Last Night In Twisted River

“Because we’re not going back to Twisted River,” the cook told his old friend.

Ketchum sighed, his eyes coming slowly to rest on Angel. The river driver got out of his truck and walked with an unexplained limp to the loading dock. (Dominic wondered if Ketchum was limping to mock him.) Ketchum picked up the dead youth’s body as if it were a sleeping baby; the logger carried the fifteen-year-old to the cab of his truck, where Danny had run ahead to open the door.

“I guess I might as well see him now as wait till I have to unload him back in town,” Ketchum told them. “I suppose these are your clothes on him?” he asked young Dan.

“Mine and my dad’s,” the twelve-year-old said.

The cook limped over to the truck, carrying Angel’s wet and dirty clothes; he put them on the floor of the cab, by the dead boy’s feet. “Angel’s clothes could stand some washing and drying,” he told Ketchum.

“I’ll have Jane wash and dry his clothes,” Ketchum told them. “Jane and I can clean Angel up a little, too-then we’ll dress him in his own clothes.”

“Jane is dead, Ketchum,” the cook told him. (It was an accident, he was about to add, but his beloved Daniel was quicker.)

“I killed her with the skillet-the one Dad hit the bear with,” Danny blurted out. “I thought Jane was a bear,” the boy told Ketchum.

The cook confirmed the story by immediately looking away from his old friend. Ketchum put his good arm around Danny’s shoulders and pulled the boy against him. Young Dan buried his face in the stomach of Ketchum’s wool-flannel shirt-the same green and blue Black Watch plaid that Six-Pack Pam had been wearing. To the twelve- year-old, the commingled smells of Ketchum and Six-Pack inhabited the shirt as confidently as their two strong bodies.

Raising his cast, Ketchum pointed to the Pontiac. “Christ, Cookie, you haven’t got poor Jane in the Chieftain, have you?”

“We took her to Constable Carl’s,” Danny said.

“I don’t know if Carl had passed out in another room, or if he wasn’t home, but I left Jane on his kitchen floor,” the cook explained. “With any luck, the cowboy will find her body and think he did it.”

“Of course he’ll think he did it!” Ketchum thundered. “I’ll bet he buried her an hour ago, or he’s digging the damn hole as we speak. But when Carl hears that you and Danny have left town, he’ll begin to think he didn’t do it! He’ll think you did it, Cookie-if you and Danny don’t get your asses back to Twisted River!”

“Bluff it out, you mean?” Dominic asked.

“What’s to bluff?” Ketchum asked. “For the rest of his rotten life, the cowboy will be trying to remember exactly how and why he killed Jane-or he’ll be looking for you, Cookie.”

“You’re assuming he won’t remember last night,” the cook said. “That’s a pretty big assumption, isn’t it?”

“Six-Pack told me you paid us a visit last night,” Ketchum told his old friend. “Well, do you think I remember you being there?”

“Probably not,” Dominic answered. “But what you’re suggesting is that I gamble everything.” It was both unconscious and uncontrollable that, when the cook said everything, he looked straight at young Daniel.

“You go back to the cookhouse, I help you unpack the Chieftain, you and Danny are completely settled in by the time the kitchen helpers show up this afternoon. Then, around suppertime,” Ketchum continued, “you send Dot or May-or one of those worthless fucking sawmill workers’ wives-to Constable Carl’s. You have her say, ‘Where’s Jane? Cookie’s going crazy without his dishwasher!’ That’s bluffing it out! You win that bluff hands down,” Ketchum told him. “The cowboy will be shitting his pants. He’ll be shitting them for years-just waiting for some dog to dig up the Injun’s body!”

“I don’t know, Ketchum,” the cook said. “It’s a huge bluff. I can’t take a chance like that-not with Daniel.”

“You’re taking a bigger chance if you leave,” his old friend told him. “Shit, if the cowboy blows your head off, I’ll take good care of Danny.”

Young Dan’s eyes kept moving from his father to Ketchum, and back to his father again. “I think we should go back to the cookhouse,” the twelve-year-old told his dad.

But the cook knew how change-any change-made his son anxious. Of course Daniel Baciagalupo would vote to stay and bluff it out; leaving represented a more unknown fear.

“Look at it this way, Cookie,” Ketchum was saying, his white cast leveled at his friend-as heavy as the cowboy’s Colt.45-“if I’m wrong and Carl shoots you, he won’t dare lay so much as a finger on Danny. But if I’m right, and the cowboy comes after you, he could kill you both-because you’d both be fugitives.”

“Well, that’s what we are-we’re fugitives,” Dominic said. “I’m not a gambler, Ketchum-not anymore.”

“You’re gambling now, Cookie,” Ketchum told him. “Either way, it’s a gamble, isn’t it?”

“Give Ketchum a hug, Daniel-we should be going,” his dad said.

Danny Baciagalupo would remember that hug, and how he thought it strange that his father and Ketchum didn’t hug each other-they were such old friends, and such good ones.

“Big changes are coming, Cookie,” Ketchum tried to tell his friend. “They won’t be moving logs over water much longer. Those dams on the Dummer ponds will be gone-this dam here won’t last, either,” he said, with a wave of his cast indicating the containment boom but choosing to leave Dead Woman Dam unnamed.

“Dummer Pond and Little Dummer and Twisted River will just flow into the Pontook. I suspect the old boom piers on the Androscoggin will last, but they won’t be using them anymore. And the first time there’s a fire in West Dummer or Twisted River, do you think anyone will bother to rebuild those sorry settlements? Who wouldn’t rather move to Milan or Errol-or even Berlin, if you were old and feeble enough?” Ketchum added. “All you have to do is stay and outlast this miserable place, Cookie-you and Danny.” But the cook and his son were making their way to the Chieftain. “If you run now, you’ll be running forever!” Ketchum called after them. He limped around his truck from the passenger’s to the driver’s side.

“Why are you limping?” the cook called to him.

“Shit,” Ketchum said. “There’s a step missing on Six-Pack’s stairs-I fucking forgot about it.”

“Take care of yourself, Ketchum,” his old friend told him.

“You, too, Cookie,” Ketchum said. “I won’t ask you about your lip, but I’m familiar with that injury.”

“By the way, Angel wasn’t Canadian,” Dominic Baciagalupo told Ketchum.

“His real name was Angelu Del Popolo,” young Dan explained, “and he came from Boston, not Toronto.”

“I suppose that’s where you’re going?” Ketchum asked them. “ Boston?”

“Angel must have had a family-there’s got to be someone who needs to know what happened to him,” the cook said.

Ketchum nodded. Through the windshield of his truck, the insufficient sunlight was playing tricks with the way Angelu Del Popolo sat up (almost straight) and faced alertly forward. Angel not only looked alive, but he seemed to be just starting the journey of his young life-not ending it.

“Suppose I tell Carl that you and Danny are delivering the bad news to Angel’s family? You didn’t leave the cookhouse looking like you were leaving it for good, did you?” Ketchum asked.

“We took nothing anybody would notice,” Dominic said. “It would appear that we were coming back.”

“Suppose I tell the cowboy that I was surprised Injun Jane wasn’t with you?” Ketchum asked. “I could say that, if I were Jane, I would have gone to Canada, too.” Danny saw how his dad considered this, before Ketchum said, “I think I won’t say you’ve gone to Boston. Maybe it’s better to say, ‘If I were Jane, I would have gone to Toronto .’ Suppose I say that?”

“Just don’t say too much, whatever you say,” the cook told him.

“I believe I’ll still think of him as ‘Angel,’ if that’s okay,” Ketchum said, as he climbed into his truck; he glanced only briefly at the dead boy, quickly looking away.

“I’ll always think of him as ‘Angel’!” young Dan called.

To what extent a twelve-year-old is aware, or not, of the start of an adventure-or whether this misadventure had begun long before Danny Baciagalupo mistook Injun Jane for a bear-neither Ketchum nor the cook could say, though Danny seemed very “aware.” Ketchum must have known that he might be seeing them for the last time, and he wanted to cast this phase of the gamble the cook was taking in a more positive light. “Danny!” Ketchum called.