Hunter's Moon

CHUCK


LOGAN
HUNTER’S


MOON
For Sylvia Siegrist Logan
Contents
1 The friends of Harry Griffin never fell off…
1
2 Harry allowed himself a quiet hour to…
4
3 Harry called it…
7
4 The radio announcer crooned his signature…
11
5 “C’mon,” said Bud, grinning for the first…
21
6 Six apartments the size of Harry’s would fit…
23
7 Jesse plus one hour and counting: the raw…
33
8 Back inside the lodge, Bud put on the…
42
9 Harry woke up with a bad case of nerves…
51
10 The clean slice of skits cut through the…
58
11 There was time.
64
12 Panic played its clumsy slow-motion joke…
71
13 Eight A.M. in Maston County. The low…
73
14 Laconic after-the-fact police traffic droned…
82
15 Maston County was governed from a one…
93
16 Bud wasn’t fine.
105
17 Jerry, apparently under orders not to discuss…
108
18 Flurries blew across Holman Field in St.
Paul…
113
19 Harry insisted that Randall drive him home. 118
20 Mistake, all the lawyers in town, Bud call… 127
21 The Jack-in-the-box had slanted eyes and… 131
22 So how serious are you, man—St. Paul…… 134
23 Six pillows propped Bud up in the hospital…
137
24 “Circle the wagons, the bitch is on a rampage…
141
25 Harry left his Honda Civic parked illegally…
148
26 The storm dumped on St. Paul and it was… 154
27 With Bud under wraps, he was free.
158
28 Harry wheeled into the lodge drive and Jay…
161
167
29 On Tuesday morning fog lay thick on…
30 They’d come after him now. Good. Get it… 177
31 The next morning it was like a basement… 185
32 Gunshots woke Harry at dawn. He rolled… 191
33 Outside, some comedian had pasted a…
201
34 Once Harry got past the blood bruise on… 207
35 Harry, in Bud’s baggy terrycloth robe…
212
36 Fifteen minutes, later, a blue Ford Escort—muffler…
218
37 He arrived early and walked along the…
222
38 Take a chance.
226
230
39 Harry dressed in the predawn dark, made…
40 Stanley High School was near the hospital… 239
41 Karson’s station wagon was parked in the… 248
42 Working on One Day Sober Twice. The… 257
43 Mitch Hakala steered his scrupulously…
266
44 The bewitching hour, when the last light… 271
45 Harry cleaned the shotgun in front of the… 276
46 The heat vent was shut off and the cold… 280
47 Harry grabbed his hunting knife, found a… 286
48 Broke his fucking nose!
296
49 The blue Escort was parked next to the… 304
50 Must have nodded off when the phone…
311
51 Hakala bobsledded his Ford Bronco down…
321
52 Tethered goat implies lion.
323
53 Ten-fifteen. Bud was late. Harry lit another…
327
54 Harry watched Linda drive out of town and…
333
55 “Look out,” Harry admonished. “There…
336
56 “How about it? One drink to celebrate…
346
57 It smelled like a dog had been rolling in… 350
58 Going south down 61 an adrenaline backfire…
358
59 Becky was drawn to Randall and they sat at…
365
60 Chato, Arizona, had two gas stations, one… 374
61 It was last day of hunting season. A stream…
384
62 Harry made the drive in Linda’s car but… 397
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Praise
Other Books by Chuck Logan
Cover
Copyright
About the Publisher
1
The friends of Harry Griffin never fell off the wagon at a decent hour. The phone rang at 3 A.M. and Bud Maston’s 90-proof baritone poured out:
“Harry? You there, man?”
“You’re drinking again,” Harry answered, half asleep and fumbling the receiver, and Bud’s reply was drowned in a clatter of truck traffic.
He focused and asked: “Where are you?”
“Where the hell do you think? Up north in a phone booth. On the highway.”
“Ten years…” Harry said to the dark, very calm now, because he could taste Jack Daniel’s ooze in Bud’s voice and smell it in the nightcrawlers of sweat that wormed through his own chest.
Bud giggled. “Fuck Minnesota Harry. I wanna talk to Detroit Harry.”
“Wonderful, you blew ten years of sobriety,” said Harry.
“Don’t pull that crap. I love you, man…”
Out there, in the drunken night, the phone slammed down and the line went dead. Harry exhaled, hung up the receiver, and rubbed his eyes; then he dropped his feet to the floor and pushed off the bed. He wandered over to the window and stared out into the dark.
His high-rise studio faced east from downtown St. Paul and he could see the new moon and a solitary pair of headlights traveling the cold ribbon of Interstate 94. It was a Thursday morning, the first week in November, and he and Bud hadn’t spoken in a year.
Since Bud had his breakdown.
And finally Harry was wide awake in the middle of the 2 / CHUCK LOGAN
night with a parched knot in his throat; angry at Bud’s reminder that the edge was always right there, just a drink away. So he tried to be reasonable and told himself, Well, shit, there were rules. And even though he hadn’t been to a meeting in a long time, the old AA reflexes kicked in; because this was your basic scream for help.
He punched on the bedside light, got his phone directory, and paged to the number that he had never called, which was an area code 218 up in the North Woods on the North Shore with the bears and the moose and the timber wolves— Goddamnit, Bud, it’s three in the fucking morning and we’re way too old for this shit!—He stabbed the buttons and waited. A busy signal droned in the Maston family lodge in Stanley, Minnesota. The last he’d heard, Bud lived with a woman up there.
He hung up the