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“Shit!” Dominic said aloud. He had suddenly thought of Jane’s Cleveland Indians cap. Where was it? Had they left Chief Wahoo upside down in the upstairs hall of the cookhouse? But they were already at Six-Pack’s place; not a soul had been on the streets, and the dance-hall door had not once opened. They couldn’t go back to the cookhouse now.
Da
“We need to leave Chief Wahoo with her, don’t we?” the twelve-year-old asked.
“Good boy,” his dad said, his heart welling with pride and fear. Regarding the back-up plan, there was so much for a twelve-year-old to remember.
The cook needed his son’s help in getting Injun Jane from the cab of the truck to Constable Carl’s kitchen door, which Jane had said was always left unlocked. It would be all right if they dragged her feet through the mud, because the constable would expect Jane’s boots to be muddy; they just couldn’t allow another part of her to touch the ground. Naturally, the dolly would have left wheel tracks in the mud-and what would Dominic have done with the dolly? Leave it in Jane’s truck, or at Constable Carl’s door?
They drove to that forlorn part of town near the sawmill and the hostelry favored by the French Canadian itinerants. (Constable Carl liked living near his principal victims.) “What would you guess Ketchum weighs?” Da
“Ketchum weighs about two-twenty, maybe two-thirty,” the cook said.
“And Six-Pack?” young Dan asked.
Dominic Baciagalupo would feel the stiffness in his neck from Six-Pack’s headlock for about a week. “Pam probably weighs about one-seventy-five-one-eighty, tops,” his dad answered.
“And what do you weigh?” Da
The cook could see where this line of questioning was going. He let Injun Jane’s feet slide all the way to the mud; he stood on the wet ground beside her, holding her around her hips while Daniel (still standing on the ru
“And Jane?” young Dan grunted, stepping down to the ground from the truck’s ru
Injun Jane weighed at least 300 pounds-maybe 315 or 320-although Dominic Baciagalupo would profess not to know. The cook could scarcely get his breath as he dragged his dead paramour to her bad boyfriend’s kitchen door, but he managed to sound almost unconcerned as he answered his son in a whisper: “Jane? Oh, she weighs about the same as Ketchum-maybe a little more.”
To their mutual surprise, the cook and his son saw that Constable Carl’s kitchen door was not only unlocked-it was open. (The wind, maybe-or else the cowboy had come home so drunk that he’d left the door open in a blind, unthinking stupor.) The misty rain had wet what they could see of the kitchen floor. While the kitchen was dimly lit, at least one light was on, but they couldn’t see beyond the kitchen; they could not know more.
When Jane’s splayed feet were touching the kitchen floor, Dominic felt confident that he could slide her the rest of the way inside by himself; it would help him that her boots were muddy and the floor was wet. “Good-bye, Daniel,” the cook whispered to his son. In lieu of a kiss, the twelve-year-old took Jane’s baseball cap off his head and put it on his father’s.
When the cook could no longer hear Da
Dominic had told the twelve-year-old that if anything ever happened to his dad-not just tonight-go to Ketchum, and tell Ketchum everything. “Watch out for the next-to-last step at the top of Pam’s stairs,” the cook had also told his son.
“Won’t Six-Pack be there?” the boy had asked.
“Just tell her you need to talk to Ketchum. She’ll let you in,” his father had said. (He could only hope that Pam would let Daniel in.)
Dominic Baciagalupo slid Injun Jane’s body past the wet area on the kitchen floor before he let her come to rest against a cabinet. Holding her under her arms, he allowed her immense weight to sag onto the countertop; then, with excruciating slowness, he stretched her body out upon the floor. While he was bending over her, the Cleveland Indians cap fell off the cook’s head and landed upside down beside Jane; Chief Wahoo was gri
But nothing happened. The cook let his breathing return to normal, choosing not to look around. If Constable Carl was there, Dominic didn’t want to see him. The cook would rather let the cowboy shoot him in the back as he was leaving; he left carefully, using the outward-turned toe of his bad foot to smear his muddy footprints as he left.
Outside, a wooden plank was stretched across the gutter from the road. Dominic used the plank to wipe flat the drag marks where the toes and heels of Jane’s boots had carved deep ruts-marking the tortured path from her truck to the constable’s kitchen door. The cook returned the plank to its proper place, wiping the mud from his hands on the wet fender of Jane’s truck, which the increasingly steady rain would wash clean. (The rain would take care of his and young Dan’s footprints, too.)
No one saw the cook limp past the silent dance hall; the Beaudette brothers, or their ghosts, had not reoccupied the old Lombard log hauler, which stood as the lone sentinel in the muddy lane alongside the hall. Dominic Baciagalupo was wondering what Constable Carl might make of Injun Jane’s body when he stumbled over it in the bleary-eyed morning. What had he hit her with? the cowboy might speculate, having hit her more than once before. But where is the weapon, the blunt instrument? the constable would be sure to ask himself. Maybe I’m not the one who hit her, the cowboy might later conclude-once his head cleared, or most certainly when he learned that the cook and his son had left town.
Please, God, give me time, the cook was thinking, as he saw his boy’s small face behind the water-streaked windshield of the Chieftain Deluxe. Young Dan was waiting in the passenger seat, as if he’d never lost faith that his father would safely return from Constable Carl’s and be their driver.
By time, that dogged companion, Dominic Baciagalupo meant more than the time needed for this most immediate getaway. He meant the necessary time to be a good father to his precious child, the time to watch his boy become a man; the cook prayed he would have that much time, though he had no idea how he might arrange such an unlikely luxury.