Last Night In Twisted River

Hero had run to his master, but the dog stopped short of where Ketchum sat on the snow-covered ground; Pam saw that the bear hound’s hackles were up, and the dog suddenly walked stiff-legged, circling the old logger. “Ketchum!” Six-Pack had called, but there’d been no response from the woodsman; only Hero had turned his head to look at her.

“I couldn’t walk over to him-not for the longest time,” Six-Pack told Da

Because it had snowed the previous day, and the snow had stopped before nightfall, it was easy for Pam to see how he’d done it. There was a trail of blood in the fresh snow. Six-Pack followed the blood down the hill to the riverbank; there were some big stumps above the bank, and she saw where Ketchum had wiped the snow off one of them. The warm blood had seeped into the stump, and Ketchum’s ax was stuck so firmly in the stump that Pam couldn’t pull it out. There was no left hand to be found; obviously, Ketchum had thrown it in the river.

Having seen the spot in the river basin where Ketchum shot the apple-juice jar containing the cook’s ashes, Da

“Once, when they was still drivin’ hardwoods on Phillips Brook,” Six-Pack told Da

Yes, Ketchum could split a four-foot hardwood log one-handed; Da

“Anything else?” Da

“Yeah-a big bottle of aspirin,” Pam told the writer. “There were still plenty of aspirin left in the bottle,” Six-Pack said. “Ketchum wasn’t much of a painkiller person, but I suppose he took some aspirin for the pain-he musta just washed ’em down with the whiskey.”

As Da

“Ketchum couldn’t forgive himself for failin’ to keep Cookie alive,” Six-Pack told the writer. “And before that-after your boy died, Da

“Me, too,” the writer said to Six-Pack. “Me, too.”

SIX-PACK DIDN’T STAY for Christmas. After they’d carried Ketchum’s guns up to Da

“How early?” he asked her.

Ketchum’s truck and Six-Pack Pam were gone when Da

Naturally, Six-Pack’s letter included instructions for taking care of Hero, but most of her letter was more personal than Da

Six-Pack had also made some long-standing friendships at the Androscoggin Valley Hospital in Berlin, where she still worked nights as a cleaning person; she’d called her friends at the hospital when she found Ketchum’s body at the cookhouse site. Six-Pack wanted Da

Pam told Da

“I know it’s none of my business,” Pam also wrote to Da

Da

All that had happened three years ago, and counting. The only reason Da