Hunter's Moon

by Chuck Logan

  Snowflakes as big as half dollars cartwheeled against the windows.

  Tony, the bartender, wore a vest and a look of discreet curiosity held close to it. As he wiped the bar and put down a fresh ashtray, he purred, “Harry, haven’t seen you in a while. Read about you though. What’s up?”

  “You seen Bud?”

  “He’s in the back with Steve.” Tony glanced at the windows and made bluff conversation. “This one’s coming from the West. Lifted the roof off the Rockies and is going to drop it smack on us. You want some coffee?”

  Steve kept a safe in the back. Harry stared at the office door at the rear of the room. So play it safe with nineteen showing or push it a little. “Hit me,” said Harry.

  “Come again?”

  “Jack Daniel’s. Double. Straight up,” said Harry, putting a five down on the bar. Felt right. No. Necessary. No way he HUNTER’S MOON / 151

  could pull off tomorrow morning straight. Damn. He needed those divorce papers.

  The drink arrived. He raised it and peered through the distorted prism of the thick tumbler at the mural of Custer’s Last Stand that stretched across the back wall next to the office door.

  Custer stood in the center of the painting, his sword raised as the redskins closed in. At first Harry didn’t recognize Bud when he came out of the office with a wad of folding cash clutched in one hand and a drink in the other. No beard. He’d cut his hair, shorn it, penitent-fashion, down to the scalp. A baggy maroon U of M

  sweatshirt hung from his shoulders.

  Bud stared at him and the stalk of celery protruding from the sturdy Bloody Mary in his hand began to shake. Bud gulped the drink, dropped the glass, scuttled around the bar, went between a screen of tall potted palms, and out the side door.

  Harry gave chase down the hotel corridor. “Hold it right there,”

  he yelled.

  “You’re drinking. All bets are off,” Bud yelled back as he hobbled, favoring his left side. He turned a corner and went down a corridor of banquet rooms. The hall stopped in a dead end. Bud looked left and right and choose the door to the left, the one with a drum poster stuck to it.

  An Assembly of Men.

  Christ. Harry paused at the door and took a deep breath. Like two more symptoms of desperation, the men’s movement and the state lottery had surfaced at about the same time in Minnesota. Same bunch that staged the production for public TV up at Bud’s lodge.

  He opened the door and entered the large hotel suite.

  The furniture was shoved in a big circle and an elusive Plains Indian flute played low on a stereo. Stuff on the walls. Masks. Spears.

  Pine scent trickled from sticks of burning incense.

  Thirty guys who didn’t need to be at work on Monday morning stood around. They tended toward carefully

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  groomed beards, sensitive eyes, and affluent bodies starved from exercise.

  Bud’s disheveled entrance and now Harry’s bloody left hand created a nervous murmur. Bud talked urgently to a portly dude in a fringed buckskin shirt with a leonine mane of black Grecian Formula hair crawling down his neck.

  Bud’s electric blue eyes danced around the room. Gregarious Bud, trying to work the crowd, groping for his social magic.

  But this gang had read the papers. They regarded him as if he’d staggered down off a sand dune on Mars; sloppy, wild-eyed, badly dressed, stitches in his lower lip, and a round, messy stain leaking from his bandaged left side, soaking through his sweatshirt.

  Bud stepped behind the endomorph in buckskin. “Leave me alone, I mean it,” he challenged as Harry went straight for him.

  “Hold on, there,” rumbled the big man. Tad Clark had had a reputation in the Cities as a “cause person,” now he’d trimmed his political sails. Now everybody was his own cause. Harry moved Clark aside and seized Bud’s wrist. The Assembly of Men began to assemble.

  “Look out, he’s been drinking,” Bud warned in a loud voice.

  Coldly, Harry said, “Make a hole. I’m taking Mr. Maston back to the hospital where he belongs.”

  Bud tried to pull free. Harry snapped his wrist into a gooseneck come-along. Bud resisted and Harry discovered there was still con-siderable physical strength in his large body. Harry wrenched the arm violently, locking the elbow and wrist, stiffening it into a fulcrum. “Ow!” Bud cried out in pain.

  Clark stepped forward and put a loose hand on Harry’s shoulder.

  “No rough stuff. Don’t you know Bud’s been…hurt?”

  “Watch it, Tad. He’s dangerous,” said Bud.

  With his free hand, Harry pulled Tad Clark close and his HUNTER’S MOON / 153

  face, with the scabs streaked across his nose and cheeks, could have modeled one of the Algonquin warrior masks Clark had hung on the wall.

  He whispered in Clark’s ear. “I’m his best friend. See. He’s under a great deal of strain because his life just blew up in his face and he’s been drinking. I’m taking him where he can get proper attention.

  And I’m about out of patience. Call off the tribe or I swear to God I’ll pop out your left eyeball and skull-fuck you to death.”

  Tad’s large eyes turned to Bud. Bud sagged and his swollen lower lip trembled. “I can’t let you go up there, Harry. It’s my responsibil-ity.”

  Tad Clark stepped back. “Where are you taking him?” he whispered.

  “Saint Helen’s. There’s a bed reserved on the CD ward. That’s not for broadcasting, you understand?”

  “You’re the one who saved his life. You shot the boy,” said Tad Clark. “Your picture was in the paper.”

  “Okay, it’s all over, folks. Out of the way,” said Harry.

  Bud went docilely. Harry collared his arm around Bud’s shoulder and walked him to the lobby where he pried Cotter’s money and his car keys from Bud’s hand and left them with Bennett at the desk.

  “Take it easy, asshole,” muttered Harry as they walked out into a blast of snow.

  Bud began to shake. “Harry, one of us has to stay straight. When I’m fucked up I might marry the wrong person. You…” A violent spasm of shaking ended his sentence. His teeth chattered. “No shit.

  I think I might have a touch of the DTs.”

  At the curb, Harry reached in the backseat, pulled out his parka, and threw it over Bud’s shoulders. Then he helped Bud into the cramped front seat and got behind the wheel.

  “Jesus,” breathed Harry. He wiped his palm across his forehead.

  “Almost made it,” said Bud. “Would have if I hadn’t ordered a drink—”

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  “The papers,” ordered Harry.

  Bud reached under his sweatshirt and pulled out the legal document. An unhealthy glaze of spoiled meat slicked his face as he rolled his eyes and said, “I’ve never seen you in a suit before. You look good.”

  26

  The storm dumped on St. Paul and it was twilight at noon. The streetlights switched on and the edges of buildings turned grainy at 100 yards and the street became a skating rink. Cars skidded. The drivers, descendants of Scandinavian berserks, looked up and grinned.

  They were a block from the hospital when Bud quipped, “Heads up, gook in the open.”

  Harry hit the brakes and just missed hitting a short brown man who tried to cross against the light on one leg and a crutch. The Hmong tipped over in a light jacket and one dilapidated tennis shoe and a safety pin fastened his empty flapping pantleg and long black hair streamed around his square, lined face as he plopped on his ass in the snow. He cocked his head and fixed Harry with onyx eyes and raised a wrinkled hand in a disturbing gesture. Harry averted his face from the black shaman gaze as a crowd of pedestrians rushed into the slippery street.

  “No shit. That’s Billy Tully,” said Bud, suddenly energized as he recognized a pin-striped rhino with a shock of white hair who lumbered from under a restaurant awning to the cripple’s aid. Harry groaned. The one-legged Hmong had to fall down in front of McD
ermit’s, where the Democratic party faithful ate their long lunches.

  It was a small town.

  “This’ll just take a second,” said Bud briskly. Manic, he surged out the door. Harry immediately was out after him, poised for another escape attempt. Bud and Billy Tully outdid each other, helping the guy to his foot, handing him his crutch.

  HUNTER’S MOON / 155

  “It’s Harry, right, we’ve met. Party at Tim and Dorothy’s,” Tully said smoothly under his breath as he deftly shook Harry’s hand in the commotion. His Scotch-gored eyes took in Harry’s battered face and the spectacle of a shorn Bud Maston appearing out of the snow in a baggy sweat suit. Unfazed, he inquired, “So how is our boy doing?”

  “Shit,” muttered Harry. “I’m trying to get his ass to Saint Helen’s to take the cure. It’s turning into an all-day job.”

  “You did good up there. We won’t forget it, son,” said Tully. He patted Harry and the Hmong on the shoulder simultaneously. “Now let’s get Bud off this street full of voters, shall we?” Harry was for that. He clamped a hand on Bud’s elbow as cars honked their horns and people gathered.

  Tully turned to Bud and a sirloin grin parted the webbed capillaries of his face. “Christ, Bud, you look like you been shot at and hit.” He winked and wheezed as he handed the stoic Hmong a business card.

  “Well I have been, Billy, I have been,” said Bud, gushing sweat that steamed in the blowing snow, oblivious that a watery nosebleed crept down his upper lip and reddened the horror-show stitches in his purple, swollen lower lip.

  Caught in the conjunction of a gathering crowd and Bill Tully, the ultimate fixer, the grotesque stump of Bud Maston’s amputated ambition waved out of the delirium tremens and the snow came down like the confetti of the victory parade he never had and he threw his free arm around the Hmong’s shoulder and hugged him like they were old asshole buddies.

  “No, Bud,” hissed Harry but Bud had already launched into his best Bud-Maston-Cares baritone: “This man fought for America and we bugged out and hung him out to dry. I’ll bet he swam the Mekong River to get out of Laos. With one leg. And now he can’t even get benefits from a veterans hospital.” He paused for breath and shot a quick aside to Harry in a low voice. “You have any money, so he can take a cab?”

  “Fuck me dead.” Harry dug out the roll of bills. Bud pulled one off the top and handed it over.

  “What a minute! That’s a hundred!” Harry protested. But 156 / CHUCK LOGAN

  the Hmong had already pocketed the bill and was making like Long John Silver toward the nearest building lobby.

  Bud steepled his hands in a Buddhist devotion and called after him. “Najoong.” He turned to Harry. “Is that the right word?”

  “Time-out, Bud,” said Tully. He pinned one of Bud’s arms, Harry had the other and they dragged him to the Honda.

  Bud wagged a finger in Tully’s face. “Guy should at least have an artificial leg. All our fucking fault, Billy, all that crap we did, the dope and the marches and the fucking McGovern campaign. We were partying and left the Neanderthals to mind the store.” The crowd had drifted away. Bud was babbling to the snow.

  Tully glanced at the ghostly lights of St. Paul and laughed. “And empty office buildings and beggars on the street. Wipe your nose, Bud.”

  Bud wiped his nose but tatters of old speeches still fell out of his mouth: “Thirteen-year-olds joining gangs, carrying guns. Reagan’s children—they grew right out of the goddamn concrete.”

  Tully’s pouchy eyes glowered. “Put the cork in it, Bud. Let Harry here take you to the hospital and here’s the word: you do this right and maybe you can pull off a come back.”

  Bud gave Tully his full attention. “Well, I don’t know, Billy, after that thing up north,” he said dubiously. “And now the CD ward.”

  “Nothing wrong with that in Minnesota. It’s an acceptable rite of passage. Like losing your virginity. As far as up north goes, figure out how to put that kid into a nice rap about drugs.” Tully smiled.

  “You know, turn it into a fucking speech. In there.” Tully pointed at the brick bastille of the hospital down the street. “And make that marriage go away. Then call me after a decent interval, we’ll talk,”

  said Tully tartly. Bud’s five minutes were up. They shook hands.

  “Get in the car,” said Harry. He shoved and Tully’s hand guided Bud’s head so he wouldn’t bump it on the door.

  Bud wheezed, fitted himself back in the front seat, and HUNTER’S MOON / 157

  dusted snow from his scalp. He waved bye-bye to Tully, who gave him thumbs up.

  “Hmong die in their sleep, you know that,” said Bud with a perplexed grin. “For no apparent medical reason. They get yanked out of their jungle and get dumped in a city on the other side of the world and they fucking die. Weird, huh?”

  “Look, showboat, I need the keys to the lodge,” said Harry dog-gedly as he skidded to a stop in front of the hospital.

  “What?” Bud shook his head. His teeth chattered. “Man. I don’t feel so hot.”

  “You’ll be fine. They’ll take care of you. Give me the keys.”

  Bud winced as he reached in his pocket and pulled out a thick key ring. Each key had a neatly printed legend on a strip of adhesive.

  “This one is to my grandfather’s gun cabinet. Make sure they didn’t take anything. This one’s the Jeep. Garage-door opener is under the front seat.”

  Harry took the keys. “You all set?”

  “Wait—what are you going to do?”

  “Make sure the rabble don’t sack Castle Frankenstein. And serve the divorce papers.”

  “You don’t know your way around up there, Harry—”

  “I know where she’ll be at eleven o’clock tomorrow morning.”

  “Christ, you’re serious.” Bud had a lucid episode, aghast through his pallor.

  “C’mon. Let’s get you inside.”

  They were expecting Bud at the desk. “I think he may be in alcohol shock,” Harry told a nurse.

  “We’ll get a wheelchair,” the nurse replied. But nobody moved.

  Bud grinned weakly. “No tickee, no washee,” he said as he pulled his wallet from his pocket and dropped a Blue Cross card on the counter.

  They stamped the plastic, resumed their efficient attentiveness, and called for a wheelchair.

  “Get some rest, Bud. I’ll be in touch.” Harry squeezed Bud’s arm.

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  Bud reacted with a loud tantrum of resentment. “You’re the one who belongs in here, not me!” Heads turned in the reception area.

  Bud Maston slouched over, feeble and bitter in his baggy sweat suit, with his cueball haircut and a ring of flab hanging around his neck, he looked like a lost recruit on the first day of basic training being shunted off to the fatboys’ platoon.

  27

  With Bud under wraps, he was free.

  Free also from Randall with his Geritol advice and Linda. Didn’t need their nagging or Bud’s raving. Never did believe that stuff about alcoholism being a disease. Doctors and hospitals and weepy therapy groups. Nobody’s fault. Let’s all be victims together. Through being sick. Be weak or be strong. The Honda idled at the curb. He was traveling in his head.

  He pawed through his tapes, found the one to blow him out of town, slapped it in the deck, and cranked the volume way up.

  He sucked the blood from his skinned knuckle, glanced at his scarred face in the rearview mirror, and popped the clutch to a thunder of guitar chords and the bawl of Waylon Jennings. The Honda fishtailed onto the streets of St. Paul.

  Now that would be an AA group he’d love to sit in on. Waylon, Kris, Willie, and Johnny Cash singing through raw holes in their livers, wallowing in Confederate self-pity…

  Harry leaned on his horn. Goddamn Minnesota drivers. Car in front too slow coming off a light. Stop-go-red-green-walk-don’t walk.

  A block later, he ran an amber, and forced a car onto the shoulder on his way to the freeway
ramp.

  He had blowing snow and the open four-lane ahead of him. And a full tank of gas and a roll of new $100 bills in his pocket. Johnny Cash waved him on singing about gunplay in Reno.

  Driving the wrong car. The Honda had a lot of heart—no, his old Plymouth Valiant had heart. A Jap car wouldn’t have HUNTER’S MOON / 159

  heart; it would have what they called ki in Shotokan karate.

  He drove out of the storm at Forest Lake and Interstate 35 ran straight to the horizon fouled with billboards. Visualizing the gray, rolling Gobi of Superior, he made good time on plowed, salted roads.

  Kris Kristofferson warbled in his whiskey-cured, bedroom voice about ribbons and hair falling down and again, he felt her, fire and ice in the moonlight, double-crossing her legs over an intersection of deceit and maybe murder. Harry stepped on the gas.

  By late afternoon he was past Duluth. On North 61, orange men left their pickups and plodded up logging trails with rifles. Twilight netted the black pines with creeping shadows and a diamond-shaped yellow sign danced in his headlights with the imprint of a leaping white-tailed buck. He crossed into Maston County and a tingle of fear enhanced the dark. Sheriff Larry Emery owned this night.

  But crossing that line clarified his unruly exit from St. Paul. He knew for the first time in a long time—maybe ever—exactly what he was doing. He had killed a sixteen-year-old boy, and while the official version of events might satisfy the local politicians, it didn’t square with his conscience. He wasn’t leaving Maston County until he knew why Chris pointed that gun. Period.

  He passed a clapboard church with a nativity scene arranged in the snow. Six-foot plastic camels were planted under strings of gaudy Christmas lights with three wise men, and baby Jesus was some kid’s doll in a bale of hay. Those dudes are lost, he thought—Mediterranean desert nomads making their wish against the black Ojibway forest. Wasn’t even Thanksgiving yet.

  A stand of shadowy red oaks hitchhiked among the pines and Harry grinned. He’d been raised by Germans, his mother’s people.

  Druids, under the Protestant shellac. Had learned superstitions from his grandmother. The Christmas tree was put up the night before Christmas. Bad luck to start the symbolism too early.