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

He tried being calm. Maybe he could be calm if he was a Tibetan. But he wasn’t.

Well, fuck this shit! Harry staggered to his feet, pulled off his gloves, and with spasming fingers, dug out his Zippo and 296 / CHUCK LOGAN

cigarettes. He held fire in his trembling cupped hands and blew smoke at the goblins.

Had his own bullshit savage voices from Knox and Benning.

All right if you die, you pussy, just don’t quit on me…

Harry drew a rectangle in the snow. As best he could, he trans-posed the map from the Snowshoe Lodge brochure. He’d followed Emery east from the lodge. Wandered east from the trailer. Cox’s driveway opened on a county road that ran north and south. He hoped. The last weather picture on the TV news showed a cold front moving from the northwest. So. Face the goddamn wind and guide left.

Harry counted cadence and kept the stinging wind on his right cheek. Thousands of numbers later he saw the sweep of lights through the trees. Trolling headlights in the dusky snow, two, three sets of them. Other lights, swinging, moving, closer in.

His stiff feet picked up the step. A road had never looked so good.

The road was just as barren, cold, and windshot as everything else. He turned left toward the nearest lights. He’d gone only a hundred yards when he halted in mid-stride, staggering. His nostrils distended.

Whiskey on the wind, sour as coal oil in the turbulent, charged air. Out of place…Harry turned.

Silent and furred with snow, Larry Emery loomed in a surge of fury. A gloved fist. No time. Stars. Or the ice cracking on his eyebrows.

The trees spun.

48

Broke his fucking nose!

Emery’s eyes bulged with tears as he stooped and seized Harry’s dropped rifle. Two-handed, he smashed it against the trunk of the nearest pine. Harry gauged Emery’s madness by the force that splintered the weapon. Emery tossed it aside.

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He gave Harry two seconds to come out of a stagger and concentrate the spinning stars into a bee storm.

“Leave her alone, damn you. Can’t you see she ain’t well?” Emery muttered as his brawny hands opened and closed, struggling for control.

Harry cleared a loose wad of phlegm and blood from his throat and spit it into the snow at Emery’s feet and choked out red-finned words, “Not your business she can’t keep her pants on!”

With a tormented sob, Larry Emery, six-two, 220 pounds, charged and his right hand jarred Harry’s left shoulder to the bone. A hay-maker left uppercut went wild and missed his nose.

Harry drove his right fist with all his might into Emery’s middle.

Mistake. Lumped muscle. Gut was a sack of potatoes. Emery’s hand came down, grabbed a handful of Harry’s frozen hair, and flung him to the ground.

“Get up, you meddling piece of shit,” rasped Emery.

Thing about pain. It sure warmed you up real fast. “This how you did in Tip Kidwell? Bounce him around and then shoot him?” Harry baited as he rolled to his feet.

“You don’t know…nothing!”

“How’d you do it, Emery? How’d you get Chris to shoot Maston?”

The sheriff’s face swelled with drunken fury and his roundhouse right looped wild. Ha! Harry timed him, stepped in and jack-hammered a stiff left jab that went in sharp under the right eye.

Followed immediately by a right cross. Another mistake. Boxing in a streetfight. Emery didn’t even back up. With a spasm of sheer animal strength, he smothered Harry with his arms and pistoned a sharp knee into his groin.

Too old for this shit. Harry cringed into a fetal ball. Nausea gushed up from his pelvis.

Emery glared down. “Stay away from her, you sono-fabitch, or next time I’ll really…”

Suddenly it was a threesome. Jason Emmet Cox burst down the road in his truck and screeched to a halt ten yards 298 / CHUCK LOGAN

away. He hit the ground running, deer rifle held high in both hands.

Horizontal butt stroke. Manual perfect. Cox buried the rifle butt into Emery’s left kidney.

“Lay off ’im, Larry!” shouted Cox.

Lights in the snow, coming down the road. The whine of an engine.

Emery and Cox struggled over the rifle, went down, rolling. “Your fault!” Emery screamed. “Belong in a mental ward. Crazy sonofabitch! Leave her alone. She ain’t well.”

“I never laid a hand on her, goddamnit,” Cox protested. Now Emery was on top, elbows locked, forcing the rifle down on Cox’s throat.

“Griffin,” gagged Cox. “A little help would be appreciated.”

Harry got his feet under him and flung himself at Emery. The three of them toppled over in a flurry of fists, knees, and elbows.

Grunts and spit. Emery’s drunken nightmare breath scalded them.

Harry threw his arms around Emery’s neck and wrapped his legs around his waist in a child’s desperate wrestling hold. Cox smashed his fist at Emery’s hands, trying to break his grip on the rifle.

Deputy Jerry did his famous four-wheel skid.

The Blazer was still rolling when Jerry Hakala came out the door at a dead run brandishing a billy club.

“Knock it off!” He dove between them. The club flailed indiscrim-inately.

“Cuffs,” gasped Cox. “Cuff the fucker…can’t hold him…”

Harry had one of Emery’s hands, Cox had the other. Jerry pried the rifle from his grasp. Emery surged, kicking with his feet, his jacket and shirt torn open. Bloody streaks from fingernails gashed his barrel chest.

“Shut your eyes!” Jerry yelled. Harry saw the canister in Jerry’s hand, clamped his eyes shut, and strained his face away. Astride Emery’s hips, Jerry squirted the Mace into Emery’s face. Emery roared and clawed at his eyes. The knot

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of men broke apart. Coughing and gasping. Emery crawled in a mad circle on all fours. Through teared eyes, Harry watched oblivious snowflakes sail down and stick to Emery’s swollen face.

They were all half blind, staggering from the chemical. A jingle of metal. Jerry had a pair of handcuffs. Emery struggled up. His arms flailed. Jerry stepped in, grabbed the sheriff’s wrist efficiently in a twist, and snapped a short vicious body check into his armpit. Then