Free Hunter's Moon by Don Hoesel

Thoreau, who was experiencing these things for the first time, CJ was remembering the smell peculiar to the place, and to a season in that place. It smelled like fall on the Baxter property, with the scents of dying maple leaves, lilac, and damp earth carried on a biting breeze, and CJ could have been returning after fifty years, rather than seventeen, and been able to recognize it.
    The house itself surprised him by the fact that it looked ageless, like a thing that existed in a book he’d read as a child and that had been plucked from the page and placed there. He allowed himself less than half a minute to enjoy it, though—knowing he could stoke wistfulness forever if he wasn’t careful. He could stare at the house, stroll the grounds, walk the woods, or chop the wood he saw gathered by the stump of a monstrous maple—he could do all of these things, never even going into the house, and be satisfied. He stood by the car long enough to watch the dog follow a scent past the porch, trailing it around the corner, before he ascended the front steps and knocked on the door.
    There was something odd about the knocking. While it was true he’d been away for many years, he’d been in and out of this house countless times and he was reasonably confident that he hadn’t knocked once. He waited a little while before the door opened—long enough for Thoreau to return from wherever his nose had led him. The dog ran up the steps and sat at CJ’s right side, watching the door expectantly. When it finally opened, CJ wasn’t surprised to see his brother on the other side of the threshold. It was only fitting.
    “Hello, little brother,” Graham said, wearing a grin.

    CJ sat at a little table in the kitchen—the same table where, when CJ was in middle school, and poor health had kept Sal more sedentary than he was accustomed to, the old man would sit with a bottle of bourbon, a book, and a PBR can in which he would drop his spent cigarettes. They would play cards, or some other game that CJ would talk him into. Sometimes Sal would just read while CJ watched out the window, waiting for his grandfather to make some comment about the book in his hands.
    CJ’s fingers glided along the beer can in front of him, tracing patterns in the condensation. With Sal now lying on his back at the morgue, it was Graham who occupied the other seat at the table. Like Sal, Graham drank bourbon and had a PBR ashtray at the ready. Now that CJ was an adult, the table seemed much smaller.
    Graham hadn’t said a great deal to him after a half hug at the door. And the only other people in the house when CJ arrived were Uncle Edward, whose face almost cracked under his wide smile, and whose hug was of the back-breaking variety, and someone whose presence surprised CJ past the point he would have thought possible—Julie.
    She was younger than he was—sixteen when he left Adelia. And CJ could scarcely reconcile the thirty-three-year-old woman with the image of the girl in his mind. He hadn’t exactly handled the end of their relationship in the best fashion. When he’d run out on Adelia, she’d been a casualty, and he’d long regretted that. He’d heard somewhere along the way that she’d married his cousin Ben, and so he supposed that things had worked out all right for her.
    She’d also given him a hug, and had left a warm kiss on his cheek before gathering up her father-in-law and giving him and Graham the time she obviously knew they needed.
    CJ wished she hadn’t left. There was an odd détente between the brothers, which CJ knew was to be expected, considering the thing that existed between them. He also knew that Graham was feeling him out, which was also to be expected.
    Thor was asleep on the kitchen floor, having finished with his reconnaissance of the house, including a thorough sniffing of Graham. Apparently, he approved of CJ’s brother because, after his inspection, he licked Graham’s hand and solicited a scratch behind his