Hunter's Moon (6 page)

After a satisfied grunt, he went back inside and collected Thor’s food and water dishes, and the bag of dog food from the pantry. The dog must have intuited what was happening because he positioned himself at the driver’s side door and looked expectantly at CJ. The last thing CJ did before locking and shutting the door of the house was to write a note to Janet that said,
I’ll
pay for the window
. He suspected he would pay for a good deal more than that, but as he backed out of the driveway and drove off, his dog in the seat next to him, he only wished he could see the look on his wife’s face when she got home.

Chapter 4

Adelia, New York

It was one of those infrequent days when Artie wished six o’clock would come so he could close the store. By right, Artie could close the store whenever he wanted, but Kaddy’s had been open until six every day since his grandfather had first opened it, and the only times it had closed early, excepting holidays and the Fall Festival, were when his wife, Artie’s grandmother, went into labor with one of their five children, and when Artie’s mother had birthed him and his two sisters. Artie’s father had always chided him that the difficulty Artie had caused his mother when she was giving birth to him closed Kaddy’s for an additional day. So Artie had contributed to a red balance sheet right out of the gate.

The day had been slow, which was unusual for a Thursday. This was the day when his customers planned their Friday evening activities, which forced them to remember all the projects that waited for them over the weekend, which then brought to mind all the things they’d need to complete said projects. They would stop in and buy these things on Thursday so they could enjoy Friday night while assuaging guilt with the belief that they’d purchased everything they needed for Saturday, convincing themselves that no matter how late they stayed out on Friday, they’d still dive into their to-do lists bright and early the next morning.

Artie’s income was culled in near equal measure from those who created projects just so they could buy a tool, and those who bought a tool as a means of convincing themselves they were one step closer to taking care of that one thing they’d been telling their wives they’d take care of for months. Entrepreneurialism and guilt were Artie’s most effective salesmen.

“What do you say, Cadbury? Is this the day we close up early?”

The scarecrow didn’t answer, although Artie thought the straw man’s frown looked more disapproving than normal. But Cadbury seemed to be in a sourer mood than usual. Consequently, Artie had left him alone most of the day.

Cadbury had been a gift from his 1998 Little League team, one of many that Artie had sponsored over the years. This was the last one to win the state championship, and they’d done so in storybook fashion. As was so often the case with good baseball stories, the magical event in this one took place in the bottom of the ninth, with two out, the tying run on base, and the batter down to his last strike. Artie was just about to head to the field house to call for the pizza, to celebrate a successful, if not ultimately rewarding, year. He also had to get the trophies and the cake from his car. The pitch had come high and inside, and it seemed to Artie that the batter, a small kid who had not hit well all season, had hesitated too long before swinging. It sounded like a gunshot when he made contact. The ball had rocketed over left field, and Artie had watched the outfielder run for the fence while the diminutive batter started to round the bases. Even before the ball cleared the fence (and Artie could not believe a kid the size of the batter could have hit the ball that hard) he knew it was a home run. As the crowd erupted, Artie followed the ball with his eyes until he lost it in the man-high corn of the farm that adjoined the baseball field.

An hour later, after the wild celebration at home plate, the presentation of the championship trophy, then the pizza and the distribution of the smaller trophies Artie had brought, someone thought to go out to the corn field and find the winning ball. It had become a team activity, and even Artie had joined in.

Ultimately, one of the boys found the ball perched precariously on the scarecrow’s hat. It was a one-in-a-million shot. Days later, Artie had found Cadbury on his doorstep, newly mounted on his own stand, with a card affixed to his chest, signed by every member of the team. He’d been in the corner ever since, and in some ways he was Artie’s most trusted confidant, or at least his best listener.

Artie wondered if the slow foot traffic had anything to do with Sal Baxter’s death. The news seemed to color most of the conversations he’d heard since word came down from the Baxter place this morning. Some of that conversation was from people who’d been involved in the pool, and who would not be collecting on Sal’s choice of today as the day to cast off his mortal coil. Artie, who was mildly miffed along those lines, would have never spoken those sentiments to other people. Although he’d let Cadbury in on his displeasure.

Outside his store window, only a few cars moved along Main Street. This told him that whatever it was that had affected his business today was making itself felt on the whole town, or at least that portion he could see from his vantage point on his stool. Artie sighed and looked over at the pallet of Scotts fertilizer, which he should have been moving to a display near the door. He knew that wasn’t likely to happen now; in fact, it was more likely that he’d close the store, and since history didn’t favor that action either, he knew the pallet would be waiting there for him tomorrow.

He reached for the book he’d placed on the counter, open and facedown to preserve his spot. With it in that position he could see the author photo on the dust jacket. Every time he bought one of CJ Baxter’s books it was something of a treat to see how CJ had changed, how the few years that had passed since his last book had made their marks on his person.

He’d read all of CJ’s books, and so far, he liked this one well enough, although it was unlikely it would replace
Road
to Glens Falls
as his favorite.
The Buffalo Hunter
was probably more literary than the others. The paragraphs were longer, and CJ seemed to be going for weightier ideas. It wasn’t quite as accessible as CJ’s other books, but Artie could see that CJ was experimenting.

Like everyone else in Adelia, Artie had not laid eyes on CJ since the boy left for college. Although he had to remind himself that CJ was hardly a boy anymore. He had to be in his mid–thirties now. He’d simply been a boy when Artie last saw him, which meant he remained a boy in the hardware store owner’s thoughts. As he picked up the book to read a few more pages, he wondered again if the funeral would bring CJ back to Adelia.

He’d certainly written about the place enough. Artie had followed a bit of the critical banter about CJ’s work—specifically how much of it was autobiographical. Artie had a unique vantage point on the question and thought he could speak with some authority. And in his opinion, he thought that anyone who could read even one of CJ Baxter’s books and not immediately see that a good portion of it was drawn from this place, and from his own childhood, was a complete idiot.

He wondered, then, what it would be like in the house on the hill if CJ did indeed make an appearance. Very little of what was written in CJ’s books was, with his own family as the model, complimentary to his kin. And that might make for some awkward moments.

Of course, drama had been a frequent guest among the Bax-ters as far back as Artie could remember. That was something else upon which he had a unique perspective, and not just because of the time he’d spent as George’s boyhood friend. While CJ was in high school, he’d spent a few summers working at Kaddy’s. In Artie’s opinion, CJ was the best employee he’d ever had. He was a natural with tools, and he had the eye of a true craftsman. Over the last two years that he’d been in his employ, Artie had been confident enough in the boy’s skills that he’d dropped CJ’s name to anyone looking for someone to do basic contractor work. During that time, CJ must have hung drywall, replaced a roof, or installed an appliance for half of the families in Adelia.

But where CJ had really excelled was as a woodworker. The week the boy left for college, he’d presented Artie with a rifle stock he’d coaxed from a piece of balsam wood. It was a beautiful piece, with silver inlays and Artie’s name carved by the rear swing swivel. Artie had it finished with Remington parts that winter, and had used it the following fall for hunting whitetail. It was a shame CJ had never got the chance to see it.

He took a last look at CJ’s photo, searching for the boy in the man he’d become, and feeling much older than he had when he’d walked into the store this morning. With a sigh, he turned the book over and found his place in the story.

Nashville, Tennessee

Each August, when highs over a hundred degrees came with regularity and people moved with the purposed paces of those traveling between air-conditioning, young men and women from all over the country—all over the world—descended on the city of Nashville. An energized mass of fashionable clothes and deep credit lines, the odor of privilege evident before one got close enough to smell them. They were the high academic achievers, the sons and daughters of wealthy alums, the athletes who could devote sufficient time to study in order to remain eligible under the university’s high standards. It was a throng that filled West End Avenue as lines of cars streamed onto campus grounds, as those who arrived early navigated their bicycles around Centennial Park, or walked past businesses that had been waiting for this influx. Most of these were returning students, with a year or more under their belts, their knowledge of the campus and the surrounding city hard-earned. Among these, though, were a percentage of teens who, while as energized as the rest of their contemporaries, were also bewildered—overmatched by the sprawling university and the weight of its history.

At one time, CJ had been among these first-year students, although that seemed like a very long time ago. Even so, he could remember stepping onto the pristine grass at Charles Hawkins Field for the very first time. He’d taken off his shoes and let his toes sink into the grass, absorbed in a place that seemed so unlike his home.

It was his first time away from the Northeast, and he’d come with no preconceived ideas about what life in this part of the country would be like. It surprised him how quickly he learned to love it. It had taken only a week—the beauty of the campus, the friendliness of the locals, and one lovely young lady—to start him toward eventually achieving the status of transplanted Yankee, a status he had held now for seventeen years.

In truth, Nashville was Southern sleight of hand—a halfway house of sorts for Northerners. A cosmopolitan community that over the last few decades had seen its demographics change to the point where, in certain communities, it was difficult to find someone native to Nashville, or even to Tennessee. Whole sections of the city and the surrounding suburbs were made up of people who came from somewhere else. Nashville was a transitional city, a place to stop and get one’s bearings before continuing on to the deeper South, to places where families could trace roots back to the dawn of the nation. In that respect, those far-flung places were much like Adelia.

CJ had come to Vanderbilt on a baseball scholarship. Scouts from all over the country had come to Adelia to watch him play. He could have punched his higher education ticket to just about anywhere. He’d selected Vanderbilt for reasons that still eluded him, and he’d played ball for just a year. He knew in high school that he would not play baseball for a living; his heart just wasn’t in it. It was in writing, which became his major after a single misguided semester in anthropology. He’d devoured the courses on literary studies, creative writing, and specialized critical studies. His first novel was published while he was in his third year.

From the beginning, there were those who suspected that much of CJ’s work was autobiographical. There were others who suspected it wasn’t quite as good as most everyone else seemed to think it was. CJ thought that both suspicions might or might not have been right; it depended on the day.

He guided the Honda onto I-40, his detour off the interstate to navigate West End so that he could drive by his alma mater now finished. He liked to do that every now and then; he’d experienced the refining of his writing skills in this institution, and it always energized him to pass by, even if he was now almost twice as old as many of the freshmen.

His detour had something of the delaying tactic in it as well. He hadn’t been back to Adelia since 1993. He’d been close—as near as Albany in support of one book or another. He wondered what it would be like after all this time, even as he suspected that it would be just as he’d left it. It wouldn’t have surprised him to discover that, aside from the prisons, not a single new structure had been built. Adelia was that kind of place.

Thoreau was in the passenger seat, watching out the window, eyes tracking anything that moved. He’d whined once when they passed Centennial Park, and CJ had scratched behind his ears until West End fed into Broadway. He didn’t have any idea how much trouble he would get into for stealing his own dog. For what he was paying his lawyer, CJ thought he should have been able to commit a murder in broad daylight and walk away a free man.