by Chuck Logan
“That sheriff looks like he wants to secure your heartbeat,” said Randall.
“No shit. That’s his bastard kid I shot.”
“Jesus,” said Dorothy.
“Slow down. Let it settle,” said Randall, quieter than Dorothy.
“Don’t let the déjà vu fuck with your head.”
Harry nodded. He had carefully not allowed himself to think about that. “It was just like that all over again. Quick, you know?”
“We know,” Dorothy’s voice caught in her throat.
Harry turned away and looked out the window at the snowy hills unreeling below them.
Other hills. Layered in mist. Emerald, jade, turquoise, shamrock, moss-green till hell wouldn’t have it and ferrous red Martian dirt that stored the day’s heat like a furnace. Sweat and fear and no sleep.
Crazy damn operation. Randall’s brainchild. Trying to rescue a renegade Viet Cong leader from the North Vietnamese. Complicated by Dorothy tagging along, hot to interview the renegade. All screwed up into a confused, running fight down a jungle mountainside. Got separated. Randall and Dorothy captured. Had them digging their own graves when Harry broke from the tree line at the run with his M16 walloping his shoulder.
Defining moment of his life. He was twenty-one years old and touched with dead-on magic and he’d sprinted through a hole in the day and even now, he smiled remembering it. Every move perfect.
The bullets meant for Randall and Dorothy had sizzled around his head. Couldn’t remember exactly. A scream. A prayer. Fuck you!
You can’t have these people that I love! The three North Vietnamese executioners went down.
“You might want to get away from the paper for a while,” said Dorothy.
“What?” Harry blinked.
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Dorothy cocked her head with a wry expression. “A newspaper’s a funny place. All these people sit around and wait for something bad to happen to somebody else out in the world. They have their filters to deal with reality. To keep it manageable. You just got turned into a story. Reporters like to write stories in newsrooms and put their byline on them like a seal of approval. They don’t like the stories walking around, talking over their shoulder. It’ll be weird.”
“I’m more worried about Bud—” Harry started to say.
“The more you help Bud, the deeper in shit you get. Leave it alone,” said Randall.
“I think you should stay at our place tonight,” said Dorothy.
Harry nodded, leaned on his duffel bag, and studied the faded Air America baggage tags looped to the grip. Same bag he’d packed in a rush when he split Detroit. Now he and his bag were on their way to Randall and Dorothy’s place again. Maybe nothing ever changed.
18
Flurries blew across Holman Field in St. Paul. The storm had merely swished its petticoats through town as it passed to the northeast. On the way to the parking lot, Randall asked, “How are you feeling?”
“Adrenaline bends,” said Harry. The corrupt taste festered in his gums and only a drink could wash it out when it got this bad.
“You need some sleep,” said Randall.
The city whirled past with the cramped aspect of a childhood home revisited as an adult. Randall took the freeway, exited on Cretin Avenue, and went south, past the College of St. Thomas.
Apple-cheeked Tommies toted bookbags. Girls in plaid skirts.
They turned onto the River Road. The homes were bigger. Larger lots. Ice winked on the crumbling grin of a Halloween jack-o’-lantern.
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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 hi
m 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.
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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 up. “Three kinds of bullshit,” she said brightly.
“Who is it?”
She mentioned a local TV anchorwoman. “Word’s out that Flattop Franky Murphy at the paper has weaseled out a juicy angle on the Maston shooting. To wit: not the first time Harry Griffin has saved a friend’s life with some snickersnack rifle work. Prepare for a trip down memory lane.”
“Nam?” asked Harry.
“My God,” said Randall. “It’s going to be a circus.”
“Shit,” said Harry. “How’d Murphy get onto that. It’s ancient history.”
Dorothy shrugged. “Well they dug it up somewhere. Slow news day, Harry. People must of glommed on. Just a few paragraphs to brighten up the story. Personalize it a little. Hip hip hooray for the new flash journalism,” said Dorothy with a sour smile. She taught the old-style journalism part time at the U of M.
“Fucking scribblers,” muttered Randall. “Tecumseh Sherman was right. Shoot the bastards.”
“So now what?” asked Harry.
“I called Bud over at Ramsey,” said Dorothy. “If none of us play into it, they don’t have a sexy sidebar. Just the basic story. So we’ll just tough it out. Lucky you. You get your fifteen minutes in the footlights,” said Dorothy.
“Bud.” Harry remembered. “He was in town talking to Murphy…”
The phone rang. Randall answered. “Fuck you.” He paused. “No comment.” He listened for a moment, looked at Harry. “Not here.”
Another pause. “No idea.” Randall hung up.
“Who?” Harry asked.
118 / CHUCK LOGAN
“Murphy.”
“I’m gonna set the fucker straight,” Harry said.
19
Harry insisted that Randall drive him home.
Chris Deucette’s death, but not his name, made headlines in St.
Paul. PHILANTHROPIST MASTON SHOT—stripped in six-column Bodoni Bold type across the top of the early outstate edition. Harry slapped quarters in the street sales box next to the elevators in his building and took out a paper.
If he’d been shot, the headline would say, HUNTER SHOT. NOBODY
SHOT. A photo of a slimmer Bud Maston accompanied the story.
Back when he was a prince, before he turned into a frog.
Going up in the elevator, he saw the sidebar below the fold. DÉJÀ
VU HAUNTS HUNTING TRAGEDY. His face made page one. An old library file photo. His hair was longer, teeth crooked. A picture of Tim Randall from one of his book promotions ran alongside.
It wasn’t the first time Harry Griffin saved a friend’s life with a fast rifle shot, a reliable source told this newspaper. In January 1968, Harold S. Griffin, then a PFC in the U.S. Army serving in Vietnam, rescued another friend in a dramatic, almost identical situation. “Harry [Griffin] hasn’t touched a gun since the war,” added the source.
Which was not true. “Bud, you dumb shit,” he muttered. He skipped the war story part and continued to read: The other recipient of Griffin’s shooting acumen is St. Paul author and former army man Timothy Randall. Randall, who was Griffin’s commanding officer, retired from the army under a cloud in 1968. His Pulitzer
HUNTER’S MOON / 119
Prize-winning book on the Vietnam War, The Bitter Coming of Age, was published in 1972.
The story quoted an old review of Randall’s book, written by some creep from the Nixon administration.
Jack Kennedy once described Randall as “a killer who wrote books.” Randall had a reputation for being a lone wolf warrior-scholar with a flair for “black operations.” Black operations is a term from the Vietnam era used to describe covert activities that included kidnapping and assassination.
The main story was off the wire from the Duluth paper and bore Sherry Rawlins’s byline. It tersely described the incident, quoting from an “exclusive” interview with Mike Hakala—“tragic result of drugs making an inroad in rural Minnesota…a patent case of justifiable homicide…friend coming to the aid of a friend”—and Bud’s recent “quiet” marriage and doomed political campaign. Jesse was not mentioned by name, her picture did not appear, and she wasn’t quoted. Hakala had kept the lid down tight.
Chris was sketched fast as a troubled kid who possessed drugs and stole guns. A blurry high-school picture. No mention of the teacher Chris had allegedly threatened at gunpoint.
Harry crumpled the paper and threw it across the room. The phone rang. It was Linda Margoles.
“Jesus, Harry. Bud called me from Ramsey. He wants to file for divorce. Then I saw you on the six o’clock news and talked to Dorothy Houston, she said you were back home. You need a lawyer?”
“Not me. Bud sure does.”
“He said you think his wife…tried to kill him?”
“I was him I wouldn’t stick around to find out.”
“Christ, he just got married.”
“Linda, just get the papers ready.” He imagined the intricate gears of her mind shifting through his rushed words.
120 / CHUCK LOGAN
“Okay, okay, calm down,” she said in a steady voice. She was humoring him. Everybody was being nice. Floating with the shock waves. In a more intimate voice she said, “How are you doing with this?”
“Not so hot,” said Harry.
“Dorothy said you haven’t eaten. I could pick up some Chinese.
Come over.”
Harry exhaled. “Linda, we’ve been through all this.”
“You shouldn’t be alone tonight.”
Harry thought about it. “Yes, I should.”
“At least have something to eat.” Her voice hovered.
“Okay. Jesus. Give me an hour.” He hung up. Dialed Randall’s.
“You see the paper?” he asked when Dorothy answered.
“It’s on the ten o’clock news, too. I told you it could get weird,”
said Dorothy.
Randall came on. “Is this Murphy a friend of yours?” he asked.
“Just a guy I work with. A hotshot,” said Harry.
“Well, he’s good, I’ll give him that. I just got a call from D.C.
Remember Hollywood from special ops?”
“Yeah,” said Harry. Hollywood. A blond gorilla with dry ice for eyes. Navy SEAL he’d worked for after Randall split the war.
“Well, Hollywood is a United States Att
orney now working for the Justice Department. He said the phones are buzzing among the old gang. Murphy looked through all my old book reviews and called the hostile ones.”
“Shit, Tim, I’m sorry you got dragged into this.”
“Hey, I’m used to being notorious. It’s you we’re worried about.
If you read between the lines, they’re setting you up as the psycho vet from central casting. Dorothy thinks you should take a leave of absence. Bug out for a while.”
“I’ll deal with it. I’ll get ’em to kill the story, the part about you.”
“Don’t kid yourself. You don’t deal with something like this. You just turned into a story.”
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“Fucking Bud. He musta said something to Murphy. Put the blood in the water.”
“It doesn’t make any difference where it started. Technically, it’s all accurate information. The clever juxtaposition gives it lurid texture. It’s what you get for living an interesting life in a world of newspaper subscribers and voyeur reporters who grub along in quiet desperation.”
“You’re a lot of help.”
“Screw ’em,” Randall chuckled. “What are they going to do? Send us to Vietnam? Let’s invite Murphy over. I’ll get out the twenty-two and we’ll sit around and shoot squirrels in the backyard while he interviews us about back when we were ‘assassins’ together.”
“They’ve no right, man,” said Harry.
“Hunker down. Let it blow over,” said Randall. “Why don’t you come back here tonight?”
Randall’s concern was practical, not emotional like Linda’s.
Randall knew he could sweat some sheets.
“I’ll think about it.”
The minute he put the phone down, it rang. A reporter from Channel 7. Harry pulled the phone connection out of the wall.
His heart started to race. Steady down. Do the tricks.
In sobriety he had evolved disciplined routines; first he put the water on for coffee, then twenty minutes of meditation till the water boiled.
He sat on the carpet, folded his legs into a half lotus, shut his eyes, and let his thoughts scatter into the darkness behind his eyelids.
He imagined them swirling in a slow-motion, underwater storm.
The heavy ones sank. The lighter ones trickled up like ribbons of bubbles.
