Last Night In Twisted River

those mutts with it.” Ketchum made a sudden gesture to the kennel when he uttered the mutts word, and Six-Pack’s dogs commenced barking at him.

“Ain’t it just like you, Ketchum, to get me in trouble with my neighbors?” Pam turned to Carmella and Danny when she said, “Would you believe he’s the only asshole who can be counted upon to drive my dogs crazy?”

“I can believe it,” Danny said, smiling.

“Shut up, all of you!” Six-Pack yelled at her dogs; they stopped barking and slunk away from the fence, all but the German shepherd, who kept his muzzle pressed against the fence and continued to stare at Hero, who stared back.

“I’d keep those two fellas separated, if I were you,” Ketchum said to Pam, pointing to his bear hound and the shepherd.

“Like I need you to tell me that!” Six-Pack said.

“Shit,” the logger said to her. “I’ll be in the truck,” Ketchum told Danny. “Stay!” he said to Hero, without looking in the hound’s direction; thus again, Ketchum managed to make Carmella turn to stone.

OLD AGE HADN’T BEEN GENTLE to Six-Pack, who was Ketchum’s age, though she was still a scary-looking bleached blonde. There was a scar on her upper lip-one Danny didn’t remember. In all likelihood, the new scar was one the cowboy had given her, the writer thought. (What was wrong with her hip might have been something the deputy had done to her, too.)

When the woodsman had shut himself in the cab of his truck and turned the radio on, Six-Pack said to Danny and Carmella: “I still love Ketchum, you know, though he don’t forgive me much-and he can be an awful asshole, when he’s judgin’ you for your faults, or for what you can’t help about yourself.”

Danny could only nod, and Carmella had been turned to stone; there was a momentary silence before Pam continued. “Talk to him, Danny. Tell him not to do somethin’ stupid to himself-to his left hand, for starters.”

“What about Ketchum’s left hand?” Danny asked her.

“Ask Ketchum about it,” Six-Pack said. “It ain’t my favorite subject. That left hand ain’t the one he ever touched me with!” she suddenly cried.

The old logger rolled down the window on the driver’s side of his truck. “Just shut up, Six-Pack, and let them leave for Christ’s sake!” he shouted; Pam’s dogs started barking again. “You already got to say you were sorry, didn’t you?” Ketchum called to her.

“Come on, Hero,” Six-Pack said to the bear hound. Pam turned and went into the trailer, with Hero limping stiffly after her.

It was still only a little after seven in the morning, and once Danny and Carmella had joined Ketchum in the truck, Six-Pack’s dogs stopped barking. There was half a cord of firewood in the bed of the pickup; the wood was covered by a durable-looking tarpaulin, and Ketchum had put his rifle under the tarp. Anyone following behind the pickup truck wouldn’t have seen the old bolt-action Remington, which was hidden in the woodpile. There was no hiding the bear smell in the cab, however.

A Kris Kristofferson song from the seventies was playing on the radio. Danny had always liked the song, and the singer-songwriter, but not even Kris Kristofferson on a beautiful morning could distract the writer from the powerful stench in Ketchum’s truck.

This could be our last good night together; We may never pass this way again .

When Ketchum steered the truck south on Route 16, with the Androscoggin now running parallel to them on the driver’s side of the vehicle, Danny reached across Carmella’s lap and turned off the radio. “What’s this I hear about your left hand?” the writer asked the old logger. “You’re not still thinking about cutting it off, are you?”

“Shit, Danny,” Ketchum said. “There’s not a day that goes by when I don’t think about it.”

“My goodness, Mr. Ketchum-” Carmella started to say, but Danny wouldn’t let her go on.

“Why the left hand, Ketchum?” Danny asked the woodsman. “You’re right-handed, aren’t you?”

“Shit, Danny-I promised your dad I would never tell you!” Ketchum said. “Even though, I suspect, Cookie probably forgot all about it.”

Danny held the cook’s ashes in both hands and shook them. “What do you say, Pop?” Danny asked the silent ashes. “I’m not hearing Dad raise an objection, Ketchum,” Danny told the logger.

“Shit-I promised your mom, too!” Ketchum shouted.

Danny remembered what Injun Jane had told him. On the night his mother disappeared under the ice, Ketchum got hold of a cleaver in the cookhouse. He’d just stood in the kitchen with his left hand on a cutting board, holding the cleaver in his right hand. “Don’t,” Jane had told the river driver, but Ketchum kept staring at his left hand on the cutting board-imagining it gone, maybe. Jane had left Ketchum there; she’d needed to take care of Danny and his dad. Later, when Jane came back to the kitchen, Ketchum was gone. Jane had looked everywhere for the logger’s left hand; she’d been sure she was going to find it somewhere. “I didn’t want you or your father finding it,” she’d told young Dan.

Sometimes, especially when Ketchum was drunk, Danny had seen the way the logger looked at his left hand; it was the way the riverman had stared at the cast on his right wrist, after Angel went under the logs.

Now they drove alongside the Androscoggin in silence, before Danny finally said: “I don’t care what you promised my dad or my mom, Ketchum. What I’m wondering is, if you hated yourself-if you were really taking yourself to task, or holding yourself accountable-wouldn’t you want to cut off your good hand?”

“My left hand is my good hand!” Ketchum cried.

Carmella cleared her throat; it might have been the awful bear smell. Without turning her head to look at either of them, but speaking instead to the dashboard of the truck-or perhaps to the silent radio-Carmella said: “Please tell us the story, Mr. Ketchum.”

CHAPTER 15. MOOSE DANCING

IT WAS NO SURPRISE TO DANNY THAT THE STORY OF KETCHUM’S left hand was not immediately forthcoming. By the time the truck passed the Pontook Reservoir-and Danny noted the familiar drain age into the fields, as they drove down Dummer Pond Road-it was obvious that Ketchum had his own agenda. The story revealing whatever curious logic had persuaded the old logger to consider his left hand his “good” one would have to wait. Danny also noticed that Ketchum drove past the former haul road to Twisted River.

“Are we going to Paris, for some reason?” the writer asked.

“ West Dummer,” Ketchum corrected him, “or what’s left of it.”

“Does anyone call it West Dummer anymore?” Danny asked.

“I do,” Ketchum answered.

Crossing the new bridge over Phillips Brook, they went the way young Dan had gone to school when Injun Jane was driving him. Long ago, it had seemed a never-ending trip from Twisted River to Paris; now the time and the road flew by, but not the bear smell.

“Don’t get your balls crossed about it, Danny, but the Paris Manufacturing Company School -the actual schoolhouse-is still standing,” Ketchum warned him. “Where the young writer-to-be spent a few of his formative years-getting the shit beat out of him, for the most part,” the woodsman explained to Carmella, who seemed to be struggling with the concept of crossed balls.

It’s probable that Carmella was simply fighting nausea; the combination of the rough surface of the dirt road with the rank smell in the truck’s cab must have made her feel sick. Danny, who was definitely nauseated, tried to ignore the bear hair drifting at their feet, blown about by the air from the open driver’s-side window of the lurching truck.

Even with a stick shift, Ketchum managed to drive right-handed. He stuck his left elbow out the driver’s-side window, with the fingers of his left hand making only coincidental contact with the steering wheel; Ketchum clenched the wheel tightly in his right hand. When he needed to shift gears, his right hand sought the navel-high