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

tried to keep the conversation going. “I saw a lot of pill bottles back in your trailer, Cox.”

“That’s right. I’m crazy. Lock-ward certified. That’s my excuse.

What’s yours?”

“Why’d Chris do it?”

“Semper fi, Griffin, semper fi,” Cox cackled to the wind.

It wasn’t that far to the lodge. Cox dropped him at the driveway.

“What about Jesse?” Harry asked.

“She’s a lot of woman. ’Fraid this has her all mixed up. She ain’t like a normal person. Throw her up in the air, she’s not liable to come down. But it’ll be over soon,” Cox said.

“What do you mean by that?” Harry said, as Cox shifted into gear. The truck began to pull away. “Goddamnit, Cox—”

Cox’s reply was nearly drowned in the engine noise. “Go armed!

The Maston family got its start setting traps in these woods!”

Harry couldn’t stop shivering, even after a hot shower. He inspected the road-killed pumpkin of his face in the bathroom mirror and groaned.

HUNTER’S MOON / 303

Got my nose.

One of the few things he’d been proud of was that his straight nose had come through the first half of his life undamaged. He plastered a thick strip of adhesive over the swelling and smoothed the ends under his puffy black eyes.

Be honest. You’re scared. Everybody you ran into today frightened you. Jesse hatching out of her vamp cocoon into a basket case.

Cox—saving your ass—that was really creepy. Christ, the two of us couldn’t handle Emery. If Jerry hadn’t showed up…Okay, so you’re on a snipe hunt with Franz Kafka. You been there before.

Talk to Mike Hakala. Showdown, nothing wild. Find out what happened in October and why in the hell he let Chris slide by making threats and hauling a gun to school. Get him to…what? Lock up the sheriff?

Not thinking clearly. The way to shake the fear was to do something. Anything. Just go into town. Get directions. Find out where Hakala lives and have it out.

He dressed quickly, snatched up the .45, and fishtailed out of the drive.

Highway 7 greeted him with raving cadenzas of snow that streamed down like the quadrillion of all his fears. Snug inside Bud’s Jeep, though. The heater whirred reliably. The radio popped on at the touch of a finger and the Ojibway Tabernacle Choir beat their goddamn drums.

The shape war danced out of the dark, up out of the swirling white ground. Harry stabbed the brakes and the deer froze in the headlights.

Big goddamn buck. Long left tine.

Chris’s deer, mocking him like everything he didn’t know, standing there, a statue in the headlights. With a yell, he stamped on the gas.

The deer scrambled, hoofs slipping on the icy asphalt. Harry drove off the shoulder and struck the animal a glancing blow with the left fender. The buck rolled over stunned and lay in knee-deep snow.

Groped for the .45 next to him. Fumbled, knocked it down between the seats. Reached into the back. Box with jumper 304 / CHUCK LOGAN

cables. Tools. His hand closed on the wooden handle of the army surplus entrenching shovel. He sprang out the door and slid in the snow. The deer had his hindquarters up and planted his antlers as a fulcrum to push his body upright.

Harry skipped around the struggling animal and the ditch blazed in a jukebox frenzy of high beams, dome, and dash lights and the snow came on like fever in the galloping drums and the shadows of man and deer jumped huge against the snow-truncated trees.

Savagely, he stepped in and swung two-handed and hit the antlers with a stinging clang of steel on bone. Damn deer was up! Seriously up on all four feet.

Face-to-face. Harry felt the hot breath snort from the buck’s nostrils and saw its neck swollen, thick, lowering, aligning the horns.

Harry stared into the wild eyes of the thing he didn’t understand, that he was trying to kill, and saw its beauty and its fury.

Thirteen tines of cruel bone sliced the air and ripped the shovel from his hands. With a hysterical laugh, he dashed back behind the car door. The buck pranced once, turned sideways, and disappeared into the night.

Time out. Call it a day, man. What was he doing in a world where he wound up going hand-to-hand with jealous sheriffs and wild fucking animals?

Harry turned off the radio and as his breath returned to normal he watched the snow quietly smooth out the wrinkles of the bizarre encounter in the ditch. He found the shovel, dug out the mired wheels, put the Jeep in four-wheel low, backed out of the ditch, and returned to the lodge.

49

The blue Escort was parked next to the burned hulk of his Honda and Jesse sat on the steps, smoking HUNTER’S MOON / 305

a cigarette. He climbed out of the Jeep, still shaking from the damn deer.

A scarf hid her hair but her face shone in the yard light with a bags-packed, leaving-on-a-jet-plane smile.

Harry opened the door. Jesse removed her coat. She wore a pleated blue dress, low snowboots. She pulled the scarf from her head. She’d been to Duluth, he’d bet. Her hair bounced, waved with the pampered coif of a beauty salon. Had her nails done, too.

Her lacquered fingers were cool as dice on his chin. “Jay told me,”

she winced appreciatively at his swollen nose and eyes. “One of these days Larry’s drinking is going to lose him his job,” She reached in her purse. Took out a present wrapped like a party favor, twisted on the ends.

“What’s that?” he asked.

“For you. Open it.”

Sunglasses. Expensive Ray-Bans.

“Put ’em on,” she coaxed. “Do wonders for your eyes.”

He placed the glasses on the table by the door. She reached back in her purse. “They go with this.” She handed him an airline ticket.

“Thought this was for Cox.”

“Jay?” She blushed. “Nah, Jay’s got other plans. That ticket was for Becky, but she’s still playing lost. What about it? A month on the beach. We could heal up. Forget about…winter.”

She kicked off her boots and walked into the den area,