Hunter's Moon

by Chuck Logan

  “You’re another savage, Harry. You’re just like Emery,” Karson said.

  Harry turned around. “This is a small-town sideshow, Bud. He despises everything Emery stands for, but his refined sensibilities won’t let him admit it. He even used Chris as a pawn in that game.”

  “That’s unthinkable,” Karson protested.

  “Not saying it was conscious, Don,” said Harry, turning to Karson.

  “Emery has more clout in town than you do. And Emery got in your face in public and humiliated you. This is your way of getting even.

  You want to see Emery take a fall. And that’s sick macho bullshit of a different order.”

  HUNTER’S MOON / 341

  Karson was on his feet, angry. “You never felt a drip of remorse about Chris. It was just another kill. You glory in your violence. All of you. Your never-ending crucifixion. Because you were in Vietnam, you bully people who weren’t.”

  Bud and Harry exchanged fast glances. Harry shook his head. “So that’s why you hale him. And us. You’re carrying some weird baggage, Karson.”

  Karson spun and glared at Bud. “You really shocked me after the shooting. All you worried about was this psychotic, how it might screw up his head, killing one more person. You should have seen him at the funeral. He was like some…Nazi.”

  “How much of that story did you read?” Harry asked Bud.

  “Just the first few sentences.”

  “It was a war story.”

  “That doesn’t surprise me,” said Karson. “Chris was fascinated with the honors that Bud and Emery won in the war, that he could never hope for because he was crippled.” Karson exhaled and lowered himself back to his chair. “I tried to bring him out of that, tried to show him…” Karson balled his hand into a fist. “There’s other masculine feelings just as deep…”

  Bud had put his head in his hands, elbows leaning on the table.

  One eye peeked between his fingers and Harry saw a yelp of dark humor in it.

  Weary of it, Harry shook Karson by the shoulder. “So just how deep into his masculine feeling did you get?”

  Karson pulled away. “I refuse to dignify that with an answer.” He relished Harry’s frustration. “There’s a dark side in all of us. We talked about that. The wild men in our dreams…there is always temptation.”

  “You laid this shit on a confused sixteen-year-old? I should whip you through hell with barbed wire,” Harry said coldly.

  “I tried to help him,” stated Karson.

  “You don’t get it, do you? Chris wasn’t like you. You want 342 / CHUCK LOGAN

  the war paint without the war. He picked up a gun,” Harry said.

  Bud came between them and pushed Harry away. “Everybody calm down,” he ordered. Bud and Harry towered over Karson, their eyes drilling into him.

  Karson cleared his throat. “Obviously I lost him to Emery when he decided to go hunting.”

  Sadness gathered in the room, mushrooming, shutting off light.

  Harry looked out the windows. Just the snow coming thicker.

  Karson’s chin sagged to his chest “Tell me the story he wrote.

  Maybe I can interpret it for you.”

  “Fuck,” said Harry.

  Bud fingered his strong chin and inspected his ragged fingernails.

  “Tell him. I’m curious.”

  “I’ve heard enough,” said Harry. He strode to the table, snatched the pistol, and shoved it in his waistband. “Bud, let’s get out of here.”

  “C’mon, Harry,” Bud jerked his head, beckoning, “Tell it.”

  Harry exhaled. “I don’t know. There’s this queer GI—”

  “Gay,” corrected Karson.

  “He has a crush on his officer. They get in this fight on a hill and everybody bugs out. Basically the guy stands his ground and dies saving everybody who ran away. There’s this drunk sergeant who comes back at the end and fights next to him. The description of the officer sounds a lot like Mitch Hakala.”

  Karson’s fine features held a brittle edge of compassion. “Chris struggled with the warrior inside. There’s some things you should see right off. Bud, you were decorated in a hill fight. So was Emery.

  Isn’t that true?”

  “I don’t know about Emery.”

  “I do,” Karson said with distaste. “Chris told me. And Emery was a sergeant.”

  Harry watched the snow come faster against the windows. He was getting tired of Don Karson. Real tired, when he launched into pop psychology.

  “Besides unrequited love, the other theme of the story is HUNTER’S MOON / 343

  betrayal. Both of Chris’s heroes betrayed him. Emery couldn’t control Jesse and make the family whole. Bud, you threatened to turn him in for selling drugs. And the fact is”—Karson lowered his eyes—“you couldn’t control her, either. Chris took a desperate gamble to reunite his family with heroic death as the alternative.”

  Bud looked to Harry and raised his eyebrows.

  Harry shrugged. “Going down in the act of taking a shot at the last Maston confers martyr status in this fucked-up county. Least that’s what Emery’s mother, the local witch, suggested.”

  Karson shook his head. “He committed suicide out there that day.”

  Bud disagreed. “Too romantic, Don. You leave out the fact that he had a head full of PCP.”

  “That, too,” said Karson sadly.

  “You’re forgetting Becky,” said Harry. “She knows something.”

  “Did she tell you that?” asked Bud.

  Harry shook his head. “Not details.”

  “Becky’s the smart one,” said Karson. “Maybe she’s hiding something or maybe it’s more obvious, maybe she’s just disassociating herself from the whole mess. She’s damaged, too. The human family can be a machine of torture.”

  “Give me a fucking break,” Bud said scowling. “I’m tired of this hindsight soap opera about a bunch of wacko people jumbled up in trauma. We ought to put an end to this…suffering, don’t you think?”

  Two shots cracked down the lake and Karson turned toward the sound. “Hunters,” he said hopefully.

  “Only thing they’re hunting today is Larry Emery. I’ll call the sheriff’s office,” said Bud. He sighed, hefted the shotgun, went to the phone, dialed, and hunched over in conversation. Suddenly he spun around and shook with hysterical laughter. “They got him. Get this. They found him sleeping off a hang-over in the Historical Society. His mother came to the police to explain why he was late for work.”

  344 / CHUCK LOGAN

  Bud’s hilarity was infectious and created a giddy aura of amnesty between the three of them. “Poor Mike,” said Karson, grinning. “All those cops. Who’s going to pay all that overtime?”

  Harry shook his head. “Emery’s still got a lot of explaining to do.

  This isn’t over yet.”

  Karson stood up. “I’d better get down there. He might need someone to talk to.”

  Harry raised his eyebrows. Karson smiled sadly. “It’s my job.” He paused at the door. “You’re right, about the baggage. I shouldn’t have prejudged the man. And Harry, you can put that away now.”

  He pointed at the pistol.

  Bud stood at the windows and watched Don Karson’s station wagon accelerate down the driveway and pondered. “They’ll probably put Emery in drug-dependency treatment.” He giggled. “Nothing will be resolved. You’re right, you know. If I were found on this floor tomorrow morning with a bullet between my eyes, the legal system of Maston County would rule accidental death. Stray hunter’s bullet.” Bud mused softly, “And that bullet would have been fired at my grandfather before I was even born. Fuck ’em all. I guess we can’t really change people. I can’t change you. And I can’t change me. Maybe we should just be who the fuck we are, huh?”

  “I have one last thing to do, file assault charges against that bastard Emery,” said Harry. “Then let’s get out of here.”

  “Might as well. Too bad they canceled the co
urt appointment.

  That’s going to be something. When Jesse meets Linda.” He giggled again. “The daughter of Scarlett O’Hara meets the daughter of Gloria Steinhem.”

  “You’re not giving her all that bread? After what’s happened?”

  Bud grinned. “She’s probably sitting out in that trailer with Cox making lists of things she wants to buy. Her mad minute at Kmart.”

  “Don’t sell Hakala short. She might downsize her figure once the grand jury cranks up,” said Harry.

  HUNTER’S MOON / 345

  Bud regarded him through lidded eyes. “Good point. She took advantage of her kid’s death. And what did being a soft touch ever get me? Dead, almost.” He patted Harry on the shoulder and stared into the falling snow. “You fuck up a few times and they never leave you alone.” He whistled softly.

  Bud slipped out of his suit coat and vest, loosened his tie, and rolled up his sleeves. In his pinstripe oxford-cloth shirt strapped with black suspenders, he looked solid, purposeful. He glanced at his fingernails. “I should clean up. I haven’t been taking care of myself.”

  Then a knowing smile played across his scabbed lower lip and his lidded eyes. “You fuck her?”

  Harry couldn’t help grinning. He saw his old friend in that smile.

  A touch of the unaffected grim elegance he’d always envied in the younger, thinner Bud. Getting stronger. Fought his way back through that wall of black plate glass, came up here and faced it.

  “Well? Did you, you devious, airborne crud?”

  “C’mon. Knock it off. I guarded Castle Frankenstein here against the serfs when they came with their torches to burn it down.”

  “You did, didn’t you?” He held up his hand to stay Harry’s pained expression. “No sweat I wouldn’t have married her sober. But you were sober when you fucked her. It was…predictable. Like you coming back up here was predictable.” He smiled. “Even you shooting Chris was predictable.”

  “Bud—”

  “Let me be a bit irreverent, Harry. It’s healthy.”

  “So you’re coming out of your funk?”

  “Yeeeaah,” said Bud. “There’s a downside, though. Considering that things couldn’t get more fucked up than they are.” Bud’s freckles did that rivet-pop on his pale skin and Huck Finn mischief twinkled in his eyes and the old charismatic smile was back. “Why in the hell are we sober?”

  Absurdity tumbled in their eyes and they laughed at the same time.

  346 / CHUCK LOGAN

  56

  “How about it? One drink to celebrate catching Emery,”

  said Bud with convivial glee as he opened the cabinet next to the fireplace. He moved the gun rack aside and withdrew a long shimmer of old glass. No label.

  “Hundred-and-fifty-year-old sherry.” Bud winked. “Before we turned inland to trap, we were pirates. Story is, my great grandfather got it from a shipwreck off the coast of Maine. Family heirloom. This we have to drink out of glasses. Be right back.” Bud started for the kitchen.

  Harry held up his hand. “Make mine ginger ale, there’s some in the fridge. One of us has to stay straight. To drive.”

  “You being predictable again?” Bud yelled back. He laughed and reappeared with two water glasses. “We’re short on crystal…these’ll have to do.” He handed the one fizzing with soda to Harry and then he struggled with a corkscrew. The ancient cork crumbled. “Fuck it”

  He broke the neck of the bottle on the fireplace.

  The impulsive gesture galvanized them with laughter. Bud slopped the amber liquid into his glass and the wine glistened on his hand.

  “I’m the designated driver,” said Harry, studying his glass.

  “All you have to do is make it to Duluth. We’ll spend the night.

  Big steak at the Pickwick.” Bud raised his glass. “Down Eros, up Mars,” he toasted.

  “Whatever,” said Harry, tasting the pop. His face screwed up. It had a chalky, chemical bite. “Shit’s gone sour.”

  “Down the hatch, buddy,” said Bud. They drained their glasses.

  Bud gestured with his empty glass, one arm on the mantel. “You flatter these people, Harry. They couldn’t put together a plan. That would involve thinking past the next paycheck.”

  Harry grimaced. Something was seriously wrong. A flush and a tingling wave of euphoric nausea radiated from his stomach and into his veins. He lowered himself to the couch.

  HUNTER’S MOON / 347

  Bud leaned against the mantel, drinking now from the broken lip of the bottle. Soot made a broad slick on his shirt under his arm and down his side. “Hey, you don’t look so hot, partner,” he said.

  Harry grinned weakly, lit a cigarette, and adjusted the .45 in his waistband so the barrel didn’t jam his nuts. “Need some sleep.”

  “When we get to Duluth, let’s really tie one on. Then we could both go through treatment. Be roommates again.”

  Bud tipped the bottle and the antique wine ran down his chin onto his suspenders. Harry sprawled, very involved in the intricate curl of smoke seeping from the cigarette.

  “Pictures,” he mused. “I think somebody was up on the balcony, behind the sheeting, taking pictures…” his voice trailed off, disappearing in the air like the swirls of smoke.

  Bud arched his eyebrows. “Really? Ah, fuck ’em all,” said Bud.

  “Especially Jesse.” He swung the bottle, taking in the overturned den. ’To fucking women, may they all rot in hell.”

  Harry’s vision was getting furry and Bud smiled at him. Bud looked…happy.

  “Just keep squeezing tighter and tighter,” said Bud. “Crush all the life out of a guy. Eat their fucking young…” Bud loomed in Harry’s vision and his smile jerked into a distorted grin and Harry had seen mat rictus of a smile before, on a picture hanging on the wall in Chris’s room, and things were becoming very fucked-up.

  “Don’t know if I’d go mat far,” said Harry.

  “Cows,” said Bud. “Milk machines. Hook ’em up in a barn in stanchions, one long production line pumping out milk, babies, and pies of shit.”

  Harry winced at the image. But he smiled too as the edges on objects in the room acquired a hazy nimbus. He was sinking through the cushions and ever so slowly his fingers touched the handle of the pistol in his belt. The idea— danger—formed in his mind. “Jesus,”

  he muttered.

  “What’s the matter? You get some bad Schweppes?”

  “Man, I don’t know. Something…”

  348 / CHUCK LOGAN

  Bud’s devouring grin yawned. “Could be the qualudes. You just swallowed enough to stop an elephant dead in his tracks.”

  Harry struggled to get up and fell back onto the couch. Bud lifted his head, put a pillow under it, and patted him on the cheek. “Sorry, Harry, but you’re going to sit this one out. like Karson said, no more sick macho bullshit.” He lifted the pistol from Harry’s jeans and tossed it aside.

  Then Bud stalked back and forth in front of the sooty maw of the fireplace and he’d cut his lip on the wine bottle and a dribble of blood made a crimson thread down his wet chin. “The thing I loved about Nam, man. No fucking women. Well, except for the gooks, but they were more like monkeys chattering. But a rifle company.

  It’s this perfect thing. There were times when I felt like Leonard fucking Bernstein with the New York Philharmonic. Just raise my baton. Andante. Allegro…” Bud sketched grace notes in the air with his hand. “It was beautiful.”

  “Sounds like officer talk to me,” Harry mumbled.

  Bud grinned at him and put his arm over Harry’s shoulder. “That’s because you were always a lone wolf. Special Operations. Out there playing Lord Jim with Tim Randall. You never had to submit”

  “P-p-paid my dues. Sat still for a lot of shit—”

  “No, you never really accepted discipline. You’d be so good if only you could. But there’s something in you that resists it”

  Harry tried to focus his strength. Words blew out his lips li
ke soap bubbles. “Called being an American, you asshole.”

  Bud shook his head. “You’ll always be a member of the mob. You never were a soldier. You were just a thug from Dee-troit City. I had some men like you in my company, they wouldn’t accept discipline…they were flawed. Like your crooked teeth were a flaw, Harry.

  You had this dynamite body and then those teeth. I’m so glad you had them fixed.”

  HUNTER’S MOON / 349

  Harry started to pour sweat and Bud was going in and out of focus. “Slipped me a mickey, you devious fuck—”

  “You’re so hard on people, Harry. You make people hide because you hide from yourself. 1 could show you who you really are if you’d let me” Bud sighed. With a flourish, be drained the bottle and the wine squeezed through his thick knuckles.

  “You called me…that night. Phone booth…. needed me,” said Harry.

  “It was a dream, Harry. Like this is a dream,” Bud towered, thick, powerful, smiling. “Did you really think that I was…weak?”

  Bud stooped, grimacing slightly with pain, one hand going to his wounded side. Harry didn’t want his lips to be smiling. Didn’t want his reflexes spread around him in a soft, silken puddle. Bud’s fingers were in his mouth, placing something against the back of his tongue.

  Harry started to gag. Bud gently massaged his throat.

  “You’re having a dream, Harry. One of those double-scream backcrawlers. Flashback City, my man.”

  “Wha…?” Harry’s tongue was lolled. His eyes rolled.

  “Sorry, buddy. This time you’re not running interference. So I’m giving you a little cocktail. Some Thorazine, to go with the ludes and a little filthy yellow Mexican heroin I found lying around. All packaged in neat gelatin time-released capsules.”

  Gently Bud massaged Harry’s throat until he swallowed. He sputtered, gagged, coughed. But far away. It was all happening far away.

  “Just take a little nap.”

  “Bud’s face filled his vision as florid as a marbled cut of meat. But getting thinner. Soon he would be handsome again. Sleek. Up at a podium surrounded by microphones in the spotlight. He caressed Harry’s face. “Do you know your Shakespeare, Harry?” he crooned.

  “Henry the Fifth? No, of course not. Thugs don’t read the classics.