Six-Pack Pam knew she would have to have her hip replaced, and every time the hip hurt her, she thought about the cowboy banging her on the dock-how he’d pushed her face against a boat cleat, which was what had given her the scar on her upper lip-but the worst of it was she’d told Ketchum that the woodsman really should kill Carl. This was the worst, because Six-Pack hadn’t known how strongly Ketchum believed that he should have killed the cowboy years ago. (And when the deputy sheriff shot Cookie, Ketchum’s self-recriminations never ceased.)
Pam was sorry, too, that she’d ever told Ketchum what Carl had done following that fatal collision on Route 110-this was out on the Berlin-Groveton road, where the highway ran alongside Dead River. Two teenagers who weren’t wearing their seat belts had slammed head-on into a turkey truck. The turkeys were already dead; they’d been “processed,” as they say in the turkey-farming business. The truck driver survived, but he’d suffered a neck injury and had briefly lost consciousness; when he came to, the driver was facing the two dead teenagers. The boy, who’d been driving, was run through by his steering column, and the girl, who was pinned in the passenger seat, had been decapitated. Carl was the first one from law enforcement on the scene, and-according to the turkey-truck driver-the cowboy had fondled the dead, decapitated girl.
Carl claimed that the truck driver was out of his head; after all, he’d snapped his neck and had blacked out, and when he came to, he was evidently hallucinating. But the cowboy had told Pam the truth. What did it matter that he’d played with the headless girl’s tits-she was dead, wasn’t she?
To which Ketchum had said-not for the first, or the last, time-“I should just kill that cowboy.”
Six-Pack now said to Hero and her German shepherd: “You two should stop eyeballin’ each other that way.” It was a little after nine in the morning-exactly eighteen minutes after the first passenger jet had hit the north tower-when the second hijacked airliner, United Airlines Flight 175 (also flying out of Boston), crashed into the south tower of the World Trade Center and exploded. Both buildings were burning when Six-Pack said to the assembled dogs, “Tell me that was another small plane, and I’ll ask you what you’ve been drinkin’ with your dog food.”
Hero tentatively licked some of the sulfa powder on his claw wounds, but the taste of it stopped the dog from licking further. “Don’t that taste special?” Pam asked the bear hound. “You lick that off, Hero, I’ve got more.”
In what appeared to be a calculated non sequitur, Hero lunged at the German shepherd; both dogs were going at it, under the kitchen table, before Six-Pack was able to separate them with the water pistol. She kept it loaded with dishwasher detergent and lemon juice, and she squirted both dogs in their eyes-they hated it. But it had hurt Pam’s hip to drop down on all fours and crawl under the kitchen table with the fighting dogs, and she was in no mood to listen to President Bush, who came on television at 9:30, speaking from Sarasota, Florida.
Six-Pack didn’t despise George W. Bush to the degree that Ketchum did, but she thought the president was a smirking twerp and a dumbed-down daddy’s boy, and she agreed with Ketchum’s assessment that Bush would be as worthless as wet crap in even the smallest crisis. If a fight broke out between two small dogs, for example, Ketchum claimed that Bush would call the fire department and ask them to bring a hose; then the president would position himself at a safe distance from the dogfight, and wait for the firemen to show up. The part Pam liked best about this assessment was that Ketchum said the president would instantly look self-important, and would appear to be actively involved-that is, once the firefighters and their hose arrived, and provided there was anything remaining of the mess the two dogs might have made of each other in the interim.
True to this portrait, President Bush said on TV that the country had suffered an “apparent terrorist attack.”
“Ya think?” Six-Pack asked the president on television. Characteristic of people who lived alone, discounting her dogs, Pam talked back to the people on TV-as if, like the dogs, the people on television could actually hear her.
By now, the Federal Aviation Administration had shut down the New York airports, and the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey had ordered all the bridges and tunnels in the New York area closed. “What are the dumb fuckers waitin’ for?” Six-Pack asked the dogs. “They should close down all the airports!” Ten minutes later, the FAA halted all flight operations at U.S. airports; it was the first time in the history of the United States that air traffic had been halted nationwide. “Ya see?” Six-Pack asked the dogs. “Someone must be listen-in’ to me.” (If not Ketchum, and definitely not the dogs.)
Six-Pack had soaked a clean sponge in cold water and was rinsing the dishwasher detergent and lemon juice out of the German shepherd’s eyes. “You’re next, Hero,” Pam told the bear hound, who watched her and the shepherd impassively.
Three minutes later, American Airlines Flight 77 crashed into the Pentagon, sending up a towering plume of smoke; two minutes after that, they evacuated the White House. “Holy shit,” Six-Pack said to the dogs. “It’s lookin’ more and more like an apparent terrorist attack, don’tcha think?”
She was holding Hero’s head in her lap, rinsing the dishwasher detergent and lemon juice from the wounded bear hound’s eyes, when, at 10:05, the south tower of the World Trade Center collapsed. After the tower plummeted into the streets, a billowing cloud of dust and debris drifted away from the building; people were running through the waves of dust.
Five minutes later, a portion of the Pentagon collapsed-at the same time that United Airlines Flight 93, which had also been hijacked, crashed to the ground in Somerset County, Pennsylvania, southeast of Pittsburgh. “I wonder where that one was headed, Hero,” Six-Pack said to the dog.
The German shepherd had circled around behind Pam, and Hero was anxious that he couldn’t see the shepherd; the bear hound’s nervousness alerted Six-Pack to her devious shepherd’s presence. She reached quickly behind her and grabbed a handful of fur and skin, squeezing as hard as she could until she heard the shepherd yelp and felt the dog twist free of her grip.
“Don’t you try sneakin’ up on me!” Six-Pack said, as the German shepherd slunk out the dog door into the outdoor kennel.
It was next announced on television that they’d evacuated the United Nations building-and the State and Justice departments, along with the World Bank. “I see all the important fellas are runnin’ for cover,” Six-Pack said to Hero. The dog eyed her warily, as if he were considering her contradictory behavior in the following manner: First she puts the bad-tasting yellow gunk on my cuts, then she squirts me in my eyes with the stinging-and-burning stuff, and lastly she tries to make me feel better; not to mention, where is that sneak-attack fuck of a German shepherd?
“Don’t get your balls crossed, Hero-I ain’t goin’ to hurt you,” Pam told the bear hound, but Hero regarded her mistrustfully; the dog might have preferred his chances with a bear.
At 10:24, the FAA reported that all inbound transatlantic aircraft entering the United States had been diverted to Canada. “Oh, that’s brilliant!” Six-Pack said to the TV. “I might have begun with that idea a few fuckin’ months ago! Like I suppose ya thought that the fellas fly-in’ those first two planes were from Boston!” But the television ignored her.