Hunter's Moon by Chuck Logan (english novels to read .TXT) 📕

He remembered what Randall had tried to teach him. Words spoken long ago in the tropical heat, in the shadow of another mountain range.

Just because you discover that everything you know and believe is wrong doesn’t give you an excuse to quit living.

“This won’t change anything, Randall. He’s got me boxed. I’m going down for two murders.”

A transit of admiration flickered in Randall’s spooky eyes. “Maybe not.” He turned and studied Becky.

374 / CHUCK LOGAN

60

Chato, Arizona, had two gas stations, one convenience store, three taverns, and the motel. The motel room’s back door opened on a sand-choked patio and the sand led to the town’s former business district, where siding hung from the original adobe walls.

Farther into the desert, the skeleton of a coal chute stood guard over abandoned railroad tracks.

A scrawny chicken pecked its way across the patio. Twenty yards away two Mexican kids with starchy bellies hung over dirty under-shorts played in a rusted-out 1957 Chevrolet.

Down the highway, under a Fellini-twilight tiara of pink and blue neon, a fat man in bib overalls played an ancient upright piano on an open court behind a cantina.

The air conditioner didn’t work and they all dripped sweat. Hollywood questioned Harry and Becky about the sequence of events at the trailer. He particularly didn’t like the part about Jerry Hakala seeing Harry with the gun, or the over-powering and kidnap of the policeman.

Patiently, he tried to walk Becky through it from the beginning.

“Did your brother go into the woods that morning planning to kill Bud Maston?”

“To fight him. To make him leave Mom alone,” said Becky.

“Becky, you’re going to have to tell us exactly what happened. It will all come out in court,” Hollywood explained.

“I don’t want to go to court,” she said through clenched teeth.

Randall signaled with his eyes to ease up. “Okay,” said Hollywood,

“so what did you see in the woods?”

“They got into an argument.”

“Could you hear what it was about?”

She shook her head. “Bud hit him and Chris tried to fight back and Bud grabbed his gun and it shot in the air. Then Bud pulled the barrel into his side and held it there. They were HUNTER’S MOON / 375

struggling, but Bud had his hand on Chris’s on the trigger. It went off again. He pulled open the bolt and stuffed it with snow. Then he pushed Chris down.”

Her voice quickened. “Chris was trying to load another bullet but his gun wouldn’t work because it had snow stuck in it. By then, Bud was screaming, laying in the snow, but now he had his own rifle pointed at Chris. Just when Harry came over the ridge, he threw his rifle away. Chris got unjammed and aimed at Bud and you know the rest.”

Harry saw it. Bud, the unlikely high-wire artist, methodically growing his love handles to cushion the bullet and meticulously planning the timing, lining up all the trapeze bars for his circus of the real and thrilling to the split-second risk.

“Why didn’t you go to Sheriff Emery?” asked Hollywood.

“I was scared. I thought Bud brought Harry to kill us all.” Becky buried her hands in her hair and when she looked up, her eyes were two sores. “Don’t you see? I did something, too…and he took pictures of me…and now part of…of what happened has even gotten back to my boyfriend.” She shut her eyes and shook her head violently and ran next door to her room.

“Give her a few minutes, Harry,” said Randall. “Then go in and just listen to her. She’s about to talk.”

Harry drifted with it while Hollywood and Randall haggled about the law. He didn’t hear the words, only the intensity of their voices and, the way they held their bodies, it could have been twenty years ago, they could have been weighing the best way to approach a hostile village.

They decided to call Mike Hakala in Maston County and let it all hang out. Hollywood picked up the phone. Harry went to the ad-joining room.

Becky was in the shower and a cloud of moisture preceded her when she came out of the bathroom saronged in a towel. The towel swished against her thighs and a peek of pubic hair caught a thread of fire off the lowering sun.

“Put some clothes on,” he said.

376 / CHUCK LOGAN

“I want to dry off,” she said. Her face was baby-butt moist and shiny. “You’d feel better if you cleaned up,” she said.

Harry didn’t want to feel better.

Becky tilted her head. “It won’t help. What that guy said. He’s just a junkie. A nobody. There’s only one way for us now.”

She leaned her damp body against him in a chaste embrace, went up on tiptoe, and kissed him with affection on the forehead. Then she sat in a chair next to the air conditioner and toyed with the off-on toggle switch.

“Out of order,” said Harry.

“Figures.” She sighed, fanning her face with her hand. The chair jerked back under her weight and disturbed the folds of the cheap polyester curtains behind it. The chintzy abstract curtain design shivered a foot above her head and a large pale-green praying mantis flexed its lethal mandibles and settled back into anonymity.

He stared at her.

“We have to finish what Chris started,” she said frankly.

“I wish it was that simple.” He shook his head. “There are rules, Becky.”

“Oh, right! After listening to what that Hector said, there’s no rules and there’s no God.”

Becky pursed her lips and looked out at the desert. “I know I’m going to cry about it, but not yet. I get into the trailer and down the hall and when I try to open the door to the bedroom the door’s locked. I can’t get it open.”

Harry sat down on the bed and waited. For a full minute the only sound was the hot swish of tires passing on the highway and the faraway tinkle of the piano.

Becky sagged in the chair and fingered one of her mother’s cigarettes from the