Last Night In Twisted River

“Big changes are coming, Cookie,” Ketchum tried to tell his friend. “They won’t be moving logs over water much longer. Those dams on the Dummer ponds will be gone-this dam here won’t last, either,” he said, with a wave of his cast indicating the containment boom but choosing to leave Dead Woman Dam u

“Dummer Pond and Little Dummer and Twisted River will just flow into the Pontook. I suspect the old boom piers on the Androscoggin will last, but they won’t be using them anymore. And the first time there’s a fire in West Dummer or Twisted River, do you think anyone will bother to rebuild those sorry settlements? Who wouldn’t rather move to Milan or Errol-or even Berlin, if you were old and feeble enough?” Ketchum added. “All you have to do is stay and outlast this miserable place, Cookie-you and Da

“Why are you limping?” the cook called to him.

“Shit,” Ketchum said. “There’s a step missing on Six-Pack’s stairs-I fucking forgot about it.”

“Take care of yourself, Ketchum,” his old friend told him.

“You, too, Cookie,” Ketchum said. “I won’t ask you about your lip, but I’m familiar with that injury.”

“By the way, Angel wasn’t Canadian,” Dominic Baciagalupo told Ketchum.

“His real name was Angelù Del Popolo,” young Dan explained, “and he came from Boston, not Toronto.”

“I suppose that’s where you’re going?” Ketchum asked them. “ Boston?”

“Angel must have had a family-there’s got to be someone who needs to know what happened to him,” the cook said.

Ketchum nodded. Through the windshield of his truck, the insufficient sunlight was playing tricks with the way Angelù Del Popolo sat up (almost straight) and faced alertly forward. Angel not only looked alive, but he seemed to be just starting the journey of his young life-not ending it.

“Suppose I tell Carl that you and Da

“We took nothing anybody would notice,” Dominic said. “It would appear that we were coming back.”

“Suppose I tell the cowboy that I was surprised Injun Jane wasn’t with you?” Ketchum asked. “I could say that, if I were Jane, I would have gone to Canada, too.” Da

“Just don’t say too much, whatever you say,” the cook told him.

“I believe I’ll still think of him as ‘Angel,’ if that’s okay,” Ketchum said, as he climbed into his truck; he glanced only briefly at the dead boy, quickly looking away.

“I’ll always think of him as ‘Angel’!” young Dan called.

To what extent a twelve-year-old is aware, or not, of the start of an adventure-or whether this misadventure had begun long before Da

But Ketchum was not one for casting a positive light for long. “I don’t suppose Jane was wearing the Chief Wahoo hat-when it happened,” the logger said to Da

“No, she wasn’t,” the twelve-year-old told him.

“Damn it, Jane-oh, shit, Jane!” Ketchum cried. “Some fella in Cleveland told me it was a lucky hat,” the river driver explained to the boy. “This fella said Chief Wahoo was some kind of spirit; he was supposed to look after Injuns.”

“Maybe he’s looking after Jane now,” Da

“Don’t get religious on me, Da

“I am missing you already, Ketchum!” the boy suddenly cried out.

“Oh, shit, Da

Then Ketchum started his truck and drove off on the haul road, toward Twisted River, leaving the cook and his son to their lengthier and less certain journey-to their next life, no less.

II. BOSTON, 1967

CHAPTER 5. NOM DE PLUME

IT WAS ALMOST EXACTLY AN UNLUCKY THIRTEEN YEARS SINCE Constable Carl had tripped over the body of the Indian dishwasher in his kitchen, and not even Ketchum could say for certain if the cowboy was suspicious of the cook and his son, who had disappeared that same night. To hear it from the most insightful gossips in that area of Coos County -that is to say, all along the upper Androscoggin -Injun Jane had disappeared with them.

According to Ketchum, it bothered Carl that people thought Jane had run off with the cook-more than the constable seemed troubled by the likelihood that he had murdered his companion with an unknown blunt instrument. (The murder weapon was never found.) And Carl must have believed he’d killed Jane; surely, he’d disposed of her body. Absolutely no one had seen her. (Her body hadn’t turned up, either.)

Yet Ketchum continued to get insinuating inquiries from the cowboy, whenever their paths crossed. “Have you still not heard a word from Cookie?” Carl would never fail to ask Ketchum. “I thought you two were friends.”

“Cookie never had a whole lot to say,” Ketchum would point out repeatedly. “I’m not surprised I haven’t heard from him.”

“And what about the boy?” the cowboy occasionally asked.

“What about him? Da

But Daniel Baciagalupo wrote a lot-not only to Ketchum. From their earliest correspondence, the boy had told Ketchum that he wanted to become a writer.

“In that case, it would be best not to expose yourself to too much Catholic thinking,” Ketchum had replied; his handwriting struck young Dan as curiously feminine. Da

All Dominic had said was: “I don’t think so.”

The puzzle of Ketchum’s pretty penmanship remained unsolved, nor did Dominic appear to give his old friend’s handwriting much thought-not to the degree young Dan did. For thirteen years, Da

“You better assume so,” was essentially all that Ketchum had conveyed to the cook, though lately Ketchum had had more to say. He’d sent Da

This was easier said than done-Ketchum had no phone. He was in the habit of calling both Dominic and young Dan collect from a public phone booth; these calls often ended abruptly, when Ketchum a