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

38 / CHUCK LOGAN

Their eyes met. “Okay?” Bud asked defiantly. Harry shrugged.

Bud took a long sip and the whiskey toned his face and tightened his eyes. His freckles seemed to pop out like brass rivets. He sighed and made a ceremony of lighting another Camel with a snappy barroom display of reflexes, twirling the cigarette in his blotchy fingers. His eyes slouched across the table. “Are you ever tempted, Harry?”

Drifting hooks of alcohol came trailing and Harry sat absolutely still, not giving them anything to snag on.

“Listen. You can do whatever you want. But you take another drink of that shit and I’m not going anywhere near the woods and loaded rifles with you.”

Bud grimaced and screwed the top back on the bottle and stuck it back in his vest. “You can be a real drag. Does it ever go to your head? Being the designated hero everybody can count on?” Resentful words. Well, tough shit. Harry’s plan was simple. Get Bud out of the situation. Then get the booze out of Bud. Until that happened, talk would just be a devious game.

“Another thing,” said Harry. “From what I’ve seen of Chris, I don’t think he should be around a rifle.”

Bud tipped his cup, stared into the contents, and moved it aside.

He dragged on his smoke so hard that strings of tobacco stuck to his lip. A tiny bead of blood welled up around a dot of white cigarette paper that tore his dry lower lip.

“Bud, it’s all wrong up here. I’ve watched you and women for years. From astrologers to community organizers. They all wind up going to law school. I figured you married some backwoods feminist, Our Lady of the Whole Food Coop or something. Jesse might have the hottest ass in Maston County but she’s not Minnesota congress-man’s wife material.”

“What the fuck is that supposed to mean?”

“What do I have to do? Draw you a fucking picture?”

Bud glowered at him. Harry reached in his pocket for a felt-tip pen. He quickly sketched on the tablecloth. A Scrooge HUNTER’S MOON / 39

McDuck moneybag with a serpentine dollar sign on the side. Then he drew a grasping feminine hand descending from above.

“Subtle,” said Bud dryly.

“She’s a hustler. And Cox? I smell institution all over that dude.”

“They’re hard-knocks folks. Takes a while for them to warm up to people who are better off. I just wanted to get lost up here. Be this ordinary guy…She took care of me. She had all these great ideas about fixing up the lodge—” Bud was gearing up to give a speech.

Harry cut him off. “Don’t con the con, man. You running a fishing lodge in the sticks? C’mon. I can’t believe you let her get her hooks into you this deep. She’s turning your house into a hotel, for Chrissake. And now she’s got spousal rights. That’s half of something.”

Bud’s expression belonged in a textbook over the caption: delu-sion. “She’s really got her heart set on opening the place next May—”

“Bullshit, the tools in that place haven’t been used in weeks, there’s dust all over them. And when you leave her it’ll break her heart and she’ll cry great big tears for about twelve minutes until she finds a lawyer who can put a dollar figure on it.” Harry took a breath.

“Enough of this shit. Do you want to be married to this woman?”

“Jesus,” Bud groaned and avoided the eyes of the lady at the cash register who was pretending to read a magazine but who was really straining her ears to eavesdrop.

Harry kept coming. “Look me in the eye and tell me you love her,”

he said.

Bud drew himself up in an attempt to meet Harry’s eyes. He burst into helpless laughter and muttered, “I can look you in the eye and tell you it’s like sticking your crank in a sack of wildcats.”

He drew his meaty hand across his eyes. “Aw goddamn. What the fuck do I do? She thinks we’re going to have this social wedding in the St. Paul Cathedral. She’s asking me for 40 / CHUCK LOGAN

an invitation list of everybody I know. She’s looking at dresses for Chrissake.”

“I’ll talk to her, man. I’ll explain—”

“Explain what? That I fell apart? A year ago I was so close I could taste it.” Bud’s fingers fondled a shapely vision of success. Then they balled into fists and he began to tremble.

Harry reached over and put his hand on Bud’s arm. “You trust me on this?” he asked.

“Yeah,” Bud sighed. “I can’t get out on my own. That’s why I called you.”

Harry nodded. “We go back, get our stuff, and split. Let me do the talking—”

Bud banged both fists down on the table and overturned the coffee cups. “No! We go through with the hunting part. I can’t write it all off to drinking. I made a promise to that kid. I’m not running out on that. I have to start turning it around somewhere.”

Harry shook his head.

They drove back in silence. Harry pulled into the driveway, braked, and put the Jeep in neutral. He leaned forward and draped both elbows on the steering wheel and watched snowflakes tumble in the headlights. He’d never known such a feeling of physical inevitability about a woman. Like gravity pulling him down.

Bud spoke in a rush. “Chris’s been getting in trouble. He gets thrown out of school. He’s been in some jams with the law. The sheriff up here is a good guy, he’s been trying to work with him, but I figured it was more my job if he’s living under my roof.”

“What kind of jams?” Harry tried to fight it.

“He got caught with some pot, some uppers. No way he’s going to listen to me about that. You’re more like the guys up here, a little scary. I thought maybe you could get through to him.”

HUNTER’S MOON / 41

“Too many things going on,” said Harry. “Forget playing daddy.”

“Harry, when I was a kid up here in the summers I was…not