High Hunt by David Eddings Read Free Book Online

beer in the fridge. We can pop open a few and talk old times.”
    â€œAll right,” I said. “How do I find the place?”
    â€œI’m out on South Tacoma Way. You know which bus to take?”
    â€œI think I can remember.”
    â€œGet off at Seventy-eighth Street and come down the right hand side. It’s the Green Lodge Trailer Court. I’m in number seventeen—a blue and white Kenwood.”
    â€œOK,” I told him. “I’ll be out in a half hour or so.”
    â€œI’ll be lookin’ for you.”
    I slowly hung up. This was going to be a mistake. Jack and I hadn’t had anything in common for years now. I pictured an evening with the both of us desperately trying to think of something to say.
    â€œMight as well get it over with,” I muttered. I stopped by a liquor store and picked up a pint of bourbon. Maybe with enough anesthetic, neither one of us would suffer too much.
    I sat on the bus reading the ads pasted above the windows and watching people get off and on. They were mostly old ladies. There’s something about old ladies on buses—have you ever noticed? I’ve never been able to put my finger on it, but whatever it is, it makes me want to vomit. How’s that for an inscription on a tombstone? “Here Lies Daniel Alders—Old Ladies on Buses Made Him Want to Puke.”
    Then I sat watching the streets and houses go by. I still couldn’t really accept any of it as actuality. It all had an almost dreamlike quality—like coming in in the middle of a movie. Everybody else is all wrapped up in the story, but you can’t even tell the good guys from the bad guys. Maybe that’s the best way to put it.
    The bus dropped me off at Seventy-eighth, and I saw the sickly green neon GREEN LODGE TRAILER COURT sign flickering down the block. I popped the seal on the pint and took a good belt. Then I walked on down to the entrance.
    It was one of those “just-twenty-minutes-from-Fort Lewis” kind of places, with graveled streets sprinkled with chuckholes. Each trailer had its tired little patch of lawn surrounded by a chicken-wire fence to keep the kids out of the streets. Assorted broken-down old cars moldered on flat tires here and there. What few trees there were looked pretty discouraged.
    It took me a while to find number seventeen. I stood outside for a few minutes, watching. I could see my brother putzing around inside—thin, dark, moving jerkily. Jack had always been like that—nervous, fast with his hands. He’d always had a quick grin that he’d turn on when he wanted something. Hissuccess with women was phenomenal. He moved from job to job, always landing on his feet, always trying to work a deal, never quite making it. If he hadn’t been my brother, I’d have called him a small-time hustler.
    I stood outside long enough to get used to his face again. I wanted to get past that strangeness stage when you say all kinds of silly-ass things because most of your attention is concentrated on the other person’s physical appearance. I think that’s why reunions of any sort go sour—people are so busy looking at each other that they can’t think of anything to say.
    Finally I went up and knocked.
    â€œDan,” he called, “is that you? Come on in.”
    I opened the screen door and stepped inside.
    â€œHey there, little brother, you’re lookin’ pretty good,” he said, grinning broadly at me. He was wearing a T-shirt, and I could see the tattoos on his arms. They had always bothered me, and I always tried not to look at them.
    â€œHello, Jack,” I said, shaking his hand. I tried to come on real cool.
    â€œGod damn,” he said, still grinning and hanging onto my hand. “I haven’t seen you in three or four years now. Last time was when I came back from California that time, wasn’t it? I think you were still in college, weren’t