Andy Grant told Ketchum and Danny where the deer were in the Bayfield area, and Ketchum already knew a fella named LaBlanc, who called himself a hunting guide; LaBlanc showed Ketchum and Danny an area north of Pointe au Baril, in the vicinity of Byng Inlet and Still River. But, in Ketchum’s case, it didn’t matter where he hunted; the deer were all around.
At first, Danny was a little insulted by the weapon Ketchum had selected for him-a Winchester Ranger, which was manufactured in New Haven, Connecticut, in the mid-eighties, and then discontinued. It was a 20-gauge, repeating shotgun with a slide action-what Ketchum called “a pump.” What initially insulted Danny was that the shotgun was a youth model.
“Don’t get your balls crossed about it,” Ketchum told the writer. “It’s a fine gun for a beginner. You better keep things simple when you start hunting. I’ve seen some fellas blow their toes off.”
For the sake of his toes, Danny guessed, Ketchum instructed the beginner to always have three rounds in the Winchester -one in the chamber and two more in the tubular magazine. “Don’t forget how many shots you’re carrying,” Ketchum said.
Danny knew that the first two rounds were buckshot; the third was a deer slug, what Ketchum called the “kill-shot.” It made no sense to load more than three rounds, no matter what the shotgun’s capacity was. “If you need a fourth or a fifth shot, you’ve already missed,” Ketchum told Danny. “The deer’s long gone.”
At night, Danny had trouble keeping Ketchum out of the bar at Larry’s Tavern, which was also a motel-south of Pointe au Baril Station, on Route 69. The motel’s walls were so thin, they could hear whoever was humping in the room next door. “Some asshole trucker and a hooker,” Ketchum declared the first night.
“I don’t think there are any hookers in Pointe au Baril,” Danny said.
“It’s a one-night stand, then,” Ketchum replied. “They sure don’t sound married.”
Another night, there was a prolonged caterwauling of a certain female kind. “This one sounds different from the night before, and the night before that,” Ketchum said.
Whoever the woman was, she went on and on. “I’m coming! I’m coming!” she kept repeating.
“Are you timing this, Danny? It might be a record,” Ketchum said, but he walked naked into the hall and beat on the door of the longest orgasm in the world. “Listen up, fella,” the old river driver said. “She’s obviously lying.”
The young man who opened the door was menacing, and in a mood to fight, but the fight-if you could call it that-was over in a hurry. Ketchum put the guy in a choke hold before the fella had managed to throw more than a punch or two. “I wasn’t lying,” the woman called from the dark room, but by then not even the young man believed her.
It was not how Danny had imagined he and Ketchum would be camping out, or otherwise roughing it, while they were hunting deer. As for the deer, the first buck Danny dropped in Bayfield required all three rounds-including the kill-shot. “Well, writers should know it’s sometimes hard work to die, Danny,” was all Ketchum told him.
Ketchum got his buck near Byng Inlet, with one shot from his 12-gauge. The next deer season in Ontario, they shot two more bucks-both of them at Still River -and by then the so-called improvements on Charlotte ’s island were complete, including the winterizing. Ketchum and Danny returned to Pointe au Baril Station in early February, when the ice on the bay nearest the mainland was two feet thick. They followed the snowmobile portage from Payne’s Road, out of Pointe au Baril, and went across the ice and drifting snow to the back dock and Granddaddy’s cabin.
Deer season was over, but Ketchum had brought his 12-gauge. “Just in case,” he told Danny.
“In case what?” Danny asked him. “We’re not poaching deer, Ketchum.”
“In case there’s some other critter,” Ketchum replied.
Later, Danny saw Ketchum grilling a couple of venison steaks on the barbecue, which Andy had hooked up to the propane inside Charlotte’s new screened-in verandah; the verandah was boarded up in winter to keep out the snow, because the outdoor summer furniture and two canoes were stored there. Unbeknownst to Danny, Ketchum had also brought his bow.
Danny forgot that Ketchum was a bow hunter, too, and that the archery season for deer in New Hampshire was three months long; Ketchum had had a lot of practice.
“That’s poaching,” Danny told the logger.
“The Mounties didn’t hear any shots, did they?” Ketchum asked.
“It’s still poaching, Ketchum.”
“If you don’t hear anything, it’s more like nothing, Danny. I know Cookie’s not a fan of venison, but I think it tastes pretty good this way.”
Danny didn’t really like deer hunting-not the killing part, anyway-but he enjoyed spending time with Ketchum, and that February of ’86, when they stayed for a few nights in the main cottage on Turner Island, Danny discovered that the winter on Georgian Bay was wonderful.
From his new writing shack, Danny could see a pine tree that had been shaped by the wind; it was bent at almost a right angle to itself. When new snow was falling, and there were near whiteout conditions-so that where the rocks on shore ended and the frozen bay began were all one-it struck Danny Angel that the little tree had a simultaneously tenacious and precarious grip on its own survival.
Danny sat transfixed in his writing shack, looking at that wind-bent pine; he was actually imagining what it might be like to live on the island in Lake Huron for a whole winter. (Of course he knew that Charlotte wouldn’t have tolerated it for longer than one weekend.)
Ketchum had come into the writing shack; he’d been hauling water from the lake, and had brought some pasta pots to a near boil on the gas stove. He’d come to inquire if Danny wanted to take the first bath or the next one.
“Do you see that tree, Ketchum?” Danny asked him, pointing to the little pine.
“I suppose you mean the one the wind has fucked over,” Ketchum said.
“Yes, that’s the one,” Danny answered. “What does it remind you of?”
“Your dad,” Ketchum told him, without hesitation. “That tree’s got Cookie written all over it, but it’ll be fine, Danny-like your dad. Cookie’s going to be fine.”
KETCHUM AND DANNY went deer hunting around Pointe au Baril in November of ’86-their third and last deer season together-and they went “camping,” as they called it, on Turner Island in late January of ’87, too. At Danny’s insistence, and to Ketchum’s considerable consternation, there was no more bow hunting out of season. Instead of his bow and the hunting arrows, Ketchum brought Hero along-together with the just-in-case 12-gauge, which was never fired.
Danny believed that the bear hound’s reputation for farting was exaggerated; that January, Ketchum again used the dog as an excuse to sleep in Granddaddy’s log cabin, which was unheated. With all the winterizing, the main cottage was a little too warm (and too comfortable) for the old woodsman, who said he liked to see his breath at night-when he could see at all. Danny couldn’t imagine what Ketchum could see at night in Granddaddy’s cabin, because there was no electricity or propane lamps there. The logger took a flashlight with him when he went off to bed, but he carried it like a club; Danny never saw him turn it on.
Ketchum had come to Charlotte ’s island only one time in summer, the same time when the cook had also come and gone. Charlotte never knew that Ketchum had the 12-gauge with him then, but Danny did. He’d heard Ketchum shooting a rattlesnake down at the back dock. Charlotte had taken the boat into Pointe au Baril Station; she didn’t hear the shot.