Hunter's Moon Read online

  Will isn’t surprised when Skryd tells him to leave.

  * * *

  During the drive home, Will’s irritability turns on himself and moves a little ways into remorse. Why did I say that? he thinks. Pretty damn harsh and no reason for it. He ought to turn back and apologize, but he drives on to the paved county highway, then on to a gravel road that brings him to his house.

  Will’s home is as much a product of his own labor as the cabin is of Skryd’s and is quite a bit larger and more architecturally complex—L-shaped, two-storied, with dormers on the upper story and embraced by a wraparound porch. Four years ago, because of the incident with Lonnie Kidman, he’d considered selling it, but he couldn’t bring himself to make the move; there was too much of himself in the place.

  He parks in the yard, which backs up to a stand of red oak and sugar maple, and before he’s slammed the truck door shut, Madeline is out on the porch. Dressed up—by local standards—in white jeans, a purple linen blouse, and open-toed shoes, she crosses her arms over her chest and tilts her head aside.

  “I suppose you forgot,” she says.

  Will stands at the bottom of the steps, looking up at her.

  “You’re wearing your Mr. Magoo look. The party? We’re supposed to be there in fifteen minutes.”

  Shit, he did forget that the Scullys, who have been renovating the bar for the past two months, are throwing a grand-opening party this weekend. A barbecue followed by Fourth of July fireworks on the town beach.

  “I thought that was tomorrow night.”

  “Nooooo, tooo-night,” Maddie sings out, with a scolding undertone in her voice. “Get yourself cleaned up.”

  * * *

  From the outside, the Great Lakes Brew Pub is the same, except for a fresh coat of yellow paint on the cedar-shake shingles. But the only things Will recognizes inside are the long antique bar and back bar; otherwise, it looks like the kind of place where people in Timberland hiking boots and Columbia fleece will plop their trim asses on the chairs and barstools (which are also all new, replacing the ones with taped or torn vinyl cushions) and quaff imports. Gone are the age-darkened pine paneling, the mounted deer heads, the stuffed bobcats and coyotes, the collection of pikes, crosscut saws, and double-bit axes commemorating Vieux Desert’s heritage as a logging town. Blond wood now covers the walls, and nailed to them are panoramic photos of autumn landscapes, loons in ponds, Great Lakes lighthouses. The Scullys fled Traverse City only to bring Traverse City to Vieux Desert, and the rehab makes Will feel as antiquated as the discarded logger’s implements—a sort of living relic.

  “They said they’d be in the back,” Maddie says, meaning their friends Jim and Helen Magnuson, who own the hardware-cum-sporting goods store on Schoolcraft Street, the closest thing the town has to a main drag.

  The larger room of the bar teems with tourists; the smaller one in the rear (an addition Will built years ago), where four round tables face the brewery’s gleaming tanks and kettles, is less crowded. Two couples Will and Madeline don’t know sit with the Magnusons at the table nearest the back door, through which the smell of grilling ribs drifts from the tiny yard behind the building. Will is famished; he’d eaten a skimpy lunch and worked it off cutting firewood.

  Jim, who has a long, narrow face and the gregarious manner of a salesman, makes introductions. The couples are friends of his and Helen’s, visiting from Ohio. Will forgets their names the second after he’s heard them. He takes the open chair between them and feels hemmed in. He pours a beer from one of the pitchers on the table; Maddie, across from him and next to cheery Helen, orders a Diet Coke from the waitress—a new hire whom Will doesn’t recognize.

  “I was telling them that you built this place, made it into something,” Jim says, canting his head toward his guests. “A run-down dive when you bought it … When was it, Will?”

  “Eighty-two. August.”

  “Eighty-two, man, eighty-two. A run-down dive then, and now it’s been featured in travel magazines.”

  “It’s a nice place. Just love those photos on the walls,” remarks one of the women. Her pert smile and practiced friendliness, with its undercurrent of fervor, cause Will to typecast her as an Amway saleswoman. “Where did you find them?”

  “I didn’t put them up, the new owners did,” he answers, letting her know by the way he says it that he doesn’t love the pictures or the gentrification the bar has undergone.

  Platters of sizzling ribs in a tangy sauce, with sides of coleslaw and roasted red potatoes, are delivered, along with a fresh pitcher—“our summer ale,” the waitress announces.

  Will eats two or three ribs from his rack, then abruptly loses his appetite; his stomach seems to shrink down into a hard little ball. When the waitress comes by to clear the table, Jim asks what time the fireworks begin. “When it’s good and dark,” she answers, ten or so.

  Jim checks his watch. “Two and a half hours. Can we all hold out till then?”

  “Think I’ll pass,” says Will, glancing at Maddie.

  “Oh, come on, honey. Live a little,” she says.

  “Worried you’ll get a flashback?” Jim composes a jocular expression to show that he’s making a quip, the sort of thing a friend can say to a friend without giving offense. Then, fixing a more serious look on his visitors: “Will is a war hero. He was in the Nam with the Marines.”

  Will detests that abbreviation, “the Nam,” especially when uttered by someone who wasn’t there, and he considers himself a survivor rather than a hero. People like Jim seem to think that the mere act of getting shot at elevates a man to the level of Achilles.

  “Well, the Fourth is a good day to meet a vet,” says the Amway woman’s husband. Like her, he’s in his early fifties, fair-haired, fair-skinned, a generic American. “Thank you for your service.”

  Another phrase Will dislikes. While it’s a big improvement over the greetings he heard when he came home in 1970, it’s become an empty, rote response, like “bless you” after someone sneezes. Every time he hears it, he’s tempted to reply, You’re welcome. Whenever I can fight in a pointless war for you, let me know.

  The temptation is upon him now. He resists it.

  “He’s more than a war hero, he’s kind of our town hero,” Jim prattles on. “Remember those cop killings up here a few years back? It was all over the news. The psycho who murdered two Chicago cops who were up this way on a hunting trip?”

  His friends shake their heads.

  Will, fixing a look on Paul, also shakes his head, signaling him not to continue the story.

  “Aw, c’mon, Will. Let me brag on you. Don’t be humble.” Jim returns to his guests. “Will was right next to them, in his truck, when the nutjob—his name was Lonnie Kidman—shot them dead with an assault rifle. Damn miracle Will wasn’t…”

  Maddie shoots him a censuring look. He’s aware, everyone in town is aware, that Will never speaks about what happened then, that he avoids all reminders of it. But Jim is more than a little buzzed; he’s captured his audience’s attention and is unable to check himself.

  “I’ve always said somebody was looking out for you, Will.”

  Will feels rather than sees four pairs of eyes turn toward him. He says nothing. No one was looking out for him. His survival then, as it had been during the war, was not providential but pure luck.

  “Well, the psycho took off into the woods. Cops and bloodhounds trying to find him. Whole damn town was scared, let me tell you, like in the movies when an escaped convict is on the loose. Will sent Maddie and their boy to stay with us, because their place is outside town, and—”

  “Maybe you shouldn’t tell this story; you’re making him uncomfortable,” Helen admonishes her husband.

  Will is not uncomfortable—he’s panicked. But Jim rolls on, relating that Kidman carjacked a motorist at a highway rest stop and made his way to Will’s house for a showdown. Jim’s voice grows faint; it’s as if wax is plugging Will’s ears, and this produces a weird sensation that he
’s … He can’t think of a word for it. Sinking, maybe. Sinking into himself.

  “He broke in with that rifle. He broke in, but Will was ready for him. Dropped him with a shotgun, right there in his own house. Put him down.”

  Mrs. Amway stares at Will, wide-eyed. “Do you mean you…” she begins, but doesn’t finish.

  “Shot him in the legs. Kneecapped him,” Jim says, answering the question she didn’t dare ask. “Kidman got life—too bad this state doesn’t have the death penalty—and Will, this man sitting right here, let me tell you, if he ran for mayor of our little burg, he would’ve been elected for life.”

  Will has a feeling that he knows is crazy but cannot shake: that he’s being stared at as if he were some sort of exotic creature. Why is Jim doing this? To impress his friends? Amuse them with a true-crime thriller? Will clutches the beer glass in both hands. A pressure builds inside him. He’s afraid he’s going to do something awful any second now—crush the glass, or toss its contents into Jim’s face. What he must do is get out of here and collect himself, but he’s trapped, a wall behind him, people on both sides.

  “’Scuse me, gotta go,” he murmurs to Mrs. Amway, nudging her shoulder with his.

  She pulls her chair closer into the table; her husband does the same to give him room. Will rises and sidles between them and the wall. Everyone thinks he’s going to the bathroom; instead, he flies out the back door into the yard, then jogs across Schoolcraft and down a staircase to the beach fronting Vieux Desert bay. It’s empty at this hour, marked by the day’s activities—footprints, a child’s plastic pail, an attempt at a sandcastle. Drawing deep breaths of cool lake air, his fingers opening and closing as if squeezing rubber balls, he walks along the water’s edge, where waves have smoothed and hardened the sand. The wind has calmed; the bay, barely rippled, is a great aquamarine plate, and the line between it and Superior’s oceanic blue is as definite as one drawn on canvas. Far out, beyond the shoreline’s curve, a sandstone cliff rises to form the point marking the bay’s easternmost limit. Will doesn’t notice how the lowering sun tints the sandstone gold, or the colors of the water, or the birch trees, white as plaster columns, leaning out from the point. He just keeps walking, blind to the beauty all around him.

  * * *

  For the rest of the summer, Will avoids Jim. He refuses to patronize the Magnusons’ store. If he needs a tool or hardware of any sort, he drives to Munising, nearly fifty miles away. Maddie tells him that it’s idiotic to burn a lot of gas just to show Jim how upset he is with him. Sure, he had been tactless to tell the story when Will so obviously didn’t want perfect strangers to hear it, but he hadn’t done so maliciously. “The guy thinks you’re a hero; he’s proud of you, proud to know you,” Maddie said.

  To Will, Jim’s motives, his lack of malice, his tactlessness—none of that is relevant. What counts is the brute fact that he told the story, and the telling was like an incantation, conjuring up memories Will had buried. They barge into his brain at random times, without warning, without any discernible trigger—Kidman firing the AR-15, shattering the windshield of Will’s truck. Lewis, the black cop, crying out, Don’t shoot me anymore, the white cop, Walsh, already dead. Kidman kicking the back door open in Will’s house the next day. Will crouched in the hall, waiting for him, a 12-gauge shotgun in his shoulder. The shotgun’s twin blasts, Kidman tumbling backward, knees and legs flayed.

  He relives these moments. No matter where he is—on a walk, driving somewhere, watching a ball game on TV—he is there in body only; in all other respects, he’s lost in the past as the episode unfolds before him, scene by scene. Their vividness reproduces the sensations he felt then: the sharp spike in his pulse rate, the sudden rush of blood from his face, the cold prickling in his forearms and across the back of his neck.

  There is one moment that makes him cringe—after Kidman, about to poach on Will’s bear bait, refused to leave, and Will burst out, “Get your skinny ass out of here … you scum-licking little shitbird.” That was when Kidman grabbed the rifle and started shooting.

  Will had known Kidman was a violent hothead; he should have been more in command of his own temper, should have known better than to use language like that. Part of him wonders if he incited the killer, as if he, Will, had been an unwitting accomplice.

  Sometimes he reimagines this scene with a happy ending. He orders Kidman to leave, as before, but with no profanity, no provocative insult, his words firm, his tone calm. His bloody impulses overcome by Will’s self-mastery, Kidman gets in the truck and drives off.

  Pleasant as it is, this version has an unwanted side effect—it always spurs a downward spiral in Will’s mental state. By showing what he could have done—no, should have done—it leads him to reproach himself for what he did do; and the self-reproach, in its turn, brings on morbid examinations of other things he should have done but failed to do, mistakes he’s made and every stupid or cruel word to come out of his mouth, including the ones he’d spoken to Bruce Skrydlowski that day. Minor transgressions are magnified into cardinal sins, stumbles into falls. These retrospectives make him feel worthless, but then, willy-nilly, his brain flips into spells of paranoid rage at people he imagines have wronged him or want to. Jim Magnuson, he thinks, intended to upset him, even though his rational mind tells him that wasn’t so.

  * * *

  Autumn arrives. Few places equal the Upper Peninsula in beauty in that season; none exceed it. Aspen leaves flutter like tongues of golden flame; tamaracks yellow; hardwoods form islands of color in the great green expanses of pine and spruce. But Will sees none of it, only grays and blacks.

  Now and then he catches himself staring at the window Kidman’s bullets had shattered, or at the wall they had gouged, or at the hallway floor his blood had stained. Will replaced the window, patched the drywall, removed the stains with a belt sander and refinished the oak planks. The spot is still visible—a square lighter by a tone than the surrounding floor—and that’s enough to flip the switch in his memory.

  Maddie is patient with him, with his simmering silences, his flares of anger, usually over some triviality or over nothing at all. She tells him one day that she’s going shopping in Marquette and to see a movie with a friend; he replies, “Why is it you’re going with her but it’s always no when I ask you to see a movie?”

  She reminds him that he hasn’t asked her to the movies since she can’t remember when, the moderateness in her voice kindling his temper further. He stomps out of the house, slamming the door behind him. Spasms of guilt inevitably follow these fits, and the guilt generates more brooding, which generates the next outburst. He is ensnared in endless repetitions, a kind of feedback loop, like a drunk who drinks to forget whatever it is that makes him drink.

  Maddie’s tolerance, of course, is not limitless. One Saturday morning, Will kicks Samantha hard enough that he fears he’s broken her ribs or damaged an internal organ. The setter has a habit of begging for food or for a biscuit by prancing in circles around him, whining desperately. The whines and her claws’ rapid clicking on the hardwood floor always annoy him; on this morning, she spins in front of him as he carries a cup of coffee to the breakfast table and trips him, spilling the coffee. “You dumb bitch!” he yells, and as automatic as an eye-blink, his booted foot lashes out and catches her side. She tumbles over with a piercing yowl.

  Maddie is very fond of the dog. She embraces Samantha, pulling her away from Will, like a mother shielding a child from an abusive father.

  “You asshole! What the hell is wrong with you?” she cries, and kneads the dog’s side and stomach to see if she’s been seriously hurt. Apparently not—the pressure of her hand doesn’t elicit a flinch or whimper.

  Will sits down, disgusted with his loss of control. Maddie, recovering from her own anger, takes her chair. They poke at their breakfasts without speaking until she says, “You’re scaring me, Will. Who are you going to kick next? Me?”

  “I’d never do that,” he replies, shocked that
she would think him capable of harming her.

  “What’s happening to you?”

  Every day, five days a week, she has to deal with messed-up people, more than ever now that the opioid epidemic has spread even to this isolated corner of the country. She would like her home to be a refuge. She’s his wife and lover, she says, not his counselor, but she needs to hear what’s eating at him. Tell me, Will, tell me, please.

  To his own surprise, he does. To his surprise because he’s a former Marine, because he doesn’t come from people who readily confide their troubles to others—no, not even to their spouses or closest friends. To do so is a sign of weakness. Maddie listens thoughtfully, without interrupting, exactly as she does when her clients confess their falls from sobriety, their struggles with booze or pills or meth, all their secret and not-so-secret sorrows.

  The cause of Will’s is plain, she says when he’s done: he has never confronted the demons conjured up by the incident with Lonnie Kidman; running his business, being a father to their son, taking care of things around the house, merely put them into suspended animation. Now that he has little to occupy him, little that requires all his faculties, they’ve awakened and come at him with redoubled fury.

  “I’ve wanted to tell you that for weeks, but I’ve kept my mouth shut,” she adds. “Hoped you’d work it out on your own.”

  Her clinical analysis rubs a raw nerve. Just what does she recommend he do? he snaps back. Find a job, at sixty-four? Community service? How about woodworking?

  Maddie shakes her head, dismissing his scorn.

  “You need to see somebody,” she answers sharply. “There’s the VA in Iron River. I’ve referred a couple of Afghan vets to them. Maybe they can help.”