High Hunt

“Es geht mir gut,” I answered, almost without thinking. Then I threw some more at him to see if he really knew any German. “Und wie geht’s Ihnen heute?”

“Mit dieses und jenes,” he said, pointing at his legs and repeating that weary joke that all Germans seem to think is so hysterically funny.

“Es freut mich,” I said dryly.

“How long were you in Germany?” he asked, coming down the steps.

“Eighteen months.”

“Where were you stationed?”

“Kitzingen. Then later in Wertheim.”

“Ach so? Ich war zwei Jahren in München.”

“Die Haupstadt von the Welt? Ganz glücklich!”

Jack chortled gleefully. “See, Mike, I told you he’d be able to sprechen that shit as well as you.”

“He’s been at me all week to talk German to you when he brought you over,” Mike said.

“Man”—Jack laughed—“you two sounded like a couple of real Krauts. Too bad you don’t know any Japanese like I do. Then we could all talk that foreign shit. Bug hell out of Sloane.” Very slowly, mouthing the words with exaggerated care, he spoke a sentence or two in Japanese. “Know what that means?”

“One-two-three-four-five?” Mike asked.

“Come on, man. I said, ‘How are you? Isn’t this a fine day?’” He repeated it in Japanese again.

“Couldn’t prove it by me,” I said, letting him have his small triumph.

He grinned at both of us, obviously very proud of himself. “Hey, Mike, how’s that boat comin’?” he asked. “Is it gonna be ready by duck season?”

“Shit!” Mike snorted. “Come on out back and look at the damn thing.”

We trooped on around to the back of the house. He had a fourteen-foot boat overturned on a pair of sawhorses out by the garage. It was surrounded by a litter of paint-scrapings which powdered the burned-out grass.

“Look at that son of a bitch,” Mike said. “I’ve counted twelve coats of paint already, and I’m still not down to bare wood. It feels pretty spongy in a couple places, too—probably rotten underneath. I’m afraid to take off any more paint—probably all that’s holding it together.”

Jack laughed. “That’s what you get for doin’ business with Thorwaldsen. He slipped you the Royal Swedish Weenie. I could have told you that.”

“That sure won’t do me much good right now,” Mike said gloomily.

We went into the house long enough for me to meet Betty. She was a big, pleasant girl with a sweet face. I liked her, too. Then the three of us went out and piled into Jack’s car. Betty stood on the little porch and waved as we pulled out of the driveway.

Jack drove on out to the highway, and we headed back toward town through the blood-colored light of the sunset.

“You have yourself a steady Schatzie in Germany?” Mike asked me.

“Last few months I did,” I told him. “Up until then I was being faithful to my ‘One and Only’ back here in the States. Of course ‘One and Only’ had a different outlook on life.”

“Got yourself one of those letters, huh?”

“Eight pages long,” I said. “By the end of the fourth page, it was all my fault. At the end of the last page, I was eighteen kinds of an unreasonable son of a bitch—you know the type.”

“Oh, gosh, yes.” Mike laughed. “We used to tack ours up on a bulletin board. So then you found yourself a Schatzie?”

I nodded. “Girl named Heidi. Pretty good kid, really.”

“I got myself tied up with a nympho in a town just outside Munich,” Mike said. “She even had her own house, for God’s sake. Her folks were loaded. I spent every weekend and all my leave-time over at her place. Exhausting!” He rolled his eyes back in his head. “I was absolutely used when I came back to the States.”

I laughed. “She had it pretty well made then. At least you probably didn’t get that ‘Marry me Chee-Eye, und take me to der land uf der big P-X’ routine.”

“No chance. I said good-bye over the telephone five minutes before the train left.”

“That’s the smart way. I figured I knew this girl of mine pretty well—hell, I’d done everything but hit her over the head to make her realize that we weren’t a permanent thing. I guess none of it sunk in. She must have had visions of a vine-covered cottage in Pismo Beach or some damned thing. Anyway, when I told her I had my orders and it was Auf Wiedersehen, she just flat flipped out. Started to scream bloody murder and then tried to carve out my liver and lights with a butcher knife.”

They both laughed.

“You guys think it’s funny?” I said indignantly. “You ever try to take an eighteen-inch butcher knife away from a hysterical woman without hurting her or getting castrated in the process?”

They howled with laughter.

I quite suddenly felt very shitty. Heidi had been a sweet, trusting kid. In spite of everything I’d told her, she’d gone on dreaming. Everybody’s entitled to dream once in a while. And if it hadn’t been for her, God knows how I’d have gotten through the first few months after that letter. Now I was treating her like she was a dirty joke. What makes a guy do that anyway?

“I had a little Jap girl try to knife me in Tokyo once,” Jack said, stopping for a traffic light. “I just kicked her in the stomach. Didn’t get a scratch. I think she was on some kinda dope—most of them gooks are. Anyway she just went wild for no reason and started wavin’ this harakari knife and screamin’ at me in Japanese. Both of us bare-assed naked, too.”

The light changed and we moved on.

“How’d you get the knife away from the German girl?” Mike asked.

I didn’t really want to talk about it anymore. “Got hold of her wrist,” I said shortly. “Twisted her arm a little. After she dropped it, I kicked it under the bed and ran like hell. One of the neighbor women beaned me with a pot on my way downstairs. The whole afternoon was just an absolute waste.”

They laughed again, and we drifted off into a new round of war stories. I was glad we’d gotten off the subject. I was still a little ashamed of myself.

It took us a good hour to get to Sloane’s house out in Ruston. The sun had gone down, and the streets were filled with the pale twilight. People were still out in their yards, guys cutting their lawns and kids playing on the fresh-cut grass and the like. Suddenly, for no particular reason, it turned into a very special kind of evening for me.

Ruston perches up on the side of the hill that rises steeply up from both sides of Point Defiance. The plush part, where Sloane lived, overlooks the Narrows, a long neck of salt water that runs down another thirty miles to Olympia. The Narrows Bridge lies off to the south, the towers spearing into the sky and the bridge itself arching in one long step across the mile or so of open water. The ridge that rises sharply from the beach over on the peninsula is thick with dark fir trees, and the evening sky is almost always spectacular. It may just be one of the most beautiful places in the whole damned world. At least I’ve always thought so.

Sloane’s house was one of the older places on the hill—easily distinguishable from the newer places because the shrubs and trees were full grown.

We pulled up behind McKlearey’s car in the deepening twilight and got out. Jack’s Plymouth and McKlearey’s beat-up old Chevy looked badly out of place—sort of like a mobile poverty area.

“Pretty plush, huh?” Jack said, his voice a little louder than necessary. The automatic impulse up here was to lower your voice. Jack resisted it.

“I smell money,” I answered.

“It’s all over the neighborhood,” Mike said. “They gotta have guys come in with special rakes to keep it from littering the streets.”

“Unsightly stuff,” I agreed as we went up Sloane’s brick front walkway.

Jack rang the doorbell, and I could hear it chime way back in the house.

A small woman in a dark suit opened the door. “Hello, Jack—Mike,” she said. She had the deepest voice I’ve ever heard come out of a woman. “And you must be Dan,” she said. “I’ve heard so much about you.” She held her hand out to me with a grace that you’ve got to be born with. I’m just enough of a slob myself to appreciate good breeding. I straightened up and took her hand.

“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Mrs. Sloane,” I said.

“Claudia,” she said, smiling. “Please call me Claudia.”

“Claudia,” I said, smiling back at her.

We went on into the house. The layout was a bit odd, but I could see the reason for it. The house faced the street with its back to the view—at least that’s how it looked from outside. Actually, the front door simply opened onto a long hallway that ran on through to the back where the living room, dining room, and kitchen were. The carpets were deep, and the paneling was rich.

“You have a lovely home,” I said. I guess that’s what you’re supposed to say.

“Why, thank you, Dan,” she said. She seemed genuinely pleased.

The living room was huge, and the west wall was all glass. Over beyond the dark upswell of the peninsula, the sky was slowly darkening. Down on the water, a small boat that looked like a lighted toy from up there bucked the tide, moving very slowly and kicking up a lot of wake.

“How on earth do you ever get anything done?” I asked. “I’d never be able to get away from the window.”

She laughed, her deep voice making the sound musical. “I pull the drapes,” she said. She looked up at me. She couldn’t have been much over five feet tall. Her dark hair was very smooth—almost sleek. I quickly looked back out the window to cover my confusion. This was one helluva lot of woman.

There was a patio out back, and I could see Sloane manhandling a beer keg across the flagstones. McKlearey sprawled in a lawn chair, and it didn’t look as if he was planning to offer any help. Sloane glanced, red-faced, up at the window.

“Hey, you drunks, get the hell on out here!” he bellowed.

“We’re set up on the patio,” Claudia said.

“Thinkin’ ahead, eh, Claude?” Jack said boisterously. “If somebody gets sick, you don’t have to get the rug cleaned.”

I cringed.

“Well,” she said, laughing, “it’s cooler out there.”

“Which one of you bastards can tap a keg?” Sloane screamed. “I’m afraid to touch the goddamn thing.”

“Help is on the way,” Mike called. We went on through the dining room and the kitchen and on out to the patio through the sliding French doors.

“I’m sure you fellows can manage now,” Claudia said, picking up a pair of black gloves from the kitchen table and coming over to stand in the open doorway. “I have to run, so just make yourselves at home.” She raised her voice slightly, obviously talking to Sloane. “Just remember to keep the screens closed on the French doors. I don’t want a house full of bugs.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Sloane yelped, coming to attention and throwing her a mock salute.

“Clown,” she said, smiling. She started to pull on the gloves, smoothing each finger carefully. “Oh, Calvin, I finished with the books for the car lot and the pawnshop. Be sure to put them where you can find them Monday morning—before you swandive into that beer keg.”

“Have we got any money?” Cal asked.

“We’ll get by,” she said. “Be sure and remind Charlie and Mel out at the Hideout that I’ll be by to check their books on Tuesday.”

“Right,” he said. He turned to us. “My wife, the IBM machine.”

“Somebody has to do the books,” she said placidly, still working on the gloves, “and after I watched this great financier add two and two and get five about nine times out of ten, I decided that it was going to be up to me to keep us out of bankruptcy court.” She smiled sweetly at him, and he made a face.

“I’m so glad to have met you, Dan,” she said, holding her hand out to me again. Her deep musical voice sent a shiver up my back. “I’m sure I’ll be seeing you again.”

“I’d hate to think we were driving you out of your own house,” I said sincerely.

“No, no. I have a meeting downtown, and then I’m running over to Yakima to visit an aunt. I’d just be in the way here anyway. You boys have fun.” She raised her voice again. “I’ll see you Monday evening, Calvin.”

He waved a brusque farewell and turned his attention back to the beer keg.

She looked at him for a moment, sighed, and went smoothly on back into the house. I suddenly wanted very much to go down to the patio and give Sloane a good solid shot to the mouth. A kiss on the cheek by way of good-bye wouldn’t have inconvenienced him all that much, and it would have spared her the humiliation of that public brush-off.

I went slowly down the three steps to the patio, staring out over the Narrows and the dark timber on the other side.

There was a sudden burst of spray from the keg and a solid “klunk” as Mike set the tap home. “There you go, men,” he said. “The beer-drinking lamp is lit.”

“Well, ahoy there, matey,” Jack said, putting it on a bit too much.

The first pitcher was foam, and Sloane dumped it in the fishpond. “Drink, you little bastards.” He giggled.

Somebody, Claudia probably, had set a trayful of beer mugs up on a permanently anchored picnic table under one of the trees. I got one of them and filled it at the keg and drifted over to the edge of the patio where the hill broke sharply away, running down to the tangled Scotch-broom and madrona thicket below.

I could hear the others horsing around back at the keg, but I ignored them for the moment, concentrating on the fading line of daylight along the top of the hills across the Narrows.

“Pretty, huh?”

It was Sloane. He stood with a mug of beer, looking out over the water. “I used to come up here when I was a kid and just look at it. Weren’t many houses or anything up here then.”

Somehow I couldn’t picture Sloane as a kid.

“I made up my mind then that someday I was gonna live up here,” he went on. “Took me a long time, but I made it.”

“Was it worth it?” I couldn’t resist asking him. I didn’t like him much right then.

“Every lousy, scratching, money-grubbing, fuckin’ minute of it,” he said with a strange intensity. “Sometimes I sit up here lookin’ out at it, and I just break out laughing at all the shit I had to crawl through to get here.”

“We all do funny things,” I said. Now he had me confused.

“I’d have never made it without Claudia,” he said. “She’s really something, isn’t she?”

“She’s a real lady,” I said.

“She was hoppin’ tables in a beer bar when I met her,” he said. “She had it even then. I can meet guys and swing deals and all, but she’s the one who puts it all together and makes it go. She’s one in a million, Dan.”

“I can tell that,” I said. How the hell do you figure a guy like Sloane?

“Hey, you bastards,” Jack called to us, “this is a party, not a private little conflab. Come on back here.”

“Just showin’ off my scenery,” Cal said. The two of us went back to the keg.

Sloane went over and pawed around under one of the shrubs. “As soon as you guys get all squared away,” he said, “I’ve got a little goodie here for you.” He pulled out a half-gallon jug of clear liquid.

“Oh, shit!” Jack said. “Auburn tanglefoot. Goddamn Sloane and his pop-skull moonshine.”

“Guaranteed to have been aged at least two hours.” Sloane giggled.

“I thought the government men had busted up all those stills years ago,” Mike said.

“No way,” Jack said. “Auburn’d blow away if it wasn’t anchored down by all those pot stills.”

McKlearey got up and took the jug from Sloane. He opened it and sniffed suspiciously. “You sure this stuff is all right?”

“Pure, one-hundred-per-cent rotgut,” Sloane said.

“I mean, they don’t spike it with wood alcohol, do they?” There was a note of worry in Lou’s voice. “Sometimes they do that. Makes a guy go blind. His eyes fall out.”

“What’s the sense of poisoning your customers?” Sloane asked. “You ain’t gonna get much repeat business that way.”

“I’ve heard that they do it sometimes, is all,” McKlearey said. “They spike it with wood alcohol, or they use an old car radiator instead of that copper coil—then the booze gets tainted with all that gunk off the solder. Either way it makes a guy go blind. Fuckin’ eyes fall right out.”

“Bounce around on the floor like marbles, huh, Lou?” Jack said. “I can see it now. McKlearey’s eyes bouncin’ off across the patio with him chasin’ ’em.” He laughed harshly. He knew about Lou and Margaret, all right. There was no question about that now.

“I don’t think I want any,” McKlearey said, handing the jug back to Sloane.

“Old Lou’s worried about his baby-blue eyeballs,” Jack said, rubbing it in.

“I just don’t want any. OK, Alders?”

“Well, I’m gonna have some,” Mike said, reaching for the jug. “I cut my teeth on Auburn moonshine. My eyes might get a little loose now and then, but they sure as hell don’t fall out.” He rolled the jug back over his arm professionally and took a long belt.

“Now, there’s an old moonshine drinker,” Jack said. “Notice the way he handles that jug.”

We passed the jug around, and each of us tried to emulate Mike’s technique. Frankly, the stuff wasn’t much good—I’ve gotten a better taste siphoning gas. But we all smacked our lips appreciatively, said some silly-ass thing like “damn good whiskey,” and had a quick beer to flush out the taste.

McKlearey still refused to touch the stuff. He went back to his lawn chair, scowling.

“Hey, man,” Jack said, “I think my eyes are gettin’ loose.” He pressed his fingers to his eyelids.

“Fuck you, Alders,” Lou said.

“Yeah.” Jack said. “They’re definitely gettin’ loose—oops! There goes one now.” He squinted one eye shut and started pawing around on the flagstones. “Come back here, you little bastard!”

“Aw, go fuck yourself, Alders!” Lou snapped. “You’re so goddamn fuckin’ funny!”

“Oh, Mother,” Jack cried, “help me find my fuckin’ eyeball.” He was grinding Lou for all he was worth.

Lou was starting to get pretty hot, and I figured another crack or two from my brother ought to do it. I knew I should say something to cool it down, but I figured that Jack knew what he was doing. If he wanted a piece of McKlearey, that was his business.

“Hey, you guys,” Mike said, inspecting Sloane’s substantial outside fireplace, “let’s build a fire.” It was a smooth way to handle the situation.

“Why?” Sloane demanded. “You cold or something, for Chrissake?”

“No, but a fire’s kinda nice, isn’t it? I mean, what the hell?”

“Shit, I don’t care,” Cal said. “Come on. There’s a woodpile over behind the garage.”

The four of us left McKlearey sulking in his lawn chair and trooped on over to the woodpile.

It took us a while to get the fire going. We wound up going through the usual business of squatting down and blowing on it to make it catch. Finally, it took hold, and we stood around looking at it with a beery sense of having really done something worthwhile.

Then we all hauled up lawn chairs and moved the keg over handy. Even Lou pulled himself in to join the group. By then it was getting pretty dark.

Sloane had a stereo in his living room, and outside speakers as well. He was piping out a sort of standard, light music, so it was pleasant. I discovered that a shot of that rotten homemade whiskey in a glass of beer made a pretty acceptable drink, and I sat with the others drinking and telling lies.

I guess it was Jack who raised the whole damned thing. He was talking about some broad he’d laid while he was on his way down to Willapa Bay to hunt geese.

“… anyhow,” he was saying, “I went on down to Willapa—got there about four thirty or five—and put out my dekes. Colder’n a bastard, and me still about half blind with alcohol. About five thirty the geese came in—only by then my drunk had worn off, and my head felt like a goddamn balloon. Man, you want to see an act of raw courage? Just watch some poor bastard with a screamin’ hangover touch off a 12 gauge with three-inch magnum shells at a high-flyin’ goose. Man, I still hurt when I think about it.”

“Get any geese?” I asked.

“Filled out before seven,” he said. “Even filled on mallards before I started back—a real carnage. I picked up my dekes, chucked all the birds in the trunk, and headed on back up the pike. I hauled off the road in Chehalis again and went into the same bar to get well. Damned if she wasn’t right there on the first stool again.”

And that started the hunting stories. Have you ever noticed how when a bunch of guys are sitting around, the stories kind of run in cycles? First the drinking stories—“Boy did we get plastered”—then the war stories—“Funny thing happened when I was in the Army”—and then the hunting stories, or the dog stories, or the snake stories. It’s almost like a ritual, but very relaxed. Nobody’s trying to outdo anybody else. It’s just sort of easy and enjoyable. Even McKlearey and Jack called a truce on the eyeball business.

I guess maybe the fire had something to do with it. You get a bunch of guys around an open fire at night, and nine times out of ten they’ll get around to talking about hunting sooner or later. It’s almost inevitable. It’s funny some anthropologist hasn’t noticed it and made a big thing out of it.

We all sifted back through our memories, lifting out the things we’d done or stories we’d heard from others. We hunted pheasant and quail, ducks and geese, rabbits and squirrels, deer and bear, elk and mountain lions. We talked guns and ammunition, equipment, camping techniques—all of it. A kind of excitement—an urge, if you want to call it that—began to build up. The faint, barely remembered smells of the woods and of gun-oil came back with a sharpness that was almost real. Unconsciously, we all pulled our chairs in closer to the fire, tightening the circle. It was a warm night, so it wasn’t that we needed the heat of the fire.

“You know,” Jack was saying, “it’s a damn shame there’s no season open right now. We could have a real ball huntin’ together—just the bunch of us.”

“Too goddamn hot,” Lou said, pouring himself another beer.

“Not up in the mountains, it’s not,” Mike said.

“When does deer season open?” Sloane asked.

“Middle of October,” Jack said. “Of course we could go after bear. They’re predators on this side of the mountains, and the season’s always open.”

“Stick that bear hunting in your ear,” Mike said. “First you’ve got to have dogs; and second, you never know when one of those big hairy bastards is gonna come out of the brush at about ten feet. You got time for about one shot before he’s chewin’ on your head and scatterin’ your bowels around like so much confetti.”

“Yuk!” Sloane gagged. “There’s a graphic picture for you.”

“No shit, man,” Mike said. “I won’t go anywhere near a goddamn bear. I shot one just once. Never again. I had an old .303 British—ten shots, and it took every goddamn one of them. That son of a bitch just kept comin’. Soaked up lead like a blotter. The guys that hunt those babies all carry .44 magnum pistols for close work.”

“Hell, man,” McKlearey said, “you can stop a tank with a .44 mag.”

Mike looked at him. “One guy I talked to jumped a bear once and hit him twice in the chest with a .300 Weatherbee and then went to the pistol. Hit him four times at point-blank range with a .44 mag before he went down. Just literally blew him to pieces, and the damned bear was still trying to get at him. I talked to the guy three years later, and his hands were still shakin’. No bears for this little black duck!”

“Would a .45 stop one?” I asked.

“Naw, the military bullet’s got a hard jacket,” Mike said. “Just goes right through.”

“No, I mean the long Colt. It’s a 250-grain soft lead bullet.”

“That oughta do it,” Jack said. “Just carryin’ the weight would slow him down enough for a guy to make a run for it.”

“I’ve got an old Colt frontier-style stored with my clothes and books in Seattle,” I said, leaning over and refilling my beer mug.

“No kiddin’?” Jack said. “What the hell did you get a cannon like that for?”

“Guy I knew needed money. I lent him twenty, and he gave me the gun as security—never saw him again. The gun may be hot for all I know.”