Hunter's Moon Chuck Logan (novels to read TXT) 📖

and he didn’t want to be alone. There was company in the alcohol. Ghosts 280 / CHUCK LOGAN

mostly. He could almost hear the runaway train of the first half of his life.

He arm wrestled with the glass. One last grab for something to brace on, ’cause this time he wasn’t playing with edges. This time he was going in, down, to the bottom.

He moved the glass back and forth across the table, pushing aside a stray .45 round, two quarters, a dime. The goddamn button Emery had found in the snow…Gouged in the wood grain, painstakingly carved with a knife, the blocky vandal letters shouted: Huzzah!

The archaic cheer brought a sad smile as he hoisted the glass.

Kind of prank he might have carved as a kid—always off in a corner reading books, dreaming of battles and chivalry…

Well no shit! Back in the game, he rose and hurled the tumbler across the lodge. Glass shards exploded off the fireplace.

The class picture Talme showed him. The writing on the back.

“Next year on to the ablative,” he said aloud.

The kid wrote.

Maybe journals or a diary, just like Harry had kept at that age, and Chris would hide what he wrote—hide it so good that Jesse, cleaning out the place, would never find it.

Harry dumped the liquor down the sink. This time he rinsed the bottle out with water. No diving for corners in the garbage pit. Deep breath, let it out. He walked down the hall and turned the knob on the door to Chris’s room.

46

The heat vent was shut off and the cold room was stripped clean except for the Iron Cross that hung from the light bulb. Harry closed his hand around the German doodad and squeezed for some lingering presence of Chris Deucette.

HUNTER’S MOON / 281

The closet doors were pulled open on their tracks, the shelves empty. The wire hangers tangled like bad nerves. The mattress was bare. The desk barren. Nothing in the drawers. Strips of tape stuck to the walls where posters had been torn down.

He felt around the mattress and box springs for any sign they had been altered to create a hiding place. He checked behind the desk, the edges of the carpet. Place was clean. This is crazy, he thought, sitting on the floor, smoking a cigarette, trying to make his mind fifteen years old—sixteen. Trying to reconstruct the glitter in Chris’s eyes, talking about guns in front of the fireplace. The fascination.

He tore the room apart.

Methodically, he ripped up the carpet and yanked the shelves from the closet. Then he did the same to Becky’s room. In Bud’s room, he took all the clothes out of the closet, out of the drawers. He was looking for a notebook, a diary. Frustrated, he kicked at the scattered clothing and went back down the hall.

Nervous sweat coiled in his armpits as he rifled the desk in the den. Lifted the computer to look underneath…

Harry stared at the IBM.

Dummy.

Chris probably never owned a pen. He had a computer. All the drawers in the desk came out. All the floppies. He flipped on the PC and began opening files, going through the disks, one by one.

Business correspondence. Budgets, proposed expenses, and spreadsheets that costed out the creation of Snowshoe Lodge. Hours in front of the screen pushing the keys. The computer sat like a squat plastic cyclops and defied him.

Harry sagged in the chair and ran his eyes over the long shelves of books that lined the den floor to ceiling. Smart kid might hide it in plain view, where he could smile to himself when people walked right by it.

He made a pot of coffee and turned on the tuner. Radio Free Ojibway tiptoed in the static. Russell Means cut in and 282 / CHUCK LOGAN

out, giving a speech. Harry started on the top shelf, opened every book. Thumbed through the pages of books that had gathered Brahman dust in an Ivy League dorm.

He ruffled the pages of The Iliad; paper swollen and gray from mildew, the cover chewed by jungle. Cam Lo, 1969, written on the flyleaf. Tossed it aside. Conrad, Camus, Bellow, Malraux littered the floor. The books of his own youth.

The drums got the range at 3 A.M. and came hoofing out of the ionosphere—loud—wailing. They carried him out onto the porch.

Giddy with black coffee, he sucked down a recharge of fresh air and listened to Glacier Lake sigh, waiting for the ice.

He found it just before dawn, in a much-handled copy of Neuroman-cer by William Gibson.

I’ve seen pictures…

The diskette was taped to a postcard and a photograph. The card was a close-up of Michelangelo’s David, the head, torso, and hips.

With red felt tip, two cherries and a sprig were drawn on the statue’s left hip. The Polaroid was something else…

“Jesus,” Harry’s breath rattled. Chris posed like the David in bad light, against a rock background. Looking off camera, one arm raised to his shoulder. Slender, ribs showing, penis tumescent. Tattoo on his left hip. Two cherries and a green sprig.

He inserted the disk in the PC and opened the solitary file, which was titled: “Martin.” With the Ojibway drums pounding in his ears, he read:

The Life and Death of Martin

Men lie. Especially they lie about war. They lie about how they get their kicks, too. Some men will be sneaky about getting you to suck their dick, then they’ll lie about it later.

HUNTER’S MOON / 283

When someone you love lies, that’s worst of all. Martin had these thoughts as he walked through the red dust toward the hill.

Martin was a soldier. All the other men in his platoon talked real tough about what they’d do when they met the enemy. Martin figured they’d all run away.

The enemy was strong. He controlled the land. It was the land of Martin’s ancestors. Everybody said they wanted to fight, to take back the land for the people. But Martin knew beneath their talk they