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

Harry had to laugh at the audience, at how they cheered the special effects, oohing and aahing when the ketchup packets splattered in long, drawn-out slow-motion arabesques, hee-hawing at the heroes’ quick one-liners as he reloaded.

Chris Deucette would have liked to watch the movie with hog tranq boiling in his brain.

The last pane of glass shattered. The last plume of gasoline burned away, the last car crashed, and the last of a million gunshots echoed over the carnage. The good guy won in the end.

He walked out of the theater grinning and people in the lobby averted their eyes from his torn face. He passed down an arcade of coming attractions and in every poster movie stars held out guns in the new American handshake.

Outside, Detroit Harry sniffed the melancholy afternoon. It HUNTER’S MOON / 137

smelled drunk out. The whole glass world was tipped on its side.

Get Bud in the hospital first…

23

Six pillows propped Bud up in the hospital bed and his hairy gut hung out and his face was the same color as the thick gauze that swathed his wounded side. He spooned soft ice cream over his distended lower lip and watched the Vikings tumble on Astroturf like steroidal Easter eggs. Harry switched off the TV set.

“Going to that funeral is the dumbest thing I ever heard,” said Harry firmly. “You had a deal with Hakala, remember? You’re going into treatment. Tomorrow.”

Bud put down his spoon and looked at Harry thoughtfully.

“I’ve…had time to think. I have an obligation to attend that service.”

“Bullshit. When can you get out of here?”

“Tomorrow. You talk to Linda?”

“She was over, doing her Angel of Mercy number. More like a Cuisinart with nipples.” Harry scowled. “I don’t need people practicing amateur shrink with my life right now…”

Bud dropped his eyes. “Déjà vu. They really got into that. Murphy tried to talk to me. I didn’t say a word.”

“It’s already blowing over. Some American church people got killed in El Salvador. That bumped us to the bottom of the front page. Tomorrow it’ll be inside. TV will drop it if nobody talks to them.”

“A Duluth station had a camera crew out there. I saw it on the news last night. Those yellow ribbons…” said Bud. “I talked to Hakala this morning. They did an autopsy. He was flying on angel dust. Who names drugs these days?”

“Pick a hospital, with a good impatient program.”

“I’ve always thought highly of Saint Helen’s. It’s right in town.

And I built their new children’s wing—”

138 / CHUCK LOGAN

“Call them. Reserve a bed.”

“I’ll call Louise in the morning. She can make the arrangements.”

Louise was Bud’s personal secretary at the foundation.

“No, you call, now.”

“What if they don’t have a bed open?”

“Pick up the phone.”

Bud picked up the bedside phone, balked, and appealed, “You think I really need to go, like, in the hospital?”

“Dial,” said Harry.

It took half an hour to get the bed reserved. Bud had to call the director of the hospital at home during dinner. When it was done, Bud grimaced and held up a tiny paper cup and peered inside. “They took me off Dilaudid. Fucking Tylenol.”

“Noon tomorrow,” said Harry.

“Saint Helen’s, Christ they run their CD ward like boot camp.”

“Good,” said Harry. “When did Linda say she could have the divorce summons ready?”

“Huh? Oh. Tomorrow. Why?”

“Somebody has to put them in her hand.”

Bud pulled his sheets around his shoulders and snuggled deeper in his pillows and his eyes drifted out the window and watched St.

Paul light its lamps against the desolate twilight.

The El Salvador killings and Washington reaction dominated the six o’clock news. Video footage of a muddy field filled the screen with adobe-colored earth and heavy, moist saffron air. The Latin cops wore white shirts, tight gray pants, and sunglasses. Their slim physiques, long black hair, and large pistols were reminiscent of the Vietnamese Special Police.

Harry understood the scene on the TV. The friction of living in a match factory with open vats of gasoline led to a certain fatalism and sensitivity to the spark of violence.

But that violence was tied to social and political forces.

HUNTER’S MOON / 139

The scene up north was Perry Mason shit. Stuff he didn’t understand.

He’d have a clearer picture when he talked to Reverend Karson.

Randall called and said he had a care package from Dorothy.

Harry told him to come on over. Thirty minutes later, Randall showed up with a casserole. Harry put it in the fridge.

“They killed the story,” Harry said.

Randall’s eyes wandered the apartment, paused on the travel gear laid out on the bed, and returned to Harry’s face. He raised an eyebrow. “How was last night?”

“Wet,” said Harry.

For a long time they watched each other; a conversation with their eyes that went back over the years. The older man sought a patience in the younger man, an acceptance. Harry felt a flush of envy. Every line in Randall’s face bore the name of a battle or a great man. He’d done it all.

Randall slowly shook his head. “Look. Bud’s a devious fuckup.

His life is a wreck, so he’s trying to avoid it by worrying about you.

He called. He’s concerned you’re not working the AA program.

Quote, that your life is starting to get unmanageable, unquote. He says I should tell you to go to a meeting.”

Harry laughed. “I’m checking him into a treatment program at noon tomorrow. You telling me to go to a meeting?”

“I’m telling you to pay more attention to your blind side.”

“This is for real. People up there want to see Bud dead.”

“And you owe him so much. Why is that? Because he helped you sober up, get a job? You would have done that on your own. He cultivated your friendship. It wouldn’t have happened normally.

There’s something off in the chemistry.”

Harry shook his head. “Bud had shrapnel pulled out of his ass in Third Med at Dong Ha just like you and me. He left the best part of himself on that ridge in Nam when he got the Congressional…

140 / CHUCK