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

The digital clock in the Jeep dashboard read 10:30. Plenty of time to stop for breakfast at the Timber Cruiser Cafe and check out this Ginny. Slowly he drove down Nanabozho Ridge.

Twelve deer carcasses dangled by their antlers from the big maple beside the General Store. Beads of frozen blood clung to the matted hair along the gutted bellies and twinkled in his low beams. Harry drove on, prowled into Stanley, and went looking for the Lutheran church.

Trinity Lutheran was an obstinate, red brick fist, its steeple hidden in the fog. He found it just past the Hakala Lumberyard, north of the business district, on a cape of compacted liver-colored shingle that formed the north shoulder of Stanley’s harbor. He rolled down his window.

An organ played “Nearer My God to Thee” and the sound turned with the waves that broke against the granite boulders to either side.

HUNTER’S MOON / 169

Trucks, snowmobiles, and four-by-fours crowded the parking lot.

Jay Cox’s big rig—scrubbed clean—sat in front of the hearse. A county sheriff’s Blazer was parked in front of the truck.

He continued down the road that led out to the end of the jetty and a sign materialized in his lights: MASTON COUNTY HISTORICAL

SOCIETY. Harry squinted to make out the nebulous mass of a two-story, pillared building. A figure appeared in the mist and he slowed.

The woman wore a pleated black skirt and a black sweater. She had prominent cheekbones and graying raven hair pulled tight along her skull and the erect carriage of an elderly ballerina. She was attaching an American flag to a pole and raised her hand to her forehead and peered into his lights. Then she hoisted the flag and walked to the church.

Harry made a U-turn and drove back toward the glow of town.

The brightest lights came from the plate-glass windows of the Timber Cruiser Cafe. After he parked, he paused at the door. He’d be able to see the cortege headlights when they left the church parking lot.

The cafe’s rough-hewn beams and crannies leaked an aroma of cigar smoke, meat and gravy, of jokes told. A Fisher wood stove in the center of the room pumped out heat. Double-bladed axes, two-handed logging saws, and mounted bucks thronged the walls.

There were sepia pictures like the ones in Hakala’s office. Lumberjacks. Miners marching under a CIO banner. Deer hunting expedi-tions. A 1920s shack with a crudely lettered Hakala Lumber sign next to a proud proprietor. A brass Wurlitzer squatted next to the door.

The red-leather stools along the counter, the booths by the windows, and the tables in the back were empty this morning except for a lanky blonde waitress with milk-white skin who lounged on a stool next to the cash register. Olympic Nordic legs spilled from her miniskirt and tapered down to bobby socks and sneakers. The two top buttons of her blouse were unbuttoned to ease the strain of her breasts.

170 / CHUCK LOGAN

She looked up from the book she was reading and her bee-stung lips smiled self-consciously. Longish teeth broke the spell. With lidded eyes and two moles—one on her left cheek, the other at the corner of her left eye—she straddled an intriguing, willowy line right between horsey and gorgeous; an inch either way and she’d be someone else.

She set a bookmark in her place, put her book aside, and sauntered down the counter.

“Coffee, black,” said Harry, opening a menu. “Oatmeal.

Grapefruit—”

“Only got the canned slices,” said a breathy voice as her gray-green eyes took in his ripped face and she sniffed the whiskey on his breath.

“Naw, give me a big orange juice.” Booze loosened his tongue and his smile as he watched her sing the order over the counter into the kitchen. The cook had a blaze-orange knit cap perched on his head and balanced a two-inch ash on the cigarette in his lips.

Harry turned over the book she had been reading. Functions of the Unconscious, lectures in psychological astrology.

He got up and went to the jukebox. The antique selections matched the decor. Harry dropped in a coin and punched “Un-chained Melody” by Al Hibbler.

She set his coffee down and blew a strand of hair out of her eyes.

Electric with Jack Daniel’s, Harry found her scent sensual and exhilarating on this morning. A scoop of rich vanilla ice cream after sex.

A pickup with a three-wheeled all-terrain scooter in the back pulled up. Three ruddy youths climbed out, swaddled in orange hunting duds. Their loud young voices drowned out the jukebox as they tumbled into a booth. High-school boys.

“Hey, Ginny,” one of them yelled, “Mountain Dews.”

Ginny swung her stuff as she rounded the counter with three green cans and glasses on a tray. She stood with one hip slanted at an angle as she took their orders. Her tight skirt molded the panty line against her buttocks.

HUNTER’S MOON / 171

Harry turned on his stool, waited for a lull in the conversation, and asked. “Have any luck?”

“Ah,” said one of the boys, “you can’t see nothing out there.”

“You guys go to high school here?”

They studied his torn face. Their apparent spokesman appraised Harry. “Yeah, so?”

“They let you off school to go hunting?”

“Just the first few days,” another piped up.

A third boy put his hand across the table, palm down, in a warning gesture. “That’s the guy,” he said. “Becky did that to his face. And that’s Bud Maston’s Jeep out there. Remember, Saturday, at the hospital…”

Conversation dried up.

“Any of you know Chris Deucette?” Harry asked.

One of them giggled. “Nope, we all got girlfriends.” The boy next to him elbowed him sharply. “Funeral’s today, you dweeb.”

“So I guess you’re not going to the funeral, huh?” asked Harry.

“Guess not,” said the spokesman. They all hunched their shoulders and looked at their glasses. Harry spun around on his stool. One of the boys griped, “Christ, Ginny, when you gonna get some decent music on that damn ole jukebox?”

“Nice kids,” said Harry, spooning brown sugar on his oatmeal. “Real friendly.”

Ginny wrote out his