole bunch, you know.”

“I know,” said Harry.

“Harry, I can understand you being pissed off, but you’ll see, it’s the only way for it to work out.”

“She told me all about it.”

“About what?”

“The divorce deal. You and Cox. The Ballad of Martin HUNTER’S MOON / 387

Kessler. Randall did a little digging around. Introduced me to a guy.

Lance Corporal Hector Cruz. Remember him? He remembers you.”

Harry uncoiled and knocked the shotgun from Bud’s shoulder, kicked it away with a swipe of Jay Cox’s boots. He unbuttoned his jacket so Bud could see the .45 in his belt.

Bud smiled. Totally relaxed. Maybe he was adapting. “What a bunch of losers, huh?” He removed a glove. His fingernails were clipped and buffed, meticulously clean. He picked briefly at the scab on his lip, put the glove back on.

Harry rested his hand on the pistol butt. “Let’s take a stroll in the woods.”

“Psycho-drama, Harry? Returning to the scene of past and future crimes?”

“Move!”

“It was so perfect,” said Bud. “God, the look in Cox’s eyes when he saw you for the first time.” Bud chuckled as they trudged down the snowmobile trail along the lakeshore. He threw out his arms and danced ahead.

“The first time I saw you standing outside Coffman Union in 1969, it was magic. You were so like him. You even moved like him. Except for the teeth, but we fixed that, didn’t we? I just kept you in my pocket all these years. Every once in a while I’d take you out and look at you.”

Harry smelled wood smoke and that’s when the crazy tinpan drum started up.

“Jesus, can you believe this shit,” said Bud, shaking his head.

Above them, on an outcrop of granite, the winos from the liquor store had a camp. They had a fire going and were bent over an upturned, rusted washtub. Sweet-potato face was there. He raised his wine bottle in a salute and did a slow drop-skip frug and a chilling, shaky cry warbled from his throat.

Bud sighed. “Okay, so I lied a little and the great crime of my life was that I fell in love with another man. Now that’ll come out.” Bud pursed his lips. “That’s not all bad these days, you know. Especially in this state.”

388 / CHUCK LOGAN

“You’re not gay, Bud. Not straight, either. When they figure out what you are, they’ll name it after you.”

Bud winked. “Not who you’re with, it’s how far you go.”

“Move, lard ass,” said Harry. He yanked out the pistol.

“Do you want me to put up my hands? Maybe you want to tie me up?”

The hollow metal beat of the drum paced them to the turnoff to Nanabozho Point and they began to climb and, as they toiled up-ward, the wind freshened and it was an absolutely beautiful November late afternoon. By the time they reached the high ground, sundown groomed the snow-struck pines.

Sweating with exertion, Bud shoved his way into a thick stand of pines that filled a cleft in the granite face. Faintly, above them on the point, in pauses of the muted drum, Harry heard the rattle of antlers.

They came across a large drag-trail, streaked with blood.

Bud laughed and pointed to the big, field-dressed deer carcass strung up in a pine tree. The deer from the road with the long curved left tine. “Is this your idea of psy war?” Bud joked.

The sun dived and the woods rattled with distant gunfire in homage to the end of hunting season.

Bud grinned. “Don’t shoot. I’m going to reach in this cranny for a flashlight.” He felt around in the crevassed rock and pulled out a light and switched it on. They squirmed through the cranny and started down. “I planted those trees when I was a boy, to hide the entrance. This is my find. I suppose when this is over I’ll have the Historical Society out here. Maybe I’ll donate the land for a park.”

The way led down through twisting galleries of lichen-covered rock and the air was claustrophobic and clammy with spores of mold and powdery sediment crumbled underfoot. The passage opened into a chamber and, veiled in spiderwebs, a hobo jungle took shape in the flashlight beam. A sleeping bag lay on a ragged futon, plywood platform