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

real strong. I had asthma, hay fever. The town kids always put me down for a weakass. I cop out on this hunting, they’ll laugh at me.” Bud’s voice turned poignant. “My father always wanted to take me hunting…” His mother and father, brother and sister had gone down in a freak sailboat mishap on Superior when he was twelve.

Harry felt it turning, beyond his control, almost like it was meant to happen. “You should get your ass into detox, not the goddamn woods.”

“Look. Let’s make a deal. We hunt opening day, then you can make your pitch. I’ll go back with you, go into treatment maybe—whatever. I’d rather confront Jesse about all this in a counselor’s office, not in my kitchen. C’mon, man, we drove all the way here through the fucking blizzard. We got the guns and the clothes…one day.”

“Shit.”

Bud grinned. “It was Chris’s idea to go hunting.” Bud held up the piece of paper he had been studying at the dining room table.

“Treasure map to the big deer. Chris knows where he is. These ridges over a swamp. We built deer stands and I put him through a gun safety class with the sheriff. That tree with the ropes on it back there?

Every year they hang the biggest deer and the winner gets a steak at the VFW cooked by…” Bud sighed. “Jesse.”

“Jesus,” Harry groaned.

“Like a contest, we all put in ten bucks, the money goes to the food shelf. I already put in for you. So what do you think? We stick Chris on one of these ridges. Then you and me sit on another…”

Bud bit his lip.

Harry glanced around. Not like he could hop a bus. “Okay, okay,”

he said. Giving in was a guilty thrill, like the first time he stole something. “So we set up on these ridges—”

“Thing is, shooting was never my strong suit,” Bud said. “I had to go back to the range three times in boot camp to 42 / CHUCK LOGAN

qualify at the bottom of my company. You never had that problem…”

He stared at Harry expectantly.

“Where’s Cox going to be?”

Bud smiled. “He’s the hired help, not a hunting buddy.”

“Okay. We hunt tomorrow. But you have to lay it on the line with her.”

Bud gripped Harry’s elbow. “Just get me through tomorrow. Go in there and try to talk to the kid, you know, about hunting. What do you say?”

Harry reached inside Bud’s vest, seized the pint, rolled down the window, and threw it out. “No more booze.”

8

Back inside the lodge, Bud put on the clown face he wore around his wife, and Jesse challenged Harry. “You get all the mantalk straightened out?”

“I’m going to take a shower,” said Bud nervously, stepping between them to stop the staring contest. He rolled his eyes toward the main room where Chris slouched in a chair. Harry didn’t move.

“Harry?” Bud insisted, then, embarrassed, he dropped his gaze and walked to the bathroom.

“Your master’s voice,” Jesse said under her breath, going past him down the hall.

Harry went to his room, grabbed his rifle case and a cleaning kit, and came back out to the main room. Bud’s expensive Sako .30-06

rifle with a Leupold scope lay on the sofa. A cheaper new Marlin, bolt action .30-30 with a Redfield scope sat next to it. A lighter load for the kid.

“That your rifle?” Harry asked as he sat down on the floor in front of the hearth.

“Bud bought it for me,” Chris said. He pulled his hair out of his eyes and his expression quieted into a puzzle of adolescent curiosity.

“Looks all cleaned up and ready to go,” said Harry. Man HUNTER’S MOON / 43

and boy warmed to each other as the old American flint and steel threw out a spark. Guns.

“Larry showed me how to clean it.”

“Larry?”

“Sheriff Emery. I had to take a gun safety class, because, like. I’m just sixteen.” His eyes flitted in the firelight.

“He shot the bear?” asked Harry. He pointed to the hide on the wall.

“Yeah. We used to live with Larry. We thought mom was going to marry him.”

Harry absorbed this large piece of information without blinking.

“What about Jay? Your mom ever think of marrying him?” he joked.

Chris laughed. “Mom says Jay is just this walking hard-on.” Chris leaned forward. “You see those scars on his cheeks? He shot himself once on a dare, right through. Missed his teeth.”

“Dumb,” said Harry.

“Yeah,” said Chris. “But he works like hell building all that new stuff out there. He’s going to retire and be a guide when they open this place.”

“That guide stuff isn’t for you, huh?”

“Fuck that,” Chris said. “If I never see another walleye it’ll be too soon.”

Harry took Randall’s rifle out of the case and pressed the catch under the trigger housing and the bolt slid out with a soft, oiled click. He set it aside and threaded a cleaning rod together.

“That’s an old gun. How long you had it?” said Chris. The boy’s fascinated expression reminded Harry of the faces of uniformed children in Civil War photographs.

“Not mine. I borrowed it.”

“Guns are beautiful,” said Chris. “They’re…perfect.” The turbulent drummer-boy eyes queried Harry for a response.

Harry shrugged. He’d never particularly liked guns. Just a tool that brought to mind a certain kind of work.

“How come you don’t have a scope on it?” asked Chris.

“I learned to shoot without a scope.”

44 / CHUCK LOGAN

“They teach you to shoot in the marines?”

“I was in the army, not the marines. Uncle back in Michigan taught me.”

“You and Bud were in the war together, weren’t you?”

Harry shook his head. “We were around some of the same places.”

Chris gave him a taunting look of disbelief. “Bud says you shot a lot of people in the war?”

Harry answered the inappropriate question with busy silence. He looked up and saw that Chris was watching him. Demanding an answer. Harry said, “Lot of people did.”

“He said you did creepy stuff. Like at night.”

“Bud tends to exaggerate.”

Chris, riveted to Harry’s every move, accepted this answer without comment. Harry