Hunter's Moon (27 page)

“Thanks,” CJ said. He hadn’t realized how hungry he was until the ham hit his plate. For the next few minutes a procession of side dishes made a circuit around the table, all for CJ’s benefit, and because everyone was watching he took more food than he otherwise would have. When the last casserole dish returned to its spot on the table, CJ was left with a mountain of food he would never be able to eat. Nevertheless, he picked up his fork and dug in.

As he chewed, he looked around the table. Graham and Meredith sat directly across from CJ and Edward, along with Maryann and her husband. Maryann gave him what he could only call a lewd smile, which sent a shiver down his back. He tried to recall the names of the people he couldn’t quite place, but except in a few cases, most of the ones he didn’t know remained that way. When he looked the other way, he found his father was watching him with an expression as inscrutable as the ingredients of the tasty noodle concoction CJ was enjoying.

“Hey, Pop,” he said.

George held his gaze for a few seconds, then gave his son a curt nod before returning to his dinner.

Over the next several minutes, the various conversations around the table, and the noises of clinking glasses and utensils on plates, provided the background sounds as CJ worked his way through the food on his plate. What amused him was that, although he’d been invited to sup with them, no one in his immediate family seemed inclined to say anything to him. In truth, they weren’t saying much to each other either, but that could also have been the result of his presence.

Farther down the table, though, sat the Baxters who were more distant from the seat of power. Their conversation was relaxed, comfortable. CJ wondered if anyone on his end noticed, but suspected they didn’t. They were too wrapped up in their grand scheming to notice something like that—to notice that a lack of grand scheming resulted in happier people.

“So, CJ,” someone said from down the table, “how’s your latest book doing?”

CJ didn’t catch who’d asked the question, so he directed his answer to the general vicinity of the inquiring voice. “Not bad,” he said. “It’s not my bestseller, but it’s holding its own.”

“Would it be selling more or less if you hadn’t clocked that critic?”

CJ didn’t need any help identifying the man asking this follow-up question. Richard seemed pleased with himself for having posed it. Next to him, Abby stared down at her plate, using her fork to pick at the minuscule amount of food left there.

CJ let the silence that had settled over the table linger. Then he sent a sly smile his cousin’s way. “I guess you’d know all about clocking someone, wouldn’t you, Richard?” Turning his attention to Richard’s wife, he said, “Nice to see you, Abby. You’re looking well.”

Richard’s face darkened, and it looked as if he might come out of his chair, but a single look from George kept him in his seat. Richard aimed daggers at CJ before picking up his fork and resuming his dinner.

After that, an uncomfortable silence fell over the gathering. As CJ dipped his spoon into the delicious sweet potato casserole, he glanced over at Julie and Ben. Julie’s husband gave him a wink and a half smile, and CJ could only assume it was for what he’d said to Richard. It was the sort of validation he’d been hoping to get from Ben’s wife, and once again the dynamics of this thing made him uneasy. He was the first to look away.

When he glanced toward his father, he saw the old man watching him with disapproval in his eyes. In response, CJ borrowed a gesture from Ben and winked at him.

Edward chose to break the tension with a war story. Even though it was one that everyone had heard, it was a welcome distraction. And since Edward never told a story the same way twice, there was no telling what he would come up with now.

When Edward’s story ended—a new ending this time, judging from the reactions of those who had heard it before—pockets of conversation started up, although no one sitting around CJ seemed willing to say a word. The exception was Maryann, who, upon seeing CJ look in her direction and rarely able to resist the urge to stir things up, said, “So who left whom?”

She asked the question just as Graham took a bite of green beans, and CJ thought he heard his brother make a small choking sound.

When CJ didn’t answer right away, Maryann said, “I mean, you and your wife are on the outs, right? That’s why you’re staying here?” She pulled out the inappropriate smile again. “What—did you cheat on her?”

Graham’s spoon fell onto his plate, and George’s face turned a shade of red that CJ remembered from his childhood as signifying an imminent spanking.

“Maryann!” George said, but she didn’t look his way. Instead she fixed CJ with that unsettling smile while her husband, a small, wiry man with a thin mustache, refilled his wineglass, seemingly oblivious to his wife’s antics.

Rather than allow her to goad him further, CJ said, “I would never cheat, Maryann. Come to think of it, I wouldn’t steal either. I wouldn’t think about supplementing my income by stealing from the company I work for.”

CJ watched Maryann’s face darken to much the same shade as their father’s. As a result of CJ’s veiled accusation, some of the extended family had begun low conversations, and there was little doubt as to the content of these discussions.

Maryann said nothing but instead reached for her husband’s wineglass and took an angry gulp.

This time when CJ looked in Julie’s direction, she was indeed looking back at him, but he found that he couldn’t read her. She held his gaze for what seemed a long time, and then looked away.

Edward leaned toward CJ and whispered, “Hey, can you ease up a bit? I don’t have that many war stories.”

“I’m not starting anything,” CJ said. “And you have more war stories than there are pictures in this house.”

As CJ was whispering to Edward, Meredith rose from her seat and walked down to the other end of the table where she placed a hand on Julie’s arm. The two of them headed into the kitchen.

CJ was stuffed. He set his fork down and pushed the plate away, then leaned back in his seat. Graham had come to the same conclusion, and both brothers relaxed, each regarding the other.

Graham said, “I finished
The Buffalo Hunter
last week.”

“What did you think?”

“It was good,” Graham said. “Different from your previous stuff, but good.”

The fact that Graham had just repeated Artie’s comment about the book almost word for word was not lost on CJ.

“I didn’t know you read my books,” CJ lied. All of them acted so worried about the family portrayal that they probably hired a cryptographer to read each of CJ’s novels just to make sure there were no secret codes embedded in the text.

“I’ve read all your books—as well as the short stories, the articles, even the reviews.”

CJ nodded an acknowledgment and also affected a wince. “Not all the reviews, I hope.”

“Are you working on anything new?” one of his cousins asked. CJ wished he could remember the man’s name.

“I’ve got something in the works. Still in the planning stages.”

“Care to give us a hint?” Graham asked.

CJ took a sip of water, then said, “To be honest, I don’t even know what it’s about yet.”

Julie and Meredith reentered the dining room, each holding a dessert. Meredith set a cherry pie in front of George while Julie deposited a chocolate cake at the other end of the table. Their arrival tugged at the attentions of those who’d been listening in on the brothers’ conversation, and the desserts won over most of them. So when Graham pressed CJ about the new book, their talk was close to being a private one.

“But surely you have a theme in mind,” Graham said.

Although he’d said it as if in passing, seventeen years was not sufficient time for CJ to have forgotten how to read his brother, regardless of the tricks he might have learned in the political arena. Graham was fishing.

“I’m working through a few possibilities,” CJ said. “Right now I think it’ll be about deceit.”

“Interesting.” Graham accepted a piece of pie from Meredith.

“Would you like some pie, CJ ?” the lovely brunette asked him next.

“No, thank you,” he answered. “I’m going to hold out for some of that chocolate cake.”

He couldn’t be sure from this distance, but a hint of color might have touched the edges of Julie’s ears.

“What specifically about deceit?” Graham asked.

CJ held off on giving his brother an answer. Instead he watched as Julie, without looking in his direction, cut a piece of cake—a large piece—set it on a plate and sent it down the table toward him.

“What about deceit indeed,” he finally said to Graham. “I thought I’d explore how a horrible secret can eat away at a family for years, and what that does to each person who knows about it.”

His cake had reached him via the hands of his uncle Sal. CJ found his fork and dove in. Only when he had a mouthful did he look at his brother, and as with both his father and Maryann, Graham’s face was inching toward that Baxter shade of red. But Graham caught himself quickly and released the breath he was holding in a long, quiet exhalation.

“Interesting idea,” the older brother said. “But hasn’t that one already been beaten to death?”

“Of course. Any writer will tell you there are no new stories. We’re all just plagiarizing each other now.”

Those who were still tuned in to the conversation, who had missed the tension hidden in the words, laughed at CJ’s seeming self-deprecation.

CJ thought that Graham might say more, but apparently he’d already said what needed saying. If the family had suspected— feared—that they were the model for CJ’s books, he’d given them something more to chew on now.

“Pop, did you hear that I cleaned out Jake Weidman last night?” CJ said, asking only because he’d learned through Rick that his father was a more than occasional guest at the game, and because it was another of his father’s haunts in which he’d insinuated himself.

“I heard you got lucky your first time,” George said. “Were dealt some cards that worked for you.”

The chocolate cake didn’t have an equal in CJ’s opinion, and he took another large bite. “Maybe a hand or two,” he said. “But after a while, Jake knew I had him. He even said as much.”

He could see that Richard had become interested at the mention of Jake’s name. CJ imagined it made Richard feel a bit queasy to hear that he was getting chummy with Jake, the superior to Richard’s boss.

“Harry Dalton was there too,” CJ added, chewing thoughtfully. He didn’t say anything more for several seconds, yet could see his father waiting. “Funny thing—he said he was looking to buy the lumber mill. Said something about you almost not making payroll last month?”

When George’s hand came down on the table, even CJ, who had been expecting something like it, jumped.

“Charles Jefferson Baxter, if you ever say anything like that about my business again, I’ll take you to the ground,” George said. His voice was low, but CJ, thanks to his childhood experience of learning to understand his father’s rages, knew just how angry he was. “You think you can come in here after seventeen years and shoot your mouth off, thinking you know better than we do? That’s not going to work. That’s not going to work at all.”

CJ knew he’d goad his father into some kind of reaction; he just hadn’t expected something so dramatic. He didn’t say anything, because he was certain that his father would try to make good on his threat. And while CJ doubted the man’s ability to carry it out by himself, these were his people, at his beck and call.

When George saw that CJ wasn’t going to say anything else, he threw his napkin on the table, got up and left, heading toward one of the house’s back rooms.

Now that he’d done it, CJ didn’t feel quite as pleased with himself, and while most of the dinner guests had seemed to favor his side in his little spats with Richard and Maryann, a quick review of faces suggested he’d since lost that support.

“Should have stopped while you were ahead,” Edward whispered.

Without another word CJ rose and exited the dining room. But rather than leave the place entirely, his feet guided him to the garage.

It was colder out here than it had been the last time CJ visited. He could even see his breath. The 853 beneath its tarp looked as if it had been tucked snugly into bed with a blanket. CJ rolled the tarp back until he’d liberated the car from front fender to driver’s seat. Resting his hands on the roof, he peered into the cab, wondering what it would feel like to take the car out on the road, to feel the straight-8 motor rumble beneath the hood.

It bothered him that Sal had never done that. Why own a beautiful car like this and never drive it? The realization that Sal had gone to his grave never knowing what it was like to let these horses run saddened him. He wondered what Sal had been afraid of.

“He loved that car like it was a woman,” Julie said.

CJ hadn’t heard her come in.

“More,” he said.

She was standing by the steps, her arms folded against the chill.

“Why do you suppose he never drove it?” he asked.

“Who knows?” She crossed the few steps that separated her from the 853 and placed a hand on the ice-cold hood. “Maybe he was afraid that it wouldn’t live up to what was in his imagination.

Maybe he didn’t want to be disappointed.”

“Pretty dumb reason not to take it out there.”

“I couldn’t agree more,” Julie said, her tone quiet.

It took him only four steps to reach her, and then to lift her hand off the car. When he kissed her, a few long seconds passed before she pushed him away, before she pulled her hand from his.

“We can’t do this,” she said.

He took a deep breath. “Because of Ben.”

“Yes, because of Ben. And because it’s not right.” She looked down at her feet, and when she looked up she wore a sad smile.

“No matter how much I might want to.”

CJ stood there in silence. He could hear distant voices coming through the door that Julie had shut behind her. With a sigh he leaned against the 853’s fender.

“When did you become a Christian?” he asked. It was the first time the possibility had occurred to him, but it felt right as he asked it.