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

Ice winked on the crumbling grin of a Halloween jack-o’-lantern.

114 / CHUCK LOGAN

Randall and Dorothy lived in a solid, three-story, wood-frame home set back from a screen of oak and maple. They entered the side door and went through a dining room hung with tourist plunder from three continents. They couldn’t have kids, so they had trips.

In the kitchen, Dorothy heated water for coffee. She turned and stared at Harry. “Not to put too fine a point on it, Harry, but those clothes have blood all over them.”

Harry showered and changed to a pair of clean jeans, turtleneck, and a heavy wool cardigan. Dorothy handed him a cup of coffee and said, “He’s in the den.”

Randall’s den overlooked the backyard. The tiers of limestone retaining walls jutting from the snow were a memory in Harry’s hands.

He and Randall had landscaped the yard ten years ago, working in July heat. Harry had watched Randall’s raw-boned strength start to slip away that summer by inches as they struggled with the rock.

The project had been a changing of the guard. Harry, tireless, panther-muscled, the PFC, had finally put out his hand, and told Randall, the colonel, to slow down.

Let me do it.

To know Randall was to be lost in the long shadow of three wars and eleven Purple Hearts and the autographed portraits that peered from the wall: Eisenhower, Kennedy, the great airborne chieftains Ridgway and Gavin.

Randall reached over and took Harry’s cigarette, dragged, then handed it back. His pale eyes scoured Harry’s face.

“What really happened up there?” he asked.

“I wasn’t supposed to be there. I was a last-minute change,” said Harry.

Randall’s gaze took on the stony focus of a sphinx.

Harry laughed nervously. “Bud’s wife.” He bit his lip. “We…”

Randall cocked his head.

“The minute I saw her I just knew I was going to fuck up. She figured out that Bud brought me up there to pry him out HUNTER’S MOON / 115

of a bad marriage. I tried to get him to leave last night. He belongs in detox.”

“Did you fuck the woman?” asked Randall.

Harry threw up his hands. “Yes. I went back after we started out to hunt. She met me on the trail. We went into this grove—”

“Really? Outside, in the woods, in the snow?” Randall appeared impressed.

Harry exhaled. “She tried to drag me back to the lodge with her.

Get it?”

“You think Bud was supposed to die in a hunting accident. And the grieving widow was supposed to pocket the Maston fortune.

And she could manipulate her son to do that—” Randall pondered.

“Not just the boy. Jesse’s daughter was out there, the sheriff’s other bastard kid. And this guy Cox who works around Bud’s place—he’s wrong from the git go.” Harry shook his head. “It was too easy. The sheriff and the DA were a little too eager to look the other way. I’m out by noon. Hakala parleys a deal, if Bud agrees to go to treatment, no grand jury. That’s not for Bud’s benefit. They’re hiding something. It’s a dying town and Bud washed up on Main Street like a ton of drunken blubber. Everybody had their knives out.”

Randall chose his words carefully. “Harry, you can watch my back anytime. You have excellent instincts in a tight pinch. But when the smoke clears, your thinking has a way of becoming fucked up.”

“What’s she like? Bud’s wife?” asked Dorothy. She had been listening in the doorway.

“Jesse?” He watched Dorothy’s eyes pierce him and then soften as he pronounced the name. “The hell of it is—I can’t shake this feeling she was asking me for help somehow. I gotta know—”

“Randall,” said Dorothy, “you better talk to him. I do believe he’s thinking of going back for her.”

Harry clicked his teeth. “She’s—”

“The blackjack dealer,” Randall inserted in a wry voice as 116 / CHUCK LOGAN

he shook his head. “Harry. You were playing it safe, getting your life together. You had nineteen on the table and you planned to stay with that. Then you went on your mission of mercy, the woman appears and tempts you to stand up and take a hit.”

“Poor Harry,” sighed Dorothy. “I thought we were through with all that.”

“Apparently not,” mused Randall. “Look at him. He’s found a drama and he’s spilled some blood and screwed this Jesse and now he thinks his testicles are tetherballs again.”

“Hey, Bud coulda been dead, and the people who set him up are still walking around up there,” Harry protested.

“Really,” said Randall. “Most folks have a day like this, they’d reach for the Valium. You, you dummy, are thinking about going back for more. And not out of concern about Bud.”

“They used me, Randall, like I was some dumb recruit,” said Harry flatly.

Randall’s knees creaked when he rose to his feet. “Here’s my advice. Right or wrong, you’re free of it. No charges. No blame. Walk away. No more temptation. No more trying to relive,” he cleared his throat, “something that’s gone.” He went into the kitchen.

“What’s eating him?” asked Harry.

“Sympathy. He was forty-two once thinking he was still twenty-five.” Dorothy narrowed her green eyes and the scar from the wound she’d suffered on the day. Harry had saved her life accented her smile.

“Say it,” said Harry.

“Just thinking,” she pondered in a bittersweet voice. “What a terrible way to fall in love.”

The bruise on Harry’s upper arm from the rifle kick spread blue on sickly yellow, the size of a grapefruit. The bruise in his mind was much larger and talk was no good and thinking was suspect and memory failed. Chris’s death and Bud’s life were in his belly.

HUNTER’S MOON / 117

Dreading the dream that might wait, Harry lay down on the couch in the living room and slept. When he opened his eyes the windows were dark. He’d slept for six hours.

Dorothy and Randall sat in the kitchen at the long trestle table under a squadron of hanging copper pots with their heads close together. Dorothy was talking on the phone. When Harry walked in, she said, “Sorry, Lucy,” and hung