Hunts in Dreams - Softcover

Drury, Tom

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1910400076 ISBN 13: 9781910400074

Publisher: Old Street Publishing, 2015

Synopsis

In this "perceptive and captivating" (New York Times) novel, Tom Drury returns to the quiet Midwest to spend an action-packed October weekend in the lives of a precarious family whose members all want something without knowing how to get it: for Charles, an heirloom shotgun he will do anything to obtain; for his wife, Joan, the imaginative life she once knew; for their young son, Micah, a knowledge of the scope and reliability of his world, gained by prowling the empty town at night; and for Joan's daughter, Lyris, a stable footing from which to begin to grow up. Sometimes together, sometimes independently, father, mother, son, and daughter move through a series of vivid encounters that demonstrate how even the most provisional family can endure in its own particular way.

About this title

About the Author:

Tom Drury's fiction has appeared in THE NEW YORKER, HARPER'S MAGAZINE, and the MISSISSIPPI REVIEW. His previous novels are THE END OF VANDALISM and THE BLACK BROOK. One of GRANTA'S "Best Young American Novelists," Drury was raised in Iowa and lives with his wife and their daughter in Connecticut.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.:

1 _ Charles The man behind the counter of the gun shop did not understand what Charles wanted, and so he summoned his sister from the back room, and she did not understand either. It was late on a Friday afternoon in October, and Charles seemed to be speaking an unknown language. Outside, the wind gusted. Sunlight broke through fast clouds and swept across the windows. The sister, in a coarsely woven blue sweater, picked up the feeding rod of a semiautomatic rifle and flicked it at her brother’s arm in play. Charles thought of it as a feeding rod, anyway.No doubt there was another name.
On guard,” she said.
I told you,” said the brother, keep away from me with that.” What Charles wanted seemed simple enough to Charles: for the gun-shop owners to visit the minister’s widow and offer to buy the shotgun she kept on pegs above the fireplace.
This is the history of the gun: Years ago it had belonged to Charles’s stepfather, who before his death had given it to the Reverend Matthews. It was a .410 side-by-side shotgun made by Hutzel and Pfeil of Cincinnati. In his mind Charles could see the company name engraved in ornate script on the breechblock. When the minister died, his widow inherited the gun. Maybe it was sentimental for Charles to want to retrieve it after all this time, and yet he believed a gun should be used once in a while. A gun should be more than an ornament on the wall of someone with no connection to the original owner.
The sister took the feeding rod in both hands as if she meant to twirl it like a baton.
What do you call that?” said Charles, on the off-chance that a simple exchange of information would set the conversation back on track.
It’s the long spring-loaded insert that pushes shells into the chamber,” she said.
Oh, okay.” How much do you want for this gun?” said the sister.
I’m not selling it.” Well, let me ask you this,” said the brother. Do you have it on you?” It’s at her house.” We can’t appraise what we can’t see,” said the sister.
Where is it again?” The minister’s widow’s house. In Grafton. Her name is Farina Matthews.” The brother shook his head. You’re asking the shop to act as a go-between.” We tried it once,” said the sister. Ended up in small claims court. It was a total loser for us.” Charles looked at a fox pelt, dusty orange with gray fringe, tacked to the wall of the shop. The fox had been flattened, its paws flung outward. What I’m suggesting is ” Yeah . . .” you go to her, you buy it from her, then you would hold it free and clear, and then I come in, as if none of this had happened. And I buy it from you.” We don’t make house calls,” said the brother. We’re not like doctors.” Actually we are, in that respect,” said the sister. We’re not like old-time doctors, who made house calls.” If you want to have her stop by the shop, that’s a different story.” She doesn’t want to sell it,” said Charles. Not to me, anyway.” Why is this conversation taking place?” said the brother.
He turned away, presenting the blank white back of his shirt to Charles. Blue gun barrels stood in a row, silver chain laced through the trigger guards. Above the guns there was a license plate Iowa 1942 all beat up as if the car or truck it had been on had hit many stumps. The sister pulled a catalogue from under the counter and began turning the pages. A lone bluebottle buzzed in the gun shop. Where did you come from?” said the sister. She raised her hand briefly in the fly’s direction before returning to her search. Okay. Here we go. The gun you want, here it is, Hutzel and Pfeil, and it’s . . .umm. . . no longer made.”

A pheasant rose from dry weeds by the railroad track, the sound of its wings like the spinning of a wheel. Charles and his stepfather .red almost at once as it passed over the right-of way. White clouds blazed in the sky. The pheasant fell near the tracks. Which of them had hit it was anyone’s guess.
We’ll shoot for it,” said Charles’s stepfather. I’ll be odd.” Indeed you will, thought Charles. He twisted the bill of his hat. I don’t know how,” he said.
His stepfather explained. On the count of three they would each display a number of fingers, letting the even- or oddness of the combined total decide who got the pheasant. Did Charles understand? No, but he pretended to. And sure enough, he did not do it right, presenting his fingers too late and nonetheless making a sum that lost the game.
His stepfather walked on, leaving the pheasant for Charles to carry. If you’re going to take the trouble to cheat,” he said, you should at least win.” They crossed to the cabin through a meadow of grass annd mint. They could smell the mint as their steps broke the plants. Birch trees grew around the house, which was made of wood, with a plank door. It did not belong to Charles’s stepfather but was open for the use of all. Inside, ants wandered over the walls and the rafters. A river ran far below the windows. The stepfather boiled water on a hot plate while Charles gathered newspapers on which they would clean the pheasant. Surveyor 6 had lifted off from the moon, only to land again a few feet away.
I didn’t cheat,” said Charles.
This would have been the fall of 1967. After that Charles knew how to shoot for something, at least in this limited sense.

The minister’s widow pushed a lawn aerator on a line between the clothesline and the house. Three sharp stars turned brightly through the grass. She kept an excellent yard and had always made it a point to do so. A van stopped on the street in front of the house. HERE COMES CHARLES THE PLUMBER was written, red on white, above the grille. She gripped the worn wooden handle of the aerator as if she might pick it up and chase the driver away.
There is nothing to talk about,” she said.
I’ve just come from the gun shop,” said Charles. They made an estimate. This is more than fair.” From a paper envelope he drew three bills.
Where did you get that?” The bank.” She could have used the money who couldn’t use three hundred now and then? but resolutely she returned to her work. Why would I do for payment what I wouldn’t do for free?” He laid the bills on the grass in her path. She speared them deftly with the tines of the aerator. I’m not selling the gun.” Why not?” Ask your mother.” I talked to her,” said Charles. She said it was that time with your boy.” Is that right?” When he was in the runaway car.” She raised the aerator and the impaled money. Are you threatening me?” Charles took the bills back. Mrs. Matthews, I’m trying to buy a gun which can’t be any use to you. I know I don’t have any right to it. But what happened between my mother and you thirty years ago I can’t help. Just let me see it.” Well, you don’t have to cry about it.” Let me see the gun.” You already did.” In the summer she had let him into the house. Standing before the mantel he had seemed big and misplaced, and she had worried for her miniature lighthouses of painted clay. Clearly he saw things in the gun that she did not, but it had been left to her by her husband, and she meant to keep it.
Farina Matthews climbed the steps of her house and washed her hands at the kitchen sink while watching the white van move down the road. THERE GOES CHARLES THE PLUMBER. She walked through the rooms, past a vase of cloth roses that seemed to watch her. Her husband had called their home Max Gate, after the residence of Thomas Hardy, his favorite author. She did not look at the gun. Her gaze drifted to the piano, on which stood a large and beautifully framed picture of her son. He was a chemist in Albuquerque and had done well for himself, discovering when he was barely out of college a new way of treating synthetic laminate so that it would remember its former shape in a vacuum.
The runaway car business amounted to nothing. That’s what Charles would never understand. When her son was four years old, she had left him in the car while getting the mail at the post office. Somehow the youngster had released the brake. The car rolled down the snowy street, but so slowly that her son would never have gotten anywhere. Far from saving him, Charles’s mother had made the situation worse by loping alongside the car and shouting as loudly as she could.
And now Charles wanted Farina to sell him the old gun, which complemented her.replace in such a homey way. When everyone knew he stole and that his plumbing customers were either shady themselves or tolerant of shadiness. I think not, said the minister’s widow to herself.

Charles Darling lived with his wife Joan, their son Micah, and Joan’s daughter Lyris on two acres south of the town of Boris. The house had been built a hundred years ago and added on to forty years ago, and the two pieces did not much match. The older part was a dormered cottage, the newer part a boot room. All in all, the place was too small, especially since the arrival of Lyris, the daughter whom Joan had placed for adoption sixteen years before.
Behind the house stood a stucco hut ...

About this edition

• Publisher: Old Street Publishing
• Publication date: 2015
• ISBN 10: 1910400076
• ISBN 13: 9781910400074
• Binding: Paperback