Last Night in Twisted River

Jane smiled at him, but it was a more measured smile than he was used to seeing on her pretty face; that she didn't answer made him anxious. "Don't tell me to ask Ketchum," the boy blurted out. This made Injun Jane laugh; her smile was more natural, and more immediately forthcoming. (As always, Chief Wahoo was madly grinning.)

"I was going to say that you should ask your father," the dishwasher said. "Don't be anxious," she added, punching his upper arm again--this time a little harder. "Danny?" Jane said, as the twelve-year-old was climbing out of the truck cab. "Don't ask Ketchum."

IT WAS A WORLD of accidents, the cook was thinking. In the kitchen, he was cooking up a storm. The lamb hash, which he'd served for breakfast, would be good for a midday meal, too; he'd also made a chickpea soup (for the Catholics) and a venison stew with carrots and pearl onions. Yes, there was the infernal pot of baked beans, and the omnipresent pea soup with parsley. But there was little else that was standard logging-camp fare.

One of the sawmill workers' wives was cooking some Italian sweet sausage on the griddle. The cook kept telling her to break up the sausage meat as she cooked it--whereupon another of the sawmill workers' wives started singing. "Try beatin' your meat with a spatula!" she sang to the unlikely but overfamiliar tune of "Vaya con Dios;" the other women joined in.

The lead singer among the sawmill workers' wives was the woman the cook had put in charge of proofing the yeast for the pizza dough--he was keeping an eye on her. Dominic wanted to mix the pizza dough and start it rising before they drove off on the haul road to deliver the midday meals. (On a Friday night, there would be a bunch of pissed-off French Canadians if there weren't enough meatless pizzas for the mackerel-snappers.)

The cook was making cornbread, too. He wanted to start the stuffing for the roast chickens he was also serving in the cookhouse Friday night; he would mix the sausage with the cornbread and some celery and sage, adding the eggs and butter when he got back to his kitchen from the river site and wherever they were loading the trucks. In a large saucepan, in which Danny had warmed the maple syrup, Dominic was boiling the butternut squash; he would mash it up and mix it with maple syrup, and add the butter when he returned to town. On Friday night, together with the stuffed roast chickens, he would serve scalloped potatoes with the whipped squash. This was arguably Ketchum's favorite meal; most Fridays, Ketchum ate some of the meatless pizza, too.

Dominic was feeling sorry for Ketchum. The cook didn't know if Ketchum truly believed they would find Angel in the spillway of the upper dam Sunday morning, or if Ketchum hoped they would never find the boy's body. All the cook had determined was that he didn't want young Daniel to see Angel's body. Dominic Baciagalupo wasn't sure if he wanted to see Angel's body--or ever find the boy, either.

The pot of water--in which the cook had poured a couple of ounces of vinegar, for the poached eggs--was coming to a boil again. For breakfast, he'd served the lamb hash with poached eggs, but when he served the hash as a midday meal, he would just have lots of ketchup handy; poached eggs didn't travel well. When the water and vinegar came to a boil, Dominic poured it over the cutting boards to sterilize them.

One of the sawmill workers' wives had made about fifty bacon, lettuce, and tomato sandwiches with the leftover breakfast bacon. She was eating one of the sandwiches while she eyed the cook--some mischief was on her mind, Dominic could tell. Her name was Dot; she was far too large to be a Dot, and she'd had so many children that she seemed to be a woman who had abandoned every other capacity she'd ever conceivably possessed, except her appetite, which the cook didn't like to think about at all. (She had too many appetites, Dominic imagined.)

The sawmill worker's wife with the spatula--the one who needed to be reminded to break up the sausage on the griddle--appeared to be in on the mischief, because she had her eye on the cook, too. Since the woman eating the BLT had her mouth full, the one with the spatula spoke first. Her name was May; she was bigger than Dot and had been married twice. May's children with her second husband were the same age as her grandchildren--that is, the children of her children from her first marriage--and this unnatural phenomenon had completely unhinged May and her second husband, to the degree that they couldn't recover sufficiently to console each other concerning the sheer strangeness of their lives.

What Dominic found unnatural was May's ceaseless need to lament the fact that she had children the age of her grandchildren. Why was it such a big deal? the cook had wondered.

"Just look at her," Ketchum had said, meaning May. "For her, everything is a big fucking deal."

Maybe so, the cook considered, as May pointed the spatula at him. Wiggling her hips in a seductive manner, she said in a purring voice: "Oh, Cookie, I would leave my miserable life behind--if only you would marry me, and cook for me, too!"

Dominic was using the long-handled dish scrubber on the cutting boards, which were soaking in boiling water; the vinegar in the hot water made his eyes tear. "You're married already, May," he said. "If you married me, and we had children, you'd have kids younger than your grandchildren. I dare not guess how that would make you feel."

May looked genuinely stricken by the idea; maybe he shouldn't have raised the dreaded subject, the cook was thinking. But Dot, who was still eating the BLT, spasmodically laughed with her mouth full--whereupon she commenced to choke. The kitchen helpers, May among them, stood waiting for the cook to do something.

Dominic Baciagalupo was no stranger to choking. He'd seen a lot of loggers and mill workers choke--he knew what to do. Years ago, he'd saved one of the dance-hall women; she was drunk, and she was choking on her own vomit, but the cook had known how to handle her. It was a famous story--Ketchum had even titled it, "How Cookie Saved Six-Pack Pam." The woman was as tall and rawboned as Ketchum, and Dominic had needed Ketchum's help to knock her to her knees, and then wrestle her to all fours, where the cook could apply a makeshift Heimlich maneuver. (Six-Pack Pam was so named because this was Ketchum's estimate of the woman's nightly quota, before she started on the bourbon.)

Dr. Heimlich was born in 1920, but his now-famous maneuver hadn't been introduced in Coos County in 1954. Dominic Baciagalupo had been cooking for big eaters for fourteen years. Countless people had choked in front of him; three of them had died. The cook had observed that pounding someone on the back didn't always work. Ketchum's original maneuver, which entailed holding the chokers upside down and vigorously shaking them, had been known to fail, too.

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But once Ketchum had been forced to improvise, and Dominic had witnessed the astonishingly successful result. A drunken logger had been too pugnacious and too big for Ketchum to shake upside down. Ketchum kept dropping the man, who was not only choking to death--he was trying to kill Ketchum, too.

Ketchum repeatedly punched the madman in the upper abdomen--all uppercuts. Upon the fourth or fifth uppercut, the choker expectorated a large, unchewed piece of lamb, which he had inadvertently inhaled.

Over the years, the cook had modified Ketchum's improvisational method to suit his own smaller size and less violent nature. Dominic would slip under the flailing arms of the choker and get behind him or her. He would hold the victim around the upper abdomen and apply sudden, upward pressure with his locked hands--just under the rib cage. This had worked every time.

In the kitchen, when Dot began to flail her arms, Dominic quickly ducked behind her. "Oh, my God, Cookie--save her!" May cried; the children-grandchildren crisis was momentarily off her mind, if not entirely forgotten.

With his nose in the warm, sweaty area at the back of Dot's neck, the cook could barely join his hands together as he reached around her. Dot's breasts were too big and low; Dominic needed to lift them out of the way to locate where Dot's rib cage ended and her upper abdomen began. But when he held her breasts, albeit briefly, Dot covered his hands with her own and forcefully shoved her butt into his stomach. She was laughing hysterically, not choking at all; crazy May and the rest of the kitchen helpers were laughing with her. "Oh, Cookie--how did you know that's how I like it?" Dot moaned.

"I always thought that Cookie was a do-it-from-behind kind of guy," May said matter-of-factly.

"Oh, you little dog!" Dot cried, grinding against the cook. "I just love how you always say, 'Behind you!'"

Dominic finally freed his hands from her breasts; he lightly pushed himself away from her.

"I guess we're not big enough for him, Dot," May said sorrowfully. Something mean had entered her voice; the cook could hear it. I'm going to pay for the children-grandchildren remark, Dominic was thinking. "Or maybe we're just not Injun enough," May said.

The cook didn't so much as look at her; the other kitchen helpers, even Dot, had turned away. May was defiantly patting the lamb hash flat against the griddle with the spatula. Dominic reached around her and turned the griddle off. He touched his fingers to the small of her back as he passed behind her. "Let's pack up, ladies," he said, almost the same way he usually said it. "You and May can pack the meals to the rivermen," the cook told Dot. "The rest of us will drive till we find the loggers on the haul road." He didn't speak to May, or look at her.

"So Dot and I do all the walkin'?" May asked him.

"You should walk more than you do," Dominic said, still not looking at her. "Walking's good for you."