“That’s romantic bullshit. The Purple Heart’s the only medal you can’t fake.”
“What are you saying?”
Randall shrugged. “I pushed paratroops for twenty-five years. Bud isn’t like you. He’s a taker, not a giver.”
“Bud’s all about giving. It’s what he does for a living.”
“He gives advice and money, neither of which cost him squat.”
The air turned brittle. Harry shook his head. “I gotta do this. This is my fight.”
Randall pointed a finger in an uncharacteristically rude gesture.
“Your blind side is your loyalty. It’s exaggerated. It saved Dorothy and me, and it’s still exaggerated.”
“I stepped into the middle of something. I’m going to walk out the tracks.”
Randall stood up and put on his coat. “What about the woman?”
“She’s part of it,” said Harry ambiguously.
“You’ve been sitting at a desk for ten years. We’re not who we were, thank God. You could tangle with some real rough-cut people up there. Loyalty isn’t just a blind side. It’s a predictable pattern.
Remember patterns?”
“Riddles don’t help me right now, Randall.”
“You’ve got it fucked around in your head to where your buddy is up to his ass in shit and you can’t let him down. You can’t run away. This has nothing to do with Bud, this is a bad old tape about your father.” The finger stabbed again, lecturing.
Harry was starting to get pissed off and the flash of anger raised the shadow that dwelled deep in his muscles. The story in his family was that his dad’s physical gifts were terrifying in a man, but just about right for a wild animal.
His voice snapped. “You taking up amateur psychology in your old age, Randall?” It came out flat and nasty, a particularly brutal resentment between a younger man and an older man. Between a father and a son.
Harry had never seen Randall show anger. He parried HUNTER’S MOON / 141
Harry’s hot eyes with the bland, accommodating smile he’d learned to wear all those years hanging out with the Vietnamese. “I just hope you remember what I taught you. I have a feeling you’re going to need it,” he said.
Harry closed the door after him and muttered, “Goddamn you, Randall, if I could have picked my own father I would have chosen you.” You’re wrong, old man. I can handle it. I have to. Because it scares me.
He took the shoebox that contained ten numbered one-year AA medallions and his medals out of the closet. He cast them, ribboned stars and brass circles, in a random pattern on the table. He selected the ten-year AA pin and set it aside.
Carefully he unrolled a musty Buddhist wall hanging. Mildew had eaten parts away and the once brightly colored threads were faded now and his fingers came away from the frayed cloth dusted with a fine talcum of red dirt.
Some Buddhist tough love. Go to your worst fear, embrace it, and see it as a product of your mind.
The Tibetan tanka portrayed a Buddha sitting in the lotus position.
A blood-red naked woman sat in his lap in a sexual posture with her legs wrapped around his waist. Her violent hair streamed up into flames and her upstretched arms turned into claws. The Buddha’s teeth projected as fangs. Skulls were woven into the woman’s fiery hair.
She is here, the Vietnamese used to say. In groves of bamboo, not pine…
Go see what was in the card she had facedown on the table.
Bet it all.
24
“Circle the wagons, the bitch is on a ram page!” Bud shouted on the phone.
Harry had overslept. Awake now.
Bud’s voice was outraged. “I’ve been on the phone all 142 / CHUCK LOGAN
morning to Stanley. I called the locksmith at the hardware store and sent him to the lodge to change the locks. He gets there and finds Jesse and that shitbird Cox with a fucking chainsaw hacking the figurehead out of the woodwork over the fireplace. They got Cox’s truck and they’re loading it up with everything that isn’t nailed down…”
He took a breath, “So I call Emery and get him over there and he at least gets them to put down the chainsaw, but he says she’s got a right to half the stuff we bought after we got married…Jesus. The locksmith calls me and says he’s isn’t going near the place till things settle down. Then he tells me he was having coffee with one of the Hakalas, Greg, who owns the bank, and hears the latest gossip.
Jesse drained the business account we set up for the lodge. There was 125,000 bucks in that account. Every cent I had that isn’t tied up in investments. I’ve been shot and now I’ve been fucking robbed!”
Bud paused, “What?”
“Welcome back, Bud,” Harry laughed.
“Very fucking funny. Thing is, according to Emery and Margoles, it isn’t robbery because, technically, the business account—since Jesse and I set it up jointly after the goddamn wedding—can be considered marital property. Sonofabitch! And while this is going on I’m in a hospital doped up. I gotta get outta here, man, and get up there before she carries off the whole damn lake bucket by bucket!”
“Calm down,” said Harry.
“Calm down?”
“It’s a game. Get it? She’s negotiating. First she softens you up with a Mau Mau routine, then she lets you off if you give her a truck full of money.”
“Easy for you to say. She’s got my plastic, man, my Visa, American Express—”
“Sit tight. Get on the horn and call Visa or whatever and tell them to freeze the accounts.”
“Stop by Linda’s office and pick up the summons and petition. I want that snake served. A chainsaw, Harry. They were cutting my house apart with a chainsaw!”
HUNTER’S MOON / 143
“Look. You clear Ramsey. I’ll pick up the divorce papers and tuck you into St. Helen’s—”
“No shit,” said Bud. “I need a court order. An injunction, something to freeze assets. Emery won’t keep an eye on the place. He’s still carrying a torch for her. Jesus, what a mess.”
“Hey, Bud. Trust me. You sit this one out. Get your head straight.
Now listen. I’m
