Last Night in Twisted River

"Look at it this way, Cookie," Ketchum was saying, his white cast leveled at his friend--as heavy as the cowboy's Colt .45--"if I'm wrong and Carl shoots you, he won't dare lay so much as a finger on Danny. But if I'm right, and the cowboy comes after you, he could kill you both--because you'd both be fugitives."

"Well, that's what we are--we're fugitives," Dominic said. "I'm not a gambler, Ketchum--not anymore."

"You're gambling now, Cookie," Ketchum told him. "Either way, it's a gamble, isn't it?"

"Give Ketchum a hug, Daniel--we should be going," his dad said.

Danny Baciagalupo would remember that hug, and how he thought it strange that his father and Ketchum didn't hug each other--they were such old friends, and such good ones.

"Big changes are coming, Cookie," Ketchum tried to tell his friend. "They won't be moving logs over water much longer. Those dams on the Dummer ponds will be gone--this dam here won't last, either," he said, with a wave of his cast indicating the containment boom but choosing to leave Dead Woman Dam unnamed.

"Dummer Pond and Little Dummer and Twisted River will just flow into the Pontook. I suspect the old boom piers on the Androscoggin will last, but they won't be using them anymore. And the first time there's a fire in West Dummer or Twisted River, do you think anyone will bother to rebuild those sorry settlements? Who wouldn't rather move to Milan or Errol--or even Berlin, if you were old and feeble enough?" Ketchum added. "All you have to do is stay and outlast this miserable place, Cookie--you and Danny." But the cook and his son were making their way to the Chieftain. "If you run now, you'll be running forever!" Ketchum called after them. He limped around his truck from the passenger's to the driver's side.

"Why are you limping?" the cook called to him.

"Shit," Ketchum said. "There's a step missing on Six-Pack's stairs--I fucking forgot about it."

"Take care of yourself, Ketchum," his old friend told him.

"You, too, Cookie," Ketchum said. "I won't ask you about your lip, but I'm familiar with that injury."

"By the way, Angel wasn't Canadian," Dominic Baciagalupo told Ketchum.

"His real name was Angelu Del Popolo," young Dan explained, "and he came from Boston, not Toronto."

"I suppose that's where you're going?" Ketchum asked them. "Boston?"

"Angel must have had a family--there's got to be someone who needs to know what happened to him," the cook said.

Ketchum nodded. Through the windshield of his truck, the insufficient sunlight was playing tricks with the way Angelu Del Popolo sat up (almost straight) and faced alertly forward. Angel not only looked alive, but he seemed to be just starting the journey of his young life--not ending it.

"Suppose I tell Carl that you and Danny are delivering the bad news to Angel's family? You didn't leave the cookhouse looking like you were leaving it for good, did you?" Ketchum asked.

"We took nothing anybody would notice," Dominic said. "It would appear that we were coming back."

"Suppose I tell the cowboy that I was surprised Injun Jane wasn't with you?" Ketchum asked. "I could say that, if I were Jane, I would have gone to Canada, too." Danny saw how his dad considered this, before Ketchum said, "I think I won't say you've gone to Boston. Maybe it's better to say, 'If I were Jane, I would have gone to Toronto.' Suppose I say that?"

"Just don't say too much, whatever you say," the cook told him.

"I believe I'll still think of him as 'Angel,' if that's okay," Ketchum said, as he climbed into his truck; he glanced only briefly at the dead boy, quickly looking away.

"I'll always think of him as 'Angel'!" young Dan called.

To what extent a twelve-year-old is aware, or not, of the start of an adventure--or whether this misadventure had begun long before Danny Baciagalupo mistook Injun Jane for a bear--neither Ketchum nor the cook could say, though Danny seemed very "aware." Ketchum must have known that he might be seeing them for the last time, and he wanted to cast this phase of the gamble the cook was taking in a more positive light. "Danny!" Ketchum called. "I just want you to know that, on occasion, I more than once mistook Jane for a bear myself."

But Ketchum was not one for casting a positive light for long. "I don't suppose Jane was wearing the Chief Wahoo hat--when it happened," the logger said to Danny.

"No, she wasn't," the twelve-year-old told him.

"Damn it, Jane--oh, shit, Jane!" Ketchum cried. "Some fella in Cleveland told me it was a lucky hat," the river driver explained to the boy. "This fella said Chief Wahoo was some kind of spirit; he was supposed to look after Injuns."

"Maybe he's looking after Jane now," Danny said.

"Don't get religious on me, Danny--just remember the Injun as she was. Jane truly loved you," Ketchum told the twelve-year-old. "Just honor her memory--that's all you can do."

"I am missing you already, Ketchum!" the boy suddenly cried out.

"Oh, shit, Danny--you best get going, if you're going," the river-man said.