“They really did a number on this place,” he said.
They sat in front of the fire. Mitch slid a Lucky Strike from a steel cigarette case and lit it with tight-banded reflexes. Harry nodded at the orange stain of iodine and the bandage on Mitch’s swollen right hand.
“What happened?”
“Nothing. How’d it go with my dad?”
“He’s hiding something.”
“Older people get, the more they got to hide.” Mitch raised his eyes and fixed them on a spot on the balcony overlooking the main room. His eyes stayed pinned there with intense concentration for long seconds.
“Mitch, why’d you steer me into the boy’s John?”
“People lie about who they really are.”
“Was Chris like that?”
“No. Chris tried to be up-front, but they all fucked him over. He had guts, but it wasn’t the kind of guts the people in this town could understand.”
“You’re the guy he came on to in school, aren’t you?”
Mitch gingerly flexed his battered knuckles. “Yeah, but it wasn’t like people say. I mean, he didn’t grab my zipper or anything…”
His eyes tightened. “We just talked.”
“So what did you talk about?”
Mitch shrugged. “Life. Our parents. Fantasies. He was, you know, real open…maybe too open.”
Pain corroded Mitch’s face. Harry went to the fire, put on another log, stabbed a few times with the poker. When he turned, Mitch was watching him intensely.
“Guess trust is hard to come by in this town,” said Harry.
Mitch rubbed the heel of his battered right hand across his cheek, smashing a tear. “Trust is a bitch, ain’t it,” he said.
“Whatever you got broken off in you, you might as well pull it out.”
268 / CHUCK LOGAN
“Yeah, well…Chris said that your fantasies are the key to your sex,” Mitch dragged on his smoke, exhaled. “He said when he jacked off he always wound up thinking of me. Then he wanted to know who I thought of…”
Mitch bit his lip. “It was like a real serious talk we were having, so I had to tell him the truth. So I told him I thought about his…sister, Becky.”
Harry smiled. Mistake. Mitch looked like he might break into tears. Soberly, Harry asked, “How’d he take that?”
“Well, at first he looked hurt but then he laughed, too.” Mitch stood up and began to pace. “I felt like his older brother. I’d look out for him at school. He had a way of pissing off the other guys.
Quick with words. But it kind of worried me, too.”
Mitch paused in front of the fireplace.
“Chris made me promise not to tell anybody about…” Mitch shook his head. “But I decided he needed someone to talk to. Someone older he could trust. What the hell did I know? I was a junior, he was a sophomore. I mean, he was not real strong and able to take care of himself. And he was freaked, having Sheriff Emery for his dead and being fifteen and wondering if he was, you know, a homosexual.”
“Did Emery know any of this?”
“Hadda hear the gossip.” Mitch allowed a tight smile. “Before they moved out, I’d be over there and Sheriff Emery would come home for dinner and Chris’d tease him about Jesse. You know, if he was so damn tough why didn’t he marry her. Sometimes Emery would look like he was about to explode inside.”
“Did Emery ever rough him up?”
“No. He never laid a hand on any of them, not Chris, or Becky or Jesse.” Mitch shook his head. “That’s what pissed Chris off so much. That his mom could just walk all over Emery.”
“So who did you trust with Chris’s problem?”
“Reverend Karson and Mr. Talme.” Mitch said sarcastically. “And I told Chris I thought he should talk to Karson.” He dropped his eyes. “Chris felt I snitched him out.”
HUNTER’S MOON / 269
“But Chris talked to Karson?”
“Oh yeah. Hardly talked to anybody else but. And Mr. Maston, who’s into a lot of the same silly shit Karson is.”
“What kind of shit?”
“You know, love the trees. Clean up the lake, close the mill, put everybody out of work. Brought those weirdo city guys up here with the drums. That’s when he started doing the cyberpunk bit, the hair and the drugs. Was almost like Chris was daring Sheriff Emery to step in and straighten him out.”
Harry thought out loud: “Sonofabitch. Would Chris try to kill Maston to get his mother and father back together?”
“I don’t Know.” Mitch clenched his fists and winced. “There was a fight. Right in this room. Just before Maston and Jesse got married.
My cousin Jerry got a call to come out here. There was Jesse and Jay Cox and Maston and they were trying to calm down Chris and Becky. I guess Chris was really nuts. Jerry said he had to drag Chris outside and sit him in the police car. He was yelling all this crazy shit like, how he’d tell his dad and he’d kill Maston if he married his mother.”
“Did your dad know this?”
“Course he knew, everybody knew.”
Mitch lowered his eyes. “Jerry told me I’d better try and talk to Chris and Becky.” He grimaced. “Becky and I were going steady for two years and she dropped me cold. And Chris turned to stone.
Next thing I know, Chris and Maston are getting along and Chris suddenly gets hot to go deer hunting and he’s off in the woods with the sheriff learning how to shoot.”
Mitch rotated his eyes around the lodge. “Becky wouldn’t talk to me for a month, then the day of the shooting, I go to the hospital when I hear what happened and she comes running out and says to get her outta there.”
“She’s talking to you now.”
“Not really. She leaves me notes in different mailboxes. Where to meet her on the road with food. I don’t know where she’s hiding.
She wanted me along with a rifle when she met you on the ridge and before that, on the trail out
