Last Night In Twisted River

apologizing to her!” Dominic said.

“For what?” Danny asked his dad.

“Occasional incontinence, perhaps. Farting, certainly-not to mention talking in my sleep,” the cook confided to his son.

“You should find a wife who’s hard of hearing-like Ketchum,” Danny suggested. They both laughed; the cowboy had to have heard their laughter.

“I was being serious, Daniel-you should at least have a regular girlfriend, a true companion,” Dominic was saying, as they came up the stairs to the second-floor hall. Even from the third floor, Carl could have singled out the distinguishing sounds of the cook’s limp on the stairs.

“I have women friends,” Danny started to say.

“I’m not talking about groupies, Daniel.”

“I don’t have groupies, Pop-not anymore.”

“Young fans, then. Remember, I’ve read your fan mail-”

“I don’t answer those letters, Dad.”

“Young-what are they called?-’editorial assistants,’ maybe? Young booksellers, too, Daniel… I’ve seen you with one or two. All those young people in publishing!”

“Young women are more likely to be unattached,” Danny pointed out to his dad. “Most women my age are married, or they’re widows.”

“What’s wrong with widows?” his father asked. (At that, they’d both laughed again-a shorter laugh this time.)

“I’m not looking for a permanent relationship,” Danny said.

“I can see that. Why?” Dominic wanted to know. They were at opposite ends of the second-floor hall, at the doorways to their respective bedrooms. Their voices were raised; surely the cowboy could hear every word.

“I’ve had my opportunities, too, Pop,” Danny told his dad.

“I just want all the best for you, Daniel,” the cook told him.

“You’ve been a good father-the best,” Danny said.

“You were a good father, too, Daniel-”

“I could have done a better job,” Danny quickly interjected.

“I love you!” Dominic said.

“I love you, too, Dad. Good night,” Danny said; he went into his bedroom and quietly closed the door.

“Good night!” the cook called from the hall. It was such a heartfelt blessing; it’s almost conceivable that the cowboy was tempted to wish them both a good night, too. But Carl lay unmoving above them, not making a sound.

Did the deputy wait as long as an hour after he’d heard them brush their teeth? Probably not. Did Danny once more dream about the windswept pine on Charlotte ’s island in Georgian Bay -specifically, the view of that hardy little tree from what had been his writing shack there? Probably. Did the cook, in his prayers, ask for more time? Probably not. Under the circumstances, and knowing Dominic Baciagalupo, the cook couldn’t have asked for much- that is, if he’d prayed at all. At best, Dominic might have expressed the hope that his lonely son “find someone”- only that.

Did the floorboards above them creak under the fat cowboy’s weight, once Carl decided to make his move? Not that they heard; or, if Danny heard anything at all, he might have happily imagined (in his sleep) that Joe was home from Colorado.

Not knowing how dark it might be in the house at night, the cowboy had tested those stairs from the third-floor writing room with his eyes closed; he’d counted the number of steps in the second-floor hall to the cook’s bedroom door, too. And Carl knew where the light switch was-just inside the door, right next to the eight-inch cast-iron skillet.

As it turned out, Danny always left a light on-on the stairs from the kitchen to the second-floor hall, so there was plenty of light in the hall. The cowboy, slipping silently in his socks, padded down the hallway to the cook’s bedroom and opened the door. “Surprise, Cookie!” Carl said, flicking on the light. “It’s time for you to die.”

Maybe Danny heard that; perhaps he didn’t. But his dad sat up in bed-blinking his eyes in the sudden, white light-and the cook said, in a very loud voice, “What took you so long, you moron? You must be dumber than a dog turd, cowboy-just like Jane always said.” (Without a doubt, Danny heard that.)

“You little shit, Cookie!” Carl cried. Danny heard that, too; he was already kneeling on the floor, pulling the Winchester out of the open case under his bed.

“Dumber than a dog turd, cowboy!” his dad was shouting.

“I’m not so dumb, Cookie! You’re the one who’s gonna die!” Carl was hollering; he never heard Danny click the safety off, or the sound of the writer running barefoot down the hall. The cowboy took aim with the Colt.45 and shot the cook in the heart. Dominic Baciagalupo was blown into the headboard of the bed; he died instantly, on the pillows. There was no time for the deputy to comprehend the cook’s curious smile, which stretched the white scar on his lower lip, and only Danny understood what his dad had uttered just before he was shot.

“She bu de,” Dominic managed to say, as Ah Gou and Xiao Dee had taught him-the she bu de that means “I can’t bear to let go.”

The Chinese was, of course, meaningless to Carl, who, as he wheeled to face the naked man in the doorway, must have half understood why the cook had died smiling. Not only did Dominic know that all the yelling would save his son; the cook also knew that his friend Ketchum had provided Daniel with a better weapon than the eight-inch cast-iron skillet. And maybe there was a margin of last-minute recognition in the cowboy’s eyes, when he saw that Danny had already taken aim with Ketchum’s Winchester -the much-maligned youth model.

The long barrel of Carl’s Colt.45 was still pointed at the floor when the first round of buckshot from the 20- gauge tore away half his throat; the cowboy was flung backward into the night table, where the lightbulb in the lamp exploded between his shoulder blades. Danny’s second load of buckshot tore away what remained of the cowboy’s throat. The deer slug, the so-called kill-shot, wasn’t really necessary, but Danny-now at point-blank range-fired the shotgun’s third and final round into Carl’s mangled neck, as if the gaping wound itself were a magnet.

If Ketchum could be believed-that is, if he’d been speaking literally about the way wolves killed their prey- weren’t these three shots from the 20-gauge Ranger exactly as kisses of wolves should be? Weren’t they, indeed, not so pretty?

Still naked, Danny went downstairs. He called the police from the phone in the kitchen, telling them that he would unlock the front door for them, and that they could find him upstairs with his father. After he’d unlocked the door, he went back upstairs to his bedroom and put on some old sweatpants and a sweatshirt. Danny thought of calling Ketchum, but it was late and there was no reason to be in a hurry. When he reentered his dad’s bedroom, there was no overlooking the kisses of wolves that had ripped the cowboy apart-leaving him like something sprayed from a hose-but Danny only briefly regretted the mess he’d made for Lupita. The blood-soaked rug, the blood- spattered walls, the bloodied photographs on the bulletin board above the shattered night table-well, Danny didn’t doubt that Lupita could handle it. He knew that something worse had happened to her: She’d lost a child.

Ketchum had been right about the red wine, the writer was thinking, as he sat on the bed beside his father. If he’d been drinking only beer, Danny thought he might have heard the cowboy a few seconds sooner; Danny just might have been able to open fire with the shotgun before Carl could have pulled the trigger. “Don’t beat up on yourself about it, Danny,” Ketchum would tell him later. “I’m the one the cowboy followed. I should have seen that coming.”

“Don’t you beat up on yourself about it, Ketchum,” Danny would tell the old logger, but of course Ketchum would.

When the police came, the lights in the neighboring houses were all ablaze, and lots of dogs were barking; normally, at that hour of the night, Rosedale is very quiet. Most of the residents who lived near the double shooting had never heard gunfire as loud and terrifying as that-some dogs would bark until dawn. But when the police came, they found Danny quietly cradling his dad’s head in his lap, the two of them huddled together on the blood-soaked pillows at the head of the bed. In his report, the young homicide detective would say that the bestselling author was waiting for them in the upstairs of the house-exactly where he’d said he would be-and that the writer appeared