“Well, it’s Friday,” Dominic said, as if he expected accidents among fools on a Friday. “There’s chickpea soup for those of you who care that it’s Friday,” the cook announced.
Ketchum noted his old friend’s impatience. “What’s the matter, Cookie? What happened?” Ketchum asked him.
“Dot and May were just fooling around,” the cook explained. He told Ketchum what had happened-what May had said about Injun Jane, too.
“Don’t tell me-tell Jane,” Ketchum told him. “Jane will tear May a new asshole, if you tell her.”
“I know, Ketchum-that’s why I’m not telling her.”
“If Jane had seen Dot holding your hands on her tits, she would have already torn Dot a new asshole, Cookie.”
Dominic Baciagalupo knew that, too. The world was a precarious place; the cook didn’t want to know the statistics regarding how many new assholes were being torn every minute. In his time, Ketchum had torn many; he would think nothing of tearing a few more.
“There’s roast chicken tonight, with stuffing and scalloped potatoes,” Dominic told Ketchum.
Ketchum looked pained to hear it. “I have a date,” the big man said. “Just my luck to miss stuffed chicken.”
“A date?” the cook said with disgust. He never thought of Ketchum’s relationships-mainly, with the dance-hall women-as dates. And lately Ketchum had been seeing Six-Pack Pam. God only knew how much they could drink together! Dominic Baciagalupo thought. Having saved her, the cook had a soft spot for Six-Pack, but he sensed that she didn’t like him much; maybe she resented being saved.
“Are you still seeing Pam?” Dominic asked his hard-drinking friend.
But Ketchum didn’t want to talk about it. “You should be concerned that May knows about you and Jane, Cookie. Don’t you think you should be a little worried?”
Dominic turned his attention to where the kitchen helpers were, and what they were doing; they had set up a folding table by the side of the haul road. There were propane burners in the wanigan; the burners kept the soup and the stew hot. There were big bowls and spoons on the folding table; the loggers went into the wanigan, each with a bowl and a spoon in hand. The women served them in the wanigan.
“You don’t look worried enough, Cookie,” Ketchum told him. “If May knows about Jane, Dot knows. If Dot knows, every woman in your kitchen knows. Even I know, but I don’t give a shit about it.”
“I know. I appreciate it,” Dominic said.
“My point is, how long before Constable Carl knows? Speaking of assholes,” Ketchum said. He rested his heavy cast on the cook’s shoulder. “Look at me, Cookie.” With his good hand, Ketchum pointed to his forehead-at the long, livid scar. “My head’s harder than yours, Cookie. You don’t want the cowboy to know about you and Jane-believe me.”
Who’s your date? Dominic Baciagalupo almost asked his old friend, just to change the subject. But the cook didn’t really want to know who Ketchum was screwing-especially if it wasn’t Six-Pack Pam.
Most nights, increasingly, when Jane went home, it was so late that Constable Carl had already passed out; the cowboy wouldn’t wake up until after she’d left for work in the morning. There was only the occasional trouble-mostly when Jane went home too early. But even a dumb drunk like the constable would eventually figure it out. Or one of the kitchen helpers would say something to her husband; the sawmill workers were not necessarily as fond of the cook and Injun Jane as the rivermen and the other loggers were.
“I get your point,” the cook said to Ketchum.
“Shit, Cookie,” Ketchum said. “Does Danny know about you and Jane?”
“I was going to tell him,” Dominic answered.
“Going to,” Ketchum said derisively. “Is that like saying you were going to wear a condom, or is that like wearing one?”
“I get your point,” the cook said again.
“Nine o’clock, Sunday morning,” Ketchum told him. Dominic could only guess that it was a date of two nights’ duration that Ketchum was having-more like a spree or a bender, maybe.
IN TWISTED RIVER, if there were nights the cook could have concealed from his son, they would have been Saturday nights, when the whoring around and drinking to excess were endemic to a community staking an improbable claim to permanence in such close proximity to a violent river-not to mention the people, who made a plainly perilous living and looked upon their Saturday nights as an indulgence they deserved.
Dominic Baciagalupo, who was both a teetotaler and a widower not in the habit of whoring around, was nonetheless sympathetic to the various self-destructions-in-progress he would witness on an average Saturday night. Maybe the cook revealed more disapproval for Ketchum’s behavior than he would ever show toward Twisted River ’s other louts and miscreants. Because Ketchum was no fool, perhaps the cook had less patience for Ketchum’s foolishness, but to a smart twelve-year-old-and Danny was both observant and smart-there appeared to be more than impatience motivating his father’s everlasting disappointment in Ketchum. And if Injun Jane didn’t defend Ketchum from the cook’s condemnation, young Dan did.
That Saturday night, when Angel had possibly arrived at Dead Woman Dam-where, because people float lower than logs, the boy’s battered body might already have passed under the containment boom, in which case the young Canadian would be eddying in either a clockwise or counterclockwise direction to the right or left of the main dam and the sluice spillway-Danny Baciagalupo was helping his dad wipe down the tables after supper had been served in the cookhouse. The kitchen help had gone home, leaving Injun Jane to scour the last of the pots and pans while she waited for the washing cycles to end, so she could put all the towels and other linens in the dryers.
Whole families came to the cookhouse for Saturday-night supper; some of the men were already drunk and fighting with their wives, and a few of the women (in turn) lashed out at their children. One of the sawmill men had puked in the washroom, and two drunken loggers had shown up late for supper-naturally, they’d insisted on being fed. The spaghetti and meatballs, which the cook made every Saturday night-for the kids-was congealed and growing cold and was so beneath Dominic Baciagalupo’s standards that he fixed the men some fresh penne with a little ricotta and the perpetual parsley.
“This is fuckin’ delicious!” one of the drunks had declared.
“What’s it called, Cookie?” the other hammered logger asked.
“Prezzémolo,” Dominic said importantly, the sheer exoticness of the word washing over the drunken loggers like another round of beer. The cook had made them repeat the word until they could say it correctly-prets-ZAY-mo-loh.
Jane was disgusted; she knew it was nothing more exotic than the Italian word for parsley. “For two drunks who were born late!” Jane complained.
“You would let Ketchum go hungry, if it was Ketchum,” Danny said to his father. “You’re wicked harsh on Ketchum.”
But the two drunks had been given a special supper and sent on their contented way. Danny and his dad and Jane were at the tail end of their Saturday-night chores when the wind from the suddenly kicked-open door to the dining room heralded another late arrival at the cookhouse.
From the kitchen, Jane couldn’t see the visitor. She shouted in the direction of the rushing wind at the dining-room door. “You’re too late! Supper is over!”
“I ain’t hungry,” said Six-Pack Pam.
Indeed, there was nothing hunger-driven in Pam’s appearance; what little flesh she had hung loosely from her big bones, and her lean, feral-looking face, tight-lipped and drawn, suggested more of a mostly-beer diet than a penchant for overeating. Yet she was tall and broad-shouldered enough to wear Ketchum’s wool-flannel shirt without looking lost in it, and her lank blond hair, which was streaked with gray, appeared to be clean but uncared for-like the rest of her. She held a flashlight as big as a billy club. (Twisted River was not a well-lit town.) Not even the sleeves of Ketchum’s shirt were too long for her.