Hunter's Moon by Chuck Logan (the false prince series txt) 📗

to have inherited all the mother’s strength.

His eyes drifted to the table where Chris turned the knife in his fingers, staring along the gray honed edge.

“You ever see one of these?” Chris asked, boldly engaging Harry’s gaze.

Harry walked over and took the knife away with a firm snap of his hand. It was a K-Bar. A marine fighting knife. As he thrust it into the scabbard that lay on the table he noticed the initials BM carved in the frayed leather. “Yeah,” said Harry, returning to the kitchen.

He opened a drawer and dropped the big knife out of sight.

“You know what it’s for?” Chris asked, all of a sudden smiling sweetly. Harry tried to stare him down. The dark eyes didn’t waver.

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“It’s for cutting the Gibionici,” Chris grinned. “You know what Gibionici is?”

“Nope,” said Harry.

“It’s what’s in the oven,” said Chris.

Becky laughed, a sweet girlish sound at odds with her mature body. “You ain’t from around here, are you, boy?”

“Like an apple turnover. My Serbian mother,” explained Jesse, meeting his eyes. They both had high wide-set cheek-bones and a trace of tannic spit to their skin that shed age. Her Serbian mother flirted with his Slavic father about the Mongol ponies that had raided in their blood.

Chris got up, walked to the drawer, took out his knife, and went back to the table.

“Plow’s on the way,” said Bud, hanging up the phone. Automatically, he plucked the pint bottle off the counter, unscrewed the top, took a quick nip, and then tucked the bottle into the inside pocket of his vest. No one seemed to notice except Harry.

“Bud’s got pull,” said Becky, letting her tongue drift lazily along her lower teeth. She had put on a kind of white waxy lipstick that Harry hated and too much purple eye shadow bruised her face.

“Push and pull. He gets things done. Don’tcha Bud?”

“Mind your manners, smarty pants,” said Bud.

Pulling away, Becky sideswiped Bud with a hip.

Bud sat down across from Chris. “Put that away,” he said. Chris put the knife down on the table and spun it. The point stopped ambiguously, aiming out toward the lake.

The knife and the way Becky threw herself around put Harry on edge. Too hot in the kitchen, too many sharp things, too much of the girl’s flesh exposed. He took his coffee to a chair in the den and sat with his back to the wall.

Jesse punched the bread dough down and formed it to fit in loaf pans. Bud talked to Chris about tomorrow morning. Becky set the table and tossed an iceberg salad.

Jesse didn’t strike him as a disorganized person, so it surprised Harry the way everything proceeded backwards.

30 / CHUCK LOGAN

Jesse took the pastry from the oven and Chris cut it into steaming strips with his big knife. Dessert came before supper. Then Jesse ladled out bowls of venison stew. They ate it with the salad and cornbread that had been in the oven with the pastry.

The electricity wavered and the radio signal cut out. In the sudden darkness, the wind leaned an icy shoulder to the lodge: a roof timber creaked.

“Candles…” said Bud.

Then the lights came back on. For a brief second, all the faces around the table were unmasked in tableau. Jesse and her children tensed in their chairs, staring at Harry. The muscle in Harry’s left cheek twitched.

Silverware grated on plates and reminded Harry of the spooked expression on Cox’s face.

Jesse moved quickly into the vacuum. “Bud says this is your first time hunting?”

“First time in Minnesota,” said Harry.

“You’ll never get that deer unless you go out in the dark,” said Becky. “You can’t see him in the daylight. And he only shows himself to certain people.”

“You are so full of shit,” said Chris.

“I showed you where he is. You get lost in the woods even with a compass.”

Chris snorted. “Only good thing about the woods is the road leading south to the Cities.”

“You drop out of school, the only thing you’ll find in the Cities is a job taking orders at McDonald’s.”

Brother and sister exchanged tight smiles.

“I know why you go hunting,” Becky announced.

“Why’s that?” asked Bud. Smiling. Oblivious.

“To get away from women,” said Becky.

Jesse’s lips turned down in a savvy expression. “Men don’t have to go anywhere to get away. They’re gone sitting right next to you.

Most of them.”

“But I know why,” said Becky, her agitated fingers jerked in conflict with her bright smile. Awkwardly, she took one of HUNTER’S MOON / 31

her mother’s cigarettes, popped a lighter, and held it experimentally between her thumb and index finger. She stared pointedly at Harry until she had his full attention. “Are you circumcised?” she asked blankly.

“Gross,” muttered Chris through a suppressed giggle.

Harry’s face flushed under her bold scrutiny.

“It’s common for men to be circumcised today,” said Bud quickly.

“For hygiene reasons.” Like a man performing a repetitive task, Bud had the pint out, splashed a shot into his coffee, and whisked it back out of sight.

“That’s what they tell you,” said Becky. “But the real reason is it’s a thing from way long ago, this kind of memory from when men sacrificed their genitals. Cut them right off. Even today, there’s these primitive tribes in some parts of the world where the men have their penises cut up so they look like vulvas and they squat to pee.”

Becky spoke self-importantly with her chin tilted up. The brightest kid in the class.

“Vulvas?” ejected Chris in feigned ignorance.

“That’s pussy to you, dummy,” said Becky, flicking cigarette ashes on her plate.

Jesse watched her daughter carefully. “Where’d you hear that?

On Donahue?” she asked.

Becky explained. “I read it in a book that Bud gave me. The mutilation of genitals is a holdover from an earlier time when women used to run the world. When men tried to make themselves look like women.”

“Look like women?” laughed Chris.

“It was their religion, and everyone ate vegetables. The men rebelled and went off hunting,” said Becky.

“Our pussy who art in heaven,” Chris quipped.

Harry watched Bud