Hunter's Moon (15 page)

Nevertheless, Daniel was good at adapting to his surroundings, especially when doing so meant a decent payoff. Weidman had already spent a great deal positioning his pieces in just the right places. But everything hinged on Graham’s win—on the placement of a sympathetic ear in a position of influence. Graham’s win was the final piece to the puzzle. And Daniel’s job was to secure that victory—to make absolutely certain that nothing went wrong.

The problem was that there was something going on here that eluded him—something that colored family conversation but that never poked its head into view. There was something Graham didn’t want to talk about, and while Daniel didn’t normally begrudge a man his secrets, he did when there was a chance the secret could derail the campaign.

He’d asked around, and the consensus was that Ronny’s and Maggie’s were the two places to make nice with the locals. As much as he disliked small towns, they were good for one thing: gossip. If there was something going on that Graham wouldn’t talk about, there was a good chance someone in town knew about it. And Daniel was confident he could pull that information from the right subject.

Before walking into Maggie’s, Daniel adjusted his tie, pulling it down and to the side. There was such a thing as looking too polished.

Chapter 10

CJ didn’t hear Julie come in over the sound of the miter saw. He and Dennis stood with their backs to the door, nary a piece of wood in sight, the saw roaring away as if it were newly bought, instead of having made a journey of several hundred miles less than a week and a half ago while crammed into the trunk of CJ’s Honda.

They were still a long way from needing the saw, but Dennis had complained about the grunt work, how he didn’t feel he was accomplishing anything unless he could play with a power tool. So he and Dennis had carried it in, set it up in the kitchen, and let it rip.

Julie stood in the doorway and watched them, two Wendy’s bags in her hands, and when they finally powered the saw down, she said, “Ben and I once paid a contractor to build a deck, and I’m certain that’s what I saw him doing.”

The moment she started to speak, both CJ and Dennis jumped in surprise.

“Ooh, sorry about that,” Julie said. She lifted the bags. “I brought lunch.”

“That’s sweet of you,” CJ said, removing his safety goggles, “but I don’t have any fingers to eat with.”

Dennis decided not to sully the moment with talking. Instead he accepted a bag, nodded thanks to Julie, and left the kitchen. Julie handed the other bag to CJ, and he peeked inside, then took a long sniff, his nose disappearing into the bag.

“Bacon double cheeseburger and onion rings,” he said, and then looked up. “You remembered.”

“Well, it
is
a pretty basic order.”

“Thanks,” he said.

“You’re welcome.”

CJ removed the items from the bag and began to eat, using the counter as a tabletop.

“To what do I owe the free lunch?” he asked even as an errant onion stuck out from between his lips.

“No reason,” Julie said. “Just thought I’d do something nice for family.” She used her toe to tap a line of trim that Dennis had pulled down earlier that morning—a detail the previous contractors had missed.

At her response, CJ’s chewing slowed. There was something that seemed wrong about hearing an old flame talking about being a member of his family. Of course, he knew that was the case. Still . . .

His response was cut off by the sound of a drill coming from the other room, and this time it was Julie who jumped.

“He did that on purpose,” she said.

CJ shook his head. “Probably not. He just likes to play with power tools.”

CJ ate in silence for a while, and Julie let him, and what might have been an uncomfortable silence wasn’t.

Finally, Julie said, “Have you seen your family since the funeral?”

“Nope.”

Julie frowned, apparently at the glibness of his answer. But without saying anything else, she rose, crossed to him, and reached for the Wendy’s bag. From it she pulled a napkin and gestured for him to take care of the line of ketchup on his chin.

CJ reached for the napkin, and his hand touched hers, where it lingered for longer than it should have. She pulled away and retreated to the other side of the room.

“So have you enrolled in veterinary school yet?” he asked, just to break the tension.

“Sadly, no. It was either do that today or bring you lunch and then go see Jack’s game.”

“Well, I suppose you made the wise choice then,” CJ said, holding up the last bit of his sandwich, which brought the smile he’d intended. But it didn’t last, replaced by a puzzled frown.

“Mind if I ask you a question?”

CJ’s mouth was full, so he answered with a headshake.

Julie leaned back against the kitchen counter and made a gesture that took in the surrounding house. “What are you doing here?” Once she’d said it, her cheeks colored, as if realizing the question sounded more abrupt than she’d intended.

CJ didn’t answer right away. He slowly chewed the food in his mouth as if deep in thought, then swallowed, looked up at her, and shrugged. “A man’s got to pay the bills, doesn’t he?”

It didn’t take long for that comment to earn him an exasperated look from his ex-girlfriend, and it came as a minor epiphany that he’d seen that expression on the face of every woman with whom he’d had any kind of meaningful relationship. It was an uncomfortable thought. Yet how could he sum up everything that was happening in his life in a way that fit their current surroundings, as well as the odd nature of their relationship? Discussing the deterioration of his marriage, the damage to his professional reputation, his sudden poverty, the scab ripped from the old family wound, and his newfound faith in God with a woman he hadn’t realized he still cared about until he walked into the house on Lyn-dale and saw her just wasn’t something he could do right now.

Fortunately there was still a boon he could throw out.

“
The Atlantic
has asked me to write an article about Graham,” he said. “So I need to spend some time here and do research.”

Julie took that in, then said, “What kind of article?”

That was a question that CJ couldn’t answer as well as he might have liked.

“What kind of article indeed,” he said.

Thankfully Dennis chose that moment to fire up the Sawzall, and this time there was an accompanying sound of splintering wood. CJ’s eyes widened, and after a frozen moment, he made for the door.

Behind him, Julie called out, “I don’t think he’s just playing this time.”

“Memory is a funny thing,” CJ said, and it wasn’t addressed to anyone in particular, but Dennis, being the only one within earshot, apparently felt the need to nod his acknowledgment.

“Think about it,” CJ went on. “There are people who can remember what they had for breakfast on Friday, July 7, 1972, but can’t describe the plot for the movie they saw yesterday.”

Dennis seemed to give this profound thought the weight it deserved, finally saying, “I g-got a p-pay-per-view movie last night. Real g-good—lots of action. But I have no idea w-what it was about.”

“You see? That’s what I’m saying. How can you trust anything you think you remember?”

“P-pancakes and sausage patties,” Dennis said. When all that earned him was a puzzled look from CJ, he explained. “Breakfast on July 7, 1972. P-pancakes and sausage patties.”

“You’re kidding.”

“Of c-course I’m kidding. I wasn’t even b-born yet.”

CJ chuckled. “Okay, you’re not allowed to mess with me when I’m trying to be philosophical.”

“Is that what you c-call it?” Dennis countered, his eyes returning to the flat-screen TV hanging over the bar. Then he asked, “Was it really a Friday?”

“Was what a Friday?”

“July 7, 1972. Was it a Friday?”

“How would I know?”

“Well, it just seems to be an odd d-detail to throw in there if it w-wasn’t true.”

“If you want to know about memory,” Rick chimed in, “you ought to talk to some of these veterans who come in here. These guys can recount practically their whole tours, down to what they ate, what the weather was like on any given day, and everything about the guys they served with. It’s weird.”

“And hardly any of it’s probably true,” CJ said. “A good story is better with details.”

“I don’t know,” Rick said. He took a break from pulling glasses out of the dishwasher, wiped his hands on his pants, and joined CJ and Dennis at the end of the bar. “You ask these old guys to tell a story, and they recount it the exact same way. Every time.”

“Tell a story enough times and even the made-up stuff sticks.” CJ paused and watched the hockey game for a few seconds and then looked back at Rick. “Don’t get me wrong, I’m sure these men have some great stories. I remember how Uncle Edward used to talk my ear off about Korea. So who’s going to quibble about a point or two?”

Rick seemed to consider that, and it seemed to CJ that Dennis had checked out of the conversation, even though he knew his friend didn’t miss much.

“So where does that leave us?” Rick asked. “Memories, I mean.”

“Your guess is as good as mine,” CJ said.

While it may have been an unfulfilling end to an interesting topic, Rick simply shrugged off the metaphysical ramifications and returned to the task of unloading the dishwasher.

But CJ couldn’t dismiss the question so easily. Because the opposite side of the coin from those who could recall the past in exhaustive detail were those who lived in the moment, because the past is like a ghost, or a novel with missing chapters.

Most commonly, though, memory found a comfortable middle ground, where the past was sufficiently muddled to make recalling details an inexact process, and the present was given context by past experience.

Yet even here in Adelia, there were exceptions. Some events had a certain substance that fused them permanently into one’s consciousness, where every detail could be called forth and replayed with exacting clarity. Usually these were brief moments—singular instances in which the emotional energy of the event—either for good or bad—preserved the scene like a fossil in amber, like the war stories Rick had heard.

Therein was the problem. Because while these small vignettes remained forever vivid, eternally poignant, the memories that served to bookend them were subject to the normal rules of deteriorating recall. The events that should have helped lend the clear moments their context became fickle, untrustworthy, rendering the precise memories, themselves, imprecise. This was the dilemma that had haunted CJ through all of his adult life.

Most of the day that Graham had killed Eddie was as vivid as the clearest digital television signal. CJ could remember nearly every step from the time he left the house with the older boys to the first few moments after the fatal shot. He could repeat most of the substance of the conversation that carried them to their spots in the woods—the verbal sparring, the accusations. The fierce anger in Graham’s eyes. And of course the whole time he sat beneath the maple, waiting for a deer to show, was there in his memory, all of it intact. Like the veterans and their war stories, CJ could recount this one day with great clarity. He could close his eyes and feel the cold on his face, and smell the decaying leaves that littered the ground. He could see in his mind’s eye the lone branch that cut at a slight angle through his field of vision, and the single leaf that still clung to its very end.

What was difficult to recall, though, were those first few days after Eddie’s death. CJ suspected he was in shock for a while, enough so that he didn’t question anything that happened afterward. He remembered the funeral, of course, and how everyone lamented the hunting accident that had taken the boy. And he remembered Graham, but as a peripheral figure, a specter hovering around the edges of things. His father too was affixed to his memories: the man answering questions, giving the appropriate hugs, and handling the details as any father would have.

And yet the realization that these were not comforting images had always troubled CJ. He was certain that even as a frightened boy, when the solid-oak presence of a father should have given him some stability, he’d viewed the man as an enemy. It had taken him a while—well into adulthood—to figure out why he’d felt that way. The only answer that presented itself was that his father knew; George understood that there had been no accident, and that had colored his every word, his every move—even as they had related to his younger son. Yet could CJ blame his father for protecting Graham? Even though CJ knew that evil had been done, even now he couldn’t fault his father. What wouldn’t a man do for his flesh and blood?

In the end, it was guilt that CJ carried with him.
He
knew what had happened in the woods, even considering the fog through which he’d navigated in the following days. Yet he’d never said anything. And didn’t that make him as guilty as George—as guilty as Graham?

In writer-speak, the entire event—predominantly the wiping away of the facts of the thing from the town’s collective consciousness—resulted in a disconcerting loss of story. Story was everything to a writer; without it, even the best characters languished. The fact that he’d lost a part of his personal history— his story—was difficult to accept. He knew that was likely the reason his novels tended toward the autobiographical. He might argue that point against the literary community, but he wouldn’t do so against himself. So by crafting fiction around the shell of his own story, maybe he hoped to reveal the missing pieces. It was frightening to consider, though, what the revelation of those pieces might accomplish.