Last Night in Twisted River

But at a time when the cook and his son were confronted with the chaos of going on the run again, Roland Drake's attack on Danny's sixth novel might delay the publication of East of Bangor by several months--conceivably, for as long as half a year. The novel was scheduled to be published in the fall of '83. (Maybe not now--possibly, the book wouldn't be published until the winter of '84. With all that was newly happening in Danny's life, it would take the author a while to remember the revisions he'd already made in the galleys--and to find the time to proofread the last quarter of the novel.)

"Revise the chickenshit title!" Drake had scribbled on the cover of East of Bangor, in deep black. "Change the author's fake name!"

And in red, throughout the novel, while the writer carpenter's criticism demonstrated no great range or in-depth perception, Drake had underlined a phrase or circled a word--on four-hundred-plus pages--and he'd added a cryptic comment, albeit only one per page. "This sucks!" and "Rewrite!" were the most repeated, along with "Cut!" and "Dog-killer!" Less common were "Lame!" and "Feeble!" More than once, "Lengthy!" had been scrawled across the entire page. Only twice, but memorably, Drake had written, "I fucked Franky, too!" (Perhaps Drake had slept with Franky, Danny only now considered; that might have contributed to the onetime writing student's animosity toward the bestselling author.)

"Have a look, Jimmy," Danny said to the trooper, handing him the desecrated copy of the galleys.

"Gee ... this makes more work for you, I suppose," Jimmy said, turning the pages. "'Year of the Dog wouldn't publish this shit!'" the state trooper read aloud, with deadpan puzzlement. Jimmy always looked pained by what he didn't understand--at once heartbroken and baffled. For a cop who'd shot his share of dogs, Jimmy had the sad, droopy eyes of a Labrador retriever; tall and thin, with a long face, the trooper looked questioningly at Danny for some explanation of Roland Drake's ravings.

"Year of the Dog was a small literary magazine," Danny explained. "Either Windham College published it, or it was independently published by some Windham College students--I can't remember."

"Franky is a girl?" Jimmy asked, reading further.

"Yes," the writer answered.

"That young woman who lived here for a while--that one, right?" the trooper asked.

"That's her, Jimmy."

"'You write with a limp!'" Jimmy read aloud. "Gee ..."

"Drake should bury his own dog--don't you think, Jimmy?" Danny asked the trooper.

"I'll take Roland's dog back to him. We'll have a little talk," Jimmy said. "You could get a restraining order--"

"I don't need one, Jimmy--I'm leaving, remember?" Danny said.

"I know how to talk to Roland," the trooper said.

"Just watch out for the other dog, Jimmy--he comes at you from behind," Danny warned him.

"I won't shoot him if I don't have to, Danny--I only shoot them when I have to," the trooper said.

"I know," Danny told him.

"It's hard to imagine anyone out to get your dad," Jimmy ventured. "I can't conceive of someone having a score to settle with the cook. You want to tell me about that, Danny?" the cop asked.

Here was another intersection in the road, the writer thought. What were these junctions, where making a sharp-left or sharp-right turn from the previously chosen path presented a tempting possibility? Hadn't there been an opportunity for Danny and his dad to go back to Twisted River, as if nothing had ever happened to Injun Jane? And of course there was the case of putting Paul Polcari back in the kitchen at Vicino di Napoli with Ketchum's single-shot 20-gauge--instead of putting someone back there who might have pulled the fucking trigger!

Well, wasn't this another opportunity to escape the conundrum? Just tell Jimmy everything! About Injun Jane, about Carl and Six-Pack Pam--about the retired deputy with his long-barreled Colt .45, that fucking cowboy! Short of asking Ketchum to kill the bastard, what other way out was there? And Danny knew that if he or his dad asked Ketchum outright, Ketchum would kill the cowboy. The old logger hadn't murdered Lucky Pinette in his bed with a stamping hammer; Lucky was probably asleep at the time, but the killer couldn't have been Ketchum, or there would be nothing holding Ketchum back from killing Carl.

But all Danny said to his state-trooper friend was, "It's about a woman. A long time ago, my dad was sleeping with a logging-camp constable's girlfriend. Later, the camp constable became a county deputy sheriff--and when he found out what had happened to his girlfriend, he came looking for my dad. The deputy is retired now, but we have reason to believe he might still be looking--he's crazy."

"A crazy ex-cop ... that's not good," Jimmy said.

"The former deputy sheriff is getting old--that's the good part. He can't keep looking much longer," Danny told the trooper, who looked thoughtful; Jimmy also seemed suspicious.

There was more to the story, of course, and the state trooper probably could discern this in the writer's atypically vague telling of the tale. (And what trouble could Danny have gotten into for killing a woman he mistook for a bear when he'd been a twelve-year-old?) But Danny didn't say more about it, and Jimmy could tell that his friend was content to keep the matter to himself and his dad. Besides, there was a dead dog to deal with; the business at hand, giving Roland

Drake a good talking-to, must have seemed more pressing to the state trooper.

"Have you got some of those large green garbage bags?" Jimmy asked. "I'll take care of that dog for you. Why don't you get a little sleep, Danny? We can talk more about the crazy old ex-cop when you want to."

"Thanks, Jimmy," Danny told his friend. Just like that, the writer was thinking, he'd driven past the intersection in the road. It hadn't even been in the category of a decision, but now the cook and his son could only keep driving. And how old was the cowboy, anyway? Carl was the same age as Ketchum, who was the same age as Six-Pack Pam. The retired deputy sheriff was sixty-six, not too old to squeeze a trigger--not yet.

From his driveway, Danny watched the taillights of the state-police patrol car as Jimmy drove off on Hickory Ridge Road. It wouldn't take the trooper long to get to Roland Drake's driveway of abandoned vehicles, and Drake's surviving husky-shepherd mix. Suddenly, it meant a lot to Danny to know what was going to happen when Jimmy brought the dead dog back to the asshole hippie. Would that really be the end of it? Was enough ever enough, or did the violence just perpetuate--that is, whenever something began violently?

Danny had to know. He got in his car and drove up Hickory Ridge Road until he spotted the trooper's taillights flickering ahead of him; then Danny slowed down. He could no longer keep the squad car's taillights in sight, but he kept following at a distance. Jimmy had probably seen Danny's headlights, albeit briefly. Surely the state policeman would have known he was being followed; knowing Jimmy, he would have guessed it was Danny, too. But Danny knew that he didn't need to see what happened when the trooper pulled into Roland Drake's salvage yard of a driveway. The writer knew he needed only to be near enough to hear the shot, if there was a shot.