Last Night In Twisted River

they’re trying to make the pond come back,” Ketchum told them. “I come out here some nights-just to watch them dance. Sometimes, I can talk Six-Pack into coming with me.”

There were no moose now-not on a bright and sunny September morning-but there was no reason not to believe Ketchum, Danny was thinking. “Your mom was a good dancer, Danny-as I know you know. I suppose the Injun told you,” Ketchum added.

When the old logger drove on, all Carmella said was: “My goodness-moose dancing!”

“If I had seen nothing else, in my whole life-only the moose dancing-I would have been happier,” Ketchum told them. Danny looked at him; the logger’s tears were soon lost in his beard, but Danny had seen them.

Here comes the left-hand story, the writer predicted. The mere mention of Danny’s mother, or her dancing, had triggered something in Ketchum.

Up close, the old riverman’s beard was more grizzled than it appeared from farther away; Danny couldn’t take his eyes off him. He’d thought that Ketchum was reaching for the gearshift when the logger’s strong right hand grabbed Danny’s left knee and squeezed it painfully. “What are you looking at?” Ketchum asked him sharply. “I wouldn’t break a promise I made to your mom or your dad, but for the fucking fact that some promises you make in your miserable life contradict some others-like I also promised Rosie that I would love you forever, and look after you if there came a day when your dad couldn’t. Like that one!” Ketchum cried; his reluctant left hand gripped the steering wheel, both harder and for longer than he allowed his left hand to hold the wheel when he was merely shifting gears.

Finally, the big right hand released Danny’s knee-Ketchum was once more driving right-handed. The logger’s left elbow pointed out the driver’s-side window, as if it were permanently affixed to the truck’s cab; the now-relaxed fingers of Ketchum’s left hand only indifferently grazed the steering wheel as he turned onto the old haul road to Twisted River.

Immediately, the road surface worsened. There was little traffic to a ghost town, and Twisted River wasn’t on the way to anywhere else; the haul road hadn’t been maintained. The first pothole the truck hit caused the glove- compartment door to spring open. The soothing smell of gun oil washed over them, momentarily relieving them from the unrelenting reek of the bear. When Danny reached to close the door of the glove compartment, he saw the contents: a big bottle of aspirin and a small handgun in a shoulder holster.

“Painkillers, both of them,” Ketchum remarked casually, as Danny closed the glove compartment. “I wouldn’t be caught dead without aspirin and some kind of weapon.”

In the pickup’s bed, nestled together on the woodpile under the tarp-along with the Remington.30-06 Springfield -Danny knew there was also a chainsaw and an ax. In a sheath above the sun visor of the truck, on the driver’s side, was a foot-long Browning knife.

“Why are you always armed, Mr. Ketchum?” Carmella asked the river driver.

Maybe it was the armed word that caught Ketchum off-guard, because he hadn’t been armed that long-ago night when the logger and the cook and the cook’s cousin Rosie had started out on the ice-do-si-doing their way on the frozen river. Right there-in the bear-stinking truck, in the woodsman’s wild eyes-a vision of Rosie must have appeared to Ketchum. Danny noticed that Ketchum’s fierce beard was once more wet with tears.

“I have made … mistakes,” the riverman began; his voice sounded choked, half strangled. “Not only errors of judgment, or simply saying something I couldn’t live up to, but actual lapses.”

“You don’t have to tell the story, Ketchum,” Danny told him, but there was no stopping the logger now.

“A loving couple will say things to each other-you know, Danny-just to make each other feel good about a situation, even if the situation isn’t good, or if they shouldn’t feel good about it,” Ketchum said. “A loving couple will make up their own rules, as if these made-up rules were as reliable or counted for as much as the rules everyone else tried to live by-if you know what I mean.”

“Not really,” Danny answered. The writer saw that the haul road to what had been the town of Twisted River was washed out-flooded, years past-and now the rocky road was overgrown with lichen and swamp moss. Only the fork in the road-a left turn, to the cookhouse-had endured, and Ketchum took it.

“My left hand was the one I touched your mom with, Danny. I wouldn’t touch her with my right hand-the one I had touched, and would touch, other women with,” Ketchum said.

“Stop!” Carmella cried. (At least she hadn’t said, “My goodness,” Danny thought; he knew Ketchum wouldn’t stop, now that he had started.)

“That was our first rule-I was her left-handed lover,” the logger explained. “In both our minds, my left hand was hers-it was Rosie’s hand, hence my most important hand, my good hand. It was my more gentle hand-the hand least like myself,” Ketchum said. It was the hand that had struck fewer blows, Danny was thinking, and Ketchum’s left index finger had never squeezed a trigger.

“I see,” Danny told him.

“Please stop,” Carmella begged. (Was she gagging or crying? the writer wondered. It hadn’t occurred to Danny that it wasn’t the story Carmella wanted to stop; it was the truck.)

“You said there was a lapse. So what was the mistake?” Danny asked the old woodsman.

But they were cresting the hill where the cookhouse had been. Just then-in the bouncing, vomitous truck-there hove into view the deceptively calm river basin, and below the basin was the bend in the river, where both Rosie and Angel had been swept away. Carmella gasped to see the water. For Danny, the shock was to see nothing there-not a board of the cookhouse remained-and as for the view of the town from where the cookhouse had been, there was no town.

“The mistake?” Ketchum shouted. “I’ll say there was a lapse! We were all drunk and hollering when we went out on the ice, Danny-you know that much, don’t you?”

“Yes-Jane told me,” Danny said.

“And I said, or I thought I said, to Rosie, ‘Give me your hand.’ I swear that’s what I said to her,” Ketchum declared. “But-being drunk, and being right-handed-I instinctively reached for her with my right hand. I had been carrying your father, but he wanted to slide around on the ice, too-so I put him down.” Ketchum finally stopped the truck.

Carmella opened the passenger-side door and vomited in the grass; the poor woman kept retching while Danny surveyed the crumbled chimney of the cookhouse. Nothing taller than two or three feet of the bricks was left standing where once the cook’s pizza oven had been.

“But your mother knew our rules,” Ketchum continued. “Rosie said, ‘Not that hand-that’s the wrong hand.’ And she danced away from me-she wouldn’t take my hand. Then your father slipped and fell down, and I was pushing him across the ice-as if he were a human sled-but I couldn’t close the distance between your mom and me. I didn’t have hold of her hand, Danny, because I’d reached for her with my right one-the bad one. Do you see?”

“I see,” Danny said, “but it seems like such a small thing.” Yet the writer could see it, vividly-how the distance between his mom and Ketchum had been insurmountable, especially when the logs tore downstream from the Dummer ponds and onto the ice in the river basin, where they quickly picked up speed.

Carmella, on her knees, appeared to be praying; her view of where her beloved Angelu had been lost was truly the best in Twisted River, which was why the cook had wanted the cookhouse erected there.

“Don’t cut off your left hand, Ketchum,” Danny told him.

“Please don’t, Mr. Ketchum,” Carmella begged the old woodsman.

“We’ll see,” was all Ketchum would tell them. “We’ll see.”

IN THE LATE FALL of the same year he’d set fire to Twisted River, Ketchum came back to the site of the cookhouse with a hoe and some grass seed. He didn’t bother to sow any of it in what had been the town of Twisted River, but in the area of the cookhouse-and everywhere on the hillside above the river basin, where the ashes from the fire had settled into the ground-Ketchum hoed the ashes and the earth together, and he scattered the grass seed. He’d picked a day when he knew it was going to rain; by the next morning, the rain had turned to sleet, and