Страница 7 из 147
He’d been a strong, wiry twelve-year-old-not big, but compact and sinewy-and the cook had retained the appearance of a lean-muscled young logger, although he was now thirty and looked older, especially to his young son. It was his dad’s seriousness that made him look older, the boy thought. You could not say “the past” or “the future” in the cook’s presence without making him frown. As for the present, even the twelve-year-old Daniel Baciagalupo understood that the times were changing.
Da
On the river drives, in the not-so-old days, when Da
When the cook saw that his son was anxious, he invariably said: “Stand your ground, Daniel-just don’t get killed. I promise you, one day we’ll leave here.”
But this made Da
Logging trails circumscribed the hills and mountains; there were big patches of meadow and second growth, where the woodcutters had harvested the hardwoods and the coniferous forest. From his bedroom, it seemed to young Daniel Baciagalupo that the bare rock and second growth could never replace the maples and birch, or the softwoods-the spruce and fir, the red and white pine, and the hemlock and tamarack. The twelve-year-old thought that the meadows were ru
And as Ketchum regularly suggested, some things would never change. “Tamarack will always love swamps, yellow birch will forever be highly prized for furniture, and gray birch will never be good for fuck-all except firewood.” As for the fact that the river drives in Coos County would soon be limited to four-foot pulpwood, Ketchum was morosely disinclined to utter any prophecies. (All the veteran logger would say was that the smaller pulpwood tended to stray out of the current and required cleanup crews.)
What would change the logging business, and what might put an end to the cook’s job, was the restless spirit of modernity; the changing times could kill a mere “settlement” like Twisted River. But Da
As for the river, it just kept moving, as rivers do-as rivers do. Under the logs, the body of the young Canadian moved with the river, which jostled him to and fro-to and fro. If, at this moment in time, Twisted River also appeared restless, even impatient, maybe the river itself wanted the boy’s body to move on, too-move on, too.
CHAPTER 2. DO-SI-DO
IN A STORAGE CLOSET OFF THE PANTRY IN THE COOKHOUSE kitchen, the cook kept a couple of folding cots-from the wanigan days, when he’d slept in any number of portable kitchens. Dominic had salvaged a couple of sleeping bags, too. It was not out of nostalgia for the wanigans that the cook had kept the old cots and mildewed sleeping bags. Sometimes Ketchum slept in the cookhouse kitchen; occasionally, if Da
THE FIRST NIGHT after Angel Pope had disappeared under the logs, it snowed a little. It was still cold at night in April, but Dominic had turned the two gas ovens on in the kitchen. The ovens were set at 350 and 425 degrees, and the cook had premixed the dry ingredients for the scones, the corn muffins, and the banana bread before going to bed. His French toast (from the banana bread) was popular, and he would make pancakes from scratch in the morning. Because of the raw eggs, Dominic didn’t like to keep the pancake batter in the fridge more than two days. Also last-minute, almost every morning, he made buttermilk biscuits, which he baked quickly in the 425-degree oven.
It was usually Da
It would be dark when Dominic got up to fry the bacon and do his baking, and dark when Da
The outside door to the cookhouse kitchen didn’t open or close properly; it was so loose-fitting that it rattled in the wind. The inside screen door opened into the kitchen, which could be added to the list of things that made Da
Da
Da