Hunter's Moon

by Chuck Logan

  The deputies came out of Chris’s room and emptied the contents of a shoebox on the table in the den and began to bag and tag three handguns and an assortment of pills.

  Looked like a snub-nosed .38, an automatic, and a bigger revolver with a long barrel. Guessing. Didn’t know much about handguns.

  No idea what the pills where. He was a couple generations removed from street pharmacology.

  84 / CHUCK LOGAN

  “What are you doing?” Harry challenged them.

  “Maston gave us permission to search the place,” said one of the deputies politely.

  The clock over the stove said 8:35. Over two hours since it went down. Still worrying his teeth with the toothbrush, Harry dialed Randall’s number in St. Paul.

  “I’m in the shit,” Harry said simply when Dorothy answered.

  “Lemme talk to Randall.”

  Randall skipped the drama and went right to the relevant facts.

  Had they given him his rights? Had he been charged with anything?

  No. But he was on his way to the local cop shop with the sheriff.

  Harry mentioned the medical examiner, who might have questions.

  He finished by saying, “I need Dorothy’s father.”

  Randall and Dorothy held a quick conference, then Dorothy came on the line.

  “They’re giving you what’s called a ‘soft Miranda.’ If the local prosecutor rules justifiable homicide, you’re in good shape. If they decide something kinky went down, then it could get tricky. Either way, they might give it to a grand jury. It’s up to the prosecutor.

  What Bud says is real important.”

  “Bud told them I saved his life.”

  “They’ll pull up your police files. They may want to take a closer look at you. I’ll call my dad and see if he knows somebody who can talk to the local prosecutor. Is there an airstrip up there?”

  “Must be. Bud flies in and out all the time.” Some comfort.

  Dorothy’s dad was a senior partner in an old St. Paul firm, also a bigshot in Democratic politics.

  “We’ll grab a charter and be right up. And another thing. Look out for the press,” said Dorothy. “This kid you shot just tried to kill a light heavyweight prominent Minnesotan. That’s a big story on a slow news day.”

  “Christ, I never thought of that,” said Harry.

  “Button up, Harry, till we get there.”

  “Will do,” said Harry.

  HUNTER’S MOON / 85

  Randall came back on the line. “Hang tough,” he said. “Don’t let it fuck with your head. Help’s on the way.”

  “Thanks,” said Harry.

  Emery drove. Harry sat in the passenger seat of the sheriff’s Blazer with his duffel between his knees. Jerry took up his silent post in the back.

  They turned onto the highway, went around a curve, and the land fell away. Superior stretched flat and endless looking like God’s level beneath brooding clouds. Way too much sky for Harry to handle right now. He lowered his eyes. The town of Stanley hid below them in the trees.

  He ran his toothbrush over his teeth. Emery glanced at him. Harry slipped the toothbrush into the chest pocket of his shirt.

  Emery sipped from his Thermos cup and slouched behind the wheel. Sorrow stacked up ledge on ledge in the sheriff’s face and his somber eyes mirrored the distant thunderheads.

  They slowed down. Decaying white clapboard houses lurked in the undergrowth and straddled the road on the heights above Stanley. The old mining ghost town was just two rings of company housing surrounding the skeleton of a company store. A sturdy WPA brick schoolhouse had its windows boarded up and scrabbly jackpine grew to the second story. Harry recalled there’d been a bloody labor dispute here back in the ’30s.

  People still lived among the ruins in swayback houses bailed together in Jackpine Savage squalor, in yards fenced with barbed wire and landscaped with rusting cars. A solitary Holstein cow walked a muddy path along a fence line. A new snowplow idled in a cloud of exhaust in front of a large pole barn.

  Emery turned off at a crossroads. Several pickups were parked in front of the general store. Hunters in orange pulled a deer carcass from one of the trucks. A single eight-point buck dangled from the birch tree. Emery stopped, got out, and

  86 / CHUCK LOGAN

  inspected the deer. The hunters did not greet him. They stepped back solemnly, giving him a wide deferential berth. Emery got back in the Blazer.

  Across from the store, a cinder-block building was painted bulk-head gray-green. A cold neon sign over the door announced: VFW.

  The marquee sign in the parking lot had remnants of a bingo announcement that had been cannibalized to spell out DEER HUNTERS

  WELCOME.

  The hospital was right off Highway 7, set into the hillside among the houses sprinkled above Minnesota 61. The new brick-and-glass facade was gracefully landscaped with pines and junipers. In back, 55-gallon drums stuffed with hunks of drywall and electrical conduit littered the raw slope. A granite slab near the entrance bore the chiseled dedication: Stanley Maston Memorial Medical Center.

  A dozen pickups were parked in front of the emergency room door. Two had stiffening deer carcasses protruding from their beds.

  Orange men milled around.

  Emery grumbled. “Everybody’s come to see the show. Shit…”

  The snow made a loud Styrofoam squeak under Harry’s boots and captions of freezing breath hung over the crowd of hunters.

  A haggard-faced Jay Cox exploded from the crowd and came straight at Harry and pushed him.

  “Why isn’t he under arrest?” Cox growled at Emery. His eyes sparked as if powerful machines were stripping their gears in there.

  “You’re outta line, Jay,” Emery said softly, easing between them.

  Then, out of nowhere, Emery had springs in his feet. Graceful as a puma he moved on Cox and acquired Cox’s face in his hand, fingers spread, like he was palming a basketball. He heaved him off balance and sent him sprawling into the snow. Jerry interposed his body, watching Emery, not the furious Cox.

  “Get him outta here before…” said Emery in a calm voice, leaving the threat hanging in the air. Some of the men HUNTER’S MOON / 87

  surrounded Cox, took him aside to walk it off. Harry took a mental note. Sheriff Emery: question mark. Second line: doesn’t like Cox.

  Emery guided Harry, in front of him, through the hospital door.

  “Need you to look at his face,” Emery said to a nurse at the desk, walking into the emergency room.

  “How are you, Larry,” asked the nurse. “You need anything?”

  “Where you got Jessica and Becky?” asked Emery.

  “In the lobby. They’re calmed down. You got any more shot-up city people out there, or is this it?” asked the nurse, turning Harry’s face in her cool fingers as if she were inspecting a hat she might buy.

  The interior of the ER revolved in a clean spin of antiseptic tile, bright lights, and gleaming stainless steel. Harry yielded to trembling fatigue and his knees collapsed. Emery caught him.

  “Delayed shock,” Emery said to the nurse.

  The nurse led Harry to a chair, popped a thermometer into his mouth, told him to strip off his coat and roll up his sleeve so she could strap a blood pressure cuff on his arm. A young doctor, his green surgical suit spotted with blood, walked over, drying his hands on a towel. “Larry, I think you should sit down,” he said.

  Emery shook him off. “Can Maston talk?”

  “The man’s been shot,” protested the doctor.

  “Ain’t shot that bad. Wait’ll you see the boy.”

  “Two minutes,” said the doctor.

  “Normal,” said the nurse, raising an eyebrow, taking out the thermometer and unstrapping the cuff.

  They had Bud across the ER, screened off. Emery went behind the curtains. Harry walked over and heard Bud’s voice, foggy with pain.

  “Oh God, Larry, I’m sorry…”

  Harry stepped in. Bud
was pale and naked except for a blue hospital sheet thrown across his gut. He was hooked up 88 / CHUCK LOGAN

  to some machine by electrodes taped to his chest. The wound in his side was painted mercurochrome orange; the actual holes were a ragged black.

  Bud muttered weakly, his face ash-white. “Forgot how much it hurts to get shot.”

  Emery escorted Harry back outside the curtain. “Just as soon you two didn’t talk till we get us a preliminary report from the forensic bunch outta Duluth. He can’t talk much anyway, they got him wacked out on Dilaudid.”

  Harry froze. Jesse Deucette, her face as bloodless as chilled ivory, had found time to braid her hair. She stood in the center of the room with the ostentatious diamond sparkling on her left hand. Their eyes played fast paddycake. If they blinked, their infidelity would crash to the floor and writhe like snakes.

  Emery broke the spell. His usual watchfulness gone, he missed the eye play. He only saw Jesse. He moved surprisingly fast, silently.

  Her presence turned his face buttermilk smooth and soft. “Now Jessica, this ain’t the time…”

  The mask of grief on her face crumpled into tears as Emery held out his arms to her. Wracked with sobs, she shook her head, but Emery persisted patiently and she was drawn into his embrace. She shuddered against his shoulder and couldn’t get words out.

  “Best to cry, just…cry now,” said Emery, stony and patient, gently patting her shoulder.

  The people in the ER seemed to shrink back, like the hunters had done when Emery inspected the deer at the general store. Harry followed Emery’s eyes, which looked past Jesse.

  Becky stood poised uncertainly on the balls of her feet in the corridor. Emery raised one hand toward her. The girl’s face spooked and she broke into a run, past the tableau of people who were watching Jesse cry in Emery’s arms. No one moved to stop her.

  Harry watched her dart out the door. A green Jeep Wrangler shivered on its suspension with a keyed-up nervous HUNTER’S MOON / 89

  clutch in a cloud of exhaust just outside the plate-glass entrance. The driver threw the door open for her. Harry caught a glimpse of the driver’s tow-headed hair and the gray flash of Becky’s wind suit and the Jeep fishtailed away.

  Jesse had stopped crying. Sniffling, she scrubbed her palm down her cheek to wipe away the tears and said, “I have to see Bud.”

  “They got him doped up,” said Emery.

  “You’d better wait a little,” said the doctor gently. “We’re monitoring for shock. Then you can talk.”

  Jesse looked at the floor in front of Harry. Her eyes came up slowly. The despair in her face was drained of tears and had become precise, faceted fire and ice, a larger version of the rock on her finger.

  Emery floated warily on the toes of his boots between them.

  “Why isn’t he under arrest?” she said and Harry’s heart stopped.

  “Don’t tell me how to do my job, Jessica,” Emery said patiently.

  “Not sure what we got here. Fact is, Griffin’d be within his rights to file an assault complaint on Becky. That’s some permanent damage on his face.”

  Harry’s fingers crept gingerly up to his face and felt a dangling flap of his cheek. Emery nodded to a nurse who took Jesse by the arm and walked her away.

  Another nurse led Harry back to his chair. Emery followed. His shadow, Jerry, was just a step behind. “Take down your trousers,”

  ordered the nurse, squinting along a hypodermic.

  “Tetanus,” said Emery. The nurse stuck Harry in the rump and then sat him down next to a table. Small curved needles lay on a towel. A stainless steel tray smelled of alcohol.

  The young doctor returned and adjusted a light on Harry’s face.

  He dabbed with alcohol-soaked gauze. Harry trembled. The doc was moving pieces of his face. He yanked off a flap of skin.

  “Two of these need stitches,” said the doctor. “Are you allergic to novocaine?”

  90 / CHUCK LOGAN

  “I don’t want novocaine in my face.” Harry wanted to stay alert.

  “You sure?”

  “Sew,” said Harry. He stared at Emery as the doctor sewed.

  Emery’s eyes didn’t waver, but a commotion at the door allowed them to break eye contact.

  A tall, red-faced, beefy man wearing hunting boots and a blaze-orange parka stomped into the ER. In contrast to his ruddy complex-ion, his hair, eyebrows, and mustache were fleecy platinum. He swiveled pale falcon eyes.

  “Larry? Jesus Christ, I just heard,” he yelled. Six other men followed in his wake. All but one was dressed for hunting in blaze orange and had the same hawkish features and white-blond hair. Emery ambled over to them.

  The doctor grimaced as he forced the needle through Harry’s cheek. Surprisingly tough stuff, skin. Harry used the pain to sharpen his attention.

  The big guy put his hands on Emery’s shoulders. For a moment Harry thought he might embrace Emery. But he shook him, getting his full attention. They talked, their heads close, then the big guy turned and pummeled the tile wall with his fist. “You don’t fucking get it, do you?” he yelled at Emery. Emery put his hands on his hips, stared at his boots. Emery talked. Harry couldn’t make out the words.

  The big guy blew up again. “I told you to do something back then, goddamnit! God, we could get sued for negligence.” Then the big guy stepped back, warned by Emery’s eyes. “I’m sorry but goddamnit…”

  They went back to talking low. They all turned and looked at Harry. The nonhunter walked over. His scrubbed face was fringed with a closely barbered mustache and his dry blue eyes were set in contemplative wrinkles behind horn-rim glasses. His sandy hair was styled past his ears and was shot with gray.

  “How you doing, son?” he asked.

  “I’m not your son. I’m probably older than you.”

  “You need anything?”

  HUNTER’S MOON / 91

  “You got a cigarette?”

  “You can’t smoke in here,” said the doctor, yanking the knot on the last stitch a little harder than was necessary. Then he dropped the needle in a pan of antiseptic and walked away. The tense discussion Emery was having with the hunting party was making the ER

  jumpy. The new guy sat down in the doctor’s place. He held out his hand. “Don Karson. Local minister. Lutheran. You Catholic?

  We have a priest in town.”

  “Is he out hunting, too?” asked Harry, sizing Karson up. A soft Christ. Not a carpenter.

  “You know, I think he is,” said Karson.

  Harry’s palm was smeared with dried blood. Karson wiped his hand on his pants.

  Jesse reappeared and joined in Emery’s conversation with the big guy. Harry breathed through his nose, deep diaphragmatic breathing to slow his racing heartbeat.

  The men formed a respectful circle around her. Then she walked toward Bud’s curtained bed. Emery moved to stop her. The big guy physically yanked Emery back.

  Now it was Emery’s turn to get mad. “Am I running a criminal investigation or what!”

  “You ain’t running shit. We better start thinking about damage control,” said the big guy. Harry noticed that everyone in hearing distance of this shouting—the nurses, the doctor—ducked their heads down into their shoulders.

  “Who’s the big one?” Harry asked the minister.

  “Mike Hakala, county prosecutor.”

  “And the others?”

  “The county board,” Karson said. “Terry Hakala, owns the lumber yard. Used to be mayor till we cut the position. And there’s Greg Hakala, the banker, and the little one is Morris Hakala, he used to run public works, now he operates the garbage business. Couple of cousins. They used to manage the paper mill cooperative. When it went under, they scrambled onto the only thing left afloat, the local government.”

  Harry appraised the Hakalas, who tended toward piratical 92 / CHUCK LOGAN

  mustaches and longish hair. All they needed was horned helmets to be a gathering of Minnesota Vikings logos.


  Jesse’s voice rose in argument behind the curtain. Harry was up.

  Everybody raced to Bud’s bed. Jesse was crying again and pointed her finger at Bud whose dilated eyes yawned in alarm. Physically, he cringed from her.

  “I told you to listen to Mike, goddamn you. This wouldn’t have happened if you had the guts to stand up to Larry. But you had to try to be one of the boys!…” She saw Harry and drew herself up.

  “Instead you had to bring him…”

  Harry braced himself for her accusations.

  She yanked the ring from her finger and threw it at Harry. The diamond bounced off his chest and rolled under the bed. Then she slapped Harry in the face. Right in the stitches. He didn’t even feel it. He was completely absorbed in the deft intelligence working behind the grief in her eyes.

  Emery grabbed her. Bud tried to sit up and tipped over the IV

  stand. It clattered on the tile, a sound as stark and hollow as Jesse’s voice. “How much is Chris’s life worth, Bud? That’s how much your fucking divorce is going to cost!”

  Movement suspended. Everyone pretended to be invisible and Harry and Jesse stared at each other across a roomful of statues. A nurse swooped down and pulled the curtains tight around the bed.

  “He killed my son. Isn’t anybody going to do anything?” Jesse sobbed. Numb stares. Karson moved to intercede. Emery seized the smaller man by the arm and pushed him away. “You stay away from her,” he hissed. No one looked at Harry except Karson and Harry sensed that the minister was another outsider here.

  Jesse the magician, who was going to turn her son’s corpse into gold, bowed her head and walked from the silent room. When she was gone, Harry asked an orderly where the bathroom was.

  On unsteady feet he walked to the bathroom that was at the opposite end of the hall from where Emery and Hakala were trying to calm Jesse. He washed the blood off his hands, HUNTER’S MOON / 93

  stared into the mirror over the sink, and tried to get used to the four claw marks that crossed his face.

  The blood was persistent, etched into the creases of his hands.

  He wanted to feel sorrow, but all that came was a flush of the tri-umphant adrenal fury he had felt on the ridge.