“Jesse, this is Harry Griffin.” Silence…“I’ve got your daughter out at the lodge.”
“Hold on to her,” Jesse said quickly. “Don’t let her out of your sight. Tie her up if you have to.”
“I thought she was following me. She spooked me,” said Harry.
“But she’s…okay?” Jesse asked slowly.
“Just a little shook up. You tell me where you are, I’ll bring her home.”
“No. I’ll come pick her up. Don’t come here. It wouldn’t…I’ll come get her.”
Harry hung up the phone. “She’s coming to get you.”
“Yeah, sure she is,” said Becky.
Harry walked past her to his duffel bag in the den, dug around, and held up a pair of sweatpants, a hooded sweatshirt, and heavy wool socks. “Put these on.”
She took the clothes and began to undress right before him. He turned his back. She laughed. “Sure you don’t want to watch? I don’t have stretch marks like Mom.”
Harry faced her and she grinned at his chagrin. She had stripped and was delicately balanced, putting one pointed foot into the gray sweats. She looked sideways at him through her 218 / CHUCK LOGAN
greasy hair and held up her soiled underwear. “You ripped my bra.”
He looked past her, at the words “Bud is a fucker” still scrawled in garish green on the wall by the fireplace, and felt irritated with both himself and her. With himself, because he should have removed it that day he returned to the lodge and encountered Cox in the driveway. With her, because he had a feeling she’d written it.
He went to the kitchen, threw open drawers and cupboards, and came back at her with a can of Comet, a bucket of water, and a copper scrub. He yanked the sweatshirt down around her outstretched arms and pushed her across the main room to the fireplace.
“Till your mom gets here, you take that writing off the wall.”
“I’m not your fucking maid!”
“Just do it,” muttered Harry.
Harry paced. Becky scrubbed. The minutes dragged by. She gave him a disgusted look when he splashed cold water on his face in the kitchen sink and ran a comb through his hair.
“How nice. You combed your hair for Mom,” she said sarcastically.
“She’s probably doing her hair.”
36
Fifteen minutes later, a blue Ford Escort—muffler rattling, rusting rocker panels—pulled up in front of the lodge and Jesse got out in wrinkled jeans and a heavy sweater with unraveled elbows.
She wore neither lipstick nor makeup and her hair hung slack, unbraided, frizzed with static electricity. Strain etched the corners of her eyes and mouth. She was the most desirable woman he had ever seen.
Charcoal crunched under her snowboots and she winced at the debris. When he opened the door, she saw the 12-gauge HUNTER’S MOON / 219
leaning against the wall and it had to be the grimmest moment of his life when he looked into her eyes.
Becky, back in her jacket, tried to shoulder by. Her face flushed as she passed through the wall of tension in the doorway. She grabbed Jesse’s elbow. “Let’s go.”
“Wait. What happened?” said Jesse, hauling Becky back by the jacket.
“I was out hunting.” Harry’s words sounded bitten. Bruises on the cold air.
“He was crying,” said Becky. “Sitting on this stump crying just like a baby. Then he must have heard me as I was trying to get out of there and he came after me with his gun.”
Jesse scanned Harry’s face as her daughter spoke. “Go wait in the car,” she told her.
Becky shook her head. “Not leaving you alone with him.”
“Git,” said Jesse.
Becky drew herself up. “Jay said…” She pursed her lips. “Don’t get alone with him…”
Jesse said starkly, “Jay’s back with Ginny.”
“But…” Becky ground her teeth together.
“Move. Right now!” ordered Jesse.
Becky’s dirty face exploded with hot tears. “You’re blind, all of you are blind. Why don’t you just fuck him on Chris’s grave!”
Jesse drew back her hand and slapped Becky, burning the palm across her face and Becky slumped and began to sob and walked down the wobbly steps. She stood staring at her shoelaces for a moment. Then she burst into a full run and disappeared around the pole barn, toward the snowmobile trail. Jesse started to follow and her shoulders sagged and she stopped.
They were alone in the driveway, facing in opposite directions.
Motionless.
“She was out there that morning, on skis. She saw us in…the trees,” said Harry.
“Perhaps,” said Jesse.
“She’s been spying on me,” Harry said, his voice too loud. “Keep her away.”
220 / CHUCK LOGAN
“How am I going to keep her away?” Jesse shot back. “I can’t even find her. Did you see how she looks? Like she’s been sleeping with cats and dogs. God knows where she gets herself off to.”
When they turned to face each other, Harry wasn’t sure if they were looking back or if they were looking forward to Sodom and Gomorrah.
She took a cigarette from her sweater pocket and tried to light it, but her fingers didn’t have the strength to push the little wheel on her lighter. Harry brought out his Zippo. His own smokes. They lit up.
Jesse turned away again and put one hand to the soot-blackened porch for balance. Harry spread his fingers and brought them to within an inch from the back of her hair. A fuzz of energy tickled his fingertips.
When she spoke, he pulled his hand back.
“That took a lot of balls, what you did with those divorce papers.
I thought Bud might try to come to the funeral. I never thought I’d see you again.”
“Yes, you did,” said Harry.
Jesse’s shoulders rose and fell and she turned around and he could not name the expression she formed with her lips. He should say something—some impossible word he didn’t know that was made out of love and sorrow and distrust.
Her hand came up and he moved to block it. “Hush,” she said with total authority as her fingers lightly brushed his hair. “You look like a high
