Like Ginny Hakala. Checking him out.
Rough, his hand seized her hair and pulled her head up. “What is it?” He growled. The wet smile on her lips froze into shock.
“What?” She wavered.
Harry wrenched her to her feet, hauled up his pants, and dragged her tripping across the main room, up the steps into the den. With his free hand, he scattered the piles of paper on the dining room table. She saw the Colt lying there and pulled away.
“Jesus, Harry, now wait a minute…”
He found what he was looking for. The David postcard and under it the snapshot of Chris with a hard-on, displaying the cherries tattooed on his hip. He thrust it in her face.
“What is it?” he demanded.
“My God,” she muttered, wincing, averting her face from the drugged smile, the aroused nakedness of her son. She shut her eyes.
Her throat muscles gagged. Harry shook her.
“Tell me, goddamnit!”
“I don’t know. Where’d you get… that?”
She could fake anything. Palpable horror. The tears coming to her eyes. Anything.
“You people,” he hissed. “What did you do to that kid?”
She shook her head. “Stop it, Harry, you’re…scaring me.”
He pulled her to him, bearing down on her wrists. There’d be bruises.
“That hurts!” she cried. Defiance crowded the pain from her eyes.
She surged, fighting him. Her fists hammered his chest. He raised his hands to defend, but somehow his arms wound up around her and they embraced and it was like he’d never kissed a woman before and she was crying, kisses full of salt all over his face.
“Hold me,” she cried.
310 / CHUCK LOGAN
“No.” The muscles in his arms and shoulders cracked and burned with the strain of pushing her away.
“We only got this one chance. We gotta take it…”
He shoved her away and she fell to the carpet. She sobbed and pounded the floor. “I only want what’s due me, goddamnit. I worked my ass off and I’m still driving that goddamn Ford with a loose muffler. Bud and I had an agreement! He lied. You all lie to get what you want!”
“I don’t believe you.” He kicked the picture at her. It skittered off her knee.
She began to cry again. “It all went to hell when you showed up!
I don’t know what happened to Chris. Now everybody’s acting crazy.
Jay. Larry. I don’t know where Becky is or what she’s doing. I’m scared, Harry…I know I did some things wrong. I’ll make it up.”
She reached for him.
This is how she lives with Emery. She expects to be taken back.
“Stay away from me,” he yelled at her.
“Please,” she pleaded. “Let’s get a motel room. Away from all of them. Just stay with me till it’s over.”
He couldn’t deal with it. If she stayed around, he’d melt down.
He went to the main room, grabbed her coat, boots, the airline ticket. The ridiculous sunglasses. Stuffed them in her purse. Opened the door, threw them past the porch into the snow.
Then he pulled her up. She clung to him. “Harry, look at me!
Please see me,” she pleaded.
“No!” He manhandled her to the door and pushed her out. She stumbled back and forth barefoot on the tilted porch with her hands tangled in her new hair. Then she began pounding on the door. He shut his eyes and turned his back, wincing each time her fist slammed the wood. Finally, exhausted, she grabbed her things and went to her car. For a few more agonizing minutes she idled in front of the steps, face slick with tears in the yard lights. Snow poured silently.
“Get out!” He shouted. Sheer will. Go out there, kiss away the tears. Don’t trust it. He wanted to believe her.
The Escort lurched down the drive. He dashed outside. “Wait,”
he yelled after her lights as they turned onto the road.
HUNTER’S MOON / 311
His heart caved in when he saw her boots crumpled where he’d thrown them. He picked them up and ran after her, down the driveway out onto the road. Her taillights disappeared around a bend.
Lifted him right out of his life. Right, wrong, up, down. Didn’t cut shit with her.
“You crazy, vulgar beautiful bitch!” he shouted hopelessly to the blowing snow and with the words, fear scooped his chest. Shit!
Desiring her was an incantation that would summon Emery out of the storm like that goddamn buck.
He ran for the lodge and snatched up the Colt. A few minutes later, the phone started ringing. He ignored it and switched off the lights. Embers glowed in the fireplace. Deep wood’s eyes. Emery’s eyes.
He hugged the pistol to his chest and waited.
Got a problem? Call a cop. Harry laughed dryly.
Damn. He wished Randall were here.
50
Must have nodded off when the phone jarred him upright and, fumbling for the pistol, he cracked open crusted eyes and very clearly, he recalled standing face-to-face with the deer.
Damn deer kicked his ass. Just like Emery.
Then Jesse…
Ring-ring-ring.
“Stay in your own goddamn lane,” he yelled. Finally the ringing stopped.
He tried to bring up spit but he came up bone dry with an 800-pound mongrel thirst gnawing on him with sloppy salivating gums, yellow teeth, and a huge wet tongue.
The pain radiating from his nose had been fluid and hot and now it set in his neck and shoulders like cold cement. He lurched to a sitting position and discovered that his whole body had the muscle flu and he had cardboard for skin.
312 / CHUCK LOGAN
The phone again. Fuck it. Jesse’s voice could cast a spell. Wasn’t going near it. He’d get his head straight. Then go find Hakala. He made coffee. Had to rebuild himself block by block.
Came to believe that we were powerless over alcohol…
Christ, back to square one. I pray the Lord my soul to take…
Screw that. Too late for that. He slapped a Doors CD on the sound system and turned up the volume. Harry put himself back together with Jim Morrison, coffee, and cigarettes.
The phone rang intermittently and he ignored it and
