Last Night in Twisted River

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 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 potatoe

s 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 sauteed 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.