Heart of the Hunter

by Chance Carter

  “That’s awful,” Kelly said.

  “And what about the baby?” Elle said.

  She looked at Kelly. Kelly was as wrapt in the story as she was, although she’d heard some of the details before. She still wasn’t sure though why Harry was telling it now.

  “The baby lived,” Harry said. “He’d be about thirty now, as you said.”

  “What do you mean, as I said?”

  “If the man you saw today was looking for the funeral home, then I’d bet dollars to donuts he’s Abraham Snow’s son, the baby who killed his mother on his way into the world.”

  “Oh, that’s terrible,” Elle said.

  “He could be someone else,” Kelly offered. “He might not be the son.”

  Harry nodded. “That’s true,” he said. “But I know this town, and I know Abraham Snow’s story better than anyone, and call it a hunch, but if there’s a young man here looking for the funeral home, it’s Abraham’s son.”

  Elle was surprised to find that her eyes had filled with tears. The story had had a greater impact on her than it ordinarily would have. Something about the way the man had been in the diner, and the way he’d been in his truck when she found him there asleep, seemed to make sense. The way he’d asked for the funeral home, the things he’d said about family, she knew it was him.

  “What happened to the baby?” she said.

  “That, you don’t want to know.”

  “Yes, I do,” she insisted.

  “You sure? Because if you think the story’s been hard so far, it only gets worse.”

  “You can’t tell us this much and not finish the story,” Kelly said.

  “All right,” Harry said, “but first we need another shot.” He poured another round of the whiskey and they knocked back their drinks. He gave the girls fresh beers. Then he continued.

  “The baby had about as hard a life as you could imagine. If you thought Abraham was cruel before, you can only imagine how he was after he lost his wife. He blamed the baby for it.”

  “What did he do to it?” Kelly said.

  “I don’t know all the details. The child services people were constantly fighting with him but when they threatened to take the boy out of Abraham’s custody, he just moved up into the mountains where they couldn’t watch him. There are a lot of creeps that live in the mountains around these parts. Abraham fit right in with them. That poor kid grew up in the hands of a monster, all alone in a cabin in the woods. When he finally got a state medical exam, when he was twelve, they found his body covered in cigarette burns. It seemed the old man liked to use him as an ashtray.”

  Elle put her hand in front of her mouth. She couldn’t believe that such things had happened to the man she’d been with in the diner.

  “The police finally went in when no one had seen the kid for a month. The school board had sent countless letters, and eventually the authorities took action.”

  “They took their sweet time,” Elle said.

  “Well, around here, things don’t move quite as fast as they might in a more modern part of the country. Around here, they give a man a little too much liberty to treat his own family as he sees fit, if you want my opinion.”

  “How was the child?” Elle said. “When they found him?”

  “It wasn’t pretty. The old man had stripped the boy naked and locked him up in a windowless cabin, or a basement or something, with four fighting pit bulls.”

  “What?”

  Harry just nodded.

  “Dogs like that,” Elle said, unable to finish the thought.

  Kelly did it for her. “Dogs like that would kill a child, especially if they were hungry.”

  “They were hungry,” Harry said. “They were starving to death. So was the boy. But the strange thing was, even though they were the meanest dogs anyone could have ever locked up with a child, and even though Abraham had bought the dogs from the meanest breeding kennels in the entire region, the dogs didn’t harm the boy. Not a single hair on his head.”

  “What?” Kelly said.

  “By the time the boy was rescued, the dogs were completely tame. The police broke into the cabin, or basement, I don’t remember that detail, and they found the boy cuddled up with the dogs. Somehow, despite all of them starving to death in that little room, the twelve-year-old boy had managed to tame those dogs. In fact, they loved him so much that they cried and howled when the police took him away.”

  “That’s incredible,” Elle said.

  “Where did they take him?” Kelly said.

  Harry shrugged. “They took him into care. I’m not sure exactly what happened. I heard he went into a group home in the city or somewhere. A few years later, someone told me he got adopted by a mysterious rich guy and his daughter in California.”

  Elle didn’t know what to make of it. “That story is incredible,” she said.

  “Every word of it’s the truth,” Harry said. “Ask anyone who was here back then.”

  “I can’t believe that the man I saw in the diner today might have been that boy.”

  “Well, I’ll tell you this much,” Harry said. “Abraham Snow didn’t have any other children. I know that much. And he sure as hell didn’t have any friends. He was alone in the world, as he deserved to be. If there’s a boy here for the funeral, it’s that very same boy. What was his name? Let me think.”

  Elle watched Harry like a hawk as she took a sip of her beer. She’d been completely sucked into the story of the boy. She felt personally connected to him after what he’d done in the diner. When he’d reached out to touch her, there’d been something in the gesture more than she’d ever felt before. It had gotten under her skin.

  “Forrester,” Harry said. “That was the boy’s name. Forrester Snow.”

  Chapter 10

  Forrester

  FORRESTER LOOKED OUT ACROSS THE windswept graveyard and pulled his jacket more tightly around his neck. He was freezing. He’d had the presence of mind to pack a black suit and white shirt before he’d left home, but he hadn’t remembered a good coat. He was paying for it now. The wind howled down the mountain peaks and cut through him like a knife.

  In front of him was a grave, eight feet long, two feet wide, and six feet deep. That’s what had become of his father, a hole in the ground and a pine box. He looked at the coffin, it wasn’t the cheapest one available at the Stone Peak funeral home, but it was close.

  The priest, in his long black coat, looked at him.

  “You ready to get started, son?”

  “Yes, father,” Forrester said.

  He was the only person who’d shown up for the funeral and he wasn’t sure if the priest would have even bothered if he hadn’t been there.

  “We are gathered here today, to bury the remains of Abraham Snow, who has now returned to his home with Our God, Our Father.”

  Forrester didn’t listen to the words. He stood there shivering, and stared up into the dizzying peaks of the mountains above. They seemed to be testing the limits of heaven themselves, seeing if they could reach high enough to pass from this world to the world of the Father.

  He looked at his hands. What had he done? The day before, in the diner, what was that? That wasn’t like him. She’d walked over, that waitress, and poured him coffee. Nothing unusual in that. But then he’d reached out and touched her. Why? What was it about her?

  He was drawn to her. He knew nothing about her. He’d scarcely said a word to her. But he wanted her. He had to have her. He had to get closer, get a better look, maybe even have a taste.

  The funeral didn’t take long. When the priest finished, he addressed Forrester directly. Forrester wasn’t sure how much of his story the priest knew, but he clearly knew some of it because he treated Forrester with an odd sort of deference, as if his past had earned him some deeper respect than the average man.

  “Would you like to say any words, son?” the priest said.

  Forrester looked up at him. He cleared his throat. Then he spoke.

  �
�Which way is the closest whiskey bar?”

  Chapter 11

  Elle

  ELLE WAS SITTING CLOSE TO the warmth of the fire in Harry’s bar with Kelly the next afternoon. Gracie had let them shut the diner early because it was dead. Gracie liked to keep the hours as consistent as possible, but given the enormously long shifts the girls pulled for her, she was happy to let them go home early when it wouldn’t affect business too much. Today was also a special day, because Grace was taking Luke to the zoo. They would be gone all day, and it meant Kelly could get out for a drink again, for the second night in a row. That was a rare treat for her.

  “You didn’t have a hang over last night, did you?” Elle asked Kelly.

  “No, not at all. Did you?”

  “No, but I think I had a few nightmares about that story Harry told us.”

  “I know what you mean,” Kelly said.

  Elle picked up her glass and as she was about to take her first sip, Kelly nudged her on the arm.

  “What?” Elle said.

  “Over there.”

  “Where?”

  “Look,” Kelly said, pointing.

  Elle looked over to the door, and sure enough, the man from the day before was entering. If Harry was right about him, his name was Forrester Snow. Elle caught herself staring at him and had to force herself to look away.

  He looked different than he had the day before, dressed in an impeccably tailored black suit with leather shoes and an expensive cotton shirt. If it wasn’t for the tattoos peeking out at the cuffs and collar, he’d have fit right in in any executive boardroom in the country. To say he was dashing was the understatement of the century. He was positively ravishing.

  Elle and Kelly watched his every move as he came up to the bar and sat on the other side of it, facing them directly. The bar made a large U-shape, with the space inside reserved for Harry. Forrester was across from them, about twelve feet from Elle’s eyes, and she took the opportunity to drink in the sight of him, every raw detail of his physique. She was under a spell, at least until Kelly kicked her on the shin.

  “Ow,” she said.

  “Well, let him have a drink without you drooling all over it.”

  “I’m not drooling.”

  “Elle, you’re practically leaning over the bar. If you try to get any closer to him you’ll fall over.”

  Forrester ordered a beer and a shot of whiskey and only then looked around at his surroundings. Elle froze when he looked in her direction. She felt the blood rushing to her cheeks in an obvious blush of embarrassment. She felt suddenly hot.

  “Hi,” Kelly said casually with a little wave.

  “Afternoon, ladies,” Forrester said, and Elle let out a silent sigh of longing at the sound of his voice.

  She prayed he didn’t look at her, because if he did, she was afraid she’d swoon and fall off her stool. But then he did look at her.

  “Hey,” he said. “Thanks for last night. I was a lot more comfortable in the hotel than I was in my truck.”

  Elle smiled. She tried to get her breathing and her galloping heart beat under control.

  “No problem,” she said, and instantly thought her voice sounded weird. She was trying to think of something else to say to avoid any awkward silence when the door opened and more people entered the bar. Her heart sank when she saw that it was the same four troublemaker boys who’d harassed her and Kelly in the diner the day before.

  “Oh, great,” Kelly said under her breath. “Here we go.”

  “They won’t bother us in here, will they?” Elle said.

  As if to answer her question, one of the boys came over to them and placed himself right between them. He put an arm around each girl.

  “What are two beautiful girls like yourselves doing alone on a night like this?”

  “Nothing,” Kelly said.

  “And who’s your friend here? Sweet cheeks? Hot lips?”

  “Her name’s Elle. Now, leave us alone, creep.”

  “Creep?” the boy said. “Come on, Kelly. That’s not what you were calling me the other night.”

  “Get lost, Phil,” Kelly said.

  “You were begging me for more the other night. Now you don’t want to even look at me.”

  “If you don’t get your hand off me and my friend in three seconds, I’m calling Harry.”

  Harry was in the kitchen behind the bar and didn’t know that the boys had come into his peaceful establishment yet.

  “What’s Harry going to do?” Phil said, making a face toward his other three friends. “He knows my daddy’s the mayor of this town. He knows what will happen to his liquor license if he so much as raises his voice to me.”

  Kelly sighed, and Elle suddenly realized that the boy’s threat might be real. Maybe Harry was afraid of these boys, or more accurately their politician fathers.

  “Harry,” she called. If this town was under the thumb of some spoiled, stuck up, asshole boys, she wanted to know that sooner rather than later. “Harry, could I get another drink?”

  No answer. She knew Harry was back there somewhere, but he was avoiding a confrontation with the boys. So it was true. These boys had free reign it seemed.

  Phil was now allowing his hand to slide down lower around the girls’ shoulders, getting dangerously close to touching their breasts.

  “Not so fast, dip shit,” Elle said. “If you move your hand one inch more, I’m going to kick your ass.”

  That caused a huge uproar of laughter from Phil and his three pathetic friends. Elle lifted up her bottle of beer and thought about smashing it into the side of Phil’s ugly head. But she couldn’t do it. She knew she’d regret it. If Phil’s father was mayor, and the other boy’s father was sheriff, she knew she really had no options. She couldn’t afford to get in trouble like that.

  The three boys found themselves a booth while Phil continued to harass Elle and Kelly. Elle remembered that Kelly had dated this numbskull, and shook her head at the thought. If this was the way the men in the town were, it was no wonder that Kelly was single.

  “So you’re going to kick my ass?” Phil said.

  “Just get away from us, creep,” Kelly said.

  “All right, all right, I’m a gentleman. I know when I’m not wanted.”

  “That’s right,” Elle said. “You’re not wanted.”

  It was at that moment that Harry came out from the kitchen. He must have had about as much as he could tolerate because he came right over to Elle and Kelly and he looked like he was about to say something. Elle noticed Kelly shake her head at him.

  “We’re fine,” she mouthed to Harry.

  Harry nodded, and Elle noticed a look of relief in his face.

  Phil strutted across the bar over to the booth with his friends and Harry followed him. Elle watched as Harry took their order for two pitchers of beer and four burgers.

  “What was that about?” Elle said under her breath to Kelly, referring to the interaction with Harry.

  Kelly sighed. “He would have stepped in to stick up for us,” she said. “I know he would have. He’s done it before. But it’s not good.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “It’s best to let those boys do what they want. Last time Harry stepped in, the mayor closed down the bar for a month. Harry couldn’t pay his bills. He almost lost the place. Those boys, I know them all too well. You already know Phil. That one sitting next to him is Patrick. The other two, sitting across are Randy and Hal. Their dads are the mayor, the sheriff, the district attorney and the county judge. Imagine trying to run a business in this town once you get in trouble with people like that.”

  “I see,” Elle said.

  “That’s why I thought it was better just to let Phil have his fun and wait for him to get bored on his own. I’d never be able to forgive myself if Harry lost his livelihood over something that could be avoided. It’s all he’s got. It’s been in his family for generations.”

  Elle nodded. She understood the situation. Just when
she’d been starting to think Stone Peak was too good to be true, she found out that she’d have to contend with these four. She looked over at the boys. She knew their type. They would have gotten on well with her ex, Gris. They liked to have fun, and at no time were they having so much fun as when they were causing trouble for someone else.

  She looked across the bar at Forrester. He was looking down at his drink, pretending he hadn’t noticed any of what had just happened. Elle felt her heart sink a little. She understood why a guy like him wouldn’t want to get into trouble, she could respect a man trying to avoid a fight, but there was a tiny part of her that would have hoped that Forrester was the kind of man who’d step in when he saw an injustice. She had to admit, she was disappointed. Maybe he wasn’t the man she’d built him up to be in her mind. Maybe being abused by his father as a child had taken the courage out of his heart.

  Harry had served the boys their drinks and came back over to the girls.

  “I’m really sorry about that, girls.”

  “It’s all right, Harry,” Kelly said. “It’s not your fault.”

  “It’s not right of me to stand by while a boy speaks to ladies like that in my establishment.”

  “You know what happened last time, Harry. It’s not worth the trouble.”

  Harry nodded, but Elle could tell he wasn’t in full agreement. The situation was eating at him and he didn’t like it.

  Elle and Kelly sipped their drinks in silence. The boys at their booth were laughing and joking about something. Harry went about his work as conscientiously as before, but there was a cloud over him now. Elle kept stealing glances at Forrester but he only looked down at his drink. Eventually she’d had enough and hopped down from her seat.

  “What are you doing?” Kelly said.

  “I’m going to talk to that guy.”

  Kelly’s eyebrow rose. “Be careful,” she said. “It’s the quiet ones that are the most dangerous.”

  “We’ll see about that,” Elle said, and rounded the bar, her beer in hand.