The Hunt Club_ A Novel - Bret Lott [4]
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