Ketchum had some difficulty bringing the bear back across the border, the all-terrain vehicle notwithstanding. “Let’s just say Hero had to walk a fair distance,” Ketchum would tell Danny. When Ketchum said “walk,” this probably meant that the dog had to run the whole way. But it was the first weekend of bear season when hounds were permitted; that fine animal was excited enough to not mind running after Ketchum’s ATV. Anyway, counting Ketchum and the dead bear, there’d been no room for Hero on the Suzuki.
“It might be dark on Monday before Hero and I get home,” Ketchum had warned Danny. There would be no locating the old logger over the long weekend; Danny didn’t even try. Ketchum had gradually accepted the telephone and the fax machine, but-at eighty-four-the former river driver would never own a cell phone. (Not that there were a lot of cell phones in the Great North Woods in ’01.)
Besides, Danny’s flight from Toronto had been delayed; by the time he’d landed in Boston and had rented the car, the leisurely cup of coffee he’d planned with Paul Polcari and Tony Molinari turned into a quick lunch. It would be early afternoon before Danny and Carmella Del Popolo left the North End. Of course the roads were in better shape than they’d been in 1954, when the cook and his twelve-year-old son had made that trip in the other direction, but northern New Hampshire was still “a fair distance” (as Ketchum would say) from the North End of Boston, and it was late afternoon when Danny and Carmella passed the Pontook Reservoir and followed the upper Androscoggin along Route 16 to Errol.
When they drove by the reservoir, Danny recognized Dummer Pond Road -from when it had been a haul road-but all he said to Carmella was: “We’ll be coming back here with Ketchum tomorrow.”
Carmella nodded; she just looked out the passenger-side window at the Androscoggin. Maybe ten miles later, she said: “That’s a powerful-looking river.” Danny was glad she wasn’t seeing the river in March or April; the Androscoggin was a torrent in mud season.
Ketchum had told Danny that September was the best time of year for them to come-for Carmella, especially. There was a good chance for fair weather, the nights were growing cooler, the bugs were gone, and it was too soon for snow. But as far north as Coos County, the leaves were turning color in late August. That second Monday in September, it already looked like fall, and there was a nip in the air by late afternoon.
Ketchum had been worried about Carmella’s mobility in the woods. “I can drive us most of the way, but it will entail a little walking to get to the right place on the riverbank,” Ketchum had said.
In his mind’s eye, Danny could see the place Ketchum meant-an elevated site, overlooking the basin above the river bend. What he couldn’t quite imagine was how different it would be-with the cookhouse entirely gone, and the town of Twisted River burned to the ground. But Dominic Baciagalupo hadn’t wanted his ashes scattered where the cookhouse was, or anywhere near the town; the cook had requested that his ashes be sunk in the river, in the basin where his not-really-a-cousin Rosie had slipped under the breaking ice. It was almost exactly the same spot where Angelù Del Popolo had gone under the logs. That, of course, was really why Carmella had come; those many years ago (thirty-four, if Danny was doing the math correctly), Ketchum had invited Carmella to Twisted River.
“If, one day, you ever want to see the place where your boy perished, I would be honored to show you,” was how Ketchum had put it to her. Carmella had so wanted to see the river basin where the accident happened, but not the logs; she knew the logs would be too much for her. Just the riverbank, where her dear Gamba and young Dan had stood and seen it happen-and maybe the exact spot in the water where her one-and-only Angelù hadn’t surfaced. Yes, she might one day want to see that, Carmella had thought.
“Thank you, Mr. Ketchum,” she’d said that day, when the logger and the cook were leaving Boston. “If you ever want to see me-” Carmella had started to say to Dominic.
“I know,” the cook had said to her, but he wouldn’t look at her.
Now, on the occasion of Danny bringing his father’s ashes to Twisted River, Ketchum had insisted that the writer bring Carmella, too. When Danny had first met Angel’s mom, the twelve-year-old had noted her big breasts, big hips, big smile-knowing that only Carmella’s smile had been bigger than Injun Jane’s. Now the writer knew that Carmella was at least as old as Ketchum, or a little older; she would have been in her mid-eighties, Danny guessed. Her hair had turned completely white-even her eyebrows were white, in striking contrast to her olive complexion and her apparently robust good health. Carmella was big all over, but she was still more feminine than Jane had ever been. And however happy she was with the new fella in her life-Paul Polcari and Tony Molinari continued to insist that she was-she’d held on to the Del Popolo name, perhaps out of respect for the fact that she had lost both the drowned fisherman and her precious only child.
Yet on the long drive north, there’d been no bewailing her beloved Angelù-and only one comment from Carmella on the cook’s passing. “I lost my dear Gamba years ago, Secondo-now you’ve lost him, too!” Carmella had said, with tears in her eyes. But she’d quickly recovered herself; for the rest of the trip, Carmella gave Danny no indication that she was even thinking about where they were going, and why.
Carmella continued to refer to Dominic by his nickname, Gamba-just as she called Danny Secondo, as if Danny were (in her heart) still her surrogate son; it appeared she’d long ago forgiven him for spying on her in the bathtub. He could not imagine doing so now, but he didn’t say so; instead, Danny rather formally apologized to Carmella for his behavior all those years ago.
“Nonsense, Secondo-I suppose I was flattered,” Carmella told him in the car, with a dismissive wave of her plump hand. “I only worried that the sight of me would have a damaging effect on you-that you might be permanently attracted to fat, older women.”
Danny sensed that this might have been an invitation for him to proclaim that he was not (and had never been) attracted to such women, though in truth-after Katie, who was preternaturally small-many of the women in his life had been large. By the stick-figure standards of contemporary women’s fashion, Danny thought that even Charlotte -indisputably, the love of his life-might have been considered overweight.
Like his dad, Danny was small, and while the writer didn’t respond to Carmella’s comment, he found himself wondering if perhaps he was more at ease with women who were bigger than he was. (Not that spying on Carmella in a bathtub, or killing Injun Jane with a skillet, had anything to do with it!)
“I wonder if you’re seeing someone now-someone special, that is,” Carmella said, after a pause of a mile or more.
“No one special,” Danny replied.
“If I can still count, you’re almost sixty,” Carmella told him. (Danny was fifty-nine.) “Your dad always wanted you to be with someone who was right for you.”
“I was, but she moved on,” Danny told her.
Carmella sighed. She had brought her melancholy with her in the car; what was melancholic about Carmella, together with her undefined disapproval of Danny, had traveled with them all the way from Boston. Danny had detected the latter’s presence as strongly as Carmella’s engaging scent-either a mild, nonspecific perfume or a smell as naturally appealing as freshly baked bread.
“Besides,” Danny went on, “my dad wasn’t with anyone special-not after he was my age.” After a pause, while Carmella waited, Danny added: “And Pop was never with anyone as right for him as you.”
Carmella sighed again, as if to note (ambiguously) both her pleasure and displeasure-she was displeased by her failure to steer the conversation where she’d wanted it to go. The subject of what was wrong with Danny evidently weighed on her. Now Danny waited for what she would say next; it was only a matter of time, he knew, before Carmella would raise the more delicate matter of what was wrong with his writing.