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“You’re quite right about that,” the cook said to his sleeping friend. The twelve-year-old came back inside, closing the kitchen’s outer door. Ketchum was sitting up on the cot; perhaps his own shouting had woken him. He was frightening to behold. The u
“Don’t forget to fuck Constable Carl, too,” the cook said to him.
“Absolutely,” Ketchum readily agreed. “That fucking cowboy.”
Constable Carl had given Ketchum the scar. The constable routinely broke up fights at the dance hall and in the hostelry bars. He’d broken up one of Ketchum’s fights by cracking the logger’s head with the long barrel of his Colt.45-“the kind of show-off weapon only an asshole would have in New Hampshire,” in Ketchum’s opinion. (Hence Constable Carl was a “cowboy.”)
Yet, in Da
“Was I saying something?” Ketchum asked the cook and his son.
“You were positively eloquent on the subject of the donkey-engine men and the truck drivers,” Dominic told his friend.
“Fuck them,” Ketchum automatically replied. “I’m going north-anywhere but here,” he a
“Yeah, sure,” Dominic said.
Da
“You should leave here, Cookie-you know you should,” Ketchum said, as the first of the headlights from the kitchen help shone into the cookhouse.
“Yeah, sure,” the cook said again. Like Dominic Baciagalupo, Ketchum talked about leaving, but he stayed.
The engine sound of the Indian dishwasher’s truck stood out among the other vehicles. “Constipated Christ!” said Ketchum, as he finally stood up. “Does Jane ever shift out of first gear?”
The cook, who had not once looked at Ketchum while he was working at the stove, looked at him now. “I didn’t hire her for her driving, Ketchum.”
“Yeah, sure,” was all Ketchum said, as Injun Jane opened the outer door; the Indian dishwasher and the rest of the kitchen help came inside. (Da
Ketchum had folded up the cot and the sleeping bag; he was putting them away when Jane spoke. “Uh-oh-there’s a logger in the kitchen,” she said. “That’s never a good sign.”
“You and your signs,” Ketchum said, without looking at her. “Is your husband dead yet, or do we have to postpone the celebration?”
“I haven’t married him yet, and I have no plans to,” Jane replied, as always. The Indian dishwasher lived with Constable Carl-a bone of contention with Ketchum and the cook. Dominic didn’t like the cowboy any better than Ketchum did-nor had Jane been with the constable long, and (speaking of signs) she gave some vague indication that she might leave him. He beat her. The cook and Ketchum had more than once remarked on Jane’s black eyes and split lips, and even Da
“I can take a beating,” was what Jane usually said to Ketchum or the cook, though it clearly pleased her that they were concerned for her safety. “But Carl should watch out,” she only occasionally added. “One day, I just might beat him back.”
Jane was a big woman, and she greeted the twelve-year-old (as she always did) by hugging him against one of her massive hips. The boy came up to her breasts, which were monumental; not even the baggy sweatshirt that she wore in the early-morning cold could conceal them. Injun Jane had a ton of coal-black hair, too-although this was unfailingly arranged in one thick braid, which hung to her rump. Even in sweatpants, or baggy dungarees-her kitchen clothes of choice-Jane couldn’t hide her rump.
On top of her head, with a hole cut out of it for the braid, was a 1951 Cleveland Indians baseball cap-a gift from Ketchum. One summer, sick of the blackflies and the mosquitoes, Ketchum had tried driving a truck; it was a long-distance lumber hauler, and he’d actually acquired the baseball cap in far-off Cleveland. (Da
“Well, Jane, you’re an Injun-this is the cap for you,” Ketchum had told her. The logo on the cap was the red face of Chief Wahoo, a toothy Indian with a crazed grin, his head, and part of his feather, encircled with the letter C. The wishbone-shaped C was red; the cap was blue. As for who Chief Wahoo was, neither Ketchum nor Injun Jane knew.
The twelve-year-old had heard the story frequently; it was one of Jane’s favorites. One of the more memorable times Da
Da
The next morning, when Jane made the boy breakfast, there was no evidence that her long black braid had ever been undone-though it was hard to imagine that sleeping with a braid of hair that long and thick could be very comfortable. For all Da
“I’ll leave you ladies to your chores,” Ketchum was saying. “Lord knows, I wouldn’t want to be in the way.”
“Lord knows,” one of the kitchen helpers said. She was one of the sawmill workers’ wives-most of the kitchen helpers were. They were all married and fat; only Injun Jane was fatter, and she wasn’t married to Constable Carl.
The constable was fat, too. The cowboy was as big as Ketchum-although Ketchum wasn’t fat-and Carl was mean. Da