Last Night in Twisted River

  All Dominic had said was: "I don't think so."

  The puzzle of Ketchum's pretty penmanship remained unsolved, nor did Dominic appear to give his old friend's handwriting much thought--not to the degree young Dan did. For thirteen years, Danny Baciagalupo, the would-be writer, had corresponded with Ketchum more than his father had. The letters that passed between Ketchum and the cook were generally terse and to the point. Was Constable Carl looking for them? Dominic always wanted to know.

  "You better assume so," was essentially all that Ketchum had conveyed to the cook, though lately Ketchum had had more to say. He'd sent Danny and Dominic the exact same letter; a further novelty was that the letter was typed. "Something's up," Ketchum had begun. "We should talk."

  This was easier said than done--Ketchum had no phone. He was in the habit of calling both Dominic and young Dan collect from a public phone booth; these calls often ended abruptly, when Ketchum announced he was freezing his balls off. Granted, it was cold in northern New Hampshire--and in Maine, where Ketchum appeared to be spending more and more of his time--but, over the years, Ketchum's collect calls were almost invariably made in the cold-weather months. (Perhaps by choice--maybe Ketchum liked to keep things brief.)

  Ketchum's very first typed letter to young Dan and his dad went on to say that the cowboy had let slip "an ominous insinuation." This was nothing new--Constable Carl was ominous, and he was forever insinuating, both Dominic and Danny already knew--but this time there'd been specific mention of Canada. In Carl's opinion, the Vietnam War was the reason relations between the United States and Canada had soured. "I'm not gettin' shit in the area of cooperation from the Canadian authorities," was all the cowboy had said to Ketchum, who took this to mean that Carl was still making inquiries across the border. For thirteen years, the cop had believed that the cook and his son went to Toronto. If the cowboy was looking for them, he wasn't making inquiries in Boston--not yet. But now Ketchum had written that something was up.

  KETCHUM'S LONG-AGO ADVICE TO DANNY--namely, if the boy wanted to be a writer, he shouldn't expose himself to too much Catholic thinking--may have been a misunderstanding on Ketchum's part. The Michelangelo School--Danny's new school in the North End--was a middle school, and a public one. The kids called the school the Mickey because the teachers were Irish, but there were no nuns among them. Ketchum must have assumed that the Michelangelo was a Catholic school. ("Don't let them brainwash you," he had written to Danny--the them word, though probably connected to Catholic thinking, was forever unclear.)

  But young Dan was not struck (or even remotely influenced) by what was Catholic about the Mickey; what he had noticed about the North End, from the start, was what was Italian about it. The Michelangelo School Center had been a frequent site of the mass meetings where Italian immigrants gathered for Americanization. The overcrowded, cold-water tenement buildings, where so many of Danny's schoolmates at the Mickey lived, had originally been built for the Irish immigrants, who'd come to the North End before the Italians. But the Irish had moved--to Dorchester and Roxbury, or they were "Southies" now. Not all that long ago, there'd been a small number of Portuguese fishermen--maybe there still was a family or two, in the vicinity of Fleet Street--but in 1954, when Danny Baciagalupo and his dad arrived, the North End was virtually all Italian.

  The cook and his son were not treated as strangers--not for long. Too many relatives wanted to take them in. There were countless Calogeros, ceaseless Saettas; cousins, and not-really-cousins, called the Baciagalupos "family." But Dominic and young Dan were unused to large families--not to mention extended ones. Hadn't being standoffish helped them to survive in Coos County? The Italians didn't understand "standoffish;" either they gave you un abbraccio ("an embrace") or you were in for a fight.

  The elders still gathered on street corners and in the parks, where one heard not only the dialects of Naples and Sicily, but of Abruzzi and Calabria as well. In the warm weather, both the young and the old lived outdoors, in the narrow streets. Many of these immigrants had come to America at the turn of the century--not only from Naples and Palermo, but also from innumerable southern Italian villages. The street life they had left behind had been re-created in the North End of Boston--in the open-air fruit and vegetable stands, the small bakeries and pastry shops, the meat markets, the pushcarts with fresh fish every Friday on Cross and Salem streets, the barbershops and shoeshine shops, the summertime feasts and festivals, and those curious religious societies whose street-level windows were painted with figures of patron saints. At least the saints were "curious" to Dominic and Daniel Baciagalupo, who (in thirteen years) had failed to find exactly what was Catholic or Italian within themselves.

  Well, to be fair, perhaps Danny hadn't entirely "failed" with the Italian part--he was still trying to lose that northern New Hampshire coldness. Dominic, it seemed, would never lose it; he could cook Italian, but being one was another matter.

  Despite Ketchum's likely misunderstanding that the Michelangelo was a Catholic school, it had long seemed unfair to Danny that his dad blamed Ketchum for giving young Dan the idea of going "away" to a boarding school. All Ketchum had said, in one of his earlier letters to Danny--in that positively girlish handwriting--was that the smartest "fella" he ever knew had attended a private school in the vicinity of the New Hampshire seacoast. Ketchum meant Exeter, not a long drive north of Boston--and in those days you could take the train, what Ketchum called "the good old Boston and Maine." From Boston's North Station, the Boston & Maine ran to northern New Hampshire, too. "Hell, I'm sure you can walk from the North End to North Station," Ketchum wrote to young Dan. "Even a fella with a limp could walk that far, I imagine." (The fella word was increasingly common in Ketchum's vocabulary--maybe from Six-Pack, though Jane had also used the word. Both Danny and his dad said it, too.)

  The cook had not taken kindly to what he called Ketchum's "interference" in Daniel's secondary-school education, though young Dan had argued with his father on that point; illogically, Dominic didn't blame the boy's seventh-and eighth-grade English teacher at the Mickey, Mr. Leary, who'd had far more to do with Danny eventually going to Exeter than Ketchum had ever had.

  For that matter, the cook should have blamed himself--for when Dominic learned that Exeter (in those days) was an all-boys' school, he was suddenly persuaded to allow his beloved Daniel to leave home in the fall of 1957, when the boy was only fifteen. Dominic would be heartbroken by how much he missed his son, but the cook could sleep at night, secure in the knowledge (or, as Ketchum would say, "the illusion") that his boy was safe from girls. Dominic let Daniel go to Exeter because he wanted to keep his son away from girls "for as long as possible," as he wrote to Ketchum.

  "Well, that's your problem, Cookie," his old friend wrote back.

  Indeed, it was. It hadn't been such an apparent problem when they'd first come to the North End--when young Dan was only twelve, and he appeared to take no notice of girls--but the cook saw how the girls already noticed his son. Among those cousins and not-really-cousins in the Saetta and Calogero clans, there would soon be some kissing cousins among them, the cook could easily imagine--not to mention all the other girls the boy would meet, for the North End was a neighborhood, where you met people like crazy. The cook and his twelve-year-old had never lived in a neighborhood before.

  On that April Sunday in '54, father and son had had some difficulty finding the North End, and--even back then--it was easier to walk in the North End than it was to drive. (Both driving and parking the Pontiac Chieftain in that neighborhood had been a task--certainly not equal to transporting Injun Jane's body from the cookhouse to Constable Carl's kitchen, but a task nonetheless.) When they wove their way, on foot, to Hanover Street--passing once within view of the gold dome of the Sumner Tunnel Authority, which appeared to shine down on them like a new sun on a different planet--they saw two other restaurants (the Europeo and Mother Anna's) near Cross Street before they spotted Vicino di Napoli.

  It was late afternoon-
-it had been a long drive from northern New Hampshire--but it was a warm, sunny day compared to the cold-morning light at Dead Woman Dam, where they'd left Angel's bluish body with Ketchum.

  Here, the sidewalks teemed with families; people were actually talking--some of them shouting--to one another. (There--at Dead Woman Dam and in Twisted River, on the morning they left--they'd seen only the slain Indian dishwasher, the drowned boy, and Ketchum.) Here, from the moment they'd parked the Pontiac and started walking, Danny had been too excited to speak; he'd never seen such a place, except in the movies. (There were no movies to see in Twisted River; occasionally, Injun Jane had taken young Dan to Berlin to see one. The cook had said he would never go back to Berlin, "except in handcuffs.")

  That April Sunday on Hanover Street, when they stopped walking outside Vicino di Napoli, Danny glanced at his father, who looked as if he'd been dragged to the North End in handcuffs--or else the cook felt doomed to be darkening the restaurant's door. Was a curse attached to the bearer of sad tidings? Dominic was wondering. What becomes of the man who brings bad news? One day, does something worse happen to him?

  Young Dan could sense his dad's hesitation, but before either father or son could open the door, an old man opened it from inside the restaurant. "Come een-a, come een-a!" he said to them; he took Danny by the wrist, pulling him into the welcoming smell of the place. Dominic mutely followed them. At first glance, the cook could tell that the old man was not his despised father; the elderly gentleman looked nothing like Dominic, and he was too old to have been Gennaro Capodilupo.

  He was, as he very much appeared to be, both the maitre d' and owner of Vicino di Napoli, and he had no memory of having met Annunziata Saetta, though he'd known Nunzi (without knowing it) and he knew plenty of Saettas--nor did the old man realize, on this particular Sunday, that it was Dominic's father, Gennaro Capodilupo, whom he'd fired; Gennaro, that pig, had been an overly flirtatious bus-boy at Vicino di Napoli. (The restaurant was where Nunzi and Dominic's philandering dad had met!) But the aged owner and maitre d' had heard of Annunziata Saetta; he'd heard of Rosina or "Rosie" Calogero, too. Scandals are the talk of neighborhoods, as young Dan and his dad would soon learn.

  As for Vicino di Napoli, the dining room was not big, and the tables were small; there were red-and-white-checkered tablecloths, and two young women and a kid (about Angel's age) were arranging the place settings. There was a stainless-steel serving counter, beyond which Dominic could see a brick-lined pizza oven and an open kitchen, where two cooks were at work. Dominic was relieved that neither of the cooks was old enough to be his father.

  "We're not quite ready to serve, but you can sit down--have-a something to drink, maybe," the old man said, smiling at Danny.

  Dominic reached into an inside pocket of his jacket, where he felt Angelu Del Popolo's wallet--it was still damp. But he had barely taken the wallet out when the maitre d' backed away from him. "Are you a cop?" the old man asked. The cop word got the attention of the two cooks Dominic had spotted in the kitchen; they came cautiously out from behind the serving counter. The kid and the two women setting the tables stopped working and stared at Dominic, too.

  "Cops don't usually work with their children," one of the cooks said to the old man. This cook was covered with flour--not just his apron but his hands and bare forearms were a dusty white. (The pizza chef, probably, Dominic thought.)

  "I'm not a cop, I'm a cook," Dominic told them. The two younger men and the old one laughed with relief; the two women and the kid went back to work. "But I have something to show you," Dominic said. The cook was fishing around in Angel's wallet. He couldn't make up his mind what to show them first--the Boston transit pass with Angelu Del Popolo's name and date of birth, or the photograph of the pretty but plump woman. He chose the streetcar and subway pass with the dead boy's actual name, but before Dominic could decide which of the men to show the pass to, the old man saw the photo in the open wallet and grabbed the wallet out of Dominic's hands.

  "Carmella!" the maitre d' cried.

  "There was a boy," Dominic began, as the two cooks hovered over the picture under plastic in the wallet. "Maybe she's his mother."

  Dominic got no further. The pizza chef hid his face in his hands, completely whitening both cheeks. "An-geh-LOO!" he wailed.

  "No! No! No!" the old man sang, grabbing Dominic by both shoulders and shaking him.

  The other cook (clearly the principal or first chef) held his heart, as if he'd been stabbed.

  The pizza chef, as white-faced as a clown, lightly touched young Dan's hand with his flour-covered fingers. "What has happened to Angelu?" he asked the boy in such a gentle way that Dominic knew the man must have a child Daniel's age, or that he'd had one. Both cooks were about ten years older than Dominic.

  "Angel drowned," Danny told them all.

  "It was an accident," his father spoke up.

  "Angelu was-a no fisherman!" the maitre d' lamented.

  "It was a logging accident," Dominic explained. "There was a river drive, and the boy slipped under the logs."

  The young women and the kid about Angel's age had bolted--Danny hadn't seen them leave. (It would turn out that they had fled no farther than the kitchen.)

  "Angelu used to work here, after school," the old man was saying, to Danny. "His mama, Carmella--she works here now."

  The other cook had stepped closer, holding out his hand to Dominic. "Antonio Molinari," the principal chef said, somberly shaking Dominic's hand.

  "Dominic Baciagalupo," the cook replied. "I was the cook in the logging camp. This is my son, Daniel."

  "Giuse Polcari," the old man said to young Dan with downcast eyes. "Nobody calls me Giuseppe. I also like just plain Joe." Pointing to the pizza chef, old Polcari said: "This is my son Paul."

  "You can call me Dan or Danny," the boy told them. "Only my dad calls me Daniel."

  Tony Molinari had gone to the door of the restaurant; he was watching the passersby on Hanover Street. "Here she comes!" he said. "I see Carmella!" The two cooks fled into their kitchen, leaving the bewildered Baciagalupos with old Polcari.

  "You gotta tell her--I no can-a do it," Giuse (or just plain Joe) was saying. "I introduce you," the maitre d' said, pushing Dominic closer to the restaurant's door; Danny was holding his dad's hand. "Her husband drowned, too--they were a true-love story!" old Polcari was telling them. "But he was a fisherman--they drown a lot."

  "Does Carmella have other children?" Dominic asked. Now the three of them could see her--a full-figured woman with a beautiful face and jet-black hair. She was not yet forty; maybe she was Ketchum's age or a little older. Big breasts, big hips, big smile--only the smile was bigger than Injun Jane's, young Dan would notice.

  "Angelu was her one and only," Giuse answered Dominic. Danny let go of his dad's hand, because old Polcari was trying to give him something. It was Angel's wallet, which felt wet and cold--the transit pass stuck out of it crookedly. Danny opened the wallet and put the pass back in place, just as Carmella Del Popolo walked in the door.

  "Hey, Joe--am I late?" she asked the old man cheerfully.

  "Not you, Carmella--you-a always on time!"

  Maybe this was one of those moments that made Daniel Baciagalupo become a writer--his first and inevitably awkward attempt at foreshadowing. The boy suddenly saw into his father's future, if not so clearly into his own. Yes, Carmella was a little older and certainly plumper than the woman in the photo Angel had carried in his wallet, but in no one's estimation had she lost her looks. At twelve, Danny may have been too young to notice girls--or the girls themselves were too young to get his attention--but the boy already had an interest in women. (In Injun Jane, surely--in Six-Pack Pam, definitely.)

  Carmella Del Popolo forcefully reminded young Dan of Jane. Her olive-brown skin was not unlike Jane's reddish-brown coloring; her slightly flattened nose and broad cheekbones were the same, as were her dark-brown eyes--like Jane's, Carmella's eyes were almost as black as her hair. And wouldn't Carme
lla soon have a sadness like Jane's inside her? Jane had lost a son, too, and Carmella--like Dominic Baciagalupo--had already lost an adored spouse.

  It was not that Danny could see, at that moment, the slightest indication that his dad was attracted to Carmella, or she to him; it was rather that the boy knew one thing for certain. Angel's mother was the next woman his father would be attached to--for as long as the North End kept them safe from Constable Carl.

  "You gotta sit down, Carmella," old Polcari was saying, as he retreated toward the kitchen, where the others were hiding. "This is that cook and his son, from up-a north--you know, Angelu's buddies."

  The woman, who was already radiant, brightened even more. "You are Dominic?" she cried, pressing the cook's temples with her palms. By the time she turned to Danny, which she did quickly, Giuse Polcari had disappeared with the other cowards. "And you must be Danny!" Carmella said with delight. She hugged him, hard--not as hard as Jane had hugged him, at times, but hard enough to make young Dan think of Jane again.

  Dominic only now realized why there'd been so little money in Angel's wallet, and why they'd found next to nothing among the dead boy's few things. Angel had been sending his earnings to his mother. The boy had begged rides to the post office with Injun Jane; he'd told Jane that the postage to Canada was complicated, but he'd been buying money orders for his mom. He'd clearly been faithful about writing her, too, for she knew how the cook and his son had befriended her boy. All at once, she asked about Ketchum.

  "Is Mr. Ketchum with you?" Carmella said to Danny, the boy's face held warmly in her hands. (Maybe this moment of speechlessness helped to make Daniel Baciagalupo become a writer. All those moments when you know you should speak, but you can't think of what to say--as a writer, you can never give enough attention to those moments.) But it was then that Carmella seemed to notice there was no one else in the dining room, and no one visible in the kitchen; the poor woman took this to mean that they intended to surprise her. Maybe her Angelu had made an unannounced visit to see her? Were the others hiding her dearest one in the kitchen, all of them managing to keep deathly quiet? "An-geh-LOO!" Carmella called. "Are you and Mr. Ketchum here, too? An-geh-LOO?"