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

wolf down stew and cornbread, all aglow with Jack Daniel’s paterfamilias, presiding over native intelligence emerging from the trash of the popular culture.

“Well, that clears that up,” said Jesse. “Now you guys do the dishes,” she ordered her kids. She turned to Harry. “C’mon, I’ll show you where you sleep.”

32 / CHUCK LOGAN

Harry picked up his duffel bag and followed Jesse down the hall past the kitchen that ended in twin bedrooms. Midway, another bedroom faced the bathroom. They went in. “You’re in here. Chris’ll sleep out on the couch,” she explained and tossed her head toward the kitchen. “Sorry about Becky. They skipped her a grade in school and she’s enjoying being precocious. She’s worse since Bud’s been around. He encourages them both to talk. Becky more than Chris.

You know Bud. He means well.” She punctuated her last sentence with a searching glance.

Harry stood flat-footed. A huge print was framed on the wall over the bed. Another Goya. But this one was a particular horror. A mad-eyed titan held a limp decapitated naked body to its ravenous mouth.

It was called “Saturn Devouring His Son.” Harry turned to her.

“I drew the line on that one being out where people could see it,”

she said. “So Chris brought it in here. Kinda fits in with David Bowie and the Sex Pistols, don’t you think?” Her eyes scanned the room.

A cheap boombox sat on a desk next to dusty schoolbooks. Another IBM PC rested on a side table in a litter of floppy disks. The walls were papered with posters from contemporary rock groups. An iron cross hung from the light cord.

“Yeah,” said Harry noncommittally. He threw his duffel bag on the rumpled bed.

She lingered at the door. “You’re a surprise,” she said very directly.

“Funny, when Bud said he was bringing a friend up, last minute and all, I didn’t figure someone like you. You’re real different from him.”

Harry shrugged, aware that neither of them knew what to do with their hands. She put hers on her hips. Seemed like a good idea. He put his the same way.

“Bud showed me some of the things you used to draw,” she said.

Harry nodded politely. It was conversation. “It’s more computers now,” he said.

“It resembles you, the way you draw.” She cocked her head. “Kinda quiet and nice to look at but there’s an edge…”

HUNTER’S MOON / 33

Her eyes softened and it would have been a sweet moment if she wasn’t the new bride of his once best friend. Something ran deep and artesian in her and Harry couldn’t tell if it was loneliness or cunning.

Her eyes pried him open. “I know stuff about you. Bud told me, about Minnesota Harry and Detroit Harry. How he found you in the gutter drifting toward an open manhole and dried you out.”

“Well, you know Bud. He gave me a hand,” said Harry.

“Riiight, now maybe you’re thinking about returning the favor, huh?” Her sporting laugh had a bitter trickle and Harry went with the loneliness. She’d never see thirty-five again and she had yet to be discovered.

But her smile was pure heroin. Once you had it, you wanted more and nothing else mattered. “Yeah,” she mused, “I know Bud all right.

I only got an idea about you.”

She left a shiver of physical intrigue in the room and if there was an open manhole she was it but he couldn’t stop himself from going to the doorway to watch her walk away down the hall.

Damn.

7

Jesse plus one hour and counting: the raw dirty copper taste started in Harry’s mouth that signaled that his nerves were acting up, so he took a shower to soak out the chill of the road, then he resorted to an old nervous habit. Dripping dry in front of the bathroom mirror, he worried at his teeth with a toothbrush.

He meditated on the tabloid disorder that was Bud; with his body out of control and his life out of control and all that bread like helium gas that allowed him to drift above the law of gravity.

Well, that was the booze for you. Met her in a bar. Hadda be shitfaced drunk when he married into this bunch. Harry 34 / CHUCK LOGAN

tasted blood. Too long, too heavy with the brush. He took it out and grimaced at the red-tipped bristles.

He ran his finger along the line of his lips. Then he grinned, revealing the straight, even teeth. His face relaxed into a modestly handsome grin. Cost five grand at the orthodontist to straighten out Detroit Harry’s crooked teeth. Cost Bud. A gift to commemorate Harry’s first year sober.

And Bud had dragged him off the street. And into AA. And sponsored him in every sense of the word; had arranged his late-start break in the straight world with the job at the paper.

So he owed Bud. The way he saw it, he owed Bud honesty.

The bathroom door swung open and Chris stood in the doorway.

“Oops, sorry,” he said, as his eyes traveled boldly over Harry’s body and stopped at hip level with intense scrutiny.

Harry slammed the door shut. That did it.

He dressed quickly and went down the hall. Bud sat at the dining room table, staring at a sheet of paper. Chris had joined his mother and sister and they stood, heads close over the sink, whispering, watching Bud.

“C’mon, we’re going out. I need to buy some smokes,” said Harry.

Bud squinted at him, then out the windows. “You kidding?”

“That place we passed down the road should be open. Get your coat on.”

Jesse, Becky, and Chris eyed Harry suspiciously.

For emphasis, Harry gripped Bud’s elbow. Tight. Bud winced.

Harry insisted. “Let’s go. We gotta talk.”

It was still snowing, but the wind had backed off. Harry had Bud’s keys in his parka so he drove. At the end of the driveway they watched a road grader with a V blade smash a swath down Highway 7. Harry steered in behind it.

Bud hunched in the passenger seat. He knew what was coming.

Harry turned on the radio