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Up close, the old riverman’s beard was more grizzled than it appeared from farther away; Da
Finally, the big right hand released Da
Immediately, the road surface worsened. There was little traffic to a ghost town, and Twisted River wasn’t on the way to anywhere else; the haul road hadn’t been maintained. The first pothole the truck hit caused the glove-compartment door to spring open. The soothing smell of gun oil washed over them, momentarily relieving them from the unrelenting reek of the bear. When Da
“Painkillers, both of them,” Ketchum remarked casually, as Da
In the pickup’s bed, nestled together on the woodpile under the tarp-along with the Remington.30-06 Springfield -Da
“Why are you always armed, Mr. Ketchum?” Carmella asked the river driver.
Maybe it was the armed word that caught Ketchum off-guard, because he hadn’t been armed that long-ago night when the logger and the cook and the cook’s cousin Rosie had started out on the ice-do-si-doing their way on the frozen river. Right there-in the bear-stinking truck, in the woodsman’s wild eyes-a vision of Rosie must have appeared to Ketchum. Da
“I have made … mistakes,” the riverman began; his voice sounded choked, half strangled. “Not only errors of judgment, or simply saying something I couldn’t live up to, but actual lapses.”
“You don’t have to tell the story, Ketchum,” Da
“A loving couple will say things to each other-you know, Da
“Not really,” Da
“My left hand was the one I touched your mom with, Da
“Stop!” Carmella cried. (At least she hadn’t said, “My goodness,” Da
“That was our first rule-I was her left-handed lover,” the logger explained. “In both our minds, my left hand was hers-it was Rosie’s hand, hence my most important hand, my good hand. It was my more gentle hand-the hand least like myself,” Ketchum said. It was the hand that had struck fewer blows, Da
“I see,” Da
“Please stop,” Carmella begged. (Was she gagging or crying? the writer wondered. It hadn’t occurred to Da
“You said there was a lapse. So what was the mistake?” Da
But they were cresting the hill where the cookhouse had been. Just then-in the bouncing, vomitous truck-there hove into view the deceptively calm river basin, and below the basin was the bend in the river, where both Rosie and Angel had been swept away. Carmella gasped to see the water. For Da
“The mistake?” Ketchum shouted. “I’ll say there was a lapse! We were all drunk and hollering when we went out on the ice, Da
“Yes-Jane told me,” Da
“And I said, or I thought I said, to Rosie, ‘Give me your hand.’ I swear that’s what I said to her,” Ketchum declared. “But-being drunk, and being right-handed-I instinctively reached for her with my right hand. I had been carrying your father, but he wanted to slide around on the ice, too-so I put him down.” Ketchum finally stopped the truck.
Carmella opened the passenger-side door and vomited in the grass; the poor woman kept retching while Da
“But your mother knew our rules,” Ketchum continued. “Rosie said, ‘Not that hand-that’s the wrong hand.’ And she danced away from me-she wouldn’t take my hand. Then your father slipped and fell down, and I was pushing him across the ice-as if he were a human sled-but I couldn’t close the distance between your mom and me. I didn’t have hold of her hand, Da
“I see,” Da
Carmella, on her knees, appeared to be praying; her view of where her beloved Angelù had been lost was truly the best in Twisted River, which was why the cook had wanted the cookhouse erected there.
“Don’t cut off your left hand, Ketchum,” Da
“Please don’t, Mr. Ketchum,” Carmella begged the old woodsman.
“We’ll see,” was all Ketchum would tell them. “We’ll see.”
IN THE LATE FALL of the same year he’d set fire to Twisted River, Ketchum came back to the site of the cookhouse with a hoe and some grass seed. He didn’t bother to sow any of it in what had been the town of Twisted River, but in the area of the cookhouse-and everywhere on the hillside above the river basin, where the ashes from the fire had settled into the ground-Ketchum hoed the ashes and the earth together, and he scattered the grass seed. He’d picked a day when he knew it was going to rain; by the next morning, the rain had turned to sleet, and all winter long the grass seed lay under the snow. There was grass the next spring, and now there was a meadow where the cookhouse had been. No one had ever mowed the grass, which was tall and wavy.