Last Night In Twisted River

“Well, that’s kind of the problem,” Ketchum told him. “Six-Pack moved on. You know how that is,” he added. Ketchum knew all about Katie moving on-there was no more to say about it.

“Six-Pack left you?” Danny asked.

“That’s not the problem,” Ketchum answered. “I’m not surprised she left me-I’m surprised she stayed so long. But I’m surprised that she’s moved in with the cowboy,” Ketchum added. “That’s the problem.”

Both Danny and his dad knew that Carl wasn’t a constable anymore. (They also knew there was no more town of Twisted River; it had burned to the ground, and it had been a ghost town before it burned.) Carl was now a deputy sheriff of Coos County.

“Are you saying Six-Pack will tell the cowboy what she knows?” Danny asked Ketchum.

“Not immediately,” Ketchum answered. “She has no reason to do me any dirt-or to do you and your dad any harm, as far as I know. We parted on good enough terms. It’s what’ll happen to her when Carl beats her up, because he will. Or when he throws her out, because he won’t keep her for long. You haven’t seen Six-Pack in a while, Danny-she’s losing her looks something wicked.”

Daniel Baciagalupo was counting to himself. He knew that Ketchum and Six-Pack were the same age, and that they both were the exact same age as Carl. When he got to fifty, Danny wrote the number down-that was how old they were. He could imagine that Six-Pack Pam’s looks were going, and that the cowboy would one day kick her out. Carl would definitely beat her, even though the deputy sheriff had stopped drinking.

“Explain what you mean,” Danny said to Ketchum.

“It’ll be when Carl does something bad to Pam-that’ll be when she’ll tell him. Don’t you see, Danny?” Ketchum asked him. “It’s the only way she can hurt him. All these years, he’s been wondering about you and your dad-all these years, he’s been thinking he killed Jane. He just can’t remember it! I think it’s honestly driven him crazy-that he can’t remember killing her, but he believes he did.”

If he was a better man, it might be a relief to the cowboy to learn he didn’t kill Injun Jane. And if Six-Pack had led a gentler life, maybe she wouldn’t be tempted to use her knowledge of the situation as a weapon. (At worst, Pam might blurt out the truth to Carl-either accidentally, or while he was beating her up.) But Ketchum wasn’t counting on the cowboy to discover some essential goodness within himself, and the river driver knew the life Six-Pack had led. (He’d led that life, too; there was nothing gentle about it.) And the cowboy had driven himself crazy-not because he believed he’d killed Jane; he didn’t even feel guilty about that, much less crazy. Ketchum was right: What made Carl crazy was that he couldn’t remember killing her; Ketchum knew the cowboy would have enjoyed remembering that.

That he couldn’t remember was why the sheriff had eventually stopped drinking. Years ago, when Ketchum had first told Danny and his dad about “the new teetotaler in Coos County,” both the cook and his son had laughed about it-they’d positively howled.

“Cookie’s got to get out of Boston -that’s for starters,” Ketchum said now. “He ought to lose the Del Popolo, too. I’m going to tell him, but you’ve got to tell him, too, Danny. Your dad doesn’t always listen to me.”

“Ketchum, are you saying it’s inevitable that Pam will tell Carl everything?”

“As inevitable as the fact that one day, Danny, the cowboy is going to beat her up.”

“Jesus!” Danny suddenly cried. “What were you and Mom doing when she was supposed to be teaching you to read?”

“Talk to your dad, Danny-it’s not my business to tell you.”

“Were you sleeping with her?” Danny asked him.

“Talk to your dad, please,” Ketchum said. Danny couldn’t remember Ketchum ever saying the please word before.

“Does my dad know you slept with her?” Danny asked him.

“Constipated Christ!” Ketchum shouted into the phone. “Why do you think your dad busted half my head open with the damn skillet?”

“What did you just say?” Danny asked him.

“I’m drunk,” Ketchum told him. “Don’t listen to what I say.”

“I thought Carl cracked your head open with his Colt forty-five,” Danny said.

“Hell, if the cowboy had cracked my head open, I would have killed him!” Ketchum thundered. As soon as the logger said this, Danny knew it was true; Ketchum would never have tolerated having his head cracked open, unless Dominic had done it.

“I saw lights on in the cookhouse,” Ketchum began, suddenly sounding weary. “Your mom and dad were up late talking, and-in those days-drinking. I walked in the screen door to the kitchen. I didn’t know it was the night your mom told your dad about her and me.”

“I get it,” Danny said.

“Not all of it, you don’t. Talk to your dad,” Ketchum repeated.

“Did Jane know?” Danny asked.

“Shit, the Injun knew everything,” Ketchum told him.

“Ketchum?” Danny asked. “Does my dad know that you didn’t learn to read?”

“I’m trying to learn now,” Ketchum said defensively. “I think that schoolteacher lady is going to teach me. She said she would.”

“Does Dad know you can’t read?” the young man asked his father’s old friend.

“I suppose one of us will have to tell him,” Ketchum said. “Cookie is probably of the opinion that Rosie must have taught me something.”

“So that was why you called-what you meant by ‘Something’s up’ in your letter-is that it?” Danny asked him.

“I can’t believe you believed that bullshit about the fucking bear,” Ketchum said. The bear story had found its way, in a more remote form, into Daniel Baciagalupo’s first novel. But of course it hadn’t really been a bear that walked into the kitchen-it had just been Ketchum. And if the bear story hadn’t been planted in young Dan’s heart and mind, maybe he wouldn’t have reached for the eight-inch cast- iron skillet-maybe he wouldn’t have imagined that the sound of his father and Jane making love was the sound of a mauling-in-progress. Then maybe he wouldn’t have killed Jane.

“So there wasn’t a bear,” Danny said.

“Hell, there’s probably three thousand bears at any given time in northern New Hampshire -I’ve seen a bunch of bears. I’ve shot some,” Ketchum added. “But if a bear had walked into the cookhouse kitchen through that screen door, your father’s best way to save himself, and Rosie, would be if the two of them had exited the kitchen through the dining room-not running, either, or ever turning their backs on the bear, but just maintaining eye contact and backing up real slowly. No, you dummy, it wasn’t a bear-it was me! Anybody knows better than to hit a bear in the face with a fucking frying pan!”

“I wish I had never written about it,” was all Danny could say.

“There’s one more thing,” Ketchum told him. “It’s another kind of writing problem.”

“Jesus!” Danny said again. “How much have you been drinking?”

“You’re sounding more and more like your father,” Ketchum told him. “I just mean that you’re publishing a book, aren’t you? And have you thought about what it might mean if that book were to become a bestseller? If suddenly you were to become a popular writer, with your name and picture in the newspapers and magazines-you might even get to be on television!”

“It’s a first novel,” Danny said dismissively. “It will have only a small first printing, and not much publicity. It’s a literary novel, or I hope it is. It’s highly unlikely it’ll be a bestseller!”

“Think about it,” Ketchum said. “Anything’s possible, isn’t it? Don’t writers, even young ones, get lucky like other people-or unlucky, as the case may be?”

This time, Danny saw it coming-sooner than he’d seen it in Mr. Leary’s classroom at the Mickey when the old English teacher made his “bold suggestion” about the boy possibly losing the Baciagalupo. The pen-name proposition-it was coming again. Ketchum had first proposed a version of it to both Danny and his dad; now Ketchum was asking Dominic to lose the Del Popolo.

“Danny?” Ketchum asked. “Are you still there? What’s the name for it-when a writer chooses a name that’s not his or her given name? That George Eliot did it, didn’t she?”