Last Night In Twisted River

granddaddy told them some story. Like he was shooting over a red squirrel’s head, because the squirrel’s chattering was driving him crazy, or that a herd of deer had been feeding on his favorite cedars, and he shot over their heads so they would go eat all the cedars on someone else’s island-when the whole time he was talking, the deer, which Granddaddy would have gutted over this hole, so there wouldn’t be any blood in the snow, and where he was keeping the meat cold… well, do you see what I’m getting at, Charlotte?” Ketchum asked her. “This here hole is a poacher’s meat locker! I told you-there’s lots of deer around here, I’ll bet.”

Ketchum and Hero had stayed in that run-down log cabin, haunted or not. (“Hell, most places I’ve lived are haunted,” Ketchum had remarked.) The newer sleeping cabins were not to the old woodsman’s liking; as for the torn screens in Granddaddy’s cabin, Ketchum said, “If you don’t get bitten by a mosquito or two, you can hardly tell you’re in the woods.” And there was more loon activity in that back bay, because there were fewer boats; Ketchum had figured that out on the first day, too. He liked the sound of loons. “Besides, Hero farts something awful-you wouldn’t want him stinking up your sleeping cabins, Charlotte!”

At the end of the day, Charlotte wasn’t shocked by the idea that her granddaddy had been a poacher. He’d died destitute and alcoholic; gambling debts and whiskey had done him in. Now, at least, the trapdoor in the floor had been given a reason for its existence, and this rather quickly led Ketchum to his suggested improvements. It never occurred to the old river driver that Charlotte had not once been interested in living on her beloved island in the frigid winter months, when the prevailing wind had permanently bent the trees-when the bay was frozen and piled high with snow, and there wasn’t a human soul around, except the occasional ice fisherman and those madmen who rode their snowmobiles over the lake.

“It wouldn’t take a whole lot to winterize the main cottage,” Ketchum began. “When you put in your flush toilets, you just want to be sure you install two septic systems-the main one, and a smaller one that nobody has to know about. Forget about using the sleeping cabins; it would be too expensive to heat them. Just stick to the main cottage. A little electric heat will be enough to keep the toilet and the sink-and the big bathtub you want, Charlotte -from freezing. You just have to heat-wrap the pipes to the small septic tank. That way, you can flush the toilet and drain the dishwater out of the sink-and empty the bathtub, too. You just can’t pump water up from the lake, or heat any water-not in a propane hot-water heater, anyway. You’ll have to cut a hole in the ice, and bring your water up by bucket; you heat the water on the gas stove for your baths, and for washing the dishes. You would sleep in the main cottage, of course-and most of your heat would come from the woodstove. You’ll need a woodstove in your writing shack, too, Danny-but that’s all you’ll need. The back bay nearest the mainland will freeze first; you can haul in your groceries on a sled towed by a snowmobile, and take your trash to town the same way. Hell, you could ski or snowshoe here from the mainland,” Ketchum said. “You just might be better off staying away from the main channel out of Pointe au Baril Station. I don’t imagine that channel freezes over too safely.”

“But why would we want to come here in the winter?” Danny asked the old woodsman; Charlotte just stared at Ketchum, uncomprehending.

“Well, why don’t we come up here this winter, Danny?” Ketchum asked the writer. “I’ll show you why you might like it.”

Ketchum didn’t mean “winter”-not exactly. He meant deer season, which was in November. The first deer season that Danny met up with Ketchum at Pointe au Baril Station, the ice hadn’t thickened sufficiently for them to cross the back bay from the mainland to Turner Island; not even snowshoes or cross-country skis would have been safe, and Ketchum’s snowmobile surely would have sunk. In addition to the snowmobile, and a vast array of foul- weather gear, Ketchum had brought the guns, but he’d left Hero at home-actually, he’d left that fine animal with Six-Pack Pam. Six-Pack had dogs, and Hero “tolerated” her dogs, Ketchum said. (Deer hunting was “unsuitable” for dogs, Ketchum also said.)

It didn’t matter that they couldn’t get to Charlotte ’s island that first year, anyway. The builder wouldn’t be finished with all the improvements before the following summer; Ketchum’s clever winterizing would have to wait until then, too. The builder, Andy Grant, was what Ketchum affectionately called “a local fella.” In fact, Charlotte had grown up with him-they’d been childhood friends. Andy had not only renovated the main cottage for Charlotte ’s parents a few years ago; he’d more recently restored the two sleeping cabins to Charlotte ’s specifications.

Andy Grant told Ketchum and Danny where the deer were in the Bayfield area, and Ketchum already knew a fella named LaBlanc, who called himself a hunting guide; LaBlanc showed Ketchum and Danny an area north of Pointe au Baril, in the vicinity of Byng Inlet and Still River. But, in Ketchum’s case, it didn’t matter where he hunted; the deer were all around.

At first, Danny was a little insulted by the weapon Ketchum had selected for him-a Winchester Ranger, which was manufactured in New Haven, Connecticut, in the mid-eighties, and then discontinued. It was a 20-gauge, repeating shotgun with a slide action-what Ketchum called “a pump.” What initially insulted Danny was that the shotgun was a youth model.

“Don’t get your balls crossed about it,” Ketchum told the writer. “It’s a fine gun for a beginner. You better keep things simple when you start hunting. I’ve seen some fellas blow their toes off.”

For the sake of his toes, Danny guessed, Ketchum instructed the beginner to always have three rounds in the Winchester -one in the chamber and two more in the tubular magazine. “Don’t forget how many shots you’re carrying,” Ketchum said.

Danny knew that the first two rounds were buckshot; the third was a deer slug, what Ketchum called the “kill- shot.” It made no sense to load more than three rounds, no matter what the shotgun’s capacity was. “If you need a fourth or a fifth shot, you’ve already missed,” Ketchum told Danny. “The deer’s long gone.”

At night, Danny had trouble keeping Ketchum out of the bar at Larry’s Tavern, which was also a motel-south of Pointe au Baril Station, on Route 69. The motel’s walls were so thin, they could hear whoever was humping in the room next door. “Some asshole trucker and a hooker,” Ketchum declared the first night.

“I don’t think there are any hookers in Pointe au Baril,” Danny said.

“It’s a one-night stand, then,” Ketchum replied. “They sure don’t sound married.”

Another night, there was a prolonged caterwauling of a certain female kind. “This one sounds different from the night before, and the night before that,” Ketchum said.

Whoever the woman was, she went on and on. “I’m coming! I’m coming!” she kept repeating.

“Are you timing this, Danny? It might be a record,” Ketchum said, but he walked naked into the hall and beat on the door of the longest orgasm in the world. “Listen up, fella,” the old river driver said. “She’s obviously lying.”

The young man who opened the door was menacing, and in a mood to fight, but the fight-if you could call it that-was over in a hurry. Ketchum put the guy in a choke hold before the fella had managed to throw more than a punch or two. “I wasn’t lying,” the woman called from the dark room, but by then not even the young man believed her.

It was not how Danny had imagined he and Ketchum would be camping out, or otherwise roughing it, while they were hunting deer. As for the deer, the first buck Danny dropped in Bayfield required all three rounds-including the kill-shot. “Well, writers should know it’s sometimes hard work to die, Danny,” was all Ketchum told him.

Ketchum got his buck near Byng Inlet, with one shot from his 12-gauge. The next deer season in Ontario, they shot two more bucks-both of them at Still River -and by then the so-called improvements on Charlotte ’s island were complete, including the winterizing. Ketchum and Danny returned to Pointe au Baril Station in early February, when the ice on the bay nearest the mainland was two feet thick. They followed the snowmobile portage from Payne’s Road, out of Pointe au Baril, and went across the ice and drifting snow to the back dock and Granddaddy’s cabin.

Deer season was over, but Ketchum had brought his 12-gauge. “Just in case,” he told Danny.

“In case what?” Danny asked him. “We’re not poaching deer, Ketchum.”

“In case there’s some other critter,” Ketchum replied.

Later, Danny saw Ketchum grilling a couple of venison steaks on the barbecue, which Andy had hooked up to the propane inside Charlotte’s new screened-in verandah; the verandah was boarded up in winter to keep out the snow, because the outdoor summer furniture and two canoes were stored there. Unbeknownst to Danny, Ketchum had also brought his bow.

Danny forgot that Ketchum was a bow hunter, too, and that the archery season for deer in New Hampshire was three months long; Ketchum had had a lot of practice.