As soon as they were married, Charlotte had said, she was going to put curtains or window shades in the gym, but because the wedding was canceled-with all the rest of it-the windows in that room had remained as they were. It was an odd gym, because it was still surrounded by bookshelves; even after he’d moved his work to Joe’s former bedroom on the third floor, Danny had left many of his books in that ground-floor room.
When Danny and his dad had dinner parties in that house on Cluny Drive, everyone put their coats in the gym; they draped them on the handrails of the treadmill, or over the StairMaster machine, or on the stationary bike, and they piled them on the weight bench, too. Moreover, there were always a couple of clipboards in that room, and a ream of blank typing paper with lots of pens. Sometimes Danny made notes to himself when he rode the stationary bike in the late afternoon, or when he walked on the treadmill. His knees were shot from all the running, but he could still walk pretty fast on the treadmill, and riding the stationary bike or using the StairMaster didn’t bother his knees.
For a fifty-eight-year-old man, Danny was in halfway decent physical shape; he was still fairly slight of build, though he had put on a few pounds since he’d starting drinking beer and red wine again-even in moderation. If Injun Jane had been alive, she would have told Danny that for someone who weighed as little as he did, even a couple of beers and one or two glasses of red wine were too much. (“Well, the Injun was harsh on the firewater subject,” Ketchum had always said; he was not a man who put much stock in moderation, even at eighty-three.)
There was no telling when Ketchum would come for Christmas, Danny was thinking, as he settled into a comfortable pace on the StairMaster; for Christmas, Ketchum just showed up. For someone who fanatically faxed Danny or his dad a dozen times a week, and who still spontaneously phoned at all hours of the day and night, Ketchum was extremely secretive about his road trips-not only his trips to Toronto for Christmas but his hunting trips elsewhere in Canada. (The hunting trips-not to Quebec, but the ones up north in Ontario -occasionally brought Ketchum to Toronto, too.)
Ketchum started his hunting in September, the beginning of bear season in Coos County. The old woodsman claimed that the black bear population in New Hampshire was well over five thousand animals, and the annual bear harvest was “only about five or six hundred critters;” most of the bears were killed in the north and central regions of the state, and in the White Mountains. Ketchum’s bear hound, that aforementioned “fine animal”-by now the grandson (or great-grandson!) of that first fine animal, one would guess-was allowed to hunt with him from the second week of September till the end of October.
The dog was a crossbreed, what Ketchum called a Walker bluetick. He was tall and rangy, like a Walker foxhound, but with the bluetick’s white coat-blotched and flecked with bluish gray-and with the bluetick’s superior quickness. Ketchum got his Walker blueticks from a kennel in Tennessee; he always chose a male and named him Hero. The dog never barked, but he growled in his sleep-Ketchum claimed that the dog didn’t sleep-and Hero let loose a mournful baying whenever he was chasing a bear.
In New Hampshire, the end of the bear season overlapped with the muzzle-loader season for deer-a short time, only from the end of October through the first week of November. The regular firearm season for deer ran the rest of the month of November, into early December, but as soon as Ketchum killed a deer in Coos County (he always dropped one with his muzzle loader), he headed up north to Canada; the regular firearm season for deer ended earlier there.
The old logger had never been able to interest the cook in deer hunting; Dominic didn’t like guns, or the taste of venison, and his limp was no fun in the woods. But after Danny and his dad moved to Canada, and Danny met Charlotte Turner, Ketchum was invited to Charlotte’s island in Lake Huron; it was the first summer she and Danny were a couple, when the cook was also invited to Georgian Bay. That was where and when-on Turner Island, in August 1984-Ketchum talked Danny into trying deer hunting.
DOMINIC BACIAGALUPO DESPISED the imposed rusticity of the summer-cottage life on those Georgian Bay islands-in ’84, Charlotte ’s family still used an outhouse. And while they had propane lights and a propane fridge, they hauled what water they needed (by the bucket method) from the lake.
Furthermore, Charlotte’s family seemed to have furnished the main cottage and two adjacent sleeping cabins with the cast-off couches, chipped dishes, and mortally uncomfortable beds that they’d long ago replaced in their Toronto home; worse, the cook surmised, there was a tradition among the Georgian Bay islanders that upheld such stingy behavior. Anything new-such as electricity, hot water, or a flush toilet-was somehow contemptible.
But what they ate was what the cook most deplored. The mainland provisions at Pointe au Baril Station-in particular, the produce and anything that passed for “fresh”-were rudimentary, and everyone burned the shit out of what they blackened beyond recognition on their outdoor barbecues.
In his first and only visit to Turner Island, Dominic was polite, and he helped out in the kitchen-to the degree this was tolerable-but the cook returned to Toronto at the end of a long weekend, relieved by the knowledge that he would never again test his limp on those unwelcoming rocks, or otherwise set foot on a dock at Pointe au Baril Station.
“There’s too much of Twisted River here-it’s not Cookie’s kind of place,” Ketchum had explained to Charlotte and Danny, after Dominic went back to the city. While the logger said this in forgiveness of his old friend, Danny was not entirely different from his dad in his initial reaction to island life. The difference was that Danny and Charlotte had talked about the changes they would make on the island-certainly after (if not before) her father passed away, and her mother was no longer able to safely get into or out of a boat, or climb up those jagged rocks from the dock to the main cottage.
Danny still wrote on an old-fashioned typewriter; he owned a half-dozen IBM Selectrics, which were in constant need of repair. He wanted electricity for his typewriters. Charlotte wanted hot water-she’d long dreamed of such luxuries as an outdoor shower and an oversize bathtub-not to mention several flush toilets. A little electric heat would be nice, too, both Danny and Charlotte had agreed, because it could get cold at night, even in the summer-they were that far north-and, after all, they would soon be having a baby.
Danny also wanted to construct “a writing shack,” as he called it-he was no doubt remembering the former farmhouse shed he’d written in, in Vermont-and Charlotte wanted to erect an enormous screened-in verandah, something large enough to link the main cottage to the two sleeping cabins, so that no one would ever have to go out in the rain (or venture into the mosquitoes, which were constant after nightfall).
Danny and Charlotte had plans for the place, in other words-the way couples in love do. Charlotte had cherished her summers on the island since she’d been a little girl; perhaps what Danny had adored were the possibilities of the place, the life with Charlotte he’d imagined there.
OH, PLANS, PLANS, PLANS-how we make plans into the future, as if the future will most certainly be there! In fact, the couple in love wouldn’t wait for Charlotte ’s father to die, or for her mother to be physically incapable of handling the hardships of an island in Lake Huron. Over the next two years, Danny and Charlotte would put in the electricity, the flush toilets, and the hot water-even Charlotte ’s outdoor shower and her oversize bathtub, not to mention the enormous screened-in verandah. And there were a few other “improvements” that Ketchum suggested; the old woodsman had actually used the improvements word, on his very first visit to Georgian Bay and Turner Island. In the summer of ’84, Ketchum had been a spry sixty-seven-young enough to still have a few plans of his own.