Last Night In Twisted River

“Don’t you try sneakin’ up on me!” Six-Pack said, as the German shepherd slunk out the dog door into the outdoor kennel.

It was next announced on television that they’d evacuated the United Nations building-and the State and Justice departments, along with the World Bank. “I see all the important fellas are runnin’ for cover,” Six-Pack said to Hero. The dog eyed her warily, as if he were considering her contradictory behavior in the following manner: First she puts the bad-tasting yellow gunk on my cuts, then she squirts me in my eyes with the stinging-and-burning stuff, and lastly she tries to make me feel better; not to mention, where is that sneak-attack fuck of a German shepherd?

“Don’t get your balls crossed, Hero-I ain’t goin’ to hurt you,” Pam told the bear hound, but Hero regarded her mistrustfully; the dog might have preferred his chances with a bear.

At 10:24, the FAA reported that all inbound transatlantic aircraft entering the United States had been diverted to Canada. “Oh, that’s brilliant!” Six-Pack said to the TV. “I might have begun with that idea a few fuckin’ months ago! Like I suppose ya thought that the fellas fly-in’ those first two planes were from Boston!” But the television ignored her.

Four minutes later, the north tower of the World Trade Center collapsed; someone said that the tower appeared to peel apart, from the top down, as if a hand had taken a knife to a tall vegetable. “If this ain’t the end of the world, it’s surely the start of somethin’ close to it,” Six-Pack said to the dogs. (Hero was still looking all around for that fuckheaded German shepherd.)

At 10:54, Israel evacuated all its diplomatic missions. Six-Pack thought she should be writing this down. Ketchum always said that the Israelis were the only ones who knew what was what; that the Israelis were closing down their diplomatic missions meant that the Muslim extremists, those militant Islamists who were determined to wipe out the Jews, were beginning their religious war by wiping out the United States-because without the United States, Israel would long ago have ceased to exist. Nobody else in the craven, so-called democratic world had the balls to stick up for the Israelis-or so Ketchum also said, and Six-Pack pretty much took what amounted to her politics from the old libertarian logger. (Ketchum admired the Israelis, and almost nobody else.)

Six-Pack had often wondered if Ketchum was half-Injun and half-Jewish, because the riverman periodically threatened to move to Israel. Pam had, more than once, heard Ketchum say: “I might make more beneficial use of myself killing those assholes from Hamas and Hezbollah, instead of picking on the poor deer and bear!”

SHORTLY AFTER ELEVEN THAT MORNING, the New York City mayor, Rudolph Giuliani, urged New Yorkers to stay at home; the mayor also ordered an evacuation of the area of the city south of Canal Street. By now, Pam was vexed at Ketchum and the two others for spending close to the whole morning scattering the little cook’s ashes. But, knowing Ketchum, Six-Pack considered that the logger would have insisted on showing Danny what the woodsman called the “vandalism” that had been done to Paris-or West Dummer, as Ketchum obdurately called it- and either en route to Paris, or on the way back, Six-Pack knew that Ketchum would have paused to deliver a fucking eulogy to the confused, heartbreaking moose who danced their scrawny asses off in Moose-Watch Pond.

Pam felt a pang that she had not often accepted Ketchum’s periodic invitations to join him in a middle-of-the- night visit to see the moose dancing. (Six-Pack believed that the moose were just aimlessly “millin’ around.”) It was also with a pang that Six-Pack regretted that she had not accompanied Ketchum on many of his proposed overnight “campin’ trips,” as she called them, to that grassy hill where the cookhouse had been; she knew this was hallowed ground to Ketchum, and that he liked nothing better than to spend the night there. Ketchum just pitched a tent and slept in a sleeping bag, but his snoring kept her awake half the night, and Pam’s hip hurt her on the hard ground. Furthermore, Ketchum best liked camping at the cookhouse site when the weather had turned colder-especially, once there was snow. The cold weather made Six-Pack’s hip throb.

“You’re the one who keeps putting off the hip-replacement surgery,” Ketchum routinely told her; Six-Pack regretted putting off the surgery, too. And how could she expect the old river driver to resume their long-ago relationship if she wouldn’t go camping with him when he asked her?

When she’d suggested going to see a movie in Berlin instead, Ketchum had rolled his eyes at her. Six-Pack knew Ketchum’s opinion of movies and Berlin. He liked to say, “I would rather stay home and watch Hero fart.”

She wanted Ketchum to marry her, Six-Pack suddenly realized. But how?

Just after noon, with Ketchum and the other two having been gone the entire morning-and Pam feeling extremely pissed-off at them, and at the rest of the world-the Immigration and Naturalization Service said that the U.S. borders with Canada and Mexico were on the highest state of alert, but that no decision had been made concerning closing the borders.

“The fanatics aren’t Canadians!” Six-Pack shouted meaninglessly at the dogs. “The terrorists aren’t Mexicans!” she wailed. She’d held herself together all morning, but Six- Pack was losing it now. Hero went out the dog door into the outdoor kennel, no doubt thinking his odds were better with the German shepherd than with Pam.

It was no wonder that when Ketchum finally arrived, with Danny and Carmella, the logger saw his long-suffering Hero (“that fine animal”) together with Pam’s dogs in the outdoor kennel-Six-Pack’s untrustworthy German shepherd among them-and took this to mean that Six-Pack had been neglecting his wounded bear hound. “Pam must be farting away her time, watching whatever abomination there is on daytime television,” was how the ever-critical woodsman expressed himself to Danny and Carmella.

“Uh-oh,” Danny said to Carmella. “You should be nice to Six-Pack, Ketchum,” Danny told the old logger. “In fact, I think you should marry her-or try living with her again, anyway.”

“Constipated Christ!” Ketchum shouted, slamming the door to his truck. Pam’s dogs immediately commenced barking, but not the stoic Hero.

Six-Pack came out the trailer door from her kitchen. “The country is under attack!” Pam screamed. “Bush is flyin’ around in Air Force One-the coward must be hidin’! The Israelis have all gone home to defend themselves! It’s the beginnin’ of the end of the world!” Six-Pack shouted at Ketchum. “And all you can do, you crotchety asshole, is rile up my dogs!”

“Marry her?” Ketchum said to Danny. “Why would I want to live with her? Can you imagine coming home every day to a deteriorated state of mind like that?”

“It’s all true!” Six-Pack wailed. “Come see for yourself, Ketchum-it’s on television!”

“On television!” Ketchum repeated, winking at Carmella-which doubtless drove Six- Pack around the bend. “Naturally, if it’s on TV, it must be truer than most things.”

But neither Six-Pack nor Ketchum had thought very much about where they were-in an orderly, fastidiously neat trailer park, in the Saw Dust Alley campground, where there were many stay-at-home women with young children, and some retired or unemployed older people (both men and women) , and a few unattended teenagers who were skipping school while their working parents didn’t have a clue.

It was Ketchum who clearly didn’t have a clue about how many people had overheard him and Pam, and both Ketchum and Six-Pack were unprepared for the diversity of opinion among the trailer-park residents, who had been glued to their television sets all morning. Given that the walls of their trailers were paper-thin, and that many of them had been talking with one another in the course of the day’s unfolding events, they’d expressed quite a variety of views-in regard to what some of them saw as the first installment of the Armageddon they were witnessing-and now this notoriously belligerent intruder had come into their small community bellowing, and the famously loudmouthed Ketchum (for the former river driver was indeed famous in Errol) seemed to be unaware of the developing news.

“Ain’t you heard, Ketchum?” an old man asked. He was stooped, almost bent over-wearing red-and-black wool hunting pants on this warm September day-with his suspenders loosely cupping his bony shoulders, and his bare, scrawny arms dangling from a white sleeveless undershirt.

“Is that you, Henry?” the logger asked the old man. Ketchum had not seen the sawyer since they’d shut down