Read Online Raven Stole the Moon by Garth Stein - Free Book Online

“I will not eat or sleep until they come.”
    “When are they going to come?”
    “When they are ready.”
    Then David closed his eyes and started making a weird sound from his throat. A dark, choking sound. Ferguson stubbed out his cigarette and stood up, frustrated and a little uneasy.
    “I’m going to get my sleeping bag,” he said to the room, and then stepped out into the night.
    A light drizzle was falling outside. Ferguson’s feet were still cold and becoming numb. He got his sleeping bag out of his plane and looked up at the town. It was dark except for an orange glow from the community house. The sky was a gray slate, clouds lightened slightly by the last fingers of the day. The air smelled like cinnamon, and Ferguson, for some reason, remembered his father. A slight man with black hair and green eyes. Black Irish. Mean as a bastard. He went elk hunting every October with his buddies and brought home a buck or two for the winter. Fergie always wanted to go. But he was too young. He wouldn’t be able to keep up. And then, when he was eleven, his dad said he could go. Fergie was so excited he couldn’t sleep for three days. Camping with the men, wet in their sleeping bags from the damp fog and the drizzle. His feet so cold. His father yelling at him to keep up. They took a rest on a log, and a doe with a fawn walked right up to them. Fergie wanted to shoot them, but his father said no, they were helpless animals. The men deer, those we shoot, the women and children are free to go. And then they shot a man deer and they tracked it down after the bullet went in. It wasn’t a clean shot. It wasn’t heart. It was lungs, and the thing ran and ran until it collapsed from lack of blood. And his father strung it up from a tree upside down and cut the head off, letting the rest of the blood run out onto the ground. And then he took his knife and slit the sheath of leather holding the animal’s insides in, letting them all spill out onto the dirt. And the smell of cinnamon was gone, obscured by the smell of hot intestines. Fergie turned away, unable to control his nausea at the smell, his father digging through the cavity, hands black with blood. Fergie vomited and his father laughed. Did you puke, you little baby? Did you puke, little girl? Scooping out handfuls of organs, hacking through bones. The bastard weighs two hundred pounds. Packing the carcass out on his back, sweating and cursing. Fergie’s job was to hold the flashlight. The darkness was close and they had to get back to the truck. Fergie dropped the light and it broke. No more light. His father smacked him hard across the face, his nose bled, and when he turned around, his father smacked him hard across the back of his head. Don’t turn your back on me, you little prick, he said. So Fergie turned again and he got hit again. If I have to drop this deer, I’m gonna beat you, boy. So Ferguson led the way out of the woods trying to hold back his tears, shaking with rage and fear, his father and a dead deer following him. Gonna cry, little girl? We’ll get you a little pink dress. Gonna cry for us? Mama ain’t here for you? Go on, cry.
    The sharp bark of a coyote snapped Ferguson out of his thoughts. He looked up to the dark woods. Something moved, branches rustled, and he caught a glimpse of an animal’s eyes. But it was gone again, as quick as that. Ferguson shuddered and hiked back up to the community house. He was looking forward to going home and getting some sleep, real sleep on a bed. He had made plenty of sacrifices for Thunder Bay; spending the night looking for evil spirits with a shaman was just another one. But at the end of the rainbow was a pot of gold. Ferguson knew there would be a big bonus if he could get the resort ready by the first of July. Money he could use to give his wife that new kitchen she wanted. The one he promised her when they bought the house fifteen years ago. The one with the wide plank floors and the island in the