The Hunt Club_ A Novel - Bret Lott [3]
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