Hunter's Moon (11 page)

The problem was that despite Maryann’s obvious failings, in this case she was probably right: most of these people were here because of the Baxter name. Not that it mattered much. All of them were here for their own reasons, and that included Sal’s family. This day meant different things for each of them. He was in no position to judge the various motives represented by the sea of bodies.

“Then worry about those who knew him,” he said before leaving his sister at the door.

The priest was talking to CJ’s father, another family member CJ had only briefly addressed. But unlike Maryann, CJ would have to talk to his father eventually. He just didn’t have to like it.

All of a sudden it seemed too warm in the room. CJ saw a door on the other side and headed for it, passing by his father without looking at him and hitting the metal door harder than necessary.

The air outside was crisp; it was the kind of air that made him wish he hadn’t given up smoking. Except for the occasional cigar, he didn’t light up anymore, and he normally didn’t miss it, but right now he really wanted a cigarette. He jammed his hands into the pockets of his suit jacket and took a deep breath, which was one of the things they taught you to do when you were hit with a craving. It didn’t help.

“Tough day?”

He hadn’t heard Julie come out, but she was at his side like a specter appearing from nowhere.

“Try getting a manuscript back from your editor,” CJ said. “That’s a tough day.”

Julie’s laugh was light and it matched the look in her eyes.

CJ started dating Julie when he was a junior, and she a freshman. They’d remained a couple until the summer before CJ left for Vanderbilt. By then, CJ’s relations with his family had driven a wedge between him and the whole of Adelia which, as CJ regretted for a long time afterward, encompassed Julie. When he’d left for Tennessee, he didn’t even say goodbye. She’d sent him a single letter, to which he hadn’t responded. He hadn’t even opened it. It was amazing how the passage of so much time had not helped to diminish how much one could feel like a heel.

“I can imagine,” she said. “If I remember correctly, you never liked to be told you were wrong.”

He gave her a puzzled look.

“I’m not sure where you’re getting that from,” he said. “I’m usually pretty agreeable.”

She gave a half smile—more of a smirk—then said, “Second grade. The BB gun.”

He didn’t remember right away; it took one long look at her amused, expectant face before it came to him, and with the memory came a smile of his own.

“It sank in there pretty good,” he said.

“A half inch is what you said after they dug it out.”

“I still think that’s the most pain I’ve ever been in,” he laughed.

“Shooting yourself, or when they dug it out?”

“Let’s just say the experience as a whole.” CJ shook his head. “I can’t believe you remember that.”

“One seldom forgets teaching moments,” Julie said. “After watching you do that, I can say that I was never tempted to shoot myself in the foot.”

“At least something good came out of it, then,” CJ said.

Julie smiled at that, but the expression didn’t last long. A gust of cold wind whipped around them, and she folded her arms, looked down at her boots. Then she looked up at CJ. “I’m going to miss him.”

CJ didn’t answer right away except to give a thoughtful nod. From what he’d been able to gather from listening to the family conversation over the last two days, it was quite possible the only two people who would miss the old man were standing outside the funeral home in the cold, listening to the start of the organ music through the closed door.

“I will too,” he answered.

When they went back inside, it was to find that everyone else had taken their seats and the priest looked ready to begin. So when CJ and Julie walked past Father Tom to get to their spots in the second and third pews, CJ knew how it must have looked. Julie had a spot on the end, next to her husband, while CJ had to work his way past several family members to take his place next to his brother, which in itself was an awkward arrangement. But it was either that spot or several rows farther back, where his mother sat, and he suspected the town already had enough gossip fodder, not to mention that he’d walked in late with a woman he used to date, and who was now married to his cousin.

As Father Tom began the mass, CJ tried to ignore the feeling of hundreds of eyes on the back of his head. Instead he tried to concentrate on Father Tom, which was something of a necessity anyway. It had been so long since he’d set foot in a Catholic church that he couldn’t remember all of the audience participation parts—when to stand, when to kneel, what to say in response to Father Tom’s words. Most of it was there in his brain, packed away like winter clothes in summer, only he couldn’t recall any of it quickly enough to keep in time with most everyone else. He realized, when he was the only one who responded to some part of the liturgy by kneeling while everyone else sat, that he’d retained virtually nothing from his days as an altar boy. So he was relieved when Father Tom started into his sermon, even though that meant having to listen to the man talk.

Father Tom had been a priest at St. Anthony’s ever since CJ could remember. Even then he’d seemed old, although he couldn’t have been more than thirty-five when CJ was in middle school. He’d been an altar boy for Father Tom, as well as for Father Paul, the younger priest who was now a bishop in Arizona. And, listening to the sermon now, CJ remembered why mass had seemed so interminable back then. To say that he was a poor public speaker would have been the height of generosity. The fact was that his voice had the sound of sandpaper doing a slow drag across rusted metal.

It was a voice that had, ironically, probably prompted more sin than repentance. For all of the altar boys forced to take their cues from Father Tom, the voice became something one could not simply ignore, a luxury afforded to the people in the pews. With all of the tasks the boy had to perform, he couldn’t risk dozing off and missing the ringing of a bell, or the dousing of a candle. Yet it was such an insufferable voice that more than one boy had found their irritation turning to anger the longer the priest talked. This emotion, depending on the boy, and the number of masses with which they assisted, was easily nudged toward mischief, a planning of some recompense against the offending priest—a man whose only crime was to share the Good News with an instrument ill-suited to the task. Over the decades, Father Tom had suffered through his share of indignities, committed at the hands of his black- and white-clad helpers, such as the release of a skunk in the church—a feat which had impressed CJ, since the boy who’d released the animal, Theo Erwin, had done so without getting sprayed himself.

After that incident, CJ experienced a burst of creativity. He wrote a short story titled
The Skunk in the Church
. It was the first time CJ had written for pleasure, and once he’d begun, he couldn’t stop. In a way, CJ owed his career to the sore-bottomed Theo Erwin, who had earned the distinction of being the only boy ever punished for a plot against the priest. CJ suspected he also owed his career to the sandpaper-voiced Father Tom, and to a certain white-striped mammal. As he considered this, he found himself hoping that his writing would never inherit the animal’s smell.

The VFW hall was as fitting a place as any for the post-funeral gathering. It was large enough, it was centrally located, and most important it smelled of the unusual, but oddly pleasant, mingled aromas of pancakes and cigars.

Sal had been a VFW member for more than fifty years, and to have heard his wife tell it, he had spent more time here than at his home. He would bring Graham and CJ here for the Saturday morning pancake breakfast, sitting at the long tables, sticky syrup spots on the red tablecloths. Sal brought the boys here on other occasions too, when the men would sit around playing cards, and Graham and CJ would be free to play foosball, or the pinball machine that was rigged so they didn’t need a quarter to play.

When he walked in the place following the procession from the cemetery, CJ couldn’t help but smile. This was one of the most solid memories from his childhood, and being back here made everything else seem more tangible. His only wish was that he would not have to spend every moment dodging well-wishers, acquaintances, extended family, and fans.

It seemed everyone was a fan, and each of them wanted to tell him which of his novels was their favorite, or which character they most identified with. And while it was flattering, and even as he wondered why all of this interest didn’t seem to translate to steadier sales, there was a limit to how many times he could hear someone confide that Julian McDermott had mirrored their own childhood, or that they’d had a mother like Shannon Easterling. It almost came as a relief, then, when someone wanted to talk about his arm rather than his books—lamenting that he’d never made it to the majors. Even so, after a time, his eyes developed a glazed look, and he found himself nodding his head and muttering “hmmm” to everything.

As he fielded this steady stream of bodies, he kept an eye on the members of his immediate family, particularly Graham and his father. As at the funeral, CJ had been next to Graham at the graveside, but they’d hardly made eye contact, much less spoken. As for his father, the ride from the church to the cemetery found most of the immediate family, CJ included, crammed into Uncle Edward’s Expedition, where CJ and his old man exchanged a few pleasantries. His father had never been much of a talker anyway, except when he was yelling at CJ’s mother, so what CJ had gotten in the Expedition was about as much as he’d have expected to get had he still lived here and saw the man daily.

CJ extricated himself from his latest conversation—an older woman who looked familiar, who said she used to teach his English class in middle school—and worked his way over to the table that held the drinks, where he approached another familiar face.

“Hello, Gabe,” CJ said.

For as long as CJ could remember, Gabe Donnelly, in his overalls and navy blue work shirt, had been a constant presence in town. When something needed doing, Gabe was there to do it, aided by whoever happened to be his assistant at the time. And in a town like Adelia, where a sense of identity is cultivated and maintained by community events, Gabe’s role made him synonymous with the events themselves. It was hard to think of the town fair, a school play, a parade, the Fall Festival, or anything else that happened in Adelia without recalling a picture of Gabe making sure everything went off without a hitch.

Even though at this moment Gabe was out of his normal uniform—wearing gray pants, a white shirt, and a blue tie with a small stain near the knot—CJ suspected it was Gabe who had set up the VFW for this afternoon.

“CJ Baxter,” the handyman said.

CJ had no idea how old Gabe was, only that he’d always looked old, and that he looked now just as he had when CJ left for college. He’d have believed any number between fifty and seventy. The gray hair, weathered skin, and hands roughened by years of hard labor could have been hallmarks of that entire age range.

“I’m guessing I have you to thank for setting this place up?”

Gabe glanced around at the VFW hall and shrugged. “Didn’t take long. Doug did most of the work.”

CJ guessed that Doug was Gabe’s current assistant.

“Well, thanks to both of you,” CJ said.

Gabe grunted and didn’t say anything for a while. After a time, he caught CJ’s eye. “Sal was a good one,” he said. “Not too many good ones left.”

“No, there’s not,” CJ agreed. It would only occur to him later that Gabe’s comment might have been something more than a blanket statement about general humanity. It was quite possible he’d been referring to CJ’s family. But even with this narrower interpretation, he would have agreed with the assessment.

When Gabe walked off, people left CJ alone for a while, and he stayed by the table, his eyes finding his brother. Graham was talking with a short man in a nice suit, who had hung around the periphery of the afternoon’s activities. CJ had noticed him right away because of his eyes; they seemed to be in constant motion, and CJ guessed he didn’t miss much. What made him truly interesting, though, was the way he smiled: all warmth and charm, and the eyes never stopping, looking through and around a person. A person like this was a gold mine for a writer. CJ learned more about writing by watching people than he did from just about anything else, and so it thrilled him when he found someone interesting to watch.

Ben, Julie’s husband, approached the table and got himself a drink. He nodded at CJ and was about to head back to his wife when CJ pointed at the stranger.

“Who’s that?” he asked his cousin. “With my brother.”

Ben followed the line of CJ’s pointed finger.

“I think they said his name’s Daniel Wolfowitz,” he answered. “He’s your brother’s new campaign manager.”

CJ mouthed a silent
oh
and returned his eyes to the pair across the room, and it occurred to him, as he watched the men talk, that he hadn’t heard a single person who wasn’t directly associated with the family mention anything about Graham’s senate run. There were, undoubtedly, a number of reasons for that—not the least of which was the short time he’d been in town. There had simply been few opportunities for anyone to bend his ear about his brother. He imagined that if he stayed in Adelia longer than it took to say a proper goodbye to Sal, and then to work on the article for
The Atlantic
, which he wasn’t sure he would write, he’d hear a lot more.