Last Night in Twisted River (60 page)

“I have women friends,” Danny started to say.

“I’m not talking about
groupies
, Daniel.”

“I don’t have groupies, Pop—not anymore.”

“Young fans, then. Remember, I’ve read your fan mail—”

“I don’t answer those letters, Dad.”

“Young—what are they called?—’editorial assistants,’ maybe? Young booksellers, too, Daniel … I’ve seen you with one or two. All those
young
people in publishing!”

“Young women are more likely to be unattached,” Danny pointed out to his dad. “Most women my age are married, or they’re widows.”

“What’s wrong with widows?” his father asked. (At that, they’d both laughed again—a shorter laugh this time.)

“I’m not looking for a permanent relationship,” Danny said.

“I can see that.
Why?”
Dominic wanted to know. They were at opposite ends of the second-floor hall, at the doorways to their respective bedrooms. Their voices were raised; surely the cowboy could hear every word.

“I’ve had my opportunities, too, Pop,” Danny told his dad.

“I just want all the best for you, Daniel,” the cook told him.

“You’ve been a good father—the
best,”
Danny said.

“You were a good father, too, Daniel—”

“I could have done a better job,” Danny quickly interjected.

“I love you!” Dominic said.

“I love you, too, Dad. Good night,” Danny said; he went into his bedroom and quietly closed the door.

“Good night!” the cook called from the hall. It was such a heartfelt blessing; it’s almost conceivable that the cowboy was tempted to wish them both a good night, too. But Carl lay unmoving above them, not making a sound.

Did the deputy wait as long as an hour after he’d heard them brush their teeth? Probably not. Did Danny once more dream about the windswept pine on Charlotte’s island in Georgian Bay—specifically, the view of that hardy little tree from what had been his writing shack there? Probably. Did the cook, in his prayers, ask for more time? Probably not. Under the circumstances, and knowing Dominic Baciagalupo, the cook couldn’t have asked for much—that is, if he’d prayed at all. At best, Dominic might have expressed the hope that his lonely son “find someone”—only that.

Did the floorboards above them creak under the fat cowboy’s weight, once Carl decided to make his move? Not that they heard; or, if Danny heard anything at all, he might have happily imagined (in his sleep) that Joe was home from Colorado.

Not knowing how dark it might be in the house at night, the cowboy had tested those stairs from the third-floor writing room with his eyes closed; he’d counted the number of steps in the second-floor hall to the cook’s bedroom door, too. And Carl knew where the light switch was—just inside the door, right next to the eight-inch cast-iron skillet.

As it turned out, Danny always left a light on—on the stairs from the kitchen to the second-floor hall, so there was plenty of light in the hall. The cowboy, slipping silently in his socks, padded down the hallway to the cook’s bedroom and opened the door. “Surprise, Cookie!” Carl said, flicking on the light. “It’s time for you to die.”

Maybe Danny heard that; perhaps he didn’t. But his dad sat up in bed—blinking his eyes in the sudden, white light—and the cook said, in a
very
loud voice, “What took you so long, you moron? You must be dumber than a dog turd, cowboy—just like Jane always said.” (Without a doubt, Danny heard that.)

“You little shit, Cookie!” Carl cried. Danny heard that, too; he was already kneeling on the floor, pulling the Winchester out of the open case under his bed.

“Dumber than a dog turd, cowboy!” his dad was shouting.

“I’m not so dumb, Cookie!
You’re
the one who’s gonna die!” Carl was hollering; he never heard Danny click the safety off, or the sound of the writer running barefoot down the hall. The cowboy took aim with the Colt .45 and shot the cook in the heart. Dominic Baciagalupo was blown into the headboard of the bed; he died instantly, on the pillows. There was no time for the deputy to comprehend the cook’s curious smile, which stretched the white scar on his lower lip, and only Danny understood what his dad had uttered just before he was shot.

“She bu de,”
Dominic managed to say, as Ah Gou and Xiao Dee had taught him—the
she bu de
that means “I can’t bear to let go.”

The Chinese was, of course, meaningless to Carl, who, as he wheeled to face the naked man in the doorway, must have half understood why the cook had died smiling. Not only did Dominic know that all the yelling would save his son; the cook also knew that his friend Ketchum had provided Daniel with a better weapon than the eight-inch cast-iron skillet. And maybe there was a margin of last-minute recognition in the cowboy’s eyes, when he saw that Danny had already taken aim with Ketchum’s Winchester—the much-maligned youth model.

The long barrel of Carl’s Colt .45 was still pointed at the floor when the first round of buckshot from the 20-gauge tore away half his throat; the cowboy was flung backward into the night table, where the lightbulb in the lamp exploded between his shoulder blades. Danny’s second load of buckshot tore away what remained of the cowboy’s throat. The deer slug, the so-called kill-shot, wasn’t really necessary, but Danny—now at point-blank range—fired the shotgun’s third and final round into Carl’s mangled neck, as if the gaping wound itself were a magnet.

If Ketchum could be believed—that is, if he’d been speaking literally about the way wolves killed their prey—weren’t these three shots from the 20-gauge Ranger exactly as kisses of wolves should be? Weren’t they, indeed, not so pretty?

Still naked, Danny went downstairs. He called the police from the phone in the kitchen, telling them that he would unlock the front door for them, and that they could find him upstairs with his father. After he’d unlocked the door, he went back upstairs to his bedroom and put on some old sweatpants and a sweatshirt. Danny thought of calling Ketchum, but it was late and there was no reason to be in a hurry. When he reentered his dad’s bedroom, there was no overlooking the kisses of wolves that had ripped the cowboy apart—leaving him like something sprayed from a hose—but Danny only briefly regretted the mess he’d made for Lupita. The blood-soaked rug, the blood-spattered walls, the bloodied photographs on the bulletin board above the shattered night table—well, Danny didn’t doubt that Lupita could handle it. He knew that something worse had happened to her: She’d lost a child.

Ketchum had been right about the red wine, the writer was thinking, as he sat on the bed beside his father. If he’d been drinking only beer, Danny thought he might have heard the cowboy a few seconds sooner; Danny just might have been able to open fire with the shotgun before Carl could have pulled the trigger. “Don’t beat up on yourself about it, Danny,” Ketchum would tell him later. “I’m the one the cowboy followed. I should have seen that coming.”

“Don’t
you
beat up on yourself about it, Ketchum,” Danny would tell the old logger, but of course Ketchum would.

When the police came, the lights in the neighboring houses were all ablaze, and lots of dogs were barking; normally, at that hour of the night, Rosedale is very quiet. Most of the residents who lived near the double shooting had never heard gunfire as loud and terrifying as that—some dogs would bark until dawn. But when the police came, they found Danny quietly cradling his dad’s head in his lap, the two of them huddled together on the blood-soaked pillows at the head of the bed. In his report, the young homicide detective would say that the bestselling author was waiting for them in the upstairs of the house—exactly where he’d said he would be—and that the writer appeared to be singing, or perhaps reciting a poem, to his murdered father.

“She bu de,”
Danny kept repeating in his dad’s ear. Neither the cook nor his son had ever known if Ah Gou and Xiao Dee’s translation of the Mandarin was essentially correct—that is, if
she bu de
literally meant “I can’t bear to let go”—but what did it matter, really? “I can’t bear to let go” was what the writer
thought
he was saying to his father, who’d kept his beloved son safe from the cowboy for nearly forty-seven years; that had been how long ago it was when they’d both left Twisted River.

Now, at last—now that the police were there—Danny began to cry. He just started to let go. An ambulance and two police cars were parked outside the house on Cluny Drive, their lights flashing. The first policemen to enter the cook’s bedroom were aware of the rudimentary story, as it had been reported over the phone: There’d been a break-in, and the armed intruder had shot and killed the famous writer’s father; Danny had then shot and killed the intruder. But surely there was more to the story than that, the young homicide detective was thinking. The detective had the utmost respect for Mr. Angel, and, under the circumstances, he wanted to give the writer all the time he needed to compose himself. Yet the damage done by that shotgun—repeatedly, and at such close range—was so excessive that the detective must have sensed that this break-in and murder, and the famous writer’s retaliation, had a substantial history.

“Mr. Angel?” the young homicide detective asked. “If you’re ready, sir, I wonder if you could tell me how this happened.”

What made Danny’s tears different was that he was crying the way a twelve-year-old would cry—as if Carl had somehow shot his dad their last night in Twisted River. Danny couldn’t speak, but he managed to point to something; it was in the vicinity of his father’s bedroom doorway.

The young detective misunderstood. “Yes, I know, you were standing there in the doorway when you shot,” the homicide policeman said. “At least, for the first shot. Then you came closer into the room, didn’t you?”

Danny was violently shaking his head. Another young policeman had noticed the eight-inch cast-iron skillet hanging just inside the doorway of the bedroom—an unusual spot for a frying pan—and he tapped the bottom of the skillet with his index finger.

“Yes!” Danny managed to say, between sobs.

“Bring that skillet over here,” the homicide detective said.

While he didn’t relinquish his hold on his father—Danny continued to cradle the cook’s head in his lap—he reached with his right hand for the eight-inch cast-iron skillet, and when his fingers closed around the handle, his crying calmed down. The young homicide detective waited; he could see there was no rushing this story.

Raising the skillet in his right hand, Danny then rested the heavy pan on the bed. “I’ll start with the eight-inch cast-iron skillet,” the writer finally began, as if he had a long story to tell—one he knew well.

V.

COOS COUNTY,
NEW HAMPSHIRE, 2001
——

CHAPTER 14

KETCHUM’S LEFT HAND

K
ETCHUM HAD BEEN HUNTING BEAR. HE’D DRIVEN HIS
truck to Wilsons Mills, Maine, and he and Hero had taken the Suzuki ATV back into New Hampshire—crossing the border about parallel to Half Mile Falls on the Dead Diamond River, where Ketchum bagged a big male black bear. His weapon of choice for bear was the short-barreled, lightweight rifle Danny’s friend Barrett had (years ago) preferred for deer: a Remington .30-06 Springfield, a carbine, what Ketchum called “my old-reliable, bolt-action sucker.” (The model had been discontinued in 1940.)

Ketchum had some difficulty bringing the bear back across the border, the all-terrain vehicle notwithstanding. “Let’s just say Hero had to walk a fair distance,” Ketchum would tell Danny. When Ketchum said “walk,” this probably meant that the dog had to
run
the whole way. But it was the first weekend of bear season when hounds were permitted; that fine animal was excited enough to not mind running after Ketchum’s ATV. Anyway, counting Ketchum and the dead bear, there’d been no room for Hero on the Suzuki.

“It might be dark on Monday before Hero and I get home,” Ketchum had warned Danny. There would be no locating the old logger over the long weekend; Danny didn’t even try. Ketchum had gradually accepted the telephone and the fax machine, but—at eighty-four—the former river driver would never own a cell phone. (Not that there were a lot of cell phones in the Great North Woods in ’01.)

Besides, Danny’s flight from Toronto had been delayed; by the time he’d landed in Boston and had rented the car, the leisurely cup of coffee he’d planned with Paul Polcari and Tony Molinari turned into a quick lunch. It would be early afternoon before Danny and Carmella Del Popolo left the North End. Of course the roads were in better shape than they’d been in 1954, when the cook and his twelve-year-old son had made that trip in the other direction, but northern New Hampshire was still “a fair distance” (as Ketchum would say) from the North End of Boston, and it was late afternoon when Danny and Carmella passed the Pontook Reservoir and followed the upper Androscoggin along Route 16 to Errol.

When they drove by the reservoir, Danny recognized Dummer Pond Road—from when it had been a haul road—but all he said to Carmella was: “We’ll be coming back here with Ketchum tomorrow.”

Carmella nodded; she just looked out the passenger-side window at the Androscoggin. Maybe ten miles later, she said: “That’s a powerful-looking river.” Danny was glad she wasn’t seeing the river in March or April; the Androscoggin was a torrent in mud season.

Ketchum had told Danny that September was the best time of year for them to come—for Carmella, especially. There was a good chance for fair weather, the nights were growing cooler, the bugs were gone, and it was too soon for snow. But as far north as Coos County, the leaves were turning color in late August. That second Monday in September, it already looked like fall, and there was a nip in the air by late afternoon.

Ketchum had been worried about Carmella’s mobility in the woods. “I can drive us most of the way, but it will entail a little walking to get to the right place on the riverbank,” Ketchum had said.

In his mind’s eye, Danny could see the place Ketchum meant—an elevated site, overlooking the basin above the river bend. What he couldn’t quite imagine was how different it would be—with the cookhouse entirely gone, and the town of Twisted River burned to the ground. But Dominic Baciagalupo hadn’t wanted his ashes scattered where the cookhouse was, or anywhere near the town; the cook had requested that his ashes be sunk in the river, in the basin where his not-really-a-cousin Rosie had slipped under the breaking ice. It was almost exactly the same spot where Angelù Del Popolo had gone under the logs. That, of course, was really why Carmella had come; those many years ago (thirty-four, if Danny was doing the math correctly), Ketchum had invited Carmella to Twisted River.

“If, one day, you ever want to see the place where your boy perished, I would be honored to show you,” was how Ketchum had put it to her. Carmella had
so wanted
to see the river basin where the accident happened, but not the logs; she knew the logs would be too much for her. Just the riverbank, where her dear Gamba and young Dan had stood and seen it happen—and maybe the exact spot in the water where her one-and-only Angelù hadn’t surfaced. Yes, she might one day want to see that, Carmella had thought.

“Thank you, Mr. Ketchum,” she’d said that day, when the logger and the cook were leaving Boston. “If you ever want to see me—” Carmella had started to say to Dominic.

“I know,” the cook had said to her, but he wouldn’t look at her.

Now, on the occasion of Danny bringing his father’s ashes to Twisted River, Ketchum had insisted that the writer bring Carmella, too. When Danny had first met Angel’s mom, the twelve-year-old had noted her big breasts, big hips, big smile—knowing that only Carmella’s smile had been bigger than Injun Jane’s. Now the writer knew that Carmella was at least as old as Ketchum, or a little older; she would have been in her mid-eighties, Danny guessed. Her hair had turned completely white—even her eyebrows were white, in striking contrast to her olive complexion and her apparently robust good health. Carmella was big all over, but she was still more feminine than Jane had ever been. And however happy she was with the new fella in her life—Paul Polcari and Tony Molinari continued to insist that she was—she’d held on to the Del Popolo name, perhaps out of respect for the fact that she had lost both the drowned fisherman
and
her precious only child.

Yet on the long drive north, there’d been no bewailing her beloved Angelù—and only one comment from Carmella on the cook’s passing. “I lost my dear Gamba years ago, Secondo—now you’ve lost him, too!” Carmella had said, with tears in her eyes. But she’d quickly recovered herself; for the rest of the trip, Carmella gave Danny no indication that she was even thinking about where they were going, and why.

Carmella continued to refer to Dominic by his nickname, Gamba—just as she called Danny Secondo, as if Danny were (in her heart) still her surrogate son; it appeared she’d long ago forgiven him for spying on her in the bathtub. He could not imagine doing so now, but he didn’t say so; instead, Danny rather formally apologized to Carmella for his behavior all those years ago.

“Nonsense, Secondo—I suppose I was flattered,” Carmella told him in the car, with a dismissive wave of her plump hand. “I only worried that the sight of me would have a damaging effect on you—that you might be permanently attracted to fat, older women.”

Danny sensed that this might have been an invitation for him to proclaim that he was
not
(and had never been) attracted to such women, though in truth—after Katie, who was preternaturally small—many of the women in his life had been large. By the stick-figure standards of contemporary women’s fashion, Danny thought that even Charlotte—indisputably, the love of his life—might have been considered overweight.

Like his dad, Danny was small, and while the writer didn’t respond to Carmella’s comment, he found himself wondering if perhaps he
was
more at ease with women who were bigger than he was. (Not that spying on Carmella in a bathtub,
or
killing Injun Jane with a skillet, had anything to do with it!)

“I wonder if you’re seeing someone now—someone special, that is,” Carmella said, after a pause of a mile or more.

“No one special,” Danny replied.

“If I can still count, you’re almost sixty,” Carmella told him. (Danny was fifty-nine.) “Your dad always wanted you to be with someone who was right for you.”

“I was, but she moved on,” Danny told her.

Carmella sighed. She had brought her melancholy with her in the car; what was melancholic about Carmella, together with her undefined disapproval of Danny, had traveled with them all the way from Boston. Danny had detected the latter’s presence as strongly as Carmella’s engaging scent—either a mild, nonspecific perfume or a smell as naturally appealing as freshly baked bread.

“Besides,” Danny went on, “my dad wasn’t with anyone special—not after he was my age.” After a pause, while Carmella waited, Danny added: “And Pop was never with anyone as right for him as you.”

Carmella sighed again, as if to note (ambiguously) both her pleasure and displeasure—she was displeased by her failure to steer the conversation where she’d wanted it to go. The subject of what was
wrong
with Danny evidently weighed on her. Now Danny waited for what she would say next; it was only a matter of time, he knew, before Carmella would raise the more delicate matter of what was wrong with his
writing
.

ALL THE WAY FROM BOSTON
, he’d found Carmella’s conversation dull—the self-righteousness of her old age was depressing. She would lose her way in what she was saying, and then blame Danny for her bewilderment; she implied that he wasn’t paying sufficient attention to her, or that he was deliberately confusing her. His dad, Danny realized, had remained sharp by comparison. While Ketchum grew deafer by the minute, and his ranting was more explosive—and though the old logger was close to Carmella’s age—Danny instinctively forgave him. After all, Ketchum had always been crazy. Hadn’t the veteran riverman been cranky and illogical when he was young? Danny was thinking to himself.

Just then, in the high-contrast, late-afternoon light, they drove past the small sign for
ANDROSCOGGIN TAXIDERMY.
“My goodness—’Moose Antlers for Sale,’” Carmella said aloud, attempting to read more minutiae from the sign. (She’d said, “My goodness,” every minute of the drive north, Danny reflected with irritation.)

“Want to stop and buy a stuffed dead animal?” he asked her.

“Just so long as it’s before dark!” Carmella answered, laughing; she patted his knee affectionately, and Danny felt ashamed for resenting her company. He’d loved her as a child and as a young man, and he had no doubt that she loved him—she’d positively
adored
his dad. Yet Danny found her tiresome now, and he hadn’t wanted her along on this trip. It was Ketchum’s idea to show her where Angel had died; Danny realized that he’d wanted Ketchum for himself. Seeing his dad’s ashes sunk in Twisted River, which was what the cook had wanted, mattered more to Danny than Ketchum making good on his promise to escort Carmella to the basin above the river bend, where her Angelù was lost. It made Danny feel ungenerous that he thought of Carmella as both a burden and a distraction; it made him feel unkind, but he believed, for the first time, that Paul Polcari and Tony Molinari hadn’t been kidding. Carmella truly must be happy—with her new fella
and
her life. (Nothing but happiness could explain why she was so boring!)

But hadn’t Carmella lost three loved ones, counting the cook—her one and only child among them? How could Danny, who had lost an only child himself,
not
see Carmella as a sympathetic soul? He
did
see her as “sympathetic,” of course! Danny just didn’t want to be with Carmella—not at this moment, when the dual missions of sinking his father’s ashes and being with Ketchum were entirely enough.

“Where are they?” Carmella asked, as they drove into Errol.

“Where are
what?”
Danny said. (They’d just been talking about
taxidermy!
Did she mean, Where are the dead stuffed animals?)

“Where are Gamba’s remains—his ashes?” Carmella asked.

“In a nonbreakable container, a jar—it’s a kind of plastic, not glass,” Danny answered, somewhat evasively.

“In your luggage, in the trunk of the car?” Carmella asked him.

“Yes.” Danny didn’t want to tell her more about the container itself—what the contents of the jar used to be, and so forth. Besides, they were coming into the town—such as it was—and while it was still light, Danny wanted to get his bearings and have a look around. That way, it would be easier to find Ketchum in the morning.

“I’ll see you bright and early Tuesday,” the old logger had said.

“What’s ‘bright and early’?” Danny asked.

“Before seven, at the latest,” Ketchum said.

“Before eight, if we’re lucky,” Danny told him. Danny had his concerns about how
bright and early
Carmella could get up and be fully functioning—not to mention that they were spending the night a few miles out of town. There was no proper place for them to stay in Errol, Ketchum had assured Danny. The logger had recommended a resort hotel in Dixville Notch.

From what Danny and Carmella could see of Errol, Ketchum had been right. They took the road toward Umbagog, past a general store, which was a liquor store, too; there was a bridge over the Androscoggin at the east end of town, and a fire station just west of the bridge, where Danny turned the car around. Driving back through town, they passed the Errol elementary school—they’d not noticed it the first time. There was also a restaurant called Northern Exposure, but the most prosperous-looking place in Errol was a sporting-goods store called L. L. Cote.

“Let’s have a look inside,” Danny suggested to Carmella.

“Just so long as it’s before dark!” she said again. Carmella had been one of the earliest erotic stimulations of his life. How could she have become such a repetitious old woman? Danny was thinking.

They both regarded the sign on the door of the sporting-goods store with trepidation.

PLEASE NO LOADED FIREARMS INSIDE

“My goodness,” Carmella said; they hesitated, albeit briefly, at the door.

L. L. Cote sold snowmobiles and all-terrain vehicles; inside there were dead stuffed animals, the regional species, enough to suggest that the local taxidermist was kept busy. (Bear, deer, lynx, fox, fisher cat, moose, porcupine, skunk—a host of “critters,” Ketchum would have said—in addition to all the ducks and the birds of prey.) There were more guns than any other single item; Carmella recoiled from such a display of lethal weaponry. A large selection of Browning knives caused Danny to reflect that probably Ketchum’s big Browning knife had been purchased here. There was also quite a collection of scent-elimination clothing, which Danny tried to explain to Carmella.