The Hunt Club by Bret Lott

Author:Bret Lott
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9780307804815
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2011-09-01T10:00:00+00:00

“Disowned the boy,” Unc said. He took a sip off his drink, set it between his feet on the floorboard, then found the burger where he’d set it on the dash, took a bite. “I wonder if he even has anything to do with this.”

We were on 64 headed out of town, had stopped at a Hardee’s, where a black girl took our order: a Frisco Burger, a small fries, and two Mr. Pibbs.

I wasn’t eating, though Unc’d told me I needed to. My stomach was gone, Mom somewhere. Somewhere. And I wondered what that Hardee’s girl would think of the story I could tell her: murder, kidnapping, suicide.

And now Unc was thinking maybe Yandle wasn’t a part of the story we couldn’t tell anybody.

I said, “But Unc, he was there at the hospital.” I took a sip of my Mr. Pibb, set it in the cup holder hanging from the window well. “Pointed at me like he was shooting me.”

“So he’s an idiot. So what? Thinks he’s Chuck Connors as the Rifleman.” He took a few fries from the box wedged between his legs. “Likes to hang out with the big dogs, hoping someday they’ll throw him a bone. Maybe let him wear one of their windbreakers.”

He chewed, said, “These need salt,” and slapped open the glove box. He reached in, moved around napkins, a map, an old history paper I’d gotten an F on and didn’t want to show to Mom.

Mom.

I looked at my watch: three-thirty.

“Gotcha,” Unc said, and pulled out one of those salt packets they give you when you ask for them. He held it between his thumb and second finger, carefully broke it open by bending the top down with his first finger, then tipped it over, shook it out.

But he missed the fries, instead salted the seat above the box.

The packet empty, he dropped it in the empty Hardee’s bag on the floorboard, then took up another couple of fries.

“Much better,” he said. “On to Beverly Hills South: Mount Pleasant.”

I shook my head. Even Unc missed the mark now and again. And, I knew, he was missing it with Yandle.

Walterboro to Mount Pleasant is a little over sixty miles one end to the other, and once we were through Parker’s Ferry and Rantowles and Red Top, houses and shops and car dealerships picking up and picking up, we were there, right there: stopped at a light beside the Amoco station where a black woman in a red smock with an orange wave in her hair hadn’t seen a thing.

Then we were at Citadel Mall, tooling right back up the Mark Clark in the opposite direction I’d come only last night, and I drove on up the ramp and onto the freeway north like it was my own, because in a way it was. I’d survived this, lived to tell the tale.

But it wasn’t over yet. No way.

And then, maybe a mile farther on, I slowed down, looked across the median for some sign of where that yellow Ford pickup’d been rolled by Thigpen in his scab-roofed Plymouth.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.