The Hunt Club_ A Novel - Bret Lott [94]
I looked at him a moment longer, thought to shine it in his eyes, blind him a second.
And then what? Dive for him?
“Your reticence, Lord Huger, at giving back the flashlight signals me you are mulling things over. Let me remind you, I have the gun.” He pointed it from me to Mom. “I’m hazarding you’ll choose not to let me kill your mother, regardless of her wayward past and your questionable lineage.”
“Huger,” Mom whispered, and took in a quick breath. “Don’t.”
“Wise woman,” Simons said.
I brought down the light, handed it over.
“Good boy. Now take a shovel, you and the virgin both, and go to the center of the circle.” He shone the light past me, to where the stakes came together, that small circle. “If Constance’s research proves correct, the center hub is where the Father of Fathers lies, waiting. We’ve saved him for last, though this night was not in our plans. We’re here only because of poor Constance’s gambit, calling you, Leland. For the last five months we’ve been here at new moon, as little light as possible so that no one might see us heading here, Thigpen and myself. But in our last episode, a mere week and a half ago, we brought Constance along, who had, I’d believed, begun finally to warm to the opportunity being afforded us. Unfortunately, we turned up something quite unexpected.” He shone the light to my left now, to a wedge of the circle on the far side. There the ground, I could see, had no growth, only bare dirt.
“Whereas we had ascertained there were twelve sites here, we stumbled upon a thirteenth.” He paused. “That of a child, its rude sarcophagus perhaps three feet long. And when we opened it up, there lay the perfect remains of a female child, interred along with her, as with all the rest of the Fathers and Mothers, her earthly possessions, each crafted by her own hands, items entombed for the long voyage home.”
I looked at the ground. Nothing, only dirt.
“Of course the precious child’s possessions were few, but two pieces—those trinkets I mentioned—captured the heart and imagination of dear Constance: two small, unfinished sweetgrass baskets, resin-encased.” He stopped, filled with himself, I could hear on his voice, pleased at his words, this explanation of all things before he killed us. “In a weak moment, one designed nonetheless to ensure she stayed happy with our arrangement, I gave them to her. Though each might have garnered a contribution somewhere between fifty and seventy-five thousand dollars, nevertheless I made the sacrifice. A sacrifice that, as you now know, has precipitated our being here tonight.”
The paperweight I’d thought nothing of, worth that much money.
But it wasn’t the money that mattered, I saw. It wasn’t that at all. It was that she’d thought enough to risk heading into a hospital to give it to me. To give to Unc, the one she loved.
Cherish your mother, she’d said, and I saw even she knew who my mother was, and knew who my father was, and knew something about love, and about death.
She knew enough to give the other to her own mother, upon it the disclaimer of sin, on Unc’s the curse of love.
“Curiously intelligent, these first savages,” Simons said. “We’ve found in each casket—carved out of oak, lined inside and out with pitch—a perfect sort of mummification, both bodies and possessions. Each item with which they have been interred, and believe me there are troves in each casket, has been encased in resin, rendering everything, from the shields and spears the men are buried with to the sweetgrass baskets the women bear, a delightful perfection, yielding top dollar again and again. Ingenious, actually, using this