Last Night in Twisted River

Well, that was kind of where he was at this moment in his life, Daniel Baciagalupo was thinking. He had a two-year-old son, whom he'd inexplicably not named after his father; he'd lost his wife, and had not yet met another woman. He was struggling to begin a second novel while the first one was not yet published, and he was about to go back to New England to his first noncooking, not-in-a-kitchen job. If that wasn't in medias res, Daniel Baciagalupo thought, what was?

And, continuing in Latin, when Danny had first gone to Exeter, he'd gone with Mr. Leary, who was with the boy in loco parentis--that is, "in the place of a parent."

Maybe that was why the first novel was dedicated to Mr. Leary. "Not to your dad?" Ketchum would ask Danny. (Carmella would ask the young writer the same question.)

"Maybe the next one," he would tell them both. His father never said anything about the dedication to Mr. Leary.

Danny got up from his desk to watch the rain streaking his windows in Iowa City. He then went and watched Joe sleeping. The way the chapter was going, the writer thought that he might as well go to bed, but he generally stayed up late. Like his dad, Daniel Baciagalupo didn't drink anymore; Katie had cured him of that habit, which was not a story he wanted to think about on a night when his writing wasn't working. He found himself wishing that Ketchum would call. (Hadn't Ketchum said they should talk?)

Whenever Ketchum called from those faraway phone booths, time seemed to stop; whenever he heard from Ketchum, Daniel Baciagalupo, who was twenty-five, usually felt that he was twelve and leaving Twisted River all over again.

One day, the writer would acknowledge this: It was not a coincidence when the logger called on that rainy April night. As usual, Ketchum called collect, and Danny accepted the call. "Fucking mud season," Ketchum said. "How the hell are you?"

"So you're a typist now," Danny said. "I'm going to miss your pretty handwriting."

"It was never my handwriting," Ketchum told him. "It was Pam's. Six-Pack wrote all my letters."

"Why?" Danny asked him.

"I can't write!" Ketchum admitted. "I can't read, either--Six-Pack read all your letters aloud to me, yours and your dad's."

This was a devastating moment for Daniel Baciagalupo; as the young writer would think of it later, it was right up there with his wife leaving him, but it

would have more serious consequences. Danny thought of how he'd poured out his heart to Ketchum, of everything he'd written to the man--not to mention what Ketchum had to have told Pam, because it was obviously Six-Pack, not Ketchum, who'd replied. This meant that Six-Pack knew everything!

"I thought my mom taught you to read," Danny said.

"Not really," Ketchum replied. "I'm sorry, Danny."

"So now Pam is typing? Danny asked. (This was truly hard to imagine; there'd not been a single typo in the typed letters both Danny and his dad had received from Ketchum.)

"There's a lady I met in the library--she turned out to be a schoolteacher, Danny. She typed the letters for me."

"Where's Six-Pack?" Danny asked.

"Well, that's kind of the problem," Ketchum told him. "Six-Pack moved on. You know how that is," he added. Ketchum knew all about Katie moving on--there was no more to say about it.

"Six-Pack left you?" Danny asked.

"That's not the problem," Ketchum answered. "I'm not surprised she left me--I'm surprised she stayed so long. But I'm surprised that she's moved in with the cowboy," Ketchum added. "That's the problem."

Both Danny and his dad knew that Carl wasn't a constable anymore. (They also knew there was no more town of Twisted River; it had burned to the ground, and it had been a ghost town before it burned.) Carl was now a deputy sheriff of Coos County.

"Are you saying Six-Pack will tell the cowboy what she knows?" Danny asked Ketchum.

"Not immediately," Ketchum answered. "She has no reason to do me any dirt--or to do you and your dad any harm, as far as I know. We parted on good enough terms. It's what'll happen to her when Carl beats her up, because he will. Or when he throws her out, because he won't keep her for long. You haven't seen Six-Pack in a while, Danny--she's losing her looks something wicked."

Daniel Baciagalupo was counting to himself. He knew that Ketchum and Six-Pack were the same age, and that they both were the exact same age as Carl. When he got to fifty, Danny wrote the number down--that was how old they were. He could imagine that Six-Pack Pam's looks were going, and that the cowboy would one day kick her out. Carl would definitely beat her, even though the deputy sheriff had stopped drinking.

"Explain what you mean," Danny said to Ketchum.

"It'll be when Carl does something bad to Pam--that'll be when she'll tell him. Don't you see, Danny?" Ketchum asked him. "It's the only way she can hurt him. All these years, he's been wondering about you and your dad--all these years, he's been thinking he killed Jane. He just can't remember it! I think it's honestly driven him crazy--that he can't remember killing her, but he believes he did."

If he was a better man, it might be a relief to the cowboy to learn he didn't kill Injun Jane. And if Six-Pack had led a gentler life, maybe she wouldn't be tempted to use her knowledge of the situation as a weapon. (At worst, Pam might blurt out the truth to Carl--either accidentally, or while he was beating her up.) But Ketchum wasn't counting on the cowboy to discover some essential goodness within himself, and the river driver knew the life Six-Pack had led. (He'd led that life, too; there was nothing gentle about it.) And the cowboy had driven himself crazy--not because he believed he'd killed Jane; he didn't even feel guilty about that, much less crazy. Ketchum was right: What made Carl crazy was that he couldn't remember killing her; Ketchum knew the cowboy would have enjoyed remembering that.

That he couldn't remember was why the sheriff had eventually stopped drinking. Years ago, when Ketchum had first told Danny and his dad about "the new teetotaler in Coos County," both the cook and his son had laughed about it--they'd positively howled.

"Cookie's got to get out of Boston--that's for starters," Ketchum said now. "He ought to lose the Del Popolo, too. I'm going to tell him, but you've got to tell him, too, Danny. Your dad doesn't always listen to me."