Last Night In Twisted River

The cook needed his son’s help in getting Injun Jane from the cab of the truck to Constable Carl’s kitchen door, which Jane had said was always left unlocked. It would be all right if they dragged her feet through the mud, because the constable would expect Jane’s boots to be muddy; they just couldn’t allow another part of her to touch the ground. Naturally, the dolly would have left wheel tracks in the mud-and what would Dominic have done with the dolly? Leave it in Jane’s truck, or at Constable Carl’s door?

They drove to that forlorn part of town near the sawmill and the hostelry favored by the French Canadian itinerants. (Constable Carl liked living near his principal victims.) “What would you guess Ketchum weighs?” Danny asked, after his dad had parked Jane’s truck in her usual spot. They were standing on the running board of the truck; young Dan held Jane upright in the passenger seat while his father managed to guide her stiffening legs out the open door. But once her feet were on the running board, what then?

“Ketchum weighs about two-twenty, maybe two-thirty,” the cook said.

“And Six-Pack?” young Dan asked.

Dominic Baciagalupo would feel the stiffness in his neck from Six-Pack’s headlock for about a week. “Pam probably weighs about one-seventy-five-one-eighty, tops,” his dad answered.

“And what do you weigh?” Danny asked.

The cook could see where this line of questioning was going. He let Injun Jane’s feet slide all the way to the mud; he stood on the wet ground beside her, holding her around her hips while Daniel (still standing on the running board) hugged her under her arms. We will both end up in the mud with Jane on top of us! Dominic was thinking, but he said, as casually as possible, “Oh, I don’t know what I weigh-about one-fifty, I guess.” (He weighed all of 145 with his winter clothes on, he knew perfectly well-he had never weighed as much as 150 pounds.)

“And Jane?” young Dan grunted, stepping down to the ground from the truck’s running board. The body of the Indian dishwasher pitched forward into his and his father’s waiting arms. Though Jane’s knees buckled, they did not touch the mud; the cook and his son staggered to hold her, but they didn’t fall.

Injun Jane weighed at least 300 pounds-maybe 315 or 320-although Dominic Baciagalupo would profess not to know. The cook could scarcely get his breath as he dragged his dead paramour to her bad boyfriend’s kitchen door, but he managed to sound almost unconcerned as he answered his son in a whisper: “Jane? Oh, she weighs about the same as Ketchum-maybe a little more.”

To their mutual surprise, the cook and his son saw that Constable Carl’s kitchen door was not only unlocked-it was open. (The wind, maybe-or else the cowboy had come home so drunk that he’d left the door open in a blind, unthinking stupor.) The misty rain had wet what they could see of the kitchen floor. While the kitchen was dimly lit, at least one light was on, but they couldn’t see beyond the kitchen; they could not know more.

When Jane’s splayed feet were touching the kitchen floor, Dominic felt confident that he could slide her the rest of the way inside by himself; it would help him that her boots were muddy and the floor was wet. “Good-bye, Daniel,” the cook whispered to his son. In lieu of a kiss, the twelve-year-old took Jane’s baseball cap off his head and put it on his father’s.

When the cook could no longer hear Danny’s retreating steps on the muddy street, he steered Jane’s great weight forward into the kitchen. He could only hope that the boy would remember his instructions. “If you hear a gunshot, go to Ketchum. If you wait for me in the Pontiac for more than twenty minutes-even if there is no shot-go to Ketchum.”

Dominic had told the twelve-year-old that if anything ever happened to his dad-not just tonight-go to Ketchum, and tell Ketchum everything. “Watch out for the next-to-last step at the top of Pam’s stairs,” the cook had also told his son.

“Won’t Six-Pack be there?” the boy had asked.

“Just tell her you need to talk to Ketchum. She’ll let you in,” his father had said. (He could only hope that Pam would let Daniel in.)

Dominic Baciagalupo slid Injun Jane’s body past the wet area on the kitchen floor before he let her come to rest against a cabinet. Holding her under her arms, he allowed her immense weight to sag onto the countertop; then, with excruciating slowness, he stretched her body out upon the floor. While he was bending over her, the Cleveland Indians cap fell off the cook’s head and landed upside down beside Jane; Chief Wahoo was grinning insanely while Dominic waited for the cocking-sound of the Colt.45, which the cook was certain he would hear. Just as Danny would be sure to hear the discharging of the gun-it was more than loud. At that hour, everyone in town would hear a gunshot-maybe even Ketchum, still sleeping off his bender. (On occasion, even from the distance of the cookhouse, Dominic had heard that Colt.45 discharge.)

But nothing happened. The cook let his breathing return to normal, choosing not to look around. If Constable Carl was there, Dominic didn’t want to see him. The cook would rather let the cowboy shoot him in the back as he was leaving; he left carefully, using the outward-turned toe of his bad foot to smear his muddy footprints as he left.

Outside, a wooden plank was stretched across the gutter from the road. Dominic used the plank to wipe flat the drag marks where the toes and heels of Jane’s boots had carved deep ruts-marking the tortured path from her truck to the constable’s kitchen door. The cook returned the plank to its proper place, wiping the mud from his hands on the wet fender of Jane’s truck, which the increasingly steady rain would wash clean. (The rain would take care of his and young Dan’s footprints, too.)

No one saw the cook limp past the silent dance hall; the Beaudette brothers, or their ghosts, had not reoccupied the old Lombard log hauler, which stood as the lone sentinel in the muddy lane alongside the hall. Dominic Baciagalupo was wondering what Constable Carl might make of Injun Jane’s body when he stumbled over it in the bleary-eyed morning. What had he hit her with? the cowboy might speculate, having hit her more than once before. But where is the weapon, the blunt instrument? the constable would be sure to ask himself. Maybe I’m not the one who hit her, the cowboy might later conclude-once his head cleared, or most certainly when he learned that the cook and his son had left town.

Please, God, give me time, the cook was thinking, as he saw his boy’s small face behind the water-streaked windshield of the Chieftain Deluxe. Young Dan was waiting in the passenger seat, as if he’d never lost faith that his father would safely return from Constable Carl’s and be their driver.

By time, that dogged companion, Dominic Baciagalupo meant more than the time needed for this most immediate getaway. He meant the necessary time to be a good father to his precious child, the time to watch his boy become a man; the cook prayed he would have that much time, though he had no idea how he might arrange such an unlikely luxury.

He got into the driver’s seat of the station wagon without receiving the.45-caliber bullet he’d been expecting. Young Dan began to cry. “I kept listening for the gunshot,” the twelve-year-old said.

“One day, Daniel, you may hear it,” his dad told him, hugging him before he started the Pontiac.

“Aren’t we going to tell Ketchum?” Danny asked.

All the cook could say might one day be in danger of sounding like a mantra, but Dominic would say it nonetheless: “We haven’t time.”

Like a long, slowly moving hearse, the maroon semiwoodie took the haul road out of the settlement. As they drove south-southeast, sometimes within sight of Twisted River, the dawn was fast approaching. There would be the dam to deal with, when they reached the Pontook Reservoir; then, wherever they went next, they would be on Route 16, which ran north and south along the Androscoggin.

Exactly how much time remained to them, in their more immediate future, would be determined by what they found at Dead Woman Dam-and how long they would need to linger there. (Not too long, Dominic would hope as he drove.)

“Are we ever going to tell Ketchum?” young Dan asked his dad.

“Sure we are,” his father answered, though the cook had no idea how he might get the necessary message to Ketchum-one that would be safe yet somehow manage to be clear.

For now, the wind had dropped and the rain was letting up. Ahead of them, the haul road was slick with tire- rutted mud, but the sun was rising; it shone in the driver’s-side window, giving Dominic Baciagalupo a bright (albeit unrealistic) view of the future.

Only hours ago, the cook had been worried about finding Angel’s body-specifically, how the sight of the dead Canadian youth might affect his beloved Daniel. Since then, the twelve-year-old had killed his favorite babysitter, and both father and son had wrestled with her body-bringing Injun Jane the not-inconsiderable distance from the