Last Night in Twisted River (4 page)

Had they expected she would put her child up for adoption, and come back to the North End? Nunzi knew that this was done, but she wouldn’t consider giving up her baby, and—notwithstanding the sizable nostalgia she expressed for the Italian North End—she was never tempted to go back to Boston, either. In her unplanned condition, she had been sent away; understandably, she resented it.

While Annunziata remained a loyal Sicilian in her own kitchen, the proverbial ties that bind were irreparably frayed. Her Boston family—and, by association, the Italian community in the North End, and whatever represented “Catholic thinking” there—had disowned her. In turn, she disowned them. Nunzi never went to Mass herself, nor did she make Dominic go. “It’s enough if we go to confession, when we want to,” she would tell young Dom—her little kiss of the wolf.

She wouldn’t teach the boy Italian, either—some essential cooking lingo excepted—nor was Dominic inclined to learn the language of “the old country,” which to the boy meant the North End of Boston, not Italy. It was both a language and a place that had rejected his mother. Italian would never be Dominic Baciagalupo’s language; he said, adamantly, that Boston was nowhere he ever wanted to go.

Everything in Annunziata Saetta’s new life was defined by a sense of starting over. The youngest of three sisters, she could read and speak English as well as she could cook
siciliano
. Nunzi taught children how to read in a Berlin elementary school—and after the accident, she took Dominic out of school and taught him some fundamental cooking skills. She also insisted that the boy read books—not just cookbooks but everything she read, which were mostly novels. Her son had been crippled while violating the generally overlooked child-labor laws; Annunziata had taken him out of circulation, her version of homeschooling being both culinary and literary.

Neither area of education was available to Ketchum, who had left school when he was younger than twelve. At nineteen, in 1936, Ketchum could neither read nor write, but when he wasn’t working as a logger, he was loading lumber onto the railroad flatcars from the open platforms at the end of the biggest Berlin mill. The deck crew tapered the load at the top, so that the flatcars could safely pass through the tunnels or under the bridges. “That was the extent of my education, before your mom taught me to read,” Ketchum enjoyed telling Danny Baciagalupo; the cook would commence to shake his head again, although the story of Dominic’s late wife teaching Ketchum to read was apparently incontestable.

At least the saga of Ketchum belatedly learning to read seemed
not
in the tall-tale category of Ketchum’s other stories—the one about the low-roofed bunkhouse at Camp One, for example. According to Ketchum, “some Injun” had been assigned the task of shoveling snow off the roof, but the Indian had neglected the job. When the roof collapsed under the weight of the snow, all but one logger escaped the bunkhouse alive—not the Indian, who was suffocated by what Ketchum called “the concentrated odor of wet socks.” (Of course the cook and his son were well aware of Ketchum’s nearly constant complaint—namely, that the stink of wet socks was the bane of bunkhouse life.)

“I don’t remember an Indian at Camp One,” was all Dominic had said to his old friend.

“You’re too young to remember Camp One, Cookie,” Ketchum had said.

Danny Baciagalupo had often observed that his father bristled at the mere mention of the seven-year age difference between himself and Ketchum, whereas Ketchum was inclined to overemphasize the discrepancy in their ages. Those seven years would have seemed insurmountable to them had the two young men met in the Berlin of their youth—when Ketchum had been a rawboned but strapping nineteen, already sporting a full if ragged beard, and Annunziata’s little Dom was not yet a teenager.

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.

Danny knew that his father’s life had been changed forever because of an ankle injury; a different accident, to the boy’s young mother, had altered the course of his own childhood and changed his dad’s life forever
again
. In a twelve-year-old’s world, change couldn’t be good.
Any
change made Danny anxious—the way missing school made him anxious.

On the river drives, in the not-so-old days, when Danny and his dad were working and sleeping in the wanigans, the boy didn’t go to school. That he didn’t like school—but that he always, and far too easily, made up the work he missed—also made Danny anxious. The boys in his grade were all older than he was, because they skipped school as often as they could and they
never
made up the work they missed; they’d all been held back and had repeated a grade or two.

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 Danny Baciagalupo anxious, too. Even the wanigans had felt like home to him. And in Twisted River, the twelve-year-old had his own bedroom above the cookhouse—where his father also had a bedroom, and where they shared a bathroom. These were the only second-story rooms in the cookhouse, and they were spacious and comfortable. Each room had a skylight and big windows with a view of the mountains, and—below the cookhouse, at the foothills of the mountains—a partial view of the river basin.

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 running wild with waist-high grass and weeds. Yet, in truth, the forests in the region were being managed for sustainable yields of timber; those woods are still producing—“in the twenty-first fucking century,” as Ketchum would one day say.

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 Danny Baciagalupo was just wondering, obsessively: What work would there be in Twisted River after the woodcutters moved on? Would the
cook
then move on? Danny worried. (Could Ketchum
ever
move on?)

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

I
N 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 Danny was awake, the boy would tirelessly endeavor to get his dad’s permission to sleep in the kitchen, too. If Ketchum hadn’t had too much to drink, Danny hoped to hear another of the logger’s stories—or the same story, wildly revised.

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 Danny’s job to be sure that the potatoes were peeled and cubed and soaking overnight in salted water. His dad would fry the potatoes on the griddle in the morning, when he fried the bacon. The griddle on the old Garland was above the broiler, which was eye-level to the cook. Even with a long-handled spatula, and standing on tiptoe or on a low stool—neither method of elevating himself was the easiest thing for a cook with a crooked foot—Dominic would frequently burn his forearm when he reached to the back of the griddle. (Sometimes Injun Jane would spell the cook at the griddle, because she was taller and her reach was longer.)

It would be dark when Dominic got up to fry the bacon and do his baking, and dark when Danny woke in the upstairs of the cookhouse to the smell of bacon and coffee, and
still
dark when the kitchen help and the Indian dishwasher arrived from town—the headlights of their vehicles heralding their arrival almost simultaneously with the engine sounds. Most mornings, the Garland’s broiler was flaming hot—for melting the cheese on top of the omelets. Among young Dan’s before-school jobs were cutting up the peppers and tomatoes for the omelets, and warming the big saucepan of maple syrup on one of the back burners of the eight-burner stove.

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 Danny Baciagalupo anxious. For any number of practical reasons, you wanted the door to open to the outside. There was enough traffic in the busy kitchen to not want a door getting in the way—and once, long ago, a bear had come into the cookhouse kitchen. It had been a balmy night—the troublesome outside door to the cookhouse was propped open—and the bear had just butted the screen door with its head and walked inside.

Danny had been too young to remember the bear, although he’d asked his father to tell him the story many times. The boy’s mother had long before put him to bed upstairs; she was having a late-night snack with Danny’s dad when the bear joined them. The cook and his wife were sharing a mushroom omelet and drinking white wine. When he used to drink, Dominic Baciagalupo had explained to his son, he had often felt compelled to fix late-night snacks for himself and his wife. (Not anymore.)

Danny’s mother screamed when she saw the bear. That made the bear stand up on its hind legs and squint at her, but Dominic had had quite a lot of wine; at first, he didn’t know it was a bear. He must have thought it was a hairy, drunken logger, coming to assault his beautiful wife.

On the stove was an eight-inch cast-iron skillet, in which the cook had recently sautéed the mushrooms for the omelet. Dominic picked up the skillet, which was still warm in his hand, and hit the bear in the face—mostly on its nose but also on the broad, flat bridge of its nose between the bear’s small, squinty eyes. The bear dropped to all fours and fled through the kitchen door, leaving the torn screen and the broken wooden slats hanging from the frame.

Whenever the cook told this story, he always said: “Well, the door had to be fixed, of course, but it still opens the wrong way.” In telling the story to his son, Dominic Baciagalupo usually added: “I would never hit a bear with a cast-iron skillet—I thought it was a
man!”

“But what would you do with a bear?” Danny asked his dad.

“Try to reason with it, I guess,” the cook replied. “In that sort of situation, you can’t reason with a man.”

As for what “that sort of situation” was, Dan could only guess. Had his father imagined he was protecting his pretty wife from a dangerous man?

As for the eight-inch cast-iron skillet, it had acquired a special place for itself in the cookhouse. It no longer made its home in the kitchen with the other pots and pans. The skillet was hung at shoulder height on a hook in the upstairs of the cookhouse, where the bedrooms were—it resided just inside Dominic’s bedroom door. That skillet had proved its worth; it had become the cook’s weapon of choice, should he ever hear someone’s footsteps on the stairs or the sound of an intruder (animal or human) sneaking around in the kitchen.

Dominic didn’t own a gun; he didn’t want one. For a New Hampshire boy, he had missed out on all the deer hunting—not only because of the ankle injury but because he hadn’t grown up with a dad. As for the loggers and the sawmill men, the deer hunters among them brought the cook their deer; he butchered the deer for them, and kept enough meat for himself so that he could occasionally serve venison in the cookhouse. It wasn’t that Dominic disapproved of hunting; he just didn’t like venison, or guns. He also suffered from a recurrent dream; he’d told Daniel about it. The cook repeatedly dreamed that he was murdered in his sleep—shot to death in his own bed—and whenever he woke from that dream, the sound of the shot was still ringing in his ears.

So Dominic Baciagalupo slept with a skillet in his bedroom. There were cast-iron skillets of all sizes in the cookhouse kitchen, but the eight-inch size was preferable for self-defense. Even young Dan could manage to swing it with some force. As for the ten-and-a-half-inch skillet, or the eleven-and-a-quarter-inch one, they may have been more accommodating to cook in, but they were too heavy to be reliable weapons; not even Ketchum could swing those bigger skillets quickly enough to take out a lecherous logger, or a bear.

THE NIGHT AFTER
Angel Pope had gone under the logs, Danny Baciagalupo lay in bed in the upstairs of the cookhouse. The boy’s bedroom was above the inside-opening screen door to the kitchen, and the loose-fitting outer door, which he could hear rattling in the wind. He could hear the river, too. In the cookhouse, you could always hear Twisted River—except when the river ran under the ice. But Danny must have fallen asleep as quickly as his father, because the twelve-year-old didn’t hear the truck. The light from the truck’s headlights had not shone into the cookhouse. Whoever was driving the truck must have been able to navigate the road from town in near-total darkness, because there wasn’t much moonlight that night—or else the driver was drunk and had forgotten to turn on the truck’s headlights.

Danny thought he heard the door to the truck’s cab close. The mud, which was soft in the daytime, could get crunchy underfoot at night—it was still cold enough at night for the mud to freeze, and now there was a dusting of new snow. Perhaps he hadn’t heard a truck door close, Dan was thinking; that
clunk
might have been a sound in whatever dream the boy had been having. Outside the cookhouse, the footsteps on the frozen mud made a shuffling sound—ponderous and wary. Maybe it’s a bear, Danny thought.

The cook kept a cooler outside the kitchen. The cooler was sealed tight, but it contained the ground lamb, for the lamb hash, and the bacon—and whatever other perishables wouldn’t fit in the fridge. What if the bear had smelled the meat in the cooler? Danny was thinking.

“Dad?” the boy spoke out, but his father was probably fast asleep down the hall.

Like everyone else, the bear seemed to be having trouble with the outer door to the cookhouse kitchen; it batted at the door with one paw. Young Dan heard grunting, too.

“Dad!” Danny shouted; he heard his father swipe the cast-iron skillet off the hook on the bedroom wall. Like his dad, the boy had gone to bed in his long johns and a pair of socks. The floor in the upstairs hall felt cold to Danny, even with his socks on. He and his dad padded downstairs to the kitchen, which was dimly lit by the pilot lights flickering from the old Garland. The cook had a two-handed grip on the black skillet. When the outer door opened, the bear—if it was a bear—pushed against the screen door with its chest. It came inside in an upright position, albeit unsteadily. Its teeth were a long, white blur.

“I’m not a bear, Cookie,” Ketchum said.

The flash of white, which Danny had imagined was the bear’s bared teeth, was the new cast on Ketchum’s right forearm; the cast went from the middle of the big man’s palm to where his arm bent at the elbow. “Sorry I startled you fellas,” Ketchum added.

“Close the outer door, will you? I’m trying to keep it warm in here,” the cook said. Danny saw his father put the skillet on the bottom step of the stairs. Ketchum struggled to secure the outer door with his left hand. “You’re drunk,” Dominic told him.

“I’ve got one arm, Cookie, and I’m right-handed,” Ketchum said.

“You’re still drunk, Ketchum,” Dominic Baciagalupo told his old friend.

“I guess you remember what that’s like,” Ketchum said.

Dan helped Ketchum close the outer door. “I’ll bet you’re real hungry,” he said to Ketchum. The big man, swaying slightly, ruffled the boy’s hair.

“I don’t need to eat,” Ketchum said.

“It might help to sober you up,” the cook said. Dominic opened the fridge. He told Ketchum: “I’ve got some meat loaf, which isn’t bad cold. You can have it with applesauce.”

“I don’t need to eat,” the big man said again. “I need you to come with me, Cookie.”

“Where are we going?” Dominic asked, but even young Dan knew when his father was pretending not to know something he clearly knew.

“You know where,” Ketchum told the cook. “I just have trouble remembering the exact spot.”

“That’s because you drink too much, Ketchum—that’s why you can’t remember,” Dominic said.

When Ketchum lowered his head, he swayed more; for a moment, Danny thought that the logger might fall down. And by the way both men had lowered their voices, the boy understood that they were negotiating; they were also being careful not to say too much, because Ketchum didn’t know what the twelve-year-old knew about his mother’s death, and Dominic Baciagalupo didn’t want his son to hear whatever odd or unwelcome detail Ketchum might remember.

“Just try the meat loaf, Ketchum,” the cook said softly.

“It’s pretty good with applesauce,” Danny said. The riverman lowered himself onto a stool; he rested his new white cast on the counter-top. Everything about Ketchum was hardened and sharp-edged, like a whittled-down stick—and, as Danny had observed, “wicked tough”—which made the sterile, fragile-looking cast as unsuited to the man as a prosthetic limb. (If Ketchum had lost an arm, he would have made do with the stump—he might have used it as a club.)

But now that Ketchum was sitting down, Danny thought the river driver looked safe enough to touch. The boy had never felt a cast before. Even drunk, Ketchum somehow knew what Dan was thinking. “Go on—you can touch it,” the logger said, extending his cast in the boy’s direction. There was dried blood, or pitch, on what Danny could see of Ketchum’s crooked fingers; they protruded from the cast, un-moving. With a broken wrist, it hurt to move your fingers for the first few days. The boy gently touched Ketchum’s cast.

The cook gave Ketchum a generous serving of meat loaf and applesauce. “There’s milk or orange juice,” Dominic said, “or I could make you some coffee.”

“What a disheartening choice,” Ketchum said, winking at Danny.

“Disheartening,” the cook repeated, shaking his head. “I’ll make some coffee.”

Danny wished that the two men would just talk about everything; the boy knew much of their history, but not enough about his mother. Of her death,
no
detail could be odd or unwelcome—Danny wanted to hear every word of it. But the cook was a careful man, or he had become one; even Ketchum, who had driven his own children away from him, was especially cautious and protective with Danny, much as the veteran logger had behaved around Angel.

“I wouldn’t go there with you when you’ve been drinking, anyway,” the cook was saying.

“I took you there when you’d been drinking,” Ketchum said; so he wouldn’t say more, he took a mouthful of meat loaf and applesauce.

“Except when it’s under a logjam, a body doesn’t move downstream as fast as a log,” Dominic Baciagalupo said, as if he were speaking to the coffeepot—not to Ketchum, whose back was turned to him. “Not unless the body is caught on a log.”

Danny had heard this explanation, in another context. It had taken a few days—three, to be exact—for his mother’s body to make the journey from the river basin to the narrows, where it had bumped up against the dam. First a drowned body sinks, the cook had explained to his son; then it rises.

“They’re keeping the dams closed through the weekend,” Ketchum said. (He meant not only Dead Woman Dam but the Pontook Dam, on the Androscoggin.) Ketchum ate steadily but not fast, the fork held unfamiliarly, and a little clumsily, in his left hand.

“It’s good with applesauce, isn’t it?” the boy asked him. Ketchum nodded in agreement, chewing vigorously.

They could smell the coffee brewing, and the cook said—more to himself than to his son, or Ketchum—“I might as well start the bacon, while I’m at it.” Ketchum just went on eating. “I suppose the logs are already at the first dam,” Dominic added, as if he were still speaking to no one but himself. “I mean
our
logs.”