by John Irving
"This is fuckin' delicious!" one of the drunks had declared.
"What's it called, Cookie?" the other hammered logger asked.
"Prezzemolo," 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.
"So I guess you've killed him and claimed his clothes for your own," the cook said, watching her warily.
"I ain't chokin', either, Cookie," Pam told him.
"Not this time, Six-Pack!" Jane called from the kitchen. Danny guessed that the ladies must have known each other well enough for Jane to have recognized Pam's voice.
"It's kinda late for the hired help to still be here, ain't it?" Pam asked the cook.
Dominic recognized Six-Pack's special drunkenness with an envy and nostalgia that surprised him--the big woman could hold her beer and bourbon, better than Ketchum. Jane had come out of the kitchen with a pasta pot under her arm; the open end of the pot was leveled at Pam like the mouth of a cannon.
Young Dan, in a presexual state of one-third arousal and two-thirds premonition, remembered Ketchum's remark about women losing their looks, and how the various degrees of lost looks registered with Constable Carl. To the twelve-year-old, Jane hadn't lost her looks--not quite yet. Her face was still pretty, her long braid was striking, and more radiant to imagine was all that coal-black hair when she undid the braid. There were her stupendous breasts to contemplate, too.
Yet seeing Six-Pack Pam unhinged Danny in a different but similar way: She was as handsome (in the category of strong-looking) as a man, and what was womanly about her came with a rawness--how she had insouciantly thrown on Ketchum's shirt, without a bra, so that her loose breasts swelled the shirt--and now her eyes darted from Jane to Danny, and then fixed upon the cook with the venturesome but nervous daring of a young girl.
"I need your help with Ketchum, Cookie," Pam said. Dominic was fearful that Ketchum had had a heart attack, or worse; he hoped that Six-Pack would spare young Daniel the gruesome details.
"I can help you with Ketchum," Injun Jane told Pam. "I suppose he's passed out somewhere--if so, I can carry him easier than Cookie can."
"He's passed out naked on the toilet, and I ain't got but one toilet," Pam said to Dominic, not looking at Jane.
"I hope he was just reading," the cook replied.
Ketchum appeared to be making his dogged way through Dominic Baciagalupo's books, which were really Dominic's mother's books and Rosie's beloved novels. For someone who'd left school when he was younger than Danny, Ketchum read the books he borrowed with a determination bordering on lunacy. He returned the books to the cook with words circled on almost every page--not underlined passages, or even complete sentences, but just isolated words. (Danny wondered if his mom had taught Ketchum to read that way.)
Once young Dan had made a list of the words Ketchum had circled in his mother's copy of Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter. Collectively, the words made no sense at all.
symbolize
whippingpost
sex
malefactresses
pang
bosom
embroidered
writhing
ignominious
matronly
tremulous
punishment
salvation
plaintive
wailings
possessed
misbegotten
sinless
innermost
retribution
paramour
besmirches
hideous
And these were only the words Ketchum had circled in the first four chapters!
"What do you suppose he's thinking?" Danny had asked his dad. The cook had held his tongue, though it was hard to resist the temptation to reply. Surely "sex" and "bosom" were much on Ketchum's mind; as for "malefactresses," Ketchum had known some. (Six-Pack Pam among them!) Regarding the "paramour," Dominic Baciagalupo was more of an authority than he wanted to be--the hell with what Ketchum made of the word! And considering "whippingpost" and "writhing"--not to mention "wailings," "misbegotten," "besmirches," and "hideous"--the cook had no desire to investigate Ketchum's prurient interest in those words.
The "matronly," the "sinless," the "innermost," and above all "symbolize," were mild surprises; nor would Dominic have imagined that Ketchum gave much thought to what was "embroidered" or "ignominious" or "tremulous" or "plaintive." The cook believed that "retribution" (especially the "punishment" part) was as much up his old friend's alley as the "possessed" factor, because Ketchum surely was possessed--to the degree that the "salvation" ingredient seemed highly unlikely. (And did Ketchum regularly feel a "pang"--a pang for whom or what? Dominic wondered.)
"Maybe they're just words," young Dan had reasoned.
"What do you mean, Daniel?"
Was Ketchum trying to improve his vocabulary? For an uneducated man, he was very well spoken--and he kept borrowing books!
"It's a list of kind of fancy words, most of them," Danny had speculated.
Yes, the cook concurred--"sex" and "bosom," and perhaps "pang," excluded.
"All I know is, I was readin' out loud to him, and then he took the fuckin' book and went into the bathroom and passed out," Six-Pack was saying. "He's got himself wedged in a corner, but he's still on the toilet," she added.
Dominic didn't want to know about the reading out loud. His impression of Ketchum's dance-hall women did not include an element of literary interest or curiosity; it was the cook's opinion that Ketchum rarely spoke to these women, or listened to them. But Dominic had once asked Ketchum (insincerely) what he did for "foreplay."
To the cook's considerable surprise, Ketchum had answered: "I ask them to read out loud to me. It gets me in the mood."
Or in the mood to take the book to the bathroom and pass out with it, Dominic now thought dryly. Nor did the cook imagine that the literacy level among Ketchum's dance-hall women was especially high. How did Ketchum know which women could read at all? And what was the book that had put him out of the mood with Six-Pack Pam? (Quite possibly, Ketchum simply had needed to go to the bathroom.)
Injun Jane had gone into the kitchen and now returned with a flashlight. "So you can find your way back," she said to Dominic, handing him the light. "I'll stay with Danny, and get him ready for bed."
"Can I go with you?" the boy asked his dad. "I could help you with Ketchum."
"My place ain't very suitable for kids, Danny," Pam told him.
That concept begged a response, but all the cook said was: "You stay with Jane, Daniel. I'll be right back," he added, m
ore to Jane than to his son, but the Indian dishwasher had already gone back inside the kitchen.
FROM THE UPSTAIRS OF THE COOKHOUSE, where the bedrooms were, there was a partial view of the river basin and a better view of the town above the basin. However, the town was so dark at night that one had little sense of the activities in the various saloons and hostelries from the distant cookhouse--nor could Danny and Injun Jane hear the music from the dance hall, where no one was dancing.
For a while, the boy and the Indian dishwasher had watched the two flashlights making their way to town. The cook's bobbing light was easily identified by his limp--and by his shorter steps, for Dominic needed to take twice as many steps to keep up with the longer strides of Six-Pack Pam. (It was their conversation Jane might have wished she could hear; it was Ketchum naked on the toilet Danny definitely wanted to see.) But soon the flashlights were lost in the fog shrouding the river basin, and in the dimmer lights of the town.
"He'll be back soon," the twelve-year-old said, because he must have sensed that Jane hoped so. She made no response, other than to turn down the bed in his father's room--she also turned the night-table light on.
Danny followed her into the upstairs hall, watching her touch the eight-inch cast-iron skillet as she left the bedroom. Shoulder-high to his dad, the skillet was breast-high to Injun Jane; it was level with Danny's eyes as he passed by it, touching it, too.
"Thinking about whacking a bear?" Jane asked the boy.
"I guess you were thinking about it," he told her.
"Go brush your teeth, and all that other stuff," she said.
The boy went into the bathroom he shared with his father. When he'd put on his pajamas and was ready for bed, Jane came into Danny's bedroom and sat on his bed beside him.
"I've never seen you undo your braid," the boy said. "I wonder what you look like with your hair down."
"You're too young to see me with my hair down," Jane told him. "I wouldn't want it on my conscience that I frightened you to death." The boy could see the playfulness in her eyes, under the visor of her Cleveland Indians cap.
There was a shout from the area of the town, and either a corresponding shout or an echo from the nearby river basin, but no words were distinguishable in the shouting, and any interconnected disputes or follow-up shouts were whipped away by the wind.
"It's dangerous in town on a Saturday night, isn't it?" Danny asked Injun Jane.
"I know this little fella with a limp--maybe you know who I mean--and he's always saying how it's 'a world of accidents.' Maybe that sounds familiar to you," Jane said. Her big hand had sneaked under the covers and found young Dan's armpit, where she knew he was the most ticklish.
"I know who you mean!" the twelve-year-old cried. "No tickling!"
"Well, the accidents are just more numerous on a Saturday night," Jane continued, not tickling him but keeping her hand in his armpit. "However, nobody's going to mess with your dad--not when Six-Pack is with him."
"There's the coming-home-alone part," the boy pointed out.
"Don't worry about your father, Danny," Jane told him; she let go of his armpit and straightened up on the bed.
"Could you take Six-Pack?" Danny asked her. It was one of Daniel Baciagalupo's favorite questions; he was always asking Injun Jane if she could "take" someone, the equivalent of Ketchum tearing an actual or alleged combatant a new asshole. Could Jane take Henri Thibeault, or No-Fingers La Fleur, or the Beaudette brothers, or the Beebe twins--or Scotty Fernald, Earl Dinsmore, Charlie Clough, and Frank Bemis?
Injun Jane generally answered: "I suppose so." (When Danny had asked her if she could take Ketchum, she'd said: "If he were drunk enough, maybe.")
But when the imaginary opponent was Six-Pack Pam, Jane hesitated. Danny had not known her to hesitate a whole lot. "Six-Pack is a lost soul," Jane finally said.
"But could you take her?" young Dan insisted.
Jane leaned over the boy as she got up from the bed; squeezing his shoulders with her strong hands, she kissed him on his forehead. "I suppose so," said Injun Jane.
"Why wasn't Six-Pack wearing a bra?" Danny asked her.
"She looked like she got dressed in a hurry," Jane told him; she blew him another kiss from the doorway of his bedroom, closing the door only halfway behind her. The light from the hall was Danny's night-light--for as long as he could remember.
He heard the wind shake the loose-fitting outer door to the kitchen; there was a rattling sound as the wind tugged at that bothersome door. The twelve-year-old knew it wasn't his dad coming home, or another night visitor.
"Just the wind!" Injun Jane called to him, from down the hall. Ever since the bear story, she knew the boy had been apprehensive about intruders.
Jane always left her shoes or boots downstairs, and came upstairs in her socks. If she had gone downstairs, Danny would have heard the stairs creak under her weight, but Jane must have stayed upstairs, as silent in her socks as a nocturnal animal. Later, young Dan heard water running in the bathroom; he wondered if his father had come home, but the boy was too sleepy to get up and go see. Danny lay listening to the wind and the omnipresent turmoil of the river. When someone kissed him on his forehead again, the twelve-year-old was too deeply asleep to know if it was his dad or Injun Jane--or else he was dreaming about being kissed, and it was Six-Pack Pam who was kissing him.
--
STRIDING THROUGH TOWN--with the cook limping after her like a loyal but damaged dog--Pam was too formidable and purposeful a figure to inspire anyone to dream of kissing her, or of being kissed by her. Certainly, the cook was dreaming of no such thing--not consciously.
"Slow down, Six-Pack," Dominic said, but either the wind carried his words beyond her hearing or Pam willfully lengthened her stride.
The wind tunneled furrows in the three-story tower of sawdust outside the sawmill, and the dust blew into their eyes. It was very flammable, what Ketchum called a "potential inferno"--at this time of year, especially. The winter-long pile wouldn't be trucked out of town until the haul roads hardened up at the end of mud season; only then would they truck it away, and sell it to the farmers in the Androscoggin Valley. (Of course, there was more inside the mill.) A fire in the sawdust would ignite the whole town; not even the cookhouse on the hill nearest the river bend would be spared, because the hill and the cookhouse bore the brunt of the wind off the river. The bigger, more brightly burning embers would be blown uphill from the town to the cookhouse.
Yet the building the cook had insisted upon was the most substantial in the settlement of Twisted River. The hostelries and saloons--even the sawmill itself, and the so-called dance hall--were mere kindling for the sawdust fire Ketchum imagined in his doomsayer dreams of ever-impending calamities.
Possibly, Ketchum was even dreaming now--on the toilet. Or so Dominic Baciagalupo considered, as he struggled to keep pace with Six-Pack Pam. They passed the bar near the hostelry favored by the French Canadian itinerants. In the muddy lane alongside the dance hall was a 1912 Lombard steam log hauler; it had been parked there so long that the dance hall had been torn down and rebuilt around it. (They'd used gasoline-powered log haulers to pull the loaded sleds of logs through the woods since the 1930s.)
If the town burned, Dominic was thinking, maybe the old Lombard forwarder would be the only surviving remains. To the cook's surprise, when he regarded the Lombard now, he saw the Beaudette brothers asleep or dead in the front seat over the sled runners. Perhaps they'd been evicted from the dance hall and had passed out (or been deposited) there.
Dominic slowed as he limped by the slumped-over brothers, but Pam had seen them, too, and she wasn't stopping. "They won't freeze--it ain't even snowin'," Six-Pack said.
Outside the next saloon, four or five men had gathered to watch a desultory fight. Earl Dinsmore and one of the Beebe twins had been brawling so long that they'd exhausted their best punches, or maybe the men were too inebriated to be fighting in the first place. They seemed beyond hurting each other--at l
east, intentionally. The other Beebe twin, out of either boredom or sheer embarrassment for his brother, suddenly started fighting with Charlie Clough. In passing, Six-Pack Pam knocked Charlie down; then she leveled Earl Dinsmore with a forearm to his ear, leaving the Beebe twins to aimlessly regard each other, the recognition slowly dawning on them that there was no one to fight--not unless they dared to take on Pam.
"It's Cookie with Six-Pack," No-Fingers La Fleur observed.
"I'm surprised you can tell us apart," Pam told him, shoving him out of her way.
They reached the flat-roofed row houses--the newer hostelries, where the truckers and donkey-engine men stayed. As Ketchum said, any contractor who would construct a flat-roofed, two-story building in northern New Hampshire was enough of a moron to not know how many assholes a human being had. Just then, the dance-hall door blew (or was shoved) open and the miserable music reached them--Perry Como singing "Don't Let the Stars Get in Your Eyes."
There was an outside flight of stairs to the nearest hostelry, and Pam turned, catching Dominic by his shirtsleeve and pulling him after her.
"Watch the next-to-last step, Cookie," she told him, tugging him up the stairs.
Stairs had never worked well with his limp--especially not at the pace Six-Pack led him. The next-to-last step from the top was missing. The cook stumbled forward, catching his balance against Pam's broad back. She simply turned again and lifted him under both arms--hoisting him to the topmost step, where the bridge of his nose collided with her collarbone. There was a womanly smell at her throat, if not exactly perfume, but the cook was confused by whatever odors of maleness clung to Ketchum's wool-flannel shirt.
The music from the dance hall was louder at the top of the stairs--Patti Page singing "(How Much Is) That Doggie in the Window?" No wonder no one dances anymore, Dominic Baciagalupo was thinking, just as Six-Pack lowered her shoulder and forced open the door. "Shit, I hate this song," she was saying, dragging the cook inside. "Ketchum!" she shouted, but there was no answer. Thankfully, the awful music stopped when Pam closed the door.