Last Night in Twisted River

"You just have to see how it goes. If Carl is believing your story--and you all have to tell the cowboy the same story--maybe he'll leave without incident. No shots need to be fired," Ketchum was saying.

"What story is that?" the cook asked his old friend.

"Well, it's about how you walked out on this lady," Ketchum said, indicating Carmella. "Not that even a fool would, mind you--but that's what you did, and everyone here hates you for it. They would like to kill you themselves, if they could find you. Do any of you have trouble remembering that story?" Ketchum asked them. They shook their heads--even the cook, but for a different reason.

"Just so there's one of you back in the kitchen," Ketchum continued. "I don't care if the cowboy knows you're back there--just so he can't quite see you. You can be banging pots and pans around all you want to. If Carl asks to see you, and he will, just tell him you're busy cooking."

"Which one of us should be back in the kitchen with the gun?" Paul Polcari asked the woodsman.

"It doesn't matter which one of you is back there--just so you all know how to work the Ithaca," Ketchum answered.

"You know Carl will come here, I suppose?" Dominic asked him.

"It's inevitable, Cookie. He'll want to talk to Carmella most of all, but he'll come here to talk to everyone. If he doesn't believe your story, and there's any trouble--that's when one of you shoots him," Ketchum said to them all.

"How will we know there's going to be trouble?" Tony Molinari asked. "How will we know if he believes our story?"

"Well, you won't see the Colt forty-five," Ketchum answered. "Believe me, he'll have it on him, but you won't know there's going to be trouble until you see the weapon. When Carl lets you see the Colt, he intends to use it."

"Then we shoot him?" Paul Polcari asked.

"Whoever's in the kitchen should call out to him first," Ketchum told them. "You just say something like, 'Hey, cowboy!'--just so he looks at you."

"It would seem to me," Molinari said, "that we'd have a better chance just to shoot him--I mean before he's looking in the direction of the shooter."

"No, not really," Ketchum told him patiently. "If the cowboy is looking in your direction, assuming you take aim at his throat, you'll hit him in the face and chest--both--and you'll probably blind him."

The cook looked at Carmella, because he thought she might faint. The busboy appeared to be feeling sick. "When the cowboy is blind, you don't have to be in as big a hurry--when you take the empty shell out and put the deer slug in. The buckshot blinds him, but the deer slug is the kill-shot," Ketchum explained to them. "First you blind him, then you kill him."

The busboy dashed for the kitchen; they could hear him barfing in the overlarge sink the dishwasher used to scour pots and pans. "Maybe he's not the one to be back in the kitchen," Ketchum said softly to the others. "Hell, we used to jacklight deer in Coos County just like this. Shine the light on them, till the deer stared right at you. First the buckshot, then the deer slug." But here the woodsman paused before continuing. "Well, with a deer--if you're close enough--the buckshot will suffice. With the cowboy, we don't want to take any unnecessary chances."

"I don't think we can kill anybody, Mr. Ketchum," Carmella said. "We simply don't know how to do that."

"I just showed you how!" Ketchum told her. "That little Ithaca is the simplest gun I own. I won it in an arm-wrestling match in Milan--you remember, don't you, Cookie?"

"I remember," the cook told his old friend. It had turned into something more serious than an arm-wrestling match, as Dominic remembered it, but Ketchum had walked away with the single-shot Ithaca--there was no disputing that.

"Hell, just work on your story," Ketchum told them. "If the story is good enough, maybe you won't have to shoot the bastard."

"Did you come all this way just to bring us the gun?" the cook asked his old friend.

"I brought the Ithaca for them, Cookie--it's for your friends, not for you. I came to help you pack. We've got a little traveling to do."

Dominic reached back for Carmella's hand--he knew she was standing behind him--but Carmella was quicker. She wrapped her arms around her Gamba's waist and burrowed her face into the back of his neck. "I love you, but I want you to go with Mr. Ketchum," she told the cook.

"I know," Dominic told her; he knew better than to resist her, or Ketchum.

"What else is in the duffel bag?" the busboy asked the logger; the kid had come out of the kitchen and was looking a little better.

"Fireworks--for the Fourth of July," Ketchum said. "Danny asked me to bring them," he told Dominic.

Carmella went with them to the walk-up on Wesley Place. The cook didn't pack many things, but he took the eight-inch cast-iron skillet off the hook in their bedroom; Carmella supposed that the skillet was mostly symbolic. She walked with them to the car-rental place. They would drive the rental car to Vermont, and Ketchum would bring the car back to Boston; then he would take the train back to New Hampshire from North Station. Ketchum hadn't wanted his truck to be missing for a few days; he didn't want the deputy sheriff to know he was away. Besides, he needed a new truck, Ketchum told them; with all the driving he and Dominic had to do, Ketchum's truck might not have made it.

For thirteen years, Carmella had been hoping to meet Mr. Ketchum. Now she'd met him, and his violence. She could see in an instant what her Angelu had admired about the man, and--when Ketchum had been younger--Carmella could easily imagine how Rosie Calogero (or any woman her age) might have fallen in love with him. But now she hated Ketchum for coming to the North End and taking her Gamba away; she would even miss the cook's limp, she told herself.

Then Mr. Ketchum said something to her, and it completely won her over. "If, one day, you ever want to see the place where your boy perished, I would be honored to show you," Ketchum said to her. Carmella had to fight back tears. She had so wanted to see the river basin where the accident happened, but not t

he logs; she knew the logs would be too much for her. Just the riverbank, where the cook and young Dan had stood and seen it happen--and maybe the exact spot in the water--yes, she might one day want to see that.