High Hunt

  I started to say something again, and she gave her pelvis a vicious little twist that damned near emasculated me.

  “I’m going to do that every time you interrupt me,” she said. She had a long memory. I don’t think I’ve ever been so completely helpless before or since. She had me—as they say—at her mercy.

  “In about a month,” she went on, “you’re going back up to the U, and I’ll be starting to go to class here in a couple of weeks. You’re going to be gone for ten days on this hunting expedition of yours. Between now and the first of October—less than ten days—is all we’ve really got. Am I getting maudlin?”

  I didn’t dare answer.

  “If you’ve gone to sleep, damn you, I’ll cripple you.”

  “I’m here,” I said, “don’t get carried away.”

  “Have I made any sense?” she asked.

  “I’m tempted to argue,” I said, “but I think you’re probably right. If we try to keep it going after I get to Seattle, it’ll just the on us anyway, and we’d both feel guilty about it. It’s easy to say that it’s only thirty miles, but the distance between Seattle and Tacoma is a lot more than that really.”

  “It’s a damned shame,” she said. She rocked her hips a few times under me, gently. “When it comes to this, you’re just clear out of sight, but that’s not really enough, is it?”

  “Not in the end, it isn’t,” I said sadly. “At first it is.”

  “Let’s give it another try,” she said. “I want to say something silly, and I want you to be too distracted to hear me.”

  This time we made it, and just as we did she said, “I love you,” very softly in my ear.

  I whispered it back to her, and then she cried.

  I held her for a long while, and then we got up and got dressed.

  Sandy was standing at the kitchen sink with a cigarette and a glass of whiskey, still nude, looking out the window at the moonlight.

  “We have to ran, Sandy,” I told her softly. “Tell Jack, OK?”

  She nodded to me and smiled vaguely at Clydine. “He’s asleep now,” she said. “He always goes to sleep. Sometimes I’d like to talk, but he always goes to sleep. They all do.” She took a drink of whiskey.

  “It’ll be all right,” I said inanely.

  “Of course,” she said, her voice slurring a bit. “In just a little while.”

  Clydine and I went on out and got in the car. I backed on out to the road and drove on down toward Fife.

  “She kept saying that all night,” I said. “‘It’s only for a little while.’ What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

  “You’re not as smart as I thought you were,” Clydine said to me. “It’s as plain as the nose on your face.”

  “What?”

  “She’s going to kill herself.”

  “Oh, come on,” I said.

  “She’ll be dead before Christmas.”

  I thought about it. Somehow it fit. “I’d better tell Jack,” I said.

  “Mind your own business,” she told me. “It hasn’t got anything to do with him.”

  “But—”

  “Just stay out of it. You couldn’t stop it anyway. It’s something that happened to her a long time ago. She’s just waiting for the right time. Leave her alone.”

  Women!

  “Let’s go back to your place,” she said. “I want us both to take a good hot bath, and then I want to sleep with you—just sleep. OK?”

  “Why not?” I said.

  “Seems to me you said that was the worst reason in the world for doing anything.”

  “I’m always saying things like that,” I told her.

  11

  THE following Wednesday, the first of September, we were all going to get together out at Carter’s to make sure we had everything all set for the hunt. We were going to be leaving on the ninth, and so we were kind of moving up on it.

  Stan had finally committed himself to going along, which surprised me since I figured that Monica would just flat veto the idea. I guess maybe she figured that that would be too obvious—or maybe she’d tried all the tricks in her bag, first the nagging, then the icicles, then crossing her legs, and none of them had worked. Stan was pretty easygoing most of the time, but he could get his back up if the occasion came along. I’d gotten a vague hint or two about the kind of pressure she was putting on him, but he was hanging in there. Then, quite suddenly, she seemed to give in. She got real nice to everybody, and that really worried me.

  The other guys had decided to bring their wives on out to Carter’s to kind of quiet down the rumblings of discontent which were beginning to crop up as a result of our frequent all-male gatherings and planning sessions. I’d asked Clydine, but there was a meeting of some kind she wanted to attend. Besides which, she told me, she’d about had the establishment types and their antics. I’d wanted her to meet Claudia; but, all things considered, it was probably for the best that she didn’t come. Jack and Cal would have been as jumpy as cats with her around after the little orgy on Sunday. I knew she could keep her mouth shut, but they wouldn’t have been so sure.

  Anyhow I was over at Mike’s that afternoon finishing up the rifle. Maybe it was just luck, but the thing was coming out beautifully. I hadn’t really taken pride in anything for a long time, and I was really getting a kick out of it. Mike came out when he got home from work and sat on the edge of the workbench with a quart of beer while I put the last coat of stock-finish on the wood. I’d finished bluing the action the day before. All that was left was a last rubdown on the wood, mounting the sling swivels and assembling the gun.

  “Man,” he said admiringly, “that’s gonna be one fine-looking weapon. How much you say you’ve got into it?”

  “About seventy-five bucks altogether,” I said, “and about thirty-forty hours of work.”

  “Beautiful job,” he said, handing me the quart. I took a guzzle and gave it back.

  “Now I just hope the son of a bitch shoots straight,” I said. “I never fired it before I started on this.”

  “Oh, I wouldn’t worry,” he said. “That old Springfield was always a pretty dependable piece of machinery. As long as you can poke one up the spout, she’ll shoot.”

  “I sure hope you’re right,” I said, carefully leaning the stock against the garage wall to dry. I scoured my hands off with turpentine and began working at them with some paste hand-cleaner.

  “Betty says you’re staying to dinner.” He finished the quart and pitched it into a box in the corner.

  “Yeah,” I said. “I’ll have to start paying board here pretty quick.” I had been eating with them pretty often.

  “Glad to have you,” he said, grinning. “It gives me somebody to swap war stories with.” Mike and I got along well.

  “Hey,” he said. “I hear that was quite a party Sunday.”

  “It was an orgy,” I said. “You ever met Helen—that pig of Sloane’s?”

  “Once or twice.”

  “Then you’ve probably got a pretty good idea of how things went.”

  “Oh, gosh, yes.” He chuckled. “Jack was telling me that little girl you brought has got quite a shape on her.”

  “You can tell that she’s a girl.”

  “He said he didn’t much care for her though.”

  I laughed about that, and then I told Mike about the little confrontation.

  “No kidding?” He laughed. “I’d sure love to have been able to see the expression on his face.”

  “What face?” I laughed. “It fell right off.”

  “Was Sandy What’s-her-name there with Jack?” he asked.

  “Yeah. Quiet as ever.”

  “She’s a strange one, isn’t she?”

  “Clydine—that’s my little girl-chum—says that Sandy’s gonna kill herself pretty quick.” I probably shouldn’t have said anything, but I knew Mike had sense enough to keep his mouth shut.

  “What makes her think so?”

  “I don’t know for sure—maybe they talke
d or maybe my little agitator is relying on the well-known, but seldom reliable, intuition women are supposed to have.”

  “Maybe so,” Mike said thoughtfully, “but I’ve heard that girl say awfully weird things sometimes. If that’s what she’s got in mind, it would sure explain a helluva lot. You tell Jack?”

  I shook my head. “He wouldn’t believe it in the first place, and what could he do about it?”

  “That’s true,” Mike admitted. He slid down off the bench and looked ruefully at his belly. “Sure is gonna get tiresome carryin’ this thing up and down mountains. God damn, a man can get out of shape in a hurry.” I think we both wanted to get off the subject of Sandy.

  “Beer and home cookin’,” I said. “Do it to you every time.” I washed my hands at the outside faucet, dried them on my pants, and got my clean clothes out of my car. We went inside, and I changed clothes in the bathroom. After we ate, Mike and I had a couple beers and watched TV while Betty cleaned up in the kitchen. She sang while she was working, and her voice was clear and high, and she hit the notes right on. There’s nothing so nice as a woman singing in the kitchen.

  Jack and Marg showed up about seven with a case of beer, and we all sat around talking. Marg looked like she’d gotten a head start on the drinking. She was a little glassy-eyed.

  “How’d you get tangled up with this Larkin guy, Dan?” Jack asked me. “He seemed a little standoffish when I met him the other day.”

  “Oh, Stan’s OK,” I said. “He’s just a little formal till he gets to know you. He’ll loosen up.”

  “I sure hope so.”

  “We shared an apartment for a while when I was up at the U,” I said. “We got along pretty well.”

  “He done much hunting?” Mike asked.

  “Birds, mostly,” I said. “I’ve been duck hunting with him a few times. He’s awfully damned good with a shotgun.” I told them about Stan’s triple on ducks.

  “That’s pretty good, but I’ll bet I could still teach him a thing or two about shotgun shootin’,” Jack boasted.

  “Here we go,” Margaret said disgustedly, “the mighty hunter bit.” Her words were a little slurred.

  “I’m good, sweetie,” Jack said. “Why should I lie about it? I am probably one of the world’s finest wing shots. Every time I go out, you can count on pure carnage.”

  “You know what’s so damned disgusting about it?” Mike said. “The big-mouth son of a bitch can probably make it stick. I saw him bust four out of five thrown beer bottles one time with a twenty-two rifle.”

  “Never could figure out how I missed that last one,” Jack said. “Must have been a defective cartridge.”

  “You’re impossible.” Betty laughed. Nothing bothered Betty.

  “Just good,” he said, “that’s all. Class will tell.” Jack smirked at us all.

  “When you guys get him out in the woods,” Margaret said dryly, “why don’t you do the world a favor and shoot him?”

  We drank some more beer and sopped up dip with potato chips. Mike and Betty had a comfortable little house with furniture that was nice but not so new as to make you afraid to relax. It was a pleasant place to talk.

  Sloane and Claudia drifted in about eight with some more beer and Sloane’s ever-present jug of whiskey.

  “Hey”—he giggled—“is this where the action is?” He bulked large in the doorway, the case of beer under one arm and his hat shoved onto the back of his head. Claudia pushed him on into the room. They looked odd together. She was so tiny, and he was so goddamn gross. It dawned on me that she was even smaller than my little radical cutie. I wondered how in the hell she’d ever gotten tangled up with Sloane.

  With him at the party, of course, any hope of quiet conversation went down the drain. He was a good-natured bastard though.

  “Wait till you see what Dan’s done with the rifle you unloaded on him,” Mike said.

  “Get it done, old buddy?” Sloane asked me.

  “Not quite,” I said.

  “Bring it around when you get done with it,” he said. “I might just buy it back.”

  “I believe I’ll hang onto this one,” I told him.

  Stan and Monica came a little later, and I could see the icicles on her face. She clicked that smile on and off rapidly as I introduced them to everybody. Stan seemed ill at ease, and I knew she’d been at him pretty hard again.

  “I thought Stanley said there were going to be six of you on this little expedition,” she said brightly. “Somebody must be missing.”

  “McKlearey,” Jack said. “He’s pretty undependable. Likely he’s in jail, drunk, or in bed with somebody’s wife—maybe all three.”

  “Really?” she said with a slightly raised eyebrow. She looked around the room. “What a charming little house,” she said, and I saw Betty’s eyes narrow slightly at the tone in the voice.

  So that was her new gimmick. She was going to put us down as a bunch of slum-type slobs and make Stan feel shitty for having anything to do with us.

  “It’s a lot more comfortable than the trailer the ‘great provider’ here has me cooped up in,” Marg said, playing right into her hands.

  “Oh, do you live in one of those?” Monica asked. “That must be nice—so convenient and everything.”

  I ground my teeth together. There was nothing I could do to stop her.

  “Sometimes I wish we lived in one,” Claudia’s low voice purred. “When your husband needs a living room the size of a basketball court to keep from knocking things over, you get a bit tired just keeping the clutter picked up.”

  I knew damned well Claudia wouldn’t be caught dead in a trailer, but she wasn’t about to let this bitch badmouth Betty and Marg.

  “Oh,” Monica said, “you have a large house?”

  “Like a barn.” Sloane giggled.

  “I just adore big, old houses,” Monica said. “It’s such a shame that the neighborhoods where you find them deteriorate so fast.”

  Jack laughed. “Sloane’s neighborhood up in Ruston isn’t likely to deteriorate much. He’s got two bank presidents, a mill owner, and a retired admiral on his block. The whole street just reeks of money.”

  Monica faltered. Certain parts of Ruston were about as high class as you were going to get around Tacoma.

  Sloane giggled again. “Costs a fortune to live there. They inhale me every year just for taxes.”

  “Oh, Calvin,” Claudia said suavely, “it’s not that bad, and the neighbors are nice, they don’t feel they have to ‘keep up’ or put each other down. They don’t have this ‘status’ thing.”

  Monica’s face froze, but that put an end to it. Claudia had real class, the one thing Monica couldn’t compete with. The little exchange had backfired, and she was the one who came out looking like a slob. She hadn’t figured on Claudia.

  Then Lou showed up. He was a little drunk but seemed to be in a good humor. “Hide your women and your liquor,” he announced in that raspy voice of his. “I’m here at last.” A kind of tension came into the room very suddenly. McKlearey still seemed to carry that air of suppressed violence with him. Maybe it was that stiff Gyrene brace he stood in all the time.

  Why in hell couldn’t he relax? I still hadn’t really bought that quick changeover of his on the night when we’d first started talking about the High Hunt. I’d figured it was a grandstand play and he’d back out, but so far he hadn’t. One thing I knew for sure—I’d have sure felt a lot better if he and Jack weren’t going up into the woods together. Both of them could get pretty irrational, and there were going to be a lot of guns around.

  “Where in hell have you been McKlearey?” Jack demanded. “You’re an hour late.”

  “I got tied up,” Lou said.

  “Yeah? What’s her name?”

  “Who bothers with names?” McKlearey jeered.

  I saw Margaret glance sharply at Lou, but his face was blank. She was actually jealous of that creepy son of a bitch, for Chrissake!

  “Let’s all have a belt
,” Sloane suggested. He hustled into the kitchen and began mixing drinks.

  I sat back, relaxing a bit now that all the little interpersonal crises were over for the moment. I think that’s why I’ve always been kind of a loner. When people get at each other and the little tensions start to build, I get just uncomfortable as hell. It’s like having your finger in a light socket knowing some guy behind you has his hand on the switch. You’re pretty sure he won’t really turn it on, but it still makes you jumpy.

  I glanced over at Claudia. I liked her more and more. I wished to hell I didn’t know about Sloane and his outside hobbies.

  Stan caught my eye with a look of strained apology. He, of course, had been on to Monica’s little performance even more than I had. I shrugged to him slightly. Hell, it wasn’t his fault.

  Sloane distributed the drinks and then stood in the archway leading to Mike’s dining room. “And now,” he announced, “if you ladies will excuse us, we’ll adjourn to the dining room here and discuss the forthcoming slaughter.” He giggled.

  “Right,” Jack said, getting up. “We got plans to make.” He was a little unsteady on his feet, but I didn’t pay much attention just then.

  The rest of us got up, and we trooped into the dining room. I saw Monica’s face tighten as Stan got up. She didn’t want him out of sight, not even for a minute.

  “Now,” Mike said after we’d pulled up the chairs and sat around the table, “I’ve made the deal with this guy named Miller in Twisp, so that’s all settled.”

  “Where in hell is Twisp, for Chrissake?” Lou demanded.

  Mike got a map, and we located Twisp, a small town in the Methow Valley.

  “How’d you get to know a guy way to hell and gone up there?” Sloane asked.

  “I’ve got a cousin who lives up there,” Mike said. “He introduced me to Miller when I was up there a year ago.”

  “What kind of guy is he?” Jack asked.

  “Rough, man. He tells you to do something, you damn well better do it.”

  “He better not try givin’ me a bad time,” Lou said belligerently.

  “He’d have you for breakfast, Lou,” Mike said. “I’ve seen him, and you can take it from me, he’s bad.”