Last Night In Twisted River

Of course there’d been more money suddenly, and the cook had worried-he still worried-about what effect it might have on young Joe. Daniel was old enough (thirty-six) when the bestseller business found him to not be affected by either the fame or the good fortune. But when Joe was only thirteen, the boy woke up one morning with a famous father. Couldn’t this have made an unwelcome mark on any kid that age? And then there were the women Daniel went through-both before and after he was famous.

The writer had been living with one of his former Windham College students when he, Tony, and Joe moved to Iowa City. The girl with a boy’s name-“It’s Franky, with a y,” she liked to say with a pout-hadn’t made the move with them.

Thank God for that, the cook thought at the time. Franky was a feral-looking little thing, a virtual wild animal.

“She wasn’t my student when I began to sleep with her,” Da

The girl had dropped in on her former teacher one day, and she’d simply stayed.

“What does Franky do all day?” his dad had asked Da

“She’s trying to be a writer,” Da

Franky did some housecleaning, and a little cooking-if you could call it that, the cook thought. The wild girl was barefoot most of the time-even in that drafty old farmhouse in the winter months, when Daniel heated the whole place with a couple of woodstoves. (Putney was the kind of town that worshipped woodstoves, Tony Angel had observed; there was even an alternative to heating in that town! The cook simply hated the place.)

Franky was a dirty-blonde with lank hair and a slouchy posture. She wore fu

There’d been more young women in the writer’s life in Iowa City, one of his workshop students among them, and while there was no one special now-nor had there been anyone long-lasting since Da

The Putney property was a virtual compound these days. The writer had turned the old farmhouse into his guesthouse; he’d built a new house for himself and Joe, and there was a separate building where Da

Da

With the war in Vietnam, they would lower the drinking age in many states to eighteen, the logic being that if they could send mere boys off to die at that age, shouldn’t the kids at least be allowed to drink? After the war was over, the drinking age would go back up to twenty-one again-but not until 1984-though nowadays, Tony knew, many kids Joe’s age had fake I.D.’s. The cook saw them all the time at Avellino; he knew his grandson had one.

It was how Joe was more than fast with girls that really worried Tony Angel. Going too fast too soon with girls could get you in as much trouble as drinking, the former Dominic Del Popolo, né Baciagalupo, knew. It had gotten the cook in trouble, in his opinion-and Daniel, too.

Despite Carmella’s best efforts, Tony knew all about her catching her niece Josie with Daniel; the cook was sure that his son had banged more than one of those DiMattia girls, and even a Saetta and a Calogero or two! But young Joe had at least seen, if not actually overheard, his father in a few more adult relationships than whatever foolishness Daniel had been up to with his kissing cousins. And his grandfather knew that Joe had spent more than a few nights in the girls’ dorms at NMH. (It was a wonder the boy hadn’t been caught and kicked out of school; now, in the spring term of his senior year, maybe he would be!) There were things Joe’s dad didn’t know, but his grandfather did.

In his frantic last night in Twisted River, the cook had prayed-for the first and only time, until now. Please, God, give me time, Tony Angel had prayed, long ago-seeing his twelve-year-old’s small face behind the water-streaked windshield of the Chieftain Deluxe. (Daniel had been waiting in the passenger seat, as if he’d never lost faith that his father would safely return from leaving Injun Jane’s body at Carl’s.)

For all the talking the cook and Ketchum did about Da

Tony Angel wasn’t much of a reader anymore-though he’d bought i