The Hunt Club (2 page)

“I got my bag phone in my daypack,” one of the men said from behind me. “I’ll call it in.”

“Good idea,” somebody said.

“Charlie Simons,” somebody else said. “God.”

“Ol’ Charlie Simons,” somebody else said. Then, almost too low to hear, “Head and hands. Not the prettiest job of degloving I’ve seen. The irony here’s pretty thick.”

Then somebody else whispered loud enough for everybody to hear, “She got that son-of-a-bitch part right.”

Some of the men gave out a quiet laugh.

I didn’t say anything, only turned from the body, my eyes down, and started back through the brush for Unc.

He knew all these men. He knew them because they’ve been a part of the whole thing out here long as he’s been alive: professional men from South of Broad entertaining themselves with the notion they were hunters. When what they did every Saturday all deer season long was just show up here, have breakfast—grits, eggs, bacon, and biscuits all cooked up before dawn by Miss Dinah Gaillard, the
black woman who lived five miles out County Road 112, and her deaf-and-dumb daughter, Dorcas, a girl a year older than me—at the clubhouse.

The kitchen where they cook it all up is just a big old iron stove and a sink set up at one end of the long, low white dining cabin we called the clubhouse, the rest of it picnic tables, screened windows, the rafters all open. Miss Dinah and Dorcas show up around 4:00
A.M
. to get things started, and Unc is always in there with them, too, laughing and talking, carrying on when I stumble in, me trying to sleep as late as I can before the members arrive. Over the years he’s learned some sign language he tries to use on Dorcas, who stops from stirring the grits or working the bacon and goes to him, puts her hands in his and slowly spells out a word or some such, the three of them laughing again for whatever it is they’re messing about, me never a part of things, only looking for coffee and heading out to build the campfire.

Then, after breakfast, Miss Dinah and Dorcas washing things up and readying for fried-chicken lunch, the members’d stand at the fire, bellies full of good food they didn’t have to make, while Unc parceled them out.

Unc knew all these South-of-Broaders. And knew it was Charles Middleton Simons, M.D.

I knew them, too, but only by the shiny Range Rovers and Suburbans and Grand Cherokees they drove, each one polished, detailed. I could size up the parking area next to the clubhouse while they were all in there eating, and know if the six-and-a-half-foot-tall ear, nose, and throat doctor was here, or the lawyer with the wireframe aviator glasses and goatee, or the fat radiologist who was always chewing on an unlit black cigar.

But I didn’t know their names because I just didn’t want to commit to memory the names of adult men who thought piling into the back of a beat-up Luv like mine and then hopping out at a stretch of dirt road was hunting. Why, too, I kept my eyes down. I just didn’t want to look any of them in the eye.

——

He was already at the truck. The Luv didn’t have a tailgate or bumper, and he was leaned against the bed.

I sat next to him. He held the top of the stick in his lap, the tip on the ground a few feet in front of him. He was moving the stick, making small shapes in the dirt, like he was thinking about writing something but wouldn’t.

He said, “One of them call sheriff’s office yet?”

I put my hands on the tops of my legs, moved them back and forth. I said, “Yep.” I waited a second, said, “You smelled it.”

“You got that right.” He stopped a second with the stick, held it still to the ground.

“And?” I said, though I knew he didn’t like that, didn’t like anybody making him give up what he didn’t want to give up.

“And what, boy?” he said. “How’d I smell it? Because I got no choice.” He stood, took a step away toward the woods on the other side of the road.

“Listen,” he said, his back to me. “Just listen.”

All I could hear was the dogs, coming closer. His back to me, he could have been anybody out here.

“Listen,” he said again, and now he turned to me: those sunglasses, the stick. It was my uncle. Nobody else.

“What I hear is all I got,” he said. “And what I can touch and what I can taste. And—” He stopped. “And all I got is what I can smell.” His shoulders fell, and he took a step toward me. “I can’t see.”

I said, “Unc, we got to talk.” I paused. “The police are on the way. You got to talk to me.”

“Listen,” he said one more time, as though I hadn’t yet said word one to him.

But this time I listened. There were a few squirrels barking. And there were the dogs working their way here. A mourning dove.

And past all this, beneath it and behind me, was the low sound of the men talking amongst themselves.

I turned. There they stood, all of them, back in the brush and looking down, a batch of hunter-orange hats at the edge of woods, between us a dirt road and twenty yards of weeds.

“They’re talking,” Unc said, “about what a son of a bitch Charlie Simons was, because he was. A son of a bitch if there ever was one.” He sat beside me again. He started with the stick in the ground again, too, still like he was almost writing.

I said, “Somebody made a joke. Said something about the irony is heavy-handed.”

He let out a breath, and I saw a smile come up on him, though I could tell he didn’t want any part of it. But it came.

“Charlie was a plastic surgeon,” Unc said. “And shot in the head.” He paused. “Hands skinned.” He took in a breath. “I imagine it was Cleve Ravenel made the joke. Him, or Buddy Rose.” He paused, moved that stick again. “Neither of them cared for that bastard much. But truth is no one give much of a damn for him.” He took in a breath. “And they’re talking about me,” he whispered, his voice gone so low I could hardly hear him for those dogs, still a good couple hundred yards off. “Because there was a time when I would have killed the man, too.”

I looked at him. Here was my uncle, somebody I thought I knew. Somebody I knew I loved.

Then I looked back to the men. Now and again one of those hunter-orange caps turned our way. I couldn’t see faces for the high weeds, only those hats turning.

“Yep,” he said. “They’re watching us.”

I quick looked at him, amazed for the millionth time at what he could figure out.

He started moving the stick again, and now, finally, I could see some kind of pattern to what he was doing: he was making a row of spiral shapes in the dirt there, like coils, each one about a foot or so across. He’d made five so far.

They were strange there on the ground, these shapes, and I wondered what he’d meant with it. But even stranger was the fact he
could do it without looking: the coils were shaky but there; no line touched itself as it grew bigger. He knew what he was doing.

I said, “There was a sign with it. With the body.”

He stopped with the stick. “No doubt that’s where my name came in.”

I said, “Yep. The sign said he was a son of a bitch, too.”

The dogs were coming closer, and I wondered if they hadn’t picked up it was human blood they were coming up on.

I said, “There was a P.S.,” and looked at him. “It said, ‘PS: Leland, can you blame me?’ ”

He shook his head, this time let out a small laugh, short and sharp.

He said, “Constance,” and still shook his head.

“You better talk to me, Unc,” I said.

But he only took that stick, dragged it back and forth through the row of shapes, wrecked them.

He stood then, faced the hunters. “Boys,” he hollered out, and all those orange caps turned this way. “The dogs are coming up,” he hollered. “Make sure and keep the damn things off that poor boy.”

“Yessir,” came a few voices.

“And Cleve Ravenel—” he called out.

“Yeah-man,” I heard, and here came one of the orange hats.

“Get your truck and go down to the clubhouse, wait for the sheriff to show up,” Unc hollered. “Then usher the brethren on back here.”

“Yessir,” the man said.

He was the one who drove the third truck out here, the cherry-red Ram 2500 with the black bed liner, the black cargo net. Unc’d picked him out to carry the last load of men, bring up the rear. He was a big man, red-faced and white hair, a beer gut that made his belt buckle disappear. He was a cancer doctor, as best I knew.

He took off his hat, rubbed the back of his head, put the other hand at his hip. He squinted at Unc, looked back to the men, then to Unc again.

“Mighty nasty work,” this Cleve Ravenel said, and I recognized his voice: the one who’d agreed with the sign.

Unc was right again.

“Sounds like,” Unc said, and nodded.

Cleve Ravenel stood there with us a few seconds, looking at Unc and the men and at Unc one more time. Then he looked at me, smiled. He winked.

“I’ll be back with the troops,” he finally said. He put the cap back on, headed past the pearl gray GMC that belonged to the short, crew-cut orthopedic surgeon.

“Cleve,” Unc called to him.

“Yeah-man?” he said, and turned, maybe too quick. He was a big man, and he looked scared. But I figured even though he was a doctor and’d seen more dead bodies than I ever would, seeing one without a head might could do that to you. Make you scared.

“On your way out stop at each stand, tell every man what’s going on over here.” He paused. “Won’t do no good to tell them to stay put. But tell them to walk on over here in the weeds on the east side of the road. Stay off the road so’s they don’t muck up any oddball tire tracks or such.”

Cleve Ravenel had a hand up at the bill of his cap to block the sun. He said, “Why’s that, Leland?”

“Just tell them,” Unc said, and turned his back to the man.

Cleve Ravenel stood there a moment longer, looking, then headed for his truck.

And now the dogs were upon us, busting out from the woods and crossing the road, the dozen of them howling and carrying on, tails wagging, most of them soaked and muddy for the low-lying land between here and the levee. It’d only be a couple minutes more before Patrick and Reynold would come through on horseback, following the pack, their purpose to scare up one last time any deer hadn’t yet moved.

Unc looked down at me, and I could see me in his glasses, two of me reflected there, me small and far away on the tail end of the Luv. Which is exactly how I felt: small, and far away.

He knew things.

Cleve Ravenel did a three-pointer, then headed away.

Unc said, “Before your Aunt Sarah ever came around, it was Constance. Then came Charlie Simons.” He paused. “Then I was out on my ass. Him a resident over to the medical college, me a snot-nosed private with the police department.” He stopped, looked to the men again. The dogs’ howling had slowed down some, as though finding what they were ape-shit over all this time was some sort of letdown.

“Then Wednesday night she gives me a call,” Unc said. He was still looking at me. “I haven’t heard from her in twenty-one years, not since the last night I ever saw her. The night I told her she was the one I was going to marry, like it or not.” He smiled, slowly shook his head. “Wednesday night she’s crying, and she tells me she’s going to kill the son of a bitch Charles Middleton Simons, M.D.”

He let out a slow whistle. He looked to the ground before him, and I was gone, my reflection. “Twenty-one years,” he whispered.

I watched him. His job with the police was something we didn’t talk about. He never said word one of it to me, not since before the fire, when he and Aunt Sarah used to come out for Christmas and Easter and he’d talk about things.

But since the fire he hadn’t said a word.

He moved his hand again, working the stick, and looked at the ground. He’d already gotten one whole spiral done, this one even clearer than the rest, steadier.

He finished the thing, said, “Better get hold of one of them bag phones. Give your momma a call.”

Then he put his boot to the shape, moved his toe back and forth in the dirt, and it was gone.

If I called my mom, she’d make me come home. And if I told her I wouldn’t—I wouldn’t—she’d haul ass down here and drag me back.

Which is why I didn’t call her, like Unc told me to. I didn’t want her to come screaming in here in that old Stanza she drives, didn’t want her making a scene in front of everyone here.

So I left Unc there at the Luv, made like I was going over to use the bag phone off the man who’d called the sheriff. But I only went to the edge of the weeds across the road, and I turned, watched him.

He’d held back a piece of truth from me, this woman Constance calling him this week. I’d hold a piece from him: the fact Mom wasn’t on her way here to get me.

A minute later I went back to the Luv, leaned on it.

He said, “What’d she say?”

“She shit bricks.”

“Such talk,” he said. “Clean up your mouth.”

“Yessir,” I said. I was quiet, then said, “She told me to come home soon as I can.”

“You’re lying.”

“I am,” I said. Mom wouldn’t have said that. “She said come home now. But I told her I couldn’t, because I might have to talk to the sheriff, seeing as how I’m a witness.”

He didn’t move. His head was down, the bill of the Braves cap covering his face, the stick still against the ground. The light was coming up around us now. We had the whole day left, a day I was certain wasn’t going to be like any other I’d known.