Last Night In Twisted River

Ketchum’s sharpening oil, by putting the knife in the dishwasher, had dulled the blade. Now the knife was dull and oily, and Danny had hung it in a most visible but unreachable part of his Toronto kitchen, where it resembled a ceremonial sword.

Ketchum’s guns were another matter. Danny hadn’t wanted them-not in Toronto. He’d given them to Andy Grant, with whom Danny went deer hunting every November. Killing Carl had made it easier for Danny to shoot deer, though he’d refused to fire a shotgun. (“Never again,” he’d said to Andy.) Danny used Ketchum’s Remington.30-06 Springfield instead. In a wooded area, even at reasonably close range, it was harder to hit a deer with that prized collectible, but the kick of the carbine-or the resonance of the short-barreled rifle’s discharge, in his ear-was different from what Danny remembered of the 20-gauge.

Andy Grant knew the Bayfield area like the back of his hand; he’d hunted there as a boy. But, for the most part, Andy took Danny deer hunting on what was more familiar terrain for Danny-that area west of Lost Tower Lake, between Payne’s Road and Shawanaga Bay. In the vicinity of the winter snowmobile portage, and sometimes within sight of the back dock on Charlotte ’s island, was a natural runway-a virtual game path for deer. That way, every November, Danny could look across the gray water at his winter destination. There were places on the mainland, overlooking Shawanaga Bay, where you could see the back dock on Turner Island-even the roof of Granddaddy’s cabin, where Ketchum had once thrown the skin from that rattlesnake he’d shot.

For those November hunting trips, Danny always stayed at Larry’s Tavern. In the bar was where he’d heard the rumor that Larry’s would one day be sold, whenever the new highway advanced that far north. Who was Danny to say, as the old-timers in the bar often did, that Larry’s should be spared? Neither the tavern nor the motel seemed worth saving to the writer, but he couldn’t deny that both parts of the roadside establishment had long served a local (albeit largely self-destructive) purpose.

And every winter, when Danny arrived on Charlotte ’s island, Andy Grant loaned him Ketchum’s Remington. (“In case of critters,” Ketchum would have said.) Andy also left a couple of extra loaded cartridge clips with the writer. Hero invariably recognized the carbine. It was one of the few times the bear hound wagged his tail, for that bolt-action Remington.30-06 Springfield had been Ketchum’s gun of choice for bear, and doubtless Hero was reminded of the thrill of the chase-or of his former master.

IT HAD TAKEN TWO YEARS for Danny to teach the dog to bark. The growling and farting, and the snoring in his sleep, came naturally to Hero-that is, if the bear hound hadn’t learned these indelicate arts from Ketchum-but Hero had never barked before. In his earliest efforts to encourage Hero to bark, Danny would occasionally wonder if the old logger had disapproved of barking.

There was a little park and playground, probably as big as a football field, near Danny’s Rosedale residence and adjacent to those two new condominiums on Scrivener Square, which-as luck would have it-did not block the writer’s view of the clock tower on the Summer-hill liquor store. Danny walked Hero in the park three or four times a day-more often than not on a leash, lest there might happen to be a German shepherd present in the park, or some other male dog who could have reminded Hero of Six-Pack’s late shepherd.

In the park, Danny barked for Hero; the writer made every effort to bark authentically, but Hero was unimpressed. After a year of this, Danny wondered if Hero somehow didn’t think that barking was a weakness in dogs.

Other dog-walkers in the little park were disconcerted by Hero’s lean-and-mean appearance, and by the bear hound’s preternatural aloofness from other dogs. There were also the scars, the stiff-hipped limp-not to mention the wonky-eyed, baleful stare. “It’s only because Hero lost an eyelid-he’s not really giving your dog the evil eye, or anything,” Danny would try to reassure the anxious dog owners.

“What happened to that ear?” a young woman with a brainless breed of spaniel asked the writer.

“Oh, that was a bear,” Danny admitted.

“A bear!”

“And the poor thing’s hip-those terrible scars?” a nervous-looking man with a schnauzer had asked.

“The same bear,” Danny said.

It was their second winter on Charlotte ’s island when the barking began. Danny had parked the Polar airboat on the ice off the front dock; he was unloading groceries from the boat, while Hero waited for him on the dock. Danny tried once more to bark at the dog-the writer had almost given up. To both Danny and the dog’s surprise, Danny’s bark was repeated; there was an echo of the bark from the direction of Barclay Island. When Hero heard the echo, he barked. Of course there was an echo attending Hero’s bark, too; the bear hound heard a dog uncannily like himself bark back.

It had gone on for over an hour-Hero barking at himself on the dock. (If Ketchum had been there, Danny thought, the former river driver would probably have shot the bear hound.) What have I created? the writer wondered, but after a while, Hero had stopped.

After that, the dog barked normally; he barked at snowmobiles and at the once-in-a-while airplanelike sound of a distant airboat out in the main channel. He barked at the train whistles, which the dog could hear from the mainland-and, less frequently, at the whine of the tires on those big long-haul trucks out on 69. As for intruders- well, in those winter weeks, there were none-there was only a now-and-again visit from Andy Grant. (Hero barked at Andy, too.)

One could never say that Ketchum’s bear hound was normal-or even almost normal- but the barking did much to alleviate the sheer creepiness of Hero’s one-eared, gaping-eyed face. Certainly, Danny’s fellow dog-walkers in that little park near Scrivener Square were less visibly anxious about the bear hound-and now that the dog barked, he growled less. It was a pity that there was nothing Danny could do about Hero’s silent farting or his colossal snoring.

What the writer was realizing was that he hadn’t known what owning a dog was like. The more Danny talked to Hero, the less the writer was inclined to think about what Ketchum would have said about Iraq. Did having a dog make you less political? (Not that Danny had ever been truly political; he’d never been like Katie, or like Ketchum.)

Danny did take sides, politically; he had political opinions. But Danny wasn’t an anti-American-the writer didn’t even feel like an expatriate! The world that was captured in the barest outline form on his Toronto refrigerator began to seem less and less important to the author. That world was increasingly not what Daniel Baciagalupo wanted to think about-especially not, as Ketchum would have said, as a writer.

THERE’D BEEN AN ACCIDENT on 69 near Horseshoe Lake Road. A dipshit driving a Hummer had rear-ended a cattle-transport trailer, killing himself and a bunch of beef cattle. This happened the first winter Danny stayed on Charlotte ’s island, and he’d heard about the accident from his cleaning woman. She was a First Nation person-a young woman with black hair and eyes, a pretty face, and thick, strong-looking hands. Once a week, Danny drove the airboat to the Shawanaga Landing Indian Reserve; that was where he picked her up, and where he returned her at the end of the day, but she almost certainly didn’t live there. Shawanaga Landing was mostly used in the summer months, both as a campsite and as a gateway to the bay. The residents of the reserve lived in the village of Shawanaga, though there were a few First Nation people who lived year-round in Skerryvore-or so Andy Grant had told Danny. (Both areas could be reached by road in the winter months, at least on snowmobiles.)

The young cleaning woman seemed to like riding in the Polar air-boat. Danny always brought a second pair of ear guards for her, and after she’d met Hero, she asked why the bear hound couldn’t come along for the ride. “The airboat is too loud for a dog’s ears-well, for his one ear, anyway,” Danny told her. “I don’t know how well Hero can hear out of the mangled ear.”

But the cleaning woman had a way with dogs. She told Danny to put her ear guards on Hero when he drove to Shawanaga Landing to pick her up, and when he drove back to Turner Island without her. (Surprisingly, the dog didn’t object to wearing them.) And when the cleaning woman rode in the airboat with Hero, she held the bear hound in her lap and covered his ears-even the mostly missing one-with her big, strong hands. Danny had never seen Hero sit in anyone’s lap before. The Walker bluetick weighed sixty or seventy pounds.

The dog devotedly followed the young woman throughout her cleaning chores, the same way Hero attached himself to Danny everywhere on the island when Danny was otherwise alone there. When Danny was using the chainsaw, the bear hound maintained a safe distance between them. (The writer was sure that Hero had learned