THE SONG ON THE RADIO in Ketchum's badly lived-in truck reached them on the loading dock of the sawmill before the truck itself appeared on the haul road--maybe it was Jo Stafford singing "Make Love to Me," but Ketchum turned off the radio before the cook could be sure about the song. (Ketchum was on his way to becoming chainsaw-deaf. The radio in his truck was always overloud, the windows--now that it was what passed for spring--usually open.) Dominic was relieved to see that Six-Pack hadn't come along for the ride; that would have seriously complicated matters.
Ketchum parked his rattling heap a discreet distance from the Pontiac; he sat in the cab with his white cast resting on the steering wheel, his eyes looking past them on the platform to where Angel was reclining in the uncertain sunlight.
"You found him, I see," Ketchum said; he looked away, toward the dam, as if he were counting the logs in the containment boom.
As always, both predictable and unaccountable things were transported in the back of Ketchum's pickup truck; a homemade shelter covered the bed of the pickup, turning the entire truck into a wanigan. Ketchum carried his chainsaws around, together with an assortment of axes and other tools--and, under a canvas tarp, an inexplicable half-cord of firewood, in case the suddenly urgent need to build a bonfire possessed him.
"Daniel and I can put Angel in the back of your pickup, where you don't have to see him," Dominic said.
"Why can't Angel ride with you in the Chieftain?" Ketchum asked.
"Because we're not going back to Twisted River," the cook told his old friend.
Ketchum sighed, his eyes coming slowly to rest on Angel. The river driver got out of his truck and walked with an unexplained limp to the loading dock. (Dominic wondered if Ketchum was limping to mock him.) Ketchum picked up the dead youth's body as if it were a sleeping baby; the logger carried the fifteen-year-old to the cab of his truck, where Danny had run ahead to open the door.
"I guess I might as well see him now as wait till I have to unload him back in town," Ketchum told them. "I suppose these are your clothes on him?" he asked young Dan.
"Mine and my dad's," the twelve-year-old said.
The cook limped over to the truck, carrying Angel's wet and dirty clothes; he put them on the floor of the cab, by the dead boy's feet. "Angel's clothes could stand some washing and drying," he told Ketchum.
"I'll have Jane wash and dry his clothes," Ketchum told them. "Jane and I can clean Angel up a little, too--then we'll dress him in his own clothes."
"Jane is dead, Ketchum," the cook told him. (It was an accident, he was about to add, but his beloved Daniel was quicker.)
"I killed her with the skillet--the one Dad hit the bear with," Danny blurted out. "I thought Jane was a bear," the boy told Ketchum.
The cook confirmed the story by immediately looking away from his old friend. Ketchum put his good arm around Danny's shoulders and pulled the boy against him. Young Da
n buried his face in the stomach of Ketchum's wool-flannel shirt--the same green and blue Black Watch plaid that Six-Pack Pam had been wearing. To the twelve-year-old, the commingled smells of Ketchum and Six-Pack inhabited the shirt as confidently as their two strong bodies.
Raising his cast, Ketchum pointed to the Pontiac. "Christ, Cookie, you haven't got poor Jane in the Chieftain, have you?"
"We took her to Constable Carl's," Danny said.
"I don't know if Carl had passed out in another room, or if he wasn't home, but I left Jane on his kitchen floor," the cook explained. "With any luck, the cowboy will find her body and think he did it."
"Of course he'll think he did it!" Ketchum thundered. "I'll bet he buried her an hour ago, or he's digging the damn hole as we speak. But when Carl hears that you and Danny have left town, he'll begin to think he didn't do it! He'll think you did it, Cookie--if you and Danny don't get your asses back to Twisted River!"
"Bluff it out, you mean?" Dominic asked.
"What's to bluff?" Ketchum asked. "For the rest of his rotten life, the cowboy will be trying to remember exactly how and why he killed Jane--or he'll be looking for you, Cookie."
"You're assuming he won't remember last night," the cook said. "That's a pretty big assumption, isn't it?"
"Six-Pack told me you paid us a visit last night," Ketchum told his old friend. "Well, do you think I remember you being there?"
"Probably not," Dominic answered. "But what you're suggesting is that I gamble everything." It was both unconscious and uncontrollable that, when the cook said everything, he looked straight at young Daniel.
"You go back to the cookhouse, I help you unpack the Chieftain, you and Danny are completely settled in by the time the kitchen helpers show up this afternoon. Then, around suppertime," Ketchum continued, "you send Dot or May--or one of those worthless fucking sawmill workers' wives--to Constable Carl's. You have her say, 'Where's Jane? Cookie's going crazy without his dishwasher!' That's bluffing it out! You win that bluff hands down," Ketchum told him. "The cowboy will be shitting his pants. He'll be shitting them for years--just waiting for some dog to dig up the Injun's body!"
"I don't know, Ketchum," the cook said. "It's a huge bluff. I can't take a chance like that--not with Daniel."
"You're taking a bigger chance if you leave," his old friend told him. "Shit, if the cowboy blows your head off, I'll take good care of Danny."
Young Dan's eyes kept moving from his father to Ketchum, and back to his father again. "I think we should go back to the cookhouse," the twelve-year-old told his dad.
But the cook knew how change--any change--made his son anxious. Of course Daniel Baciagalupo would vote to stay and bluff it out; leaving represented a more unknown fear.