by John Irving
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.
That summer, Ketchum had brought the dog. The fine animal was as alert as a squirrel from the second he put his paws on the island's main dock. "There must be a bear around here--Hero knows bears," Ketchum said. There was a stiff-standing ridge of fur (formerly, loose skin) at the back of the hound's tensed neck; the dog stayed as close to Ketchum as the woodsman's shadow. Hero wasn't a dog you were inclined to pat.
Ketchum wasn't a summer person; he didn't fish, or screw around with boats. The veteran river driver was no swimmer. What Ketchum saw in Georgian Bay, and on Turner Island, was what the place must be like in the late fall and the long winter, and when the ice broke up in the spring. "Lots of deer around here, I'll bet," the old logger remarked; he was sti
ll standing on the dock, only moments after he'd arrived and before he picked up his gear. He appeared to be sniffing the air for bear, like his dog.
"Injun country," Ketchum said approvingly. "Well, at least it was--before those damn missionaries tried to Christianize the fucking woods." As a boy, he'd seen the old black-and-white photographs of a pulpwood boom afloat in Gore Bay, Manitoulin Island. The lumber business around Georgian Bay would have been at its height about 1900, but Ketchum had heard the history, and he'd memorized the yearly cycles of logging. (In the autumn months, you cut your trees, you built your roads, and you readied your streams for the spring drives--all before the first snowfall. In the winter, you kept cutting trees, and you hauled or sledded your logs over the snow to the edge of the water. In the spring, you floated your logs down the streams and the rivers into the bay.)
"But, by the nineties, all your forests went rafting down to the States--isn't that right?" Ketchum asked Charlotte. She was surprised by the question; she didn't know, but Ketchum did.
It was like logging everywhere, after all. The great forests had been cut down; the mills had burned down, or they'd been torn down. "The mills perished out of sheer neglect," as Ketchum liked to put it.
"Maybe that bear's on a nearby island," Ketchum said, looking all around. "Hero's not agitated enough for there to be a bear on this island." (To Danny and Charlotte, the lean hound looked agitated enough for there to be a bear on the dock.)
It turned out that there was a bear on Barclay Island that summer. The water between the two islands was a short swim for a bear--both Danny and Ketchum discovered they could wade there--but the bear never showed up on Turner Island, perhaps because the bear had smelled Ketchum's dog.
"Burn the grease off the grill on the barbecue, after you've used it," Ketchum advised them. "Don't put the garbage out, and keep the fruit in the fridge. I would leave Hero with you, but I need him to look after me."
There was an uninhabited log cabin, the first building to be assembled on Turner Island, near the back dock. Charlotte gave Ketchum a tour of it. The screens were a little torn, and a pair of bunk beds had first been separated and then nailed together, side by side, where they were covered with a king-size mattress that overhung the bed frames. The blanket on the bed was moth-eaten, and the mattress was mildewed; no one had stayed there since Charlotte's grandfather stopped coming to the island.
It had been his cabin, Charlotte said, and after the old man died, no other member of the Turner family went near the run-down building, which Charlotte said was haunted (or so she'd believed as a girl).
She pulled aside a well-worn, dirty rug; she wanted to show Ketchum the hidden trapdoor in the floor. The cabin was set on cement posts, not much taller than cinder blocks--there was no foundation--and under the trapdoor was nothing but bare ground, about three feet below the floor. With the pine trees all around, pine needles had blown under the cabin, which gave the ground a deceptively soft and comfortable appearance.
"We don't know what Granddaddy used the trapdoor for," Charlotte explained to Ketchum, "but because he was a gambling man, we suspect he hid his money here."
Hero was sniffing the hole in the floor when Ketchum asked: "Was your granddaddy a hunting man, Charlotte?"
"Oh, yes!" Charlotte cried. "When he died, we finally threw away his guns." (Ketchum winced.)
"Well, this here's a meat locker," Ketchum told her. "Your granddaddy came up here in the winter, I would bet."
"Yes, he did!" Charlotte said, impressed.
"Probably after deer season, when the bay was frozen," Ketchum considered. "I'm guessing that when he shot a deer--and your Mounties would have known when someone was shooting, given how quiet it would be here in the winter, with all the snow--and when the Mounties came and asked him what he was shooting, I expect your granddaddy told them some story. Like he was shooting over a red squirrel's head, because the squirrel's chattering was driving him crazy, or that a herd of deer had been feeding on his favorite cedars, and he shot over their heads so they would go eat all the cedars on someone else's island--when the whole time he was talking, the deer, which Granddaddy would have gutted over this hole, so there wouldn't be any blood in the snow, and where he was keeping the meat cold ... well, do you see what I'm getting at, Charlotte?" Ketchum asked her. "This here hole is a poacher's meat locker! I told you--there's lots of deer around here, I'll bet."
Ketchum and Hero had stayed in that run-down log cabin, haunted or not. ("Hell, most places I've lived are haunted," Ketchum had remarked.) The newer sleeping cabins were not to the old woodsman's liking; as for the torn screens in Granddaddy's cabin, Ketchum said, "If you don't get bitten by a mosquito or two, you can hardly tell you're in the woods." And there was more loon activity in that back bay, because there were fewer boats; Ketchum had figured that out on the first day, too. He liked the sound of loons. "Besides, Hero farts something awful--you wouldn't want him stinking up your sleeping cabins, Charlotte!"
At the end of the day, Charlotte wasn't shocked by the idea that her granddaddy had been a poacher. He'd died destitute and alcoholic; gambling debts and whiskey had done him in. Now, at least, the trapdoor in the floor had been given a reason for its existence, and this rather quickly led Ketchum to his suggested improvements. It never occurred to the old river driver that Charlotte had not once been interested in living on her beloved island in the frigid winter months, when the prevailing wind had permanently bent the trees--when the bay was frozen and piled high with snow, and there wasn't a human soul around, except the occasional ice fisherman and those madmen who rode their snowmobiles over the lake.
"It wouldn't take a whole lot to winterize the main cottage," Ketchum began. "When you put in your flush toilets, you just want to be sure you install two septic systems--the main one, and a smaller one that nobody has to know about. Forget about using the sleeping cabins; it would be too expensive to heat them. Just stick to the main cottage. A little electric heat will be enough to keep the toilet and the sink--and the big bathtub you want, Charlotte--from freezing. You just have to heat-wrap the pipes to the small septic tank. That way, you can flush the toilet and drain the dishwater out of the sink--and empty the bathtub, too. You just can't pump water up from the lake, or heat any water--not in a propane hot-water heater, anyway. You'll have to cut a hole in the ice, and bring your water up by bucket; you heat the water on the gas stove for your baths, and for washing the dishes. You would sleep in the main cottage, of course--and most of your heat would come from the woodstove. You'll need a woodstove in your writing shack, too, Danny--but that's all you'll need. The back bay nearest the mainland will freeze first; you can haul in your groceries on a sled towed by a snowmobile, and take your trash to town the same way. Hell, you could ski or snowshoe here from the mainland," Ketchum said. "You just might be better off staying away from the main channel out of Pointe au Baril Station. I don't imagine that channel freezes over too safely."
"But why would we want to come here in the winter?" Danny asked the old woodsman; Charlotte just stared at Ketchum, uncomprehending.
"Well, why don't we come up here this winter, Danny?" Ketchum asked the writer. "I'll show you why you might like it."
Ketchum didn't mean "winter"--not exactly. He meant deer season, which was in November. The first deer season that Danny met up with Ketchum at Pointe au Baril Station, the ice hadn't thickened sufficiently for them to cross the back bay from the mainland to Turner Island; not even snowshoes or cross-country skis would have been safe, and Ketchum's snowmobile surely would have sunk. In addition to the snowmobile, and a vast array of foul-weather gear, Ketchum had brought the guns, but he'd left Hero at home--actually, he'd left that fine animal with Six-Pack Pam. Six-Pack had dogs, and Hero "tolerated" her dogs, Ketchum said. (Deer hunting was "unsuitable" for dogs, Ketchum also said.)
It didn't matter that they couldn't get to Charlotte's island that first year, anyway. The builder wouldn't be finished with all the improvements before the f
ollowing summer; Ketchum's clever winterizing would have to wait until then, too. The builder, Andy Grant, was what Ketchum affectionately called "a local fella." In fact, Charlotte had grown up with him--they'd been childhood friends. Andy had not only renovated the main cottage for Charlotte's parents a few years ago; he'd more recently restored the two sleeping cabins to Charlotte's specifications.
Andy Grant told Ketchum and Danny where the deer were in the Bayfield area, and Ketchum already knew a fella named LaBlanc, who called himself a hunting guide; LaBlanc showed Ketchum and Danny an area north of Pointe au Baril, in the vicinity of Byng Inlet and Still River. But, in Ketchum's case, it didn't matter where he hunted; the deer were all around.
At first, Danny was a little insulted by the weapon Ketchum had selected for him--a Winchester Ranger, which was manufactured in New Haven, Connecticut, in the mid-eighties, and then discontinued. It was a 20-gauge, repeating shotgun with a slide action--what Ketchum called "a pump." What initially insulted Danny was that the shotgun was a youth model.
"Don't get your balls crossed about it," Ketchum told the writer. "It's a fine gun for a beginner. You better keep things simple when you start hunting. I've seen some fellas blow their toes off."
For the sake of his toes, Danny guessed, Ketchum instructed the beginner to always have three rounds in the Winchester--one in the chamber and two more in the tubular magazine. "Don't forget how many shots you're carrying," Ketchum said.
Danny knew that the first two rounds were buckshot; the third was a deer slug, what Ketchum called the "kill-shot." It made no sense to load more than three rounds, no matter what the shotgun's capacity was. "If you need a fourth or a fifth shot, you've already missed," Ketchum told Danny. "The deer's long gone."
