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“We’ll be there,” the boy had said.
“What plans are you making with Ketchum?” Injun Jane whispered in the twelve-year-old’s ear. Big as she was, the boy hadn’t noticed her behind him; he first mistook her for the sawmill worker’s wife who’d been breathing down his neck, but Jane had returned from the dining room.
“Dad and I are meeting Ketchum at Dead Woman Dam on Sunday morning,” Da
Jane shook her head, her long braid, longer than a horse’s tail, swishing above her big rump. “So Ketchum talked him into it,” she said disapprovingly; the boy couldn’t see her eyes above the pulled-down visor of her Cleveland Indians cap. As always, Chief Wahoo was gri
The near-perfect choreography in the kitchen would have been imperceptible to a stranger, but Da
In the cramped aisle between the countertop and the stove, where there was a pan or a pot on six of the eight burners, the cook and the Indian dishwasher passed back-to-back. This wasn’t new-it happened all the time-but Da
“Do-si-do your partner,” the dishwasher said.
Despite his limp, the cook caught his balance; not one scone slid off the hot tray. “Do-si-do,” Dominic Baciagalupo softly said. Injun Jane had already passed behind him. No one but Da
CHAPTER 3. A WORLD OF ACCIDENTS
ANGEL POPE HAD GONE UNDER THE LOGS ON THURSDAY. After breakfast on Friday, Injun Jane drove Da
The river-driving crew would be prodding logs on a site just upstream of Dead Woman Dam. The cook and his kitchen helpers would prepare four midday meals; they would backpack two meals to the rivermen, and drive two meals to the loggers loading the trucks along the haul road between the town of Twisted River and the Pontook Reservoir.
Fridays were hard enough without the woe of losing Angel. Everyone was in too much of a hurry for the weekend to start, although weekends in Twisted River (in the cook’s opinion) amounted to little more than drinking too much and the usual sexual missteps-“not to mention the subsequent embarrassment or shame,” as Da
When Injun Jane dropped Da
“I know,” the twelve-year-old told her. He had never thrown a punch at anyone-nor had he ever kicked someone in the balls. Jane’s instructions to the boy bewildered him; he thought that her directions must have been based on some advice Constable Carl had given her, but Jane only had to worry about the constable hitting her. Young Dan believed that nobody else would have dared to confront her-maybe not even Ketchum.
While Jane would kiss Da
“What is it, Da
“Do you do-si-do my dad?” the boy asked her.
Jane smiled at him, but it was a more measured smile than he was used to seeing on her pretty face; that she didn’t answer made him anxious. “Don’t tell me to ask Ketchum,” the boy blurted out. This made Injun Jane laugh; her smile was more natural, and more immediately forthcoming. (As always, Chief Wahoo was madly gri
“I was going to say that you should ask your father,” the dishwasher said. “Don’t be anxious,” she added, punching his upper arm again-this time a little harder. “Da
IT WAS A WORLD of accidents, the cook was thinking. In the kitchen, he was cooking up a storm. The lamb hash, which he’d served for breakfast, would be good for a midday meal, too; he’d also made a chickpea soup (for the Catholics) and a venison stew with carrots and pearl onions. Yes, there was the infernal pot of baked beans, and the omnipresent pea soup with parsley. But there was little else that was standard logging-camp fare.
One of the sawmill workers’ wives was cooking some Italian sweet sausage on the griddle. The cook kept telling her to break up the sausage meat as she cooked it-whereupon another of the sawmill workers’ wives started singing. “Try beatin’ your meat with a spatula!” she sang to the unlikely but overfamiliar tune of “Vaya con Dios;” the other women joined in.
The lead singer among the sawmill workers’ wives was the woman the cook had put in charge of proofing the yeast for the pizza dough-he was keeping an eye on her. Dominic wanted to mix the pizza dough and start it rising before they drove off on the haul road to deliver the midday meals. (On a Friday night, there would be a bunch of pissed-off French Canadians if there weren’t enough meatless pizzas for the mackerel-snappers.)
The cook was making cornbread, too. He wanted to start the stuffing for the roast chickens he was also serving in the cookhouse Friday night; he would mix the sausage with the cornbread and some celery and sage, adding the eggs and butter when he got back to his kitchen from the river site and wherever they were loading the trucks. In a large saucepan, in which Da
Dominic was feeling sorry for Ketchum. The cook didn’t know if Ketchum truly believed they would find Angel in the spillway of the upper dam Sunday morning, or if Ketchum hoped they would never find the boy’s body. All the cook had determined was that he didn’t want young Daniel to see Angel’s body. Dominic Baciagalupo wasn’t sure if he wanted to see Angel’s body-or ever find the boy, either.