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

jolted back up to high volume. He heard Bud go down the hall and have a long con-voluted conversation with Chris, trying to convince him to turn it down. Bud’s voice was a reasonable drone. Harry debated walking in there and shaking the kid. Turn it down. Do it. He flopped down on the bed. It was a house without rules.

Bud entered the room and Harry smelled marijuana.

“That kid smoking dope out there?” Harry asked.

“Jesse. She smokes a little grass before she goes to bed.”

Harry lit a cigarette with jerky motions and blew smoke to blot out the cannabis perfume. “You talk to her?”

“Jesus Christ, man, I took a year to get into this…give me a few days.”

Harry scowled.

“What’s going on with you? You’re getting all pointy.” Bud said.

“I don’t like people smoking dope where I sleep,” said Harry.

“Take it easy. There’s other people in the world besides you.”

Harry thought about it. One of his basic rules was, if you get uncomfortable, leave. Before something happened. Now here he was waiting for Jesse to happen.

48 / CHUCK LOGAN

And now Bud’s ruddy face looked pleasantly bedraggled. The ends of his beard were damp and stuck to his meaty chest and his robe fell open at the waist and showed the hairy sag of his belly. A chunk of his left calf muscle the size of a fist was missing, the skin twisted over the concave whorl of scar tissue. The wound gave his leg, below the knee, the slick appearance of a scalded drumstick.

“I’d feel more comfortable tonight in one of those log cabins,”

said Harry.

“The roofs aren’t on those cabins. Hey, hey,” Bud said in a soothing voice as he put his hands gently on Harry’s shoulders. “It’s been a long day. We’re both burned from the drive. And we’ve talked down some heavy shit. Maybe you’re just a little nervous about…tomorrow.”

“Nervous?”

Bud cuffed him warmly on the neck, his fingers lingered, kneading the taut muscle. “I don’t know. Guns. Moving targets.”

Endless bullshit, thought Harry. And the woman, right next door, smoking dope in a silk robe.

Bud paused at the door and glanced self-consciously down the darkened hallway. “This won’t be easy. She really turns me on,” he said in a hoarse voice.

Harry looked away and tried to put sternness in his voice. “That kid, Chris, needs a kick in the pants.”

“He’ll be all right once we get in the woods—”

“Shit,” Harry laughed, pointing to the Goya over the bed. “Lookit this room. There’s probably an altar around here someplace with the bones of little children on it.”

Bud shrugged. “You’re not used to being around kids, Harry. I’ve been learning. You have to be flexible.”

But not too flexible, thought Harry. Too hot, the absurdly loud music beyond the door. The marijuana seeping—permissive, unraveling—in the air.

“Well, she’s in there, waiting,” said Bud in an amazed voice. “More than I can handle.”

“When you met her, she approach you?” Harry asked.

“Actually I met her a couple of years ago. She came down HUNTER’S MOON / 49

to Saint Paul. Put the bite on me for a political campaign she was managing.”

“Whose campaign?”

“County sheriff. And after that, it was the new hospital—”

“You check her out? Her background?”

Bud shrugged. “She’s from here. Moved to Duluth, went to UMD.

Got knocked up her freshman year. The guy split. Kids were born out of wedlock. She married another guy. He died, then she moved back here.”

“Was there ever anything between Jesse and Cox?” Harry asked abruptly.

“Cox? Be serious. She’s got more class than that,” Bud grimaced.

“What about this Larry? The sheriff?”

“They used to go out—”

“Chris said they used to live together.”

Bud swallowed. “She does stuff that…”

Harry exhaled. Bail out, man. Beyond this point it gets real fucked up! Problem is, buddy, your wife turns me on. And it ain’t all in my overheated imagination. “This is dumb, me being here, Bud.”

“I need you, Harry. To…talk to…”

“Jesus Christ,” Harry muttered. “Get outta here.” He pushed Bud through the door.

“Right. We got a big day tomorrow,” Bud forced a grin and closed the door. His departure caused a sudden quiet to fill the lodge. The TV, the stereo. Off. Absolute silence. The cold wrestled with the roof and the furnace came on.

Listening. The whole hot lodge turned into an acoustic device.

Harry shut off the light, stripped down, crawled into bed, and lay on his back, smoking. Faintly, he could hear Bud and Jesse on the other side of the wall. A low domestic conversation. Several times he thought he heard his name.

They were discreet at first. The individual sounds were subdued.

Harry stubbed out his smoke, rolled over, and lay facedown.

50 / CHUCK LOGAN

A thump? A giggle? Right against the wall next to his bed. Christ, the headboard of their bed was banging on the wall. Jesse tapping out Morse code with her hips right through the partition.

Harry’s imagination amplified the muffled sounds as the springs squeaked. There was a throaty yelp of pain or pleasure. Slow then fast then slow again. Harry shut his eyes. Bud in there. His sticky flab slapping her like a tub of hamburger.

Harry took a deep breath and tried his tricks. Part of sobering up had been learning transcendental meditation. Now he tried to find the ladder to climb to a calmer depth. All Harry is divided into three parts. He tried to separate his mind from his heartbeat from his breathing. Let it all float.

Bang. Ram. Groan.

No good. There were other relaxation techniques. Older, surer ones.

Because One-Eyed Lazarus, the dead twig he peed through, was up and jolly red. Christ. An erection. Thought he’d used them all up and would spend the rest of his life paying interest on a wanton deficit. To break the tension, he masturbated slowly, outdistancing the faint sounds next door. Tried to hang there, defying gravity, on the very top arc of sensation. The universal problem. How do you make anything last?

There.

But just as quickly gone. A spilled memory. Practical now. Hide the evidence. Bent over, he tiptoed