by Chuck Logan
“The first time I saw you standing outside Coffman Union in 1969, it was magic. You were so like him. You even moved like him. Except for the teeth, but we fixed that, didn’t we? I just kept you in my pocket all these years. Every once in a while I’d take you out and look at you.”
Harry smelled wood smoke and that’s when the crazy tinpan drum started up.
“Jesus, can you believe this shit,” said Bud, shaking his head.
Above them, on an outcrop of granite, the winos from the liquor store had a camp. They had a fire going and were bent over an upturned, rusted washtub. Sweet-potato face was there. He raised his wine bottle in a salute and did a slow drop-skip frug and a chilling, shaky cry warbled from his throat.
Bud sighed. “Okay, so I lied a little and the great crime of my life was that I fell in love with another man. Now that’ll come out.” Bud pursed his lips. “That’s not all bad these days, you know. Especially in this state.”
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“You’re not gay, Bud. Not straight, either. When they figure out what you are, they’ll name it after you.”
Bud winked. “Not who you’re with, it’s how far you go.”
“Move, lard ass,” said Harry. He yanked out the pistol.
“Do you want me to put up my hands? Maybe you want to tie me up?”
The hollow metal beat of the drum paced them to the turnoff to Nanabozho Point and they began to climb and, as they toiled up-ward, the wind freshened and it was an absolutely beautiful November late afternoon. By the time they reached the high ground, sundown groomed the snow-struck pines.
Sweating with exertion, Bud shoved his way into a thick stand of pines that filled a cleft in the granite face. Faintly, above them on the point, in pauses of the muted drum, Harry heard the rattle of antlers.
They came across a large drag-trail, streaked with blood.
Bud laughed and pointed to the big, field-dressed deer carcass strung up in a pine tree. The deer from the road with the long curved left tine. “Is this your idea of psy war?” Bud joked.
The sun dived and the woods rattled with distant gunfire in homage to the end of hunting season.
Bud grinned. “Don’t shoot. I’m going to reach in this cranny for a flashlight.” He felt around in the crevassed rock and pulled out a light and switched it on. They squirmed through the cranny and started down. “I planted those trees when I was a boy, to hide the entrance. This is my find. I suppose when this is over I’ll have the Historical Society out here. Maybe I’ll donate the land for a park.”
The way led down through twisting galleries of lichen-covered rock and the air was claustrophobic and clammy with spores of mold and powdery sediment crumbled underfoot. The passage opened into a chamber and, veiled in spiderwebs, a hobo jungle took shape in the flashlight beam. A sleeping bag lay on a ragged futon, plywood platform underneath. Mats. A kerosene heater. There was a propane stove and a
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cache of canned and freeze-dried food. Two five-gallon drums of water.
Hundreds of candles dripped wax stalactites down the crannied rock. Bud removed his gloves and opened a box of Blue Tip matches.
Harry stooped, grabbed Bud’s gloves, and stuck them in his pocket.
Bud began lighting candles and set the cave in motion. Frantic insect activity retreated from the light and cast crawly shadows and slowly the walls undulated into shape.
A neolithic Sistine of deer and bison arched above their heads.
Stick hunters with bows and spears.
Becky’s backpack lay on the dirty tatami mats. Bud shouted and his voice echoed in the cavern. “Come out, come out, wherever you are…” he turned to Harry. “So where’s the cops, rocket scientist?
That’s the idea, isn’t it?”
Becky’s voice came from deep in the inky recesses. “How do I know you won’t kill me with an ax thing like you did Mom?”
“What are you talking about?” asked Bud. “Come out where I can see you.”
Harry poked him with the pistol and nodded at the pack. “Open it,” he ordered. Bud unfastened the flap, picked out the mask of Martin’s face, and held it in front of his own. “Pot’s light, Becky,”
he sang into the shadows. Bud slipped his hand into his pocket.
“Time to put in your ante.”
“Watch it,” warned Harry.
“Just some pictures, Harry.” Bud sprinkled the prints on the mats.
Laminated color ran wetly in the candlelight. “I have more, all X-rated. Back in Saint Paul, in the offices of Noble and Deal.”
Bud looked at them fondly and lined them up.
Variations of Chris. He lay on his stomach on the mattress, bathed in the glow of candles, looking over his skinny shoulder, a drugged smile smeared on his face. His narrow buttocks shining. The mask worn backward. Bud grinned, reached in his pocket and tossed another picture.
Becky—a sweaty two-six-pack-fantasy—thrust luridly naked on the spit of two adolescent penises.
390 / CHUCK LOGAN
Bud smiled and a tapestry of shadow creeped over his face. “Air-tight Rebecca. The apple never falls far from the tree, does it? You never really know people. Look at the expressions. That’s pure delight, beyond the limits. Chris gave me acid. Then we played spin the bottle. It started innocently with talk. Then you go to the right place. Create the right conditions and give your fantasies permission to come out. It could happen to anyone.” Bud bent his manicured middle finger against his thumb and flicked it forward. Chris’s picture skittered across the cave.
“Doing it with that murderous little creep was like putting a worm on a hook.”
Harry leveled the pistol between Bud’s eyebrows. Steady.
Bud raised his voice and leavened it with contrition. “Mike? Jerry?
Drunkenness is no excuse. I freely admit what happened here. And I’m deeply ashamed.”
Becky yelled again from the shadows. “Harry? What should I do?”
“What can we do, Becky?” shouted Bud. “Except tell the truth.
Let the courts decide.” He turned to Harry and whispered. “It’s the only way. You just have to submit.” Then he continued his confession in the loud voice. “He seduced me, Harry. Can you believe that?
My wife’s kid seduced me.”
The pistol shook.
“You can’t do it, Harry. Not when you’re sober. Not without provocation. Go on, try to pull the trigger.”
Harry explored the cushion of sweat against his index finger and felt the tiny grid on the trigger.
“You’re weak,” said Bud. “Like Martin was weak. Like Cox was weak. You have all these messy beliefs that make you a tar baby and get you stuck in the world. You’d all bumble over the cliff if people like me didn’t organize you.”
Harry swung the pistol and opened a gash in Bud’s cheek. “C’mon, you sonofabitch,” he rasped.
Bud staggered and held out his hands, smiling through a stain of blood. “I don’t want to fight you, Harry. I love you. I’ve always loved you. You proved your love when you saved HUNTER’S MOON / 391
my life. And you’ll learn to love me. I imagine it will be an awful trial. I’ll be your best and worst character witness.”
Bud paced, his voice by turns practical and dismissive. “I’ll take some hits for being easily manipulated. By Jesse. By Cox, by these feral children. Have to deal with ugly rumors about my military record. But that won’t be so bad in light of recent events, not like it would have been a year ago. Anyway, nobody really cares about Vietnam.”
Harry shoved Bud hard, knocking him back against the rock. Bud kept smiling. “I think a classic post-traumatic stress defense will work best for you. I’ll get anybody you want to defend you. I mean anybody. I’ll visit faithfully when you’re in prison. I’ve already provided for you. A generous amount has been put aside for you in lieu of the salary and retirement benefits you will lose. Even if something happens to me, you’ll be taken care of.
More money than you could ever earn.
“And in prison you will learn obedience. That’s what prisons are for. To teach men like you obedience to other, stronger men.”
The pistol burned in Harry’s hand. Bud’s vivid eyes twinkled in the candlelight over the front sight.
“Poor Harry. All you had was one grubby little penny. Your pathetic honor and all the tough-guy illusions that go with it. Where are they, now? After Chris? That was your cherry, baby, and I got it.”
With a hollow click, the safety on the .45 snapped to firing position.
Bud wasn’t impressed. “You have to make up your mind. Either you kill me or obey me.”
“Fight, you bastard,” said Harry in a calm voice.
Bud laughed. “Mother Goose. You still believe in all those American nursery rhymes. Even Chris, that crippled little fuck, thought he was on a mission from John Wayne.” Bud clucked and shook his head and even now he could not resist giving a speech. “All of you kiddies, all the evidence to the contrary, you keep perpetuating the myths, keep paying your taxes and returning the politicians to office.
You keep fighting
392 / CHUCK LOGAN
the wars. Wise up. This country is just one big shopping mall run by murderers. Those people were blackmailing me!”
“You’re going to jail,” said Harry.
Bud laughed. “I built the goddamn jail to hold people like you.
People who lose control. Who get confused and lash out. I can protect you, even inside. After the first time a bunch of those grunting animals hold you down and spread your cheeks, you won’t refuse my calls or my intervention through third parties. By the time you get out, you’ll be trained. You might even get a job sweeping up if you learn how to say ‘Sir.’”
“Why’d you have to do that to Jesse and Cox?”
“Go on, say ‘sir.’”
“Why them, like that?”
“But I didn’t. You did it to protect me from a larcenous woman who’d use her son to attempt murder for profit. You figured it out, but in the process you went over the edge.” Bud yelled into the shadows. “Olle olle oxen free.”
Something started in the dark. Like a pebble being thrown.
Deliberately, Bud yelled into the shadows. “Somebody has to stop you, Harry, before you kill again!” Harry jerked his head. Bud lunged, one hand shoving the slide on the barrel housing of the .45
back, effectively disarming the firing mechanism. His other hand flashed up from the cuff of his boot and black steel guttered in the candlelight.
Harry blocked the marine K-Bar—Bud’s cannibal knife—and took two inches of the tip in the muscle below his left elbow before it jarred into bone. The pain came in a clean bath and he grinned as his left hand clamped on Bud’s right wrist. Bud warded off the pistol and, as they grappled, he puckered his lips in a mocking kiss.
“C’mon, tough guy, wrestle me down.” His voice was a wild giggle.
Boys roughhousing. “Harder, Harry, faster—take it right to the edge.
I always do. Are those steel bands of yours getting flaccid?” Bud thrilled.
Bud crowded him against the granite wall. Candles scattered. Hot wax dotted their faces. Theatrically, Bud yelled, “Run for it, Becky!
I’ll hold him as long as I can.”
Becky darted from the shadows.
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“Run, run, run!” shouted Bud. His bulk swept Harry in a jerky polka embrace across the gallery. Becky danced on the balls of her feet, maneuvering.
Enough games. Harry broke free and slapped him up with the pistol and his left fist. Bud recoiled, chastised, as if he’d blundered into the moving parts of a machine. He crumbled to his knees.
“Drop it, Griffin!” The mournful voice and the cold circle of steel against the back of his neck came moccasin-silent out of the shadows.
Emery had got his deer after all.
Harry took a moment to enjoy the confusion on Bud’s bleeding face. Then he dropped the pistol.
“You said he was in the hospital,” Bud gasped.
“I lied.”
Bud struggled up, grinning. “Larry, Jesus Christ!”
“Surprise,” said Emery.
Bud missed the irony in Emery’s voice and blurted in relief. “Am I glad to see you. This crazy sonofabitch coulda killed somebody.”
“Yeah,” said Emery. “Looked that way to me, too. Pick up that gun, Maston.”
Despite his blacked eyes, Emery cut an impressive figure turned out in the sheriff’s uniform that was tailored fawn and gray with mother of pearl snap buttons neat on the pockets and a hand-tooled pistol belt low on his hip. A gold five-pointed star pinned his chest and the heavy revolver in his hand appeared very serious, Rock of Ages steady, and very straight indeed.
Harry stepped back to give Bud room to scramble for the pistol.
“He said Becky might be here. I didn’t know what he’d try but I thought maybe…” Bud’s best civic-minded voice.
Becky spoke calmly, too calmly. “What do I do?” And Bud missed that too.
“You just go on outside, Becky,” said Emery, moving swiftly to put his body between Bud and the girl.
“I want to stay,” she said distinctly. Averting her eyes, she stooped to grab at the picture.
394 / CHUCK LOGAN
“No, leave it be,” said Emery. “That’s evidence, honey. You gotta learn to live with the truth. Go on now. Git.”
Becky started through the narrow entrance. She turned.
“Go,” said Emery. “Don’t look back.”
When she’d disappeared, Harry moved to cover the exit. Blood curled down into his palm and he blotted it against the granite, leaving a damp ochre handprint in the candlelight.
Bud sensed a little of it. A sip from Harry’s hemlock eyes. “What?”
he asked. Perplexed, he watched as Harry and Emery exchanged the barest of smiles. He extended the pistol like a pointer. “Larry. It’s him. He’s on drugs. Give him a blood test.”
“No shit,” said Emery. “How you doin’, Harry? How’s the nose?”
“How’s yourself?”
“Mike says you’ll drop the assault charge if I to go to AA. Looks like you got me after all.”
“Larry,” Bud shouted, “Becky! You shouldn’t let her out there alone, she’ll run off—”
“Nah,” said Emery. “She’ll be fine. Her grandma’s out there.
Everybody is.”
“Who! What?”
Time accelerated for Bud and his electric eyes bulged with the meteor that was compressing him down to seconds. It all slowed for Harry and he thought, what a fine thing a cave is and his gaze wandered, slowly diagramming the movements some man or woman had made hundreds of years before, creating a buffalo by torchlight.
“So…what do we do now, guys?” Bud stuttered, shifting uneasily.
“Just what is it you’re up for?”
“Bud Maston, I’m arresting you for the murders of Jessica Deucette and Jason Cox,” Emery said.
“Larry, hey, it’s me, for Chrissake! I admit I did some awful things, but I was stoned, fucked-up…you can understand that.” Bud fingered the pistol nervously.
“We took two slugs outta Jay. My guess is they came from that Colt there in your hand, that now conveniently has your fingerprints on it,” said Emery.
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“But Harry had the gun. Harry had it,” shouted Bud.
“Looks like you got it now, bigshot.”
“Larry, how’s this going to look in court? Think about what you’re saying,” said Bud.
“You know what it was? The third shot Chris fired. Went over your head. That should have hit you. I taught that boy to shoot. He was a natural. You had the scope all out of square. That gun shot a foot off at twenty feet. And another thing. You gave Chris steel jackets, not soft-nosed hunting loads. So it’d make a neat, clean hole.”
“Okay, Larry, that’s the way you want it.
Give me my rights.”
“That picture board Cox had in his workshop threw me, so I brought it home to study it,” said Emery.
“I want to talk to my lawyer,” Bud demanded in a strangled voice.
He hugged the pistol with both hands against his chest.
Harry noticed that Emery had his hair pulled back in a braid.
Little blue ribbon tied to a dream catcher back there.
“Couldn’t just shoot Jessica, could you?…had to…” Emery faltered, regained his voice. “She wouldn’t marry me when I come back,” he said in his mournful voice. “I didn’t believe her when she said she was pregnant. I was on my way overseas. She never forgave me for that. Leaving her alone. Spent my whole life making up for that.”
“Harry did it. Harry did it,” Bud pleaded.
Larry Emery, the father of Jessica Deucette’s children and the legal executioner of her husbands, continued to speak. “At first, when I came back, she wouldn’t even let me see Chris and Becky.
Years and years I took care of her, got her out of jams, but I was never good enough. Wouldn’t let me tell them the truth. And finally when they knew, she wouldn’t let them have my name.” Emery’s voice banged the granite walls. “Tell me again how you got my baby high on drugs and played games with him, Maston.”
“You gotta help me here, Harry. Look at him, he’s—”
“So long hero,” said Harry.
396 / CHUCK LOGAN
“You can’t do this to me!” Bud raised the Colt and fired. Rock chips drew blood from Harry’s cheek and neck and the noise was a white-hot wire in his ears.
“Never hit anything shaking like that.” The last thing Harry saw in Bud Maston’s eyes was disbelief.
He turned his back and started through the narrow passage. It was personal what was going on back there. It required privacy. He never looked back, not even when the shots reverberated through the tight space almost rupturing his eardrums.
He walked into the cold night air toward the flashlights and the balloons of chilly breath. Randall. Ginny Hakala was there, crying softly. Becky, shivering in a blanket, leaned against Mitch. Miss Loretta held her chin high, as befits the Ojibway version of a Spartan mother. Mike Hakala and several deputies stepped forward. Jerry Hakala handed Harry a cup of coffee. Morris pressed a wad of gauze to his bleeding arm.
