Hunter's Moon (23 page)

Thor lay next to CJ’s chair, exhausted with his fill of chasing rabbits and squirrels, and eating half a bag of marshmallows that CJ had made the mistake of leaving out on the porch while he and Artie were inside. Beyond the crackling fire, the only sounds were the dog’s snoring and a lone owl that CJ guessed was to his southeast, maybe twenty or thirty yards away.

When he was finished with the fire, which he’d determined required another log, Artie leaned back in the camp chair and pulled the pipe from his mouth.

“Is five thirty alright for you?” he asked—the first words either of them had spoken in thirty minutes. “I’m too old to do that 4:00 a.m. stuff anymore.”

“Five thirty’s just fine,” CJ said.

At the sound of his master’s voice, Thor raised his head a fraction, but it wasn’t a few seconds more before sleep had retaken him.

“I figure we’ll head south toward the Onochooie. There’s a bluff about a quarter mile from the water. With any luck we’ll get one early.”

“Not too early,” CJ said, his words slow in coming. “Get one too early and there’s no time to recover from the hike in.”

Artie chuckled. “You make a good point.” He tapped the pipe once in his palm and then put it back in his mouth.

The honor to which CJ felt unequal was a historic happening in the town of Adelia. Artie had closed Kaddy’s on a business day. Right now, there was a sign on the door that, when morning light came, was likely to draw a crowd, if only to gaze in wonder at the two words Gone Hunting. It had been written with black marker on a piece of cardboard, and there was nothing in the handwriting that signified the writer was sorry for the inconvenience. To the contrary, the large, hastily scribed block letters conveyed the idea that if you minded the store’s proprietor taking a Monday off to hunt, then you could just take your business elsewhere.

CJ, who had not been in town long enough to grasp the full significance of the event until he’d asked Artie where the Closed sign was, only to learn that there wasn’t one, was grateful beyond words at the gesture.

It had been Artie’s idea, and less of an idea than an order. When CJ came back from the house on Lyndale, Artie had intuited his need for some kind of diversion, which meant closing the hardware store. He’d simply told CJ they were going hunting and then he’d gone home to gather his gear, and soon he and CJ had set off.

The well-kept cabin behind where CJ sat had been Artie’s for thirty years. When he bought it he’d assured his wife that it would be a place for frequent getaways—a place for romance. In the following three decades, Artie’s better half had graced the cabin a total of seven times and had, even on those occasions, placed second behind whatever guns Artie had brought with him. She didn’t much begrudge the time he spent here alone, which wasn’t as frequently as she teased him, as she’d never taken to the outdoors. She was never able to gain a satisfactory level of comfort at the cabin.

At the moment, CJ thought it was the most perfect spot on the face of the earth. It was only a forty-five-minute drive from Adelia, but it might as well have been a few hundred miles due to the solitude aided by the tall trees, the gorges, and elevated land that made up the Adirondack terrain. After they’d first arrived here, and after they’d stowed their things in the cabin, Artie had taken him on a short hike through the surrounding woods, and CJ had been taken back to his youth, to times spent all over this land at the foot of the mountains.

The walk had been short only because of Artie’s arthritis. CJ still wondered how Artie would make it more than a quarter mile tomorrow, but he was willing to put his trust in the older man’s ability to determine his own limits.

The moon had risen early, right on the heels of the setting sun, and it now shone full and bright overhead. CJ had tipped his head to look at it, and had touched the fringes of a light doze when Artie said, “It’s a hunter’s moon tonight. A good omen for tomorrow, I suspect.”

“Every moon is a hunter’s moon as long as he has a gun,” CJ said.

Artie chuckled, and CJ smelled the sweet aroma of pipe smoke float his way.

“The Indians called it the hunter’s moon because it rose early and let them continue to track the prey they’d been hunting even as the sun went down,” Artie explained.

CJ considered that while the moon returned his stare. After a while he said, “Pretty convenient if you’re a hungry Indian.”

Thor snorted in his sleep, which CJ took as the dog offering his opinion.

“I suppose it was,” Artie agreed. “I suppose it was.”

Artie was up first, shaking CJ awake. He was already dressed, and as CJ rolled to a sitting position on the edge of the bed, he smelled coffee and saw a stack of pancakes in the center of the table. He couldn’t believe he’d slept soundly enough to have not heard or smelled Artie’s breakfast preparations.

“What time is it?”

“Five,” Artie called over his shoulder, having returned to the stove and a sizzling pan of eggs. “If you’re quick, we can be out of here at five thirty like we wanted.”

CJ wasn’t sure
what
he wanted. It had been a long time since he’d hunted and the hour seemed ungodly. As he sat up on the bed, willing his legs to move, he was amazed at how youthful Artie appeared. In his jeans and flannel shirt, hunting boots, and a bowie knife affixed to his belt, he looked at least ten years younger. He reminded himself, though, that Artie was almost thirty years older than he, and that did much to force him out of bed.

Artie set a cup of coffee in front of CJ as he took a seat at the table.

“Thanks,” CJ said.

Artie returned to the stove and brought the skillet of eggs back to the table, setting it on a potholder, and then lowered himself into the other chair.

“Did you know that you snore?” he asked as he piled eggs onto CJ’s plate.

After a sip of coffee CJ said, “I’ve been told.”

The two men ate the rest of the meal in silence, and then as Artie cleaned up the dishes, CJ finished getting dressed. When he’d left Tennessee he hadn’t packed the necessary things to spend a day hunting, so they’d stopped at a sporting goods store on the drive in so CJ could at least pick up some thermal underwear and a decent pair of boots. Because they weren’t broken in yet, the boots felt a little tight as he slipped them on. He knew he’d have a few blisters by the time the day was over, but they would be happy blisters if he took a buck.

By the time he was ready, Artie had finished the dishes and had retrieved the two guns he’d brought along. Artie sat on a stool and unzipped the cases, leaning first one gun, then the other, against the wall. This was the first CJ had seen of them out of their cases, and he released a low whistle.

“Those are beauties,” he said.

That seemed to amuse Artie. He gave CJ a wink and then picked one of the guns up, offering it to his hunting companion.

It looked like a Remington hybrid—something custom, and it was obvious that it had been used more than a time or two. CJ turned it over in his hands, feeling the weight of it, the balance. As he studied it, his eyes caught something on the butt, and he turned it so he could take a closer look. And when it finally occurred to him what he was seeing, he looked up and grinned at Artie.

“You had it finished out,” he said.

Artie’s smile nearly matched his own. “It’s my favorite gun.” He reached for it and CJ gave it up. Artie gave him the other rifle, a Winchester, and probably a better gun than the one Artie would use.

When they set out, Thor seemed subdued, but CJ could almost feel the coiled energy in his well-muscled body. CJ had asked Artie if he should leave the dog at the cabin, but Artie said to bring him along, that the deer wouldn’t smell him, and that he was confident Thor would stay quiet and alert. Although CJ had his doubts, they were hunting on Artie’s dime—or at least around his cabin.

The hike was two miles up a hill that rose so gradually that CJ almost didn’t feel it doing so. It was only when he glanced backward, charting their progress through the trees, that he saw how much they’d ascended.

Artie’s knee seemed to hold up under the strain of the hike. The image CJ had earlier of him in the cabin that morning—the image of a younger man—proved stronger out here, as if taking on the hunter’s role granted him a measure of youthful energy.

It took a good half hour for them to reach the spot Artie had in mind. CJ knew they’d found it when they emerged from the tree line and looked down on an expanse of land no more than twenty feet below them. Artie was right; it was a perfect spot. He saw the natural path right away, a shallow gorge buffered on each side by tall grass.

The bluff, as Artie called it, was more a hill that ended somewhat abruptly, and as CJ looked down he saw it wasn’t a vertical drop but a slope with an angle around fifty-five degrees. If a bear was chasing him, he’d attempt to navigate it, but he’d much prefer finding a way around without imminent danger as a motivator.

While CJ admired the view, spotting the river through the bare trees ahead, Artie walked over to a large tree close to the drop-off and hunkered down in a spot that looked to have been made for him. And it probably had been, hollowed out by his backside during countless hours of immobile observance. CJ looked for a place to do the same, and found a likely candidate in a tree about eight feet from Artie. Thor, once he’d sniffed around a bit, seemed to understand the general principle, and he too found a spot among the brown leaves, positioning himself so he could look down over the land that spread out below.

The two men and the dog stayed that way until the woods around them began to return to normal, as the birds and small animals that had stopped at their arrival forgot about them and renewed their private conversations.

It was twenty minutes later when Artie spoke, keeping his voice soft, unable to carry down the slope.

“Sometimes I sit here for five minutes before a doe or a buck comes walking out of the trees just to the right there, steps out into the path, and starts walking toward the river. Almost always calm as can be.” He shifted a bit against the tree, but not enough that CJ heard the movement. “And there are other days when I sit here until the sun’s almost gone and I know that there hasn’t been a deer within miles of me.”

It wasn’t something that required a response, and so CJ offered none. Artie turned quiet, and CJ thought he was done, but a few minutes later, Artie whispered, “And you know what? I love it just as much when I get to sit here all day.”

CJ had been watching the tall grass on the far side of the path, alert for any movement that seemed out of sync with the wind, and while he was a firm believer that the act of hunting was its own reward, he couldn’t wholly agree with Artie’s sentiment.

“I can’t say I love it as much,” CJ whispered back. “No matter how perfect everything might be, there’s that small part of me that’s unfulfilled if I don’t go home with something.”

“That’s because you’re not old and don’t mind dragging it back to camp,” Artie said with a quiet laugh.

Another ten minutes passed before either of them said anything, and this time it was CJ who spoke, going back to Artie’s earlier words.

“Aren’t you frustrated when you sit here all day, knowing there’s nothing out there—no chance of something stepping out?”

When Artie didn’t answer right away, CJ looked over and saw the man watching the grass, his eyes sharp. Finally, he said, “The only time it’s frustrating is when I know they
are
there and they won’t step out.”

Thor sensed it before either of them saw it, and it was then that Thor proved he was a natural hunting dog because instead of snapping his head up, the dog raised it slowly so as not to frighten the prey.

“Two o’clock, ten yards in the grass,” Artie said, not moving a muscle.

The only parts of his body CJ moved were his eyes. It took him almost a full fifteen seconds to spot it, and he only did so when the entirety of the brown grass went one way with the wind except for a small section that went in the other direction. CJ almost lost it twice, so closely did its color match the surroundings, but it was getting closer to the shorter grass, to the natural path that would take it to the water.

It didn’t so much as step out of the covering as it just appeared there.

It was a thing of beauty, large and powerfully built. As it lifted its head to survey the land, CJ counted eleven points and couldn’t tell if one had broken off on the other side or if the asymmetry was natural. Even from the distance CJ was at, he thought he could see the flecks of moisture on the snout, hear grunting as the animal tested the air. At one point it shifted until it was looking directly toward the hunting party, but it couldn’t see CJ and Artie against the trees, and Thor, watching the massive buck with just the slightest tremor running down his back, stayed still as a statue. After a time, the buck turned and started toward the river.

CJ let it get a few paces away, let it find its rhythm before he moved. He had the gun in his hand and had pulled away from the tree, positioning himself closer to the bluff’s edge, when he realized what he was doing. With a sheepish smile, he turned to Artie, the man who had brought him, and whose deer this was by virtue of his hospitality. Except that he found that Artie hadn’t moved. The older man sat with his back against the tree, gun across his lap, and he returned CJ’s smile with one of his own, then gestured for CJ to take the shot.