by Chuck Logan
She jammed her hands in her pockets and hunched her shoulders, with the collar of the jacket turned up, she looked like a smart-ass kid getting arrested for the first time.
When they got inside the lodge he asked. “Where is she?”
“Depends what time of the month it is. Mom’s calendar’s got men on it instead of numbers.” Becky flopped down on the couch and folded her arms sullenly across her chest.
Harry found Cox’s number in the slim directory next to the phone and took a chance. His fingers shook, dialing the number. On the third ring, Jesse answered.
“Jesse, this is Harry Griffin.” Silence…“I’ve got your daughter out at the lodge.”
“Hold on to her,” Jesse said quickly. “Don’t let her out of your sight. Tie her up if you have to.”
“I thought she was following me. She spooked me,” said Harry.
“But she’s…okay?” Jesse asked slowly.
“Just a little shook up. You tell me where you are, I’ll bring her home.”
“No. I’ll come pick her up. Don’t come here. It wouldn’t…I’ll come get her.”
Harry hung up the phone. “She’s coming to get you.”
“Yeah, sure she is,” said Becky.
Harry walked past her to his duffel bag in the den, dug around, and held up a pair of sweatpants, a hooded sweatshirt, and heavy wool socks. “Put these on.”
She took the clothes and began to undress right before him. He turned his back. She laughed. “Sure you don’t want to watch? I don’t have stretch marks like Mom.”
Harry faced her and she grinned at his chagrin. She had stripped and was delicately balanced, putting one pointed foot into the gray sweats. She looked sideways at him through her 218 / CHUCK LOGAN
greasy hair and held up her soiled underwear. “You ripped my bra.”
He looked past her, at the words “Bud is a fucker” still scrawled in garish green on the wall by the fireplace, and felt irritated with both himself and her. With himself, because he should have removed it that day he returned to the lodge and encountered Cox in the driveway. With her, because he had a feeling she’d written it.
He went to the kitchen, threw open drawers and cupboards, and came back at her with a can of Comet, a bucket of water, and a copper scrub. He yanked the sweatshirt down around her outstretched arms and pushed her across the main room to the fireplace.
“Till your mom gets here, you take that writing off the wall.”
“I’m not your fucking maid!”
“Just do it,” muttered Harry.
Harry paced. Becky scrubbed. The minutes dragged by. She gave him a disgusted look when he splashed cold water on his face in the kitchen sink and ran a comb through his hair.
“How nice. You combed your hair for Mom,” she said sarcastically.
“She’s probably doing her hair.”
36
Fifteen minutes later, a blue Ford Escort—muffler rattling, rusting rocker panels—pulled up in front of the lodge and Jesse got out in wrinkled jeans and a heavy sweater with unraveled elbows.
She wore neither lipstick nor makeup and her hair hung slack, unbraided, frizzed with static electricity. Strain etched the corners of her eyes and mouth. She was the most desirable woman he had ever seen.
Charcoal crunched under her snowboots and she winced at the debris. When he opened the door, she saw the 12-gauge HUNTER’S MOON / 219
leaning against the wall and it had to be the grimmest moment of his life when he looked into her eyes.
Becky, back in her jacket, tried to shoulder by. Her face flushed as she passed through the wall of tension in the doorway. She grabbed Jesse’s elbow. “Let’s go.”
“Wait. What happened?” said Jesse, hauling Becky back by the jacket.
“I was out hunting.” Harry’s words sounded bitten. Bruises on the cold air.
“He was crying,” said Becky. “Sitting on this stump crying just like a baby. Then he must have heard me as I was trying to get out of there and he came after me with his gun.”
Jesse scanned Harry’s face as her daughter spoke. “Go wait in the car,” she told her.
Becky shook her head. “Not leaving you alone with him.”
“Git,” said Jesse.
Becky drew herself up. “Jay said…” She pursed her lips. “Don’t get alone with him…”
Jesse said starkly, “Jay’s back with Ginny.”
“But…” Becky ground her teeth together.
“Move. Right now!” ordered Jesse.
Becky’s dirty face exploded with hot tears. “You’re blind, all of you are blind. Why don’t you just fuck him on Chris’s grave!”
Jesse drew back her hand and slapped Becky, burning the palm across her face and Becky slumped and began to sob and walked down the wobbly steps. She stood staring at her shoelaces for a moment. Then she burst into a full run and disappeared around the pole barn, toward the snowmobile trail. Jesse started to follow and her shoulders sagged and she stopped.
They were alone in the driveway, facing in opposite directions.
Motionless.
“She was out there that morning, on skis. She saw us in…the trees,” said Harry.
“Perhaps,” said Jesse.
“She’s been spying on me,” Harry said, his voice too loud. “Keep her away.”
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“How am I going to keep her away?” Jesse shot back. “I can’t even find her. Did you see how she looks? Like she’s been sleeping with cats and dogs. God knows where she gets herself off to.”
When they turned to face each other, Harry wasn’t sure if they were looking back or if they were looking forward to Sodom and Gomorrah.
She took a cigarette from her sweater pocket and tried to light it, but her fingers didn’t have the strength to push the little wheel on her lighter. Harry brought out his Zippo. His own smokes. They lit up.
Jesse turned away again and put one hand to the soot-blackened porch for balance. Harry spread his fingers and brought them to within an inch from the back of her hair. A fuzz of energy tickled his fingertips.
When she spoke, he pulled his hand back.
“That took a lot of balls, what you did with those divorce papers.
I thought Bud might try to come to the funeral. I never thought I’d see you again.”
“Yes, you did,” said Harry.
Jesse’s shoulders rose and fell and she turned around and he could not name the expression she formed with her lips. He should say something—some impossible word he didn’t know that was made out of love and sorrow and distrust.
Her hand came up and he moved to block it. “Hush,” she said with total authority as her fingers lightly brushed his hair. “You look like a high school boy after gym class with comb marks in his hair.”
She bit her lip and looked away and then noticed the soot on her hand from the porch and realized she’d marked his forehead with it. She rubbed her fingers together, then dragged on the cigarette.
“Leave Jay alone. He’s in real rough shape.”
Harry nodded. “Then tell him to stay away from me.”
She took a deep breath. “This all has to stop. It’s time to be…practical. We have to talk.”
“We’re talking right now.”
She shook her head. “Someplace away from here.”
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“About what?”
“A divorce settlement.”
“That’s for lawyers,” said Harry.
“We could meet for dinner…I know a place on sixty-one.”
“I’ll think about it,” said Harry.
“You do that. Think real hard.” She walked down the steps and got in her car. Completely exhausted by their conversation, Harry watched her drive away. His hand was up next to his temple where she’d touched him and came away faintly smudged with soot.
She called an hour later.
“The restaurant’s called the Shore Wind, just north of Gooseberry Fal
ls. I can meet you there at eight,” she said.
“I’ll be there.”
“I’ll be alone,” she said.
“So will I.”
He spent the afternoon watching the day turn cold as bone, so damn cold that only Eskimo and Indian curses had the grit to do it justice.
He made a pot of very strong, very black, coffee.
Bud called at 6 P.M. while Harry was cleaning the rifle. Radio Free Ojibway was back on the radio, dropping out of a hole in the sky.
“What’s that in the background?” asked Bud.
“Drums.”
Bud’s voice sounded hollow over the long-distance connection.
“I was hoping you wouldn’t be there. You got me worried.”
“Look, Bud. I was having some trouble. But I’m all right now.”
“I said that very thing this morning in my group. They suggested that I stick around.”
“I saw Jesse. She wants to talk. Tonight. About a divorce settlement.”
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“Be careful,” Bud said quickly. “Whatever you do, don’t get sucked in to trying to get her approval.”
“Anything you want me to say? Know about?”
Harry listened to Bud’s rapid breathing. “Talk to her,” Bud said tightly. “Find out what she wants.”
37
He arrived early and walked along the beach behind the restaurant and the cold gnawed down and Lake Superior clicked in the dark like a pane of glass.
Jesse arrived punctually. Her face was porcelain, bare of makeup, and she could have just emerged from an icy shower of grief. Or calculation. Wordless, he helped her off with her coat.
She wore a severe ivory silk blouse with a high buttoned neck and a long dark skirt and her hair plunged down in strict black lines against the tendons of her throat.
His suit wouldn’t do, so he’d put on one of Bud’s sweaters that he’d found in the bedroom closet. His dress shirt and tie. And his scabs. Her eyes sparked when she recognized the sweater.
The manager took her hand and expressed his condolences about Chris. They spoke intimately and Jesse noticed a few changes he’d made in the decor as he ushered them to a table by the windows overlooking the shore.
“They know you here,” said Harry.
“I did some work for them once.”
A small bar situated along one wall. “Tending bar?” he asked.
“I worked on their books.”
“So you’re not a bartender?”
“I’m good with numbers. Taxes, things like that.”
“Bud leaves things out.”
“Definitely.” Her eyes hardened. “Bud likes me in jeans and a lumberjack shirt. When I was a kid my dad taught me to HUNTER’S MOON / 223
flip flapjacks in a frying pan. Bud saw me do it once and decided that’s who I was.”
“Was he right?”
“I took tap-dancing lessons when I was a kid, too. Doesn’t make me a chorus girl.” She ordered a vodka martini. He had black coffee.
“So how do we begin, you and I?” she asked frankly, holding the martini glass in both hands.
“We already…began,” said Harry. She raised her eyebrows. “I think you tried to kill my friend for money. That you used your own kid to do it.”
“Prove it,” she said straight back.
“Never happen in Maston County.” Harry inhaled and said the rest of it. “I’m also obviously attracted to you.”
“Prove that, too,” she said.
Harry spread his hands on the linen tablecloth in what he meant to be a slow stable gesture. His fingers blundered into a water glass and nearly tipped it over.
She studied him. “Don’t get hung up on appearances. You have this knack for walking into the middle of things. You should try to catch some beginnings.” Her voice chiseled, matching her eyes. “One thing Bud knows about is appearances. He creates people and assigns them roles. He made you into the best buddy. First he gave you a lot in common, then he got you to owe him…”
She lit a Marlboro and leaned forward.
“He gets things on people to hold over them. Then he tosses in a curve and enjoys watching you scramble. And you can’t shake him.
He—” she searched for a word—“adapts. It scares me what he could do if he got into politics.”
Harry had not expected this kind of conversation. He couldn’t tell if she was testing him for weaknesses or for strengths.
“He knew,” she said.
“Knew what?”
“That we couldn’t keep our hands off each other. What we had wasn’t even ours. We’re stuck. Like two butterflies on a 224 / CHUCK LOGAN
pin.” She blew a nervous stream of smoke. “The biggest mistake I ever made in my life was marrying him.”
Harry raised an eyebrow and she jerked her lips in a nonsmile.
“And your biggest mistake was coming up here. But I did and you did and…” Her voice trailed off.
Harry took the button from his pocket and placed it on the table.
“What’s that?” she asked.
“Came off my pants, that morning in the woods. Larry Emery found it.”
“He would.” She pursed her lips and turned her head and her breasts rose and fell under the silk. When she looked back, the precise finish vanished from her eyes. They clouded, rapture in one, everlasting damnation in the other.
“You’re trying to turn me around…just like that morning,” Harry said, guarded.
She cocked her head and the movement rippled her straight hair.
“He took you off the street, fixed your teeth, got you your job. You’re his hard guy Frankenstein. Wasn’t for him, you’d be exercising those fifty-caliber shoulders on a loading dock somewhere, going to seedy AA meetings every night, and having tense dreams about glasses of draft beer.”
Harry gave her a tight smile and sorrow bunched the corners of her lips. He couldn’t decipher what impulse sucked the tears back from her eyes. One second it was vulnerable, the next it shriveled into the bitterest of smiles.
“You can fuck me, but you can’t see me, and I’m sitting right here in front of you,” she said.
“Jesse…we have to talk about Chris.”
Her eyes slapped him. “Nobody’s innocent. All clear?”
Maybe all they had were random moments. This one was gone.
Her words came in tight wire bundles. “Listen carefully, wise ass.
Tell your master I want the lodge, the lake, the land…and a million dollars.”
“That’s pretty steep blood money for a murdering kid.”
A spark of hellfire flew in her eyes. “Combined business and divorce settlement. He can cash out. Simple round figures.”
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“Why don’t you tell him?” he asked.
“He slapped an injunction on me. We’re not supposed to talk.”
“So get a lawyer.”
“Why? When you’re here. The invaluable friend.” She laughed bitterly. “The best man, the best shot…the best fuck.”
They became aware of the waiter poised nervously to take their order.
“I lost my appetite. How about you?” she said briskly. The waiter retreated.
She pulled some bills from the pocket of her purse and dropped them on the table, getting ready to leave.
“You don’t have much of a life, do you?” she asked as she stood up. “You’re not interested in money, or power. Just some myths about who you are and a few moments when they seem to come true. Chris was one of those moments, wasn’t he?”
“Why’s Becky hiding?” he countered as they walked toward the coat rack.
“Keep it simple, stupid. The lake, the lodge, the land, and the money.”
He took her arm and pulled her around to face him. “You don’t fit up here, with Emery and Cox.”
Her face flashed. “We don’t all get to wind up where we fit.
Sometimes we wind up where we get stuck.” She pr
ied off his hand and put on her coat.
In the parking lot they hunched in their coats, leaving, but not finished. Harry dropped all pretense of control. “Why’s Cox look at me that way?” he demanded.
“You mean like he’s seen a ghost?” Abruptly she turned and walked down the path among the boulders to the shore. Harry followed her. She turned up her collar and huddled close to him.
“Why are we here?” he asked.
“Open your eyes.”
He peered into her face. She took his chin in her hand and pointed it out over the lake. The horizon flamed pale green 226 / CHUCK LOGAN
and vermilion where the Aurora Borealis made a million-car pileup at the edge of the world.
“Pretty,” he said, looking into her face.
“It’s fucking beautiful, Harry. The most beautiful thing you’ll ever see.”
Another situation, another woman; it would be the time for a kiss and the kiss was spectral between them in the warm, white vapor of their breath mingling and gone in the night.
He opened his mouth to speak. Her finger pressed her lips and gently moved to his, sealing them. She was so good it looked like a real tear bent in the corner of her eye when she said, “The worst part of all this is it had to be you.”
She turned and walked up the path. Halfway up, she spun and made an electric figure against the flickering sky.
“What the hell do you want?” he yelled at her.
“I want you to take a chance on me.”
Then she disappeared into the darkness. He caught up to her in the parking lot.
“Anything else you want to tell Bud?” he asked in a hoarse voice.
“Sure, tell him life is unfair.” Composed now, she got into her car and rolled down the window. “I’m a damsel in distress. Since you served those papers at the funeral, the local cavemen think I’m up for grabs. Larry has it in his mind that the guy who gets the biggest deer gets me. Men, huh?” she said as she drove away.
Her presence lingered and the caress of evil came as softly and innocently as a breeze stirs a flag. Shoot a deer. Fuck a dragon. Betray Bud. Out on the black arena of Superior, ice cracked like a starter pistol.
38
Take a chance.
The old infantry gamble. Stay low in the weeds with nineteen. Or stand up and walk toward it and tempt the bitch.
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