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

Cox had a screw loose. He wasn’t cool, could be out there, working up to it. He’d make a move.

Harry’s wet hand hovered over the whiskey bottle on the dining room table. Square away. Arm yourself. Even back when he was fucked up, he’d never mixed booze and guns. The one time that he did…

He dumped Jack D down the kitchen sink, started the coffee water, and went into the main room. He came back from the oak cabinet with his arms filled with guns.

He laid the two shotguns, the .45 Colt automatic, and the rifle on the dining room table. Went back for boxes of shells.

The pile of weapons stared at him as he rinsed the vegetables.

Sliced the onions, mushrooms, green peppers, enjoying their shape and color and their innocent scent. And as the knife went snick-chop against the maple grain the thought of Jesse ran like a thief under his skin. She stole all four directions, up and down, right and wrong…

“FUCK!!!” he shouted. As if the word, the sound, presented with enough force, could make her materialize in the kitchen right before his eyes.

For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge. Knowledge, knowledge who’s got the knowledge.

Karson. Becky maybe.

He wiped out a deep Wagner cast-iron frying pan. Shook HUNTER’S MOON / 179

in some olive oil and turned on the gas. Threw in the garlic and the sliced steak. Watched the strips of beef singe and curl in the spatter-ing oil. Then he tossed in a double handful of loosely sliced onions.

While the meat browned he opened cans of tomatoes, tomato sauce, and paste. Deep breaths to inhale the steam of onion, meat, and garlic.

Chris. Doll face in the muddy snow with a massaged-in mortuary smile, rouge, and makeup. Somebody had grabbed at him, tried to catch him, maybe Cox, spooky old Cox, had pulled his suit coat up over his shoulders so his skinny white chest…

Harry threw in the rest of the vegetables and stirred them with a long wooden spoon, added olive oil, oregano, a bay leaf, and a pinch of sugar. He lay two miniatures trees of parsley and cilantro on the block. Minced them. Dumped them in.

Lost track of time. Emptied the ashtray twice. Brewed another pot of coffee. He added the rest of the ingredients to his spaghetti sauce, stirred, tasted, added spices, and all the rest of the red cooking wine just ahead of an impulse to drink it. Set the burner to simmer.

Steam brought sweat to his brow and coated the kitchen windows.

He rubbed a porthole with his fist. The afternoon was one deepening blue shadow.

Be dark soon.

Well Bud, here I am, out of the office. In the woods, getting back to nature. He jammed shotgun shells with double O’s on them into the 12 gauge. Wracked the pump action. The steel clashed with the fatality of a gate closing.

Locked and loaded.

“Fuck,” he shouted again. While the pasta water boiled, he began to clean the counters. His finger traced the letters in the spattered spices, salt and pepper.

F-U-C-K. The opposite of death.

He’d lost his appetite. He turned his back on the kitchen, took a cup of strong black coffee to the table in the den, lit a cigarette, and methodically loaded the double-barreled shotgun with birdshot.

Harry exhaled, set the shotgun aside, and pressed stumpy 180 / CHUCK LOGAN

slugs into the pistol magazine. Never liked the .45. Always struck him as an overbuilt American way to end an argument. No finesse, too many catches along the slide. Cock it and the hammer stuck out, caught on stuff. He hefted the pistol in his hand. The other weapons in the cabinet were for hunting. Not this baby.

He slammed the magazine into the handle, yanked the slide, and thumbed the safe. What the hell, man; you never planned on living this long anyway…

They came for him at sundown. Harry had turned out all the lights and waited on the porch steps, sipping coffee, smoking a cigarette in his cupped hand. The 12-gauge pump rested across his knees.

The double-barrel leaned against the porch rail. The .45 was in his waistband and a spare magazine jutted from his back pocket. Probably should have put the Honda in the garage.

He heard them and then he saw them.

A dozen riders on snowmobiles, their lights streaking like vigilante torches as they came wild weasel through the black trees.

Harry’s guts tightened. His heart raced. A qualm of sweat popped on his palms. Then the adrenaline boost.

Ohhh shit!

The growl of engines came fast between the cabins and swirled in the driveway. A ragged volley of beer cans and rocks clattered off the porch, windows shattered. Escalation. One of the riders stood up in his seat and threw a long-neck bottle. A smoky sparking arc.

The corner of the porch burst into oily flame.

Cox in his biker denim. Playing for keeps. Okay, motherfucker…

Harry backed off the outside porch, into the doorway of the mud porch, and fired the double-barrel one-handed. Two loads of birdshot skinned off snowmobile suits and metal. Muffled cries.

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One of the snowmobiles crashed into his Honda. The rider ran.

Harry dropped the double-barrel and took deliberate aim with the pump. Buckshot slammed into the riderless machine. The gas tank exploded and a shock wave billowed. The mist snapped back full of fire and the Honda’s gas tank blew in a sunburst not unlike a Japanese flag.

Down on one knee in the doorway with fire licking the side of his face. All flame and smoke and scurrying shadows, but he held his fire. Even in the chaos there were rules. No one was directly threatening his life. He couldn’t bring himself to fire the killing buckshot directly at the milling figures.

The siren and flasher exploded out of the flickering dark with a whoop-whoop scream as the Blazer, Deputy Jerry at the wheel, did its patented four-wheel skid down the driveway and the snowmobiles scattered like cockroaches in a Raid commercial. The dismounted rider leaped onto another sled, hugged the