Harry sat perfectly still, not even reacting when he saw Mitch Hakala step from the trees 50 yards away wearing illegal gray tree bark camo and carrying a scoped rifle.
“You’re a pretty smart kid,” said Harry.
“I’m pretty smart, period,” said Becky. “And I need to know exactly why you’re here, but it looks like you still haven’t figured it out for yourself.”
“Why’d you get me up here?”
“To tell you to go see Miss Loretta. Take her a present when you go. A carton of Pall Malls.” She turned and walked toward Mitch and the trees.
“What? Who’s Loretta?” he shouted after her. But she and the boy were gone. Harry sat alone on the gnarled roots of the twisted tree and watched the sunlight play checkers on the vast plain of Superior.
You’re eight years old and you creep to the edge of the stairs in a rural Michigan farmhouse and listen to your uncles drink 238 / CHUCK LOGAN
their beer and tell their war stories and you hear a few words and suddenly you’re more alone in the world.
You learn how your dad really died in the war, how your dad could savage other men in the ring and beat your mother when he was drunk, but when it came to the German army…
Learn how your uncles and your dad went to fight Hitler as brand-new paratroopers in the same company of the 82nd and when the time came, how your dad chickened out in the door and refused to jump into Sicily.
So they brought him over to the invasion beach on a boat and sent him to the line, to the Biazza Ridge, where his company was dug in and he took one look at the panzers of the Hermann Göring Division and he deserted his buddies and ran away.
Back in England, waiting on a court-martial for cowardice, he got himself stabbed to death in a drunken bar fight over a whore and you weren’t even born yet.
Harry threw pebbles over the drop, one after another. His sense of physical fear had always been acute by a factor of imagination squared, but he’d also had his dad’s reflexes, so he went into Golden Gloves and the factories and streets of Detroit and then the jungles of Vietnam to put his blood through the hairiest strainer he could find to cleanse the coward gene and he never ran away.
He dropped his chin on his chest. Except from his wife and kid.
Except from Linda Margoles and his whole goddamn life.
He didn’t plan it, but he wound up coming down through the low ridges and the swamp where the shooting happened.
When the deer snorted in the thicket, he didn’t even break stride.
Damn deer was laughing at him from deep inside the rhubarb-colored briar patch.
He walked an arc around the brush and the deer started its stamping and blowing. Arrogant fucker. Serve him right if I put one up his nostril.
Harry trudged back to the lodge. Karson. The schoolteacher, Talme. Now Miss Loretta? The list was getting longer.
HUNTER’S MOON / 239
Not even halfway through the morning and he was beat. Should have bought that bottle.
40
Stanley High School was near the hospital in the hilly streets above the town. The spacious tented halls echoed with departed iron wealth.
In the principal’s office Harry asked the secretary, “Where would I find Karl Talme this hour?”
She gave him an officious once-over. “Are you a parent?” she asked.
“Yes,” said Harry. Which was true, but not accurate under the circumstances. “It concerns a student.”
“You must be new?”
“Yup. Just moved in.”
“People are moving out, not moving in,” she said dryly. Talme taught Senior English the next two hours. He had a break between classes in twenty minutes. She gave him the room number and craned her neck over her desk as he walked back into the hall.
On his way out to the parking lot, he passed beneath Bud’s photograph enshrined above a brass plaque commemorating the new gym. The old Bud, Huck Finn playing Citizen Kane, his face radiating civic virtue and noblesse oblige.
Steam came from the grille of the green Jeep Wrangler parked next to Bud’s Jeep. Mitch. His car hadn’t been there when Harry pulled into the lot. He smoked a cigarette, watched two firemen flood a skating rink on a snowy athletic field, and kept an eye out for Mitch Hakala. Back inside, he quick-stepped at the bell to get to Talme’s room before classes changed, found the room number, and glanced through the glass-paned door. Talme sat at his desk. Students filed past him picking up assignments.
Not that many students. Even during class change, the halls were half empty. Harry let the sparse herd jostle him. When the room was empty, he went in.
240 / CHUCK LOGAN
Talme had the build of a fireplug that liked to eat a lot. Comfortably powerful. He rearranged his thick glasses to focus on Harry.
“Mr. Talme, could I have a few minutes of your time? My name is…”
“I know who you are. You disrupted the funeral, you called my house the other night. My wife said you were rude on the phone.”
His tone was matter-of-fact. Competent, grounded guy.
“You were Chris Deucette’s homeroom teacher…”
Talme cut him off. “Don Karson told me he was talking to you.
He runs his mouth too damn much.”
“Yeah, he does. How about I buy you a cup of coffee and we talk about it.”
Talme’s sigh conveyed an appreciation of the absurdity of life.
“Sure. What the hell. You know where the Timber Cruiser Cafe is?”
Harry nodded. “Meet me there at noon.” Talme dropped his
