Hunter's Moon

by Chuck Logan

  The weird orange light of the north stirred embers of storm-charge in the snow and he kept walking, deep into the woods.

  Not sure anymore. Were they going to kill Bud? Arrange another accident? This time, coincidence would have a better aim. Jesse would walk away and lay on a beach and sip snappy rum drinks.

  Harry tried to imagine Jay Cox in a Hawaiian shirt and sunglasses.

  Cha cha cha. Becky the witness would disappear, be found in the spring when it thawed. Patient Larry Emery would do the paperwork and wait for Jesse to return to him. Then they’d all sharpen their knives and go after the will…

  Ice cracked and his feet went out from under him. Yikes!

  294 / CHUCK LOGAN

  Waist-deep in frigid black water. He scrambled for solid ground.

  Soaker. Great. He’d blundered into a fucking tamarack swamp.

  Walk around, dummy. In minutes, his leg muscles were cramped from jumping from one clump of roots to another. His gloves were drenched and his hands cut raw from grabbing at saplings. Solid sheets of ice clung to his jeans. Boots cased in it.

  The wind burned the sweat running in his eyes and sleety snow slashed his face and dreadlocks of frozen sweat clicked in his hair.

  Forget Jesse and Emery. You’re lost, man.

  Harry began to shiver in a cloud of steam and he wished it was from fear. His body was losing heat faster than it could replace it.

  Okay. You’re wet, wind’s rising, the temperature’s plunging. You have daylight. But how much?

  Calmly, he smoked a cigarette and stared into the bleak maze of trees and marsh. You have a lighter. No matches. He smiled at the irony. Raised in the woodland shadows of the Great Lakes, he’d made all the obvious mistakes. Not just being disoriented without a map or compass. Soaked to the bone. Been up all night, hadn’t eaten. Plus all that coffee. Dehydrated for sure.

  Build a fire and dry out? Or walk out while he had light. Walk out. He’d have to backtrack. No calm way to get out of the swamp.

  He lurched on stiffening feet. Patient black water pooled under patches of thin ice. Trick was not to…Don’t think the word. He’d already thought lost.

  He broke the ice off his pants and began the long march back.

  Hadda be that goddamn fat sticky snow that fluffed up. Mistake to be going this fast, but he had to go on tracks while he still had them.

  He fell into a jerky trot doubling back on the boot prints that swelled with new snow. The ground was pulling zippers shut. Fainter, fainter. Gone.

  No more walking tracks, just his fresh lost tracks.

  He stood perfectly still and strained his ears. Hoped to hear a truck, a chainsaw, some reference.

  Mistake. The wind spooked him with a low groaning HUNTER’S MOON / 295

  among the trees and panic creaked ajar in the switchback moraines and the jack pine wagged their skinny boughs. Thumbs down. The snow blew almost horizontal in the limbo light.

  Shaking uncontrollably now, an ominous solidity bonded his feet and boots together and a painful sting tightened in his fingers. Harry began to jog to get his circulation going. Blindly, just to move. The synergy of wind and snow torqued him and loosed a trampling surge in his chest.

  He’d held on to the rifle. Useless damn thing, fringed with ice.

  He pressed it to his chest to rein in his runaway heartbeat. The wind scythed him and hacked off a corner of the light. And he came down with bone-deep shivers and it was hostile everywhere he looked and the idea of night entered his mind.

  Nanabozho time.

  A carnival of jack-in-the-boxes went booga booga in the wind.

  Control slipped a notch and Harry had a peek at full-blown panic.

  It occurred to him that Tad Clark should have his group out here on the bone lip of hypothermia. Talk about the Shadow. The primitive power of wilderness.

  The only heat came from the pulsing tick under his left shoulder blade. Not alone out here. Harry tried to wrack the lever on his rifle.

  Frozen solid. He yanked his knife from its scabbard. It fell from his numb fingers. He lurched after it, digging frantically in the snow.

  Couldn’t find it. Lost.

  The wind soared, the branches rattled like a gallows tattoo, and the cold sliced right through him. He felt the blood turning gray in his veins and the whiteout was erasing him like a small mistake and when it passed, the forest reached for him.

  Join us, beckoned the line-dancing trees and the wind chanted, midwife to the Windigo. You winter soul of men. You spirit of starvation, of cannibals, of incest, of murder…

  He took a deep breath and stared it in the face. Don’t fight it, you’ll just mess it up. Be calm. He tried being calm. Maybe he could be calm if he was a Tibetan. But he wasn’t.

  Well, fuck this shit! Harry staggered to his feet, pulled off his gloves, and with spasming fingers, dug out his Zippo and 296 / CHUCK LOGAN

  cigarettes. He held fire in his trembling cupped hands and blew smoke at the goblins.

  Had his own bullshit savage voices from Knox and Benning.

  All right if you die, you pussy, just don’t quit on me…

  Harry drew a rectangle in the snow. As best he could, he trans-posed the map from the Snowshoe Lodge brochure. He’d followed Emery east from the lodge. Wandered east from the trailer. Cox’s driveway opened on a county road that ran north and south. He hoped. The last weather picture on the TV news showed a cold front moving from the northwest. So. Face the goddamn wind and guide left.

  Harry counted cadence and kept the stinging wind on his right cheek. Thousands of numbers later he saw the sweep of lights through the trees. Trolling headlights in the dusky snow, two, three sets of them. Other lights, swinging, moving, closer in.

  His stiff feet picked up the step. A road had never looked so good.

  The road was just as barren, cold, and windshot as everything else. He turned left toward the nearest lights. He’d gone only a hundred yards when he halted in mid-stride, staggering. His nostrils distended.

  Whiskey on the wind, sour as coal oil in the turbulent, charged air. Out of place…Harry turned.

  Silent and furred with snow, Larry Emery loomed in a surge of fury. A gloved fist. No time. Stars. Or the ice cracking on his eyebrows.

  The trees spun.

  48

  Broke his fucking nose!

  Emery’s eyes bulged with tears as he stooped and seized Harry’s dropped rifle. Two-handed, he smashed it against the trunk of the nearest pine. Harry gauged Emery’s madness by the force that splintered the weapon. Emery tossed it aside.

  HUNTER’S MOON / 297

  He gave Harry two seconds to come out of a stagger and concentrate the spinning stars into a bee storm.

  “Leave her alone, damn you. Can’t you see she ain’t well?” Emery muttered as his brawny hands opened and closed, struggling for control.

  Harry cleared a loose wad of phlegm and blood from his throat and spit it into the snow at Emery’s feet and choked out red-finned words, “Not your business she can’t keep her pants on!”

  With a tormented sob, Larry Emery, six-two, 220 pounds, charged and his right hand jarred Harry’s left shoulder to the bone. A hay-maker left uppercut went wild and missed his nose.

  Harry drove his right fist with all his might into Emery’s middle.

  Mistake. Lumped muscle. Gut was a sack of potatoes. Emery’s hand came down, grabbed a handful of Harry’s frozen hair, and flung him to the ground.

  “Get up, you meddling piece of shit,” rasped Emery.

  Thing about pain. It sure warmed you up real fast. “This how you did in Tip Kidwell? Bounce him around and then shoot him?” Harry baited as he rolled to his feet.

  “You don’t know…nothing!”

  “How’d you do it, Emery? How’d you get Chris to shoot Maston?”

  The sheriff’s face swelled with drunken fury and his roundhouse right looped wild. Ha! Harry timed him, stepped in and jack-hammered a stiff left jab that went in sharp
under the right eye.

  Followed immediately by a right cross. Another mistake. Boxing in a streetfight. Emery didn’t even back up. With a spasm of sheer animal strength, he smothered Harry with his arms and pistoned a sharp knee into his groin.

  Too old for this shit. Harry cringed into a fetal ball. Nausea gushed up from his pelvis.

  Emery glared down. “Stay away from her, you sono-fabitch, or next time I’ll really…”

  Suddenly it was a threesome. Jason Emmet Cox burst down the road in his truck and screeched to a halt ten yards 298 / CHUCK LOGAN

  away. He hit the ground running, deer rifle held high in both hands.

  Horizontal butt stroke. Manual perfect. Cox buried the rifle butt into Emery’s left kidney.

  “Lay off ’im, Larry!” shouted Cox.

  Lights in the snow, coming down the road. The whine of an engine.

  Emery and Cox struggled over the rifle, went down, rolling. “Your fault!” Emery screamed. “Belong in a mental ward. Crazy sonofabitch! Leave her alone. She ain’t well.”

  “I never laid a hand on her, goddamnit,” Cox protested. Now Emery was on top, elbows locked, forcing the rifle down on Cox’s throat.

  “Griffin,” gagged Cox. “A little help would be appreciated.”

  Harry got his feet under him and flung himself at Emery. The three of them toppled over in a flurry of fists, knees, and elbows.

  Grunts and spit. Emery’s drunken nightmare breath scalded them.

  Harry threw his arms around Emery’s neck and wrapped his legs around his waist in a child’s desperate wrestling hold. Cox smashed his fist at Emery’s hands, trying to break his grip on the rifle.

  Deputy Jerry did his famous four-wheel skid.

  The Blazer was still rolling when Jerry Hakala came out the door at a dead run brandishing a billy club.

  “Knock it off!” He dove between them. The club flailed indiscrim-inately.

  “Cuffs,” gasped Cox. “Cuff the fucker…can’t hold him…”

  Harry had one of Emery’s hands, Cox had the other. Jerry pried the rifle from his grasp. Emery surged, kicking with his feet, his jacket and shirt torn open. Bloody streaks from fingernails gashed his barrel chest.

  “Shut your eyes!” Jerry yelled. Harry saw the canister in Jerry’s hand, clamped his eyes shut, and strained his face away. Astride Emery’s hips, Jerry squirted the Mace into Emery’s face. Emery roared and clawed at his eyes. The knot

  HUNTER’S MOON / 299

  of men broke apart. Coughing and gasping. Emery crawled in a mad circle on all fours. Through teared eyes, Harry watched oblivious snowflakes sail down and stick to Emery’s swollen face.

  They were all half blind, staggering from the chemical. A jingle of metal. Jerry had a pair of handcuffs. Emery struggled up. His arms flailed. Jerry stepped in, grabbed the sheriff’s wrist efficiently in a twist, and snapped a short vicious body check into his armpit. Then he swept Emery’s rubber legs out from under him. Using the rigid locked arm as a lever, he forced Emery face down in the snow. Cox trapped the other arm. Like two men hog-tying a steer, grunting, tears streaming down their red faces, they grappled the arms together.

  Jerry clamped the shackle. They jumped back, their breath coming in long torn clouds.

  “What’s…going…on?” Jerry demanded.

  “Police brutality,” gasped Cox with a predatory grin, his pepper-fog eyes watering. “Like I said on the phone. Emery was following him. Jumped out from behind a tree and sucker punched him. Saw it all coming down the road.” Cox cleared his throat, snuffled, and spit out a wad of bloody mucus. “Then he kicked him in the balls.

  When he was down. It was very unsheriff-like.”

  “Kill you motherfuckers.” Emery gasped in a strangled growl. On his knees, struggling for breath, eyes black and wild. His body made a crazy jig, raging against the cuffs.

  “Jesus, Larry.” Jerry winced and looked away. He exhaled and cursed: “Jesse.”

  Emery lowered his eyes.

  “Yeah,” said Jerry, shaking his head, “Jesse.”

  Harry had trouble seeing. His head was cased in a tight Norman helmet with a thick flange of swelling pain welded for a nose. A cold ring radiated inside his neck where pain thawed into fiery spasms.

  He visualized vertebrae fused in a nerve-grinding mangle. With sat-isfaction, he determined that between them, he and Cox had blacked both of Emery’s eyes and given him a hell of lumpy mouse on his right cheek.

  300 / CHUCK LOGAN

  “You all right, Griffin?” asked Jerry.

  “Fuck you and your sister,” spat Harry.

  “This weather, you were lucky Cox called. Said you were turned around in the swamp and that Larry might be after you. We had some guys out looking for Becky.” Jerry paused to catch his breath.

  “Shifted the search this way.”

  “You gotta do something with him before he hurts somebody,”

  said Cox.

  “I know, I know,” muttered Jerry. “Jesus, what a fuckin’ week.

  Okay. Larry? You hear me? We’re gonna put you in the car.”

  Emery nodded sullenly. Head bent, his eyes fixed on the trampled blood-sprinkled snow.

  “C’mon, help me get him in, before the rest of the guys get here,”

  said Jerry.

  Emery stood up, shook off Jerry’s hand, and stumbled to the Blazer. Jerry opened the passenger door. Emery got in. Jerry pulled the seat belt over his cuffed hands, securing him. “We’ll go like this till I get you home. Then I’ll get you cleaned up,” Jerry’s voice strove for calm.

  “Wait a minute. Aren’t you gonna lock him up?” Harry said.

  “Don’t tell me how to do my job. Way I see it, you gave this man a lot of provocation. Both of you!” Jerry said in a level voice.

  Cox rummaged at the side of the road. Found Emery’s deer rifle, wracked the bolt, unloading it, cleared it, and handed it to Jerry.

  “Let it go, Griffin,” cautioned Cox.

  “You kidding? With Maston coming up here to see her? You want that crazy sonofabitch walking around?”

  “We’ll deal with it, okay?” said Jerry. He picked up his radio handset and briskly explained that they’d found the lost guy. He didn’t mention anything about the scene with Emery and signed off.

  “Now, you guys need a ride?”

  “Fuck that,” said Harry. Cox shook his head.

  “Okay, that’s it.” Jerry closed the door. Emery hunched in the seat, staring straight ahead. Jerry got behind the wheel, put the Blazer in gear, and drove away.

  HUNTER’S MOON / 301

  Harry trembled and watched the taillights recede. “He’s gonna let the sucker go. Jesus.”

  Cox gave a hollow laugh, stooped, retrieved Harry’s rifle, and squinted along the shattered stock. “This puppy’s fucked unless you got crooked bullets. Maston might have a few of those, but I don’t think you do.” He tossed the rifle into the brush.

  “How’d you happen to be here?” asked Harry.

  Cox shrugged. “Found you guys’ tracks by the trailer, doubled back, Emery had done the same, was watching you in there with Jesse. He followed you when you came out. Lost your tracks in the swamp when the storm whipped up. I called Jerry.”

  So something was out there. Not the Windigo. Men were still the scariest thing in the forest.

  Cox shook his head. “Emery’s right, you know. She’s off her fuckin’ rocker since Chris—”

  “Do we know each other, Cox?”

  Spooky laugh. “You might say we’re connected.”

  “You and Ginny…I thought you were on the outs, but I was wrong, wasn’t I? You’ve been keeping tabs on me together.”

  Cox grinned. “She got a nice way of checking a fella out, don’t she?”

  Harry shivered and cautiously dabbed at the elbow that was growing between his eyes. “Fuckin’ Emery likes to hit.”

  Cox nodded. “Kind of guy who’ll never quit. Hate people like that.” Then he gr
inned. “I’m like that.”

  “He’s a violent sonofabitch.”

  “We all are,” Cox said. “That’s why we’re here. The lives we lived brought us together.” He bent down and grabbed a handful of snow, packed it, and pressed it against Harry’s swollen nose. “You best hold that there for a while for the swelling. Get to the hospital. At least slap some tape on it.” While Harry adjusted the icepack, Cox shook two cigarettes from a pack and handed one to Harry. He popped a lighter and his gaunt face flared in the flame, warted, and scarred.

  302 / CHUCK LOGAN

  Harry pressed. “What went down at the lodge last month, when Jesse called the cops? C’mon, man. You were there.”

  Cox cast his eyes at the snow-blurred woods. “I was there all right.” He chuckled and slapped Harry on the shoulder. “Never get greedy, troop, it’ll fuck up your life.”

  “You’re not a whole lot of help, Cox.”

  “Sin loy. Sorry ’bout that.” Cox grinned enigmatically. “Kinda like being out at night with the gooks, ain’t it? Don’t know who’s really next to you till it’s too late.”

  He picked up his rifle and nodded toward his truck. “Run you home?”

  “I suppose so,” said Harry resignedly. His nose was beginning to throb. He threw down his cigarette and headed for the passenger side.

  As the vehicle careened down the snow-clogged road, Harry 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!”