Last Night in Twisted River

  Danny's mother screamed when she saw the bear. That made the bear stand up on its hind legs and squint at her, but Dominic had had quite a lot of wine; at first, he didn't know it was a bear. He must have thought it was a hairy, drunken logger, coming to assault his beautiful wife.

  On the stove was an eight-inch cast-iron skillet, in which the cook had recently sauteed the mushrooms for the omelet. Dominic picked up the skillet, which was still warm in his hand, and hit the bear in the face--mostly on its nose but also on the broad, flat bridge of its nose between the bear's small, squinty eyes. The bear dropped to all fours and fled through the kitchen door, leaving the torn screen and the broken wooden slats hanging from the frame.

  Whenever the cook told this story, he always said: "Well, the door had to be fixed, of course, but it still opens the wrong way." In telling the story to his son, Dominic Baciagalupo usually added: "I would never hit a bear with a cast-iron skillet--I thought it was a man!"

  "But what would you do with a bear?" Danny asked his dad.

  "Try to reason with it, I guess," the cook replied. "In that sort of situation, you can't reason with a man."

  As for what "that sort of situation" was, Dan could only guess. Had his father imagined he was protecting his pretty wife from a dangerous man?

  As for the eight-inch cast-iron skillet, it had acquired a special place for itself in the cookhouse. It no longer made its home in the kitchen with the other pots and pans. The skillet was hung at shoulder height on a hook in the upstairs of the cookhouse, where the bedrooms were--it resided just inside Dominic's bedroom door. That skillet had proved its worth; it had become the cook's weapon of choice, should he ever hear someone's footsteps on the stairs or the sound of an intruder (animal or human) sneaking around in the kitchen.

  Dominic didn't own a gun; he didn't want one. For a New Hampshire boy, he had missed out on all the deer hunting--not only because of the ankle injury but because he hadn't grown up with a dad. As for the loggers and the sawmill men, the deer hunters among them brought the cook their deer; he butchered the deer for them, and kept enough meat for himself so that he could occasionally serve venison in the cookhouse. It wasn't that Dominic disapproved of hunting; he just didn't like venison, or guns. He also suffered from a recurrent dream; he'd told Daniel about it. The cook repeatedly dreamed that he was murdered in his sleep--shot to death in his own bed--and whenever he woke from that dream, the sound of the shot was still ringing in his ears.

  So Dominic Baciagalupo slept with a skillet in his bedroom. There were cast-iron skillets of all sizes in the cookhouse kitchen, but the eight-inch size was preferable for self-defense. Even young Dan could manage to swing it with some force. As for the ten-and-a-half-inch skillet, or the eleven-and-a-quarter-inch one, they may have been more accommodating to cook in, but they were too heavy to be reliable weapons; not even Ketchum could swing those bigger skillets quickly enough to take out a lecherous logger, or a bear.

  THE NIGHT AFTER Angel Pope had gone under the logs, Danny Baciagalupo lay in bed in the upstairs of the cookhouse. The boy's bedroom was above the inside-opening screen door to the kitchen, and the loose-fitting outer door, which he could hear rattling in the wind. He could hear the river, too. In the cookhouse, you could always hear Twisted River--except when the river ran under the ice. But Danny must have fallen asleep as quickly as his father, because the twelve-year-old didn't hear the truck. The light from the truck's headlights had not shone into the cookhouse. Whoever was driving the truck must have been able to navigate the road from town in near-total darkness, because there wasn't much moonlight that night--or else the driver was drunk and had forgotten to turn on the truck's headlights.

  Danny thought he heard the door to the truck's cab close. The mud, which was soft in the daytime, could get crunchy underfoot at night--it was still cold enough at night for the mud to freeze, and now there was a dusting of new snow. Perhaps he hadn't heard a truck door close, Dan was thinking; that clunk might have been a sound in whatever dream the boy had been having. Outside the cookhouse, the footsteps on the frozen mud made a shuffling sound--ponderous and wary. Maybe it's a bear, Danny thought.

  The cook kept a cooler outside the kitchen. The cooler was sealed tight, but it contained the ground lamb, for the lamb hash, and the bacon--and whatever other perishables wouldn't fit in the fridge. What if the bear had smelled the meat in the cooler? Danny was thinking.

  "Dad?" the boy spoke out, but his father was probably fast asleep down the hall.

  Like everyone else, the bear seemed to be having trouble with the outer door to the cookhouse kitchen; it batted at the door with one paw. Young Dan heard grunting, too.

  "Dad!" Danny shouted; he heard his father swipe the cast-iron skillet off the hook on the bedroom wall. Like his dad, the boy had gone to bed in his long johns and a pair of socks. The floor in the upstairs hall felt cold to Danny, even with his socks on. He and his dad padded downstairs to the kitchen, which was dimly lit by the pilot lights flickering from the old Garland. The cook had a two-handed grip on the black skillet. When the outer door opened, the bear--if it was a bear--pushed against the screen door with its chest. It came inside in an upright position, albeit unsteadily. Its teeth were a long, white blur.

  "I'm not a bear, Cookie," Ketchum said.

  The flash of white, which Danny had imagined was the bear's bared teeth, was the new cast on Ketchum's right forearm; the cast went from the middle of the big man's palm to where his arm bent at the elbow. "Sorry I startled you fellas," Ketchum added.

  "Close the outer door, will you? I'm trying to keep it warm in here," the cook said. Danny saw his father put the skillet on the bottom step of the stairs. Ketchum struggled to secure the outer door with his left hand. "You're drunk," Dominic told him.

  "I've got one arm, Cookie, and I'm right-handed," Ketchum said.

  "You're still drunk, Ketchum," Dominic Baciagalupo told his old friend.

  "I guess you remember what that's like," Ketchum said.

  Dan helped Ketchum close the outer door. "I'll bet you're real hungry," he said to Ketchum. The big man, swaying slightly, ruffled the boy's hair.

  "I don't need to eat," Ketchum said.

  "It might help to sober you up," the cook said. Dominic opened the fridge. He told Ketchum: "I've got some meat loaf, which isn't bad cold. You can have it with applesauce."

  "I don't need to eat," the big man said again. "I need you to come with me, Cookie."

  "Where are we going?" Dominic asked, but even young Dan knew when his father was pretending not to know something he clearly knew.

  "You know where," Ketchum told the cook. "I just have trouble remembering the exact spot."

  "That's because you drink too much, Ketchum--that's why you can't remember," Dominic said.

  When Ketchum lowered his head, he swayed more; for a moment, Danny thought that the logger might fall down. And by the way both men had lowered their voices, the boy understood that they were negotiating; they were also being careful not to say too much, because Ketchum didn't know what the twelve-year-old knew about his mother's death, and Dominic Baciagalupo didn't want his son to hear whatever odd or unwelcome detail Ketchum might remember.

  "Just try the meat loaf, Ketchum," the cook said softly.

  "It's pretty good with applesauce," Danny said. The riverman lowered himself onto a stool; he rested his new white cast on the countertop. Everything about Ketchum was hardened and sharp-edged, like a whittled-down stick--and, as Danny had observed, "wicked tough"--which made the sterile, fragile-looking cast as unsuited to the man as a prosthetic limb. (If Ketchum had lost an arm, he would have made do with the stump--he might have used it as a club.)

  But now that Ketchum was sitting down, Danny thought the river driver looked safe enough to touch. The boy had never felt a cast before. Even drunk, Ketchum somehow knew what Dan was thinking. "Go on--you can touch it," the logger said, extending his cast in the boy's direction. There was dried blood, or pitch, on
what Danny could see of Ketchum's crooked fingers; they protruded from the cast, un-moving. With a broken wrist, it hurt to move your fingers for the first few days. The boy gently touched Ketchum's cast.

  The cook gave Ketchum a generous serving of meat loaf and applesauce. "There's milk or orange juice," Dominic said, "or I could make you some coffee."

  "What a disheartening choice," Ketchum said, winking at Danny.

  "Disheartening," the cook repeated, shaking his head. "I'll make some coffee."

  Danny wished that the two men would just talk about everything; the boy knew much of their history, but not enough about his mother. Of her death, no detail could be odd or unwelcome--Danny wanted to hear every word of it. But the cook was a careful man, or he had become one; even Ketchum, who had driven his own children away from him, was especially cautious and protective with Danny, much as the veteran logger had behaved around Angel.

  "I wouldn't go there with you when you've been drinking, anyway," the cook was saying.

  "I took you there when you'd been drinking," Ketchum said; so he wouldn't say more, he took a mouthful of meat loaf and applesauce.

  "Except when it's under a logjam, a body doesn't move downstream as fast as a log," Dominic Baciagalupo said, as if he were speaking to the coffeepot--not to Ketchum, whose back was turned to him. "Not unless the body is caught on a log."

  Danny had heard this explanation, in another context. It had taken a few days--three, to be exact--for his mother's body to make the journey from the river basin to the narrows, where it had bumped up against the dam. First a drowned body sinks, the cook had explained to his son; then it rises.

  "They're keeping the dams closed through the weekend," Ketchum said. (He meant not only Dead Woman Dam but the Pontook Dam, on the Androscoggin.) Ketchum ate steadily but not fast, the fork held unfamiliarly, and a little clumsily, in his left hand.

  "It's good with applesauce, isn't it?" the boy asked him. Ketchum nodded in agreement, chewing vigorously.

  They could smell the coffee brewing, and the cook said--more to himself than to his son, or Ketchum--"I might as well start the bacon, while I'm at it." Ketchum just went on eating. "I suppose the logs are already at the first dam," Dominic added, as if he were still speaking to no one but himself. "I mean our logs."

  "I know which logs you mean, and which dam," Ketchum told him. "Yes, the logs are already at the dam--they were there while you were making supper."

  "So you saw that moron doctor there?" the cook asked. "Not that you need a genius to put a cast on a broken wrist, but you must be a man who loves to take chances." Dominic went out of the cookhouse to get the bacon from the cooler. It was black outside, and the sound of the river rushed into the warm kitchen.

  "You used to take chances, Cookie!" Ketchum called out to his old friend; he looked cautiously at Danny. "Your dad used to be happier, too--when he drank."

  "I used to be happier--period," the cook said; the way he dropped the slab of bacon on the cutting board made Danny look at his father, but Ketchum never turned his attention away from the meat loaf and applesauce.

  "Given that bodies move downstream slower than logs," Ketchum said with deliberate slowness, his speech slightly slurred, "what would you guess as to Angel's estimated time of arrival at that spot I'm having trouble remembering, exactly?"

  Danny was counting to himself, but it was clear to the boy, and to Ketchum, that the cook had already been estimating the young Canadian's journey. "Saturday night or Sunday morning," Dominic Baciagalupo said. He had to raise his voice above the hissing bacon. "I'm not going there with you at night, Ketchum."

  Danny quickly looked at Ketchum, anticipating the big man's response; it was, after all, the story that most interested the boy, and the one closest to his heart. "I went there with you at night, Cookie."

  "The odds are better you'll be sober Sunday morning," the cook told Ketchum. "Nine o'clock, Sunday morning--Daniel and I will meet you there." (They meant Dead Woman Dam, though young Dan knew that neither man would say it.)

  "We can all go in my truck," Ketchum said.

  "I'll drive Daniel with me, in case you're not quite sober," Dominic replied.

  Ketchum pushed his clean plate away; he rested his shaggy head on the countertop and stared at his cast. "You'll meet me at the mill-pond, you mean?" Ketchum asked.

  "I don't call it that," the cook said. "The dam was there before the mill. How can they call it a pond, when it's where the river narrows?"

  "You know mill people," Ketchum said with contempt.

  "The dam was there before the mill," Dominic repeated, still not naming the dam.

  "One day the water will breach that dam, and they won't bother to build another one," Ketchum said; his eyes were closing.

  "One day they won't be driving logs on Twisted River," the cook said. "They won't need a dam where the river runs into the reservoir, though I believe they'll keep the Pontook Dam on the Androscoggin."

  "One day soon, Cookie," Ketchum corrected him. His eyes were closed--his head, his chest, and both his arms were sprawled on the countertop. The cook quietly removed the clean plate, but Ketchum wasn't asleep; he spoke more slowly than before. "There's a sort of spillway off to one side of the dam. The water makes a pool--it's almost like an open well--but there's a kind of containment boom, just a rope with floats, to keep the logs out."

  "It sounds like you remember it as exactly as I do," Dominic told him.

  That was where they'd found his mother, Danny knew. Her body floated lower in the water than the logs; she must have drifted under the containment boom and into the spillway. Ketchum had found her all alone in the pool, or the well--not a log around her.

  "I can't quite see how to get there," Ketchum said, with some frustration. With his eyes still closed, he was slowly curling the fingers of his right hand, his fingertips reaching for but not quite touching the palm of his cast; both the cook and his son knew that the logger was testing his tolerance of the pain.

  "Well, I can show you, Ketchum," Dominic said gently. "You have to walk out on the dam, or across the logs--remember?"

  The cook had carried one of the folding cots into the kitchen. He nodded to his son, who helped him set up the cot--where it wouldn't be in the way of the ovens, or the inside-opening screen door. "I want to sleep in the kitchen, too," Danny told his dad.

  "If you make a little distance between yourself and the conversation, you might actually go back to sleep," Dominic said to his son.

  "I want to hear the conversation," Danny said.

  "The conversation is almost over," the cook whispered in the boy's ear, kissing him.

  "Don't count on it, Cookie," Ketchum said, with his eyes still closed.

  "I've got the baking to do, Ketchum--and I might as well start the potatoes."

  "I've heard you talk and cook at the same time," Ketchum told him; he hadn't opened his eyes.

  The cook gave his son a stern look, pointing to the stairs. "It's cold upstairs," Danny complained; the boy paused on the bottom step, where the skillet was.

  "On your way, please put the skillet back where it belongs, Daniel."

  The boy went grudgingly upstairs, pausing on every step; he listened to his father work with the mixing bowls. Young Dan didn't need to see in order to know what his dad was doing--the cook always made the banana bread first. As Danny hung the eight-inch cast-iron skillet on the hook in his father's bedroom, he counted sixteen eggs cracked into the stainless-steel bowl; then came the mashed bananas and the chopped walnuts. (Sometimes, his dad topped the bread with warm apples.) The cook made the scones next, adding the eggs and the butter to the dry ingredients--the fruit, if he had any, he added last. From the upstairs hall, Danny could hear his father greasing the muffin tins, which he then sprinkled with flour--before he put the corn-muffin mixture into the tins. There was oatmeal in the banana bread--and sweet bran flour, which the boy could soon smell from his bedroom.

  It was warmer under the covers, fro
m where Danny heard the oven doors open and the baking pans and muffin tins slide in; then he heard the oven doors close. The unusual sound, which made the boy open his eyes and sit up in bed, was his father struggling to lift Ketchum--holding the big man under both arms while he dragged him to the folding cot. Danny hadn't known that his dad was strong enough to lift Ketchum; the twelve-year-old crept quietly down the stairs and watched his father settle Ketchum on the cot, where the cook covered the logger with one of the unzipped sleeping bags, as if the opened bag were a blanket.

  Dominic Baciagalupo was putting the potatoes on the griddle when Ketchum spoke to him. "There was no way I could let you see her, Cookie--it wouldn't have been right."

  "I understand," the cook said.

  On the stairs, Danny closed his eyes again, seeing the story, which he knew by heart--Ketchum, taking small steps on the logs, drunk, while he reached into the pool created by the spillway. "Don't come out here, Cookie!" Ketchum had called ashore. "Don't you try walking on the logs--or on the dam, either!"

  Dominic had watched Ketchum carry his dead wife along the edge of the containment boom. "Get away from me, Cookie!" Ketchum had called, as he came across the logs. "You can't see her anymore--she's not the same as she was!"

  The cook, who was also drunk, had taken the blanket from the back of Ketchum's truck. But Ketchum would not come ashore with the body; even drunk, he had kept walking on the logs with small, rapid steps. "Spread the blanket in the back of the truck, Cookie--then walk away!" When Ketchum came ashore, Dominic was standing at a triangular point--equidistant from the riverbank and Ketchum's truck. "Just stand your ground, Cookie--till I cover her," Ketchum had said.

  Danny wondered if that was the source of his father's frequent admonition: "Stand your ground, Daniel--just don't get killed." Maybe it had come from Ketchum, who had gently placed the cook's dead wife in the back of his truck, covering her with the blanket. Dominic had kept his distance.

  "Didn't you want to see her?" Danny had asked his dad, too many times.