by John Irving
That Saturday night before the Christmas break--the last night that Patrice would be Patrice--Danny and Ketchum had ordered three bottles of the Barolo Massolino. As the cook had told Arnaud, Ketchum drank most of the wine, but Ketchum had also been counting.
"You may say you have a couple of beers, and one or two glasses of red wine with your dinner, Danny, but you've had four glasses of wine tonight. Even three glasses of wine, on top of two beers, is kind of a lot for a little fella." There was nothing accusatory in Ketchum's tone--he was simply setting the record straight--but Danny was defensive about it.
"I didn't know you were counting for me, Ketchum."
"Don't be like that, Danny," the logger said. "It's just my job to look after you fellas."
Ketchum had complained about Danny's tendency not to lock the house on Cluny Drive after he came home from dinner. But most nights the cook came home later than his son, and Dominic didn't like fumbling around with the door key. The cook preferred to lock the front door after he'd come home, and before he went to bed.
"But wine makes you sleepy, doesn't it, Danny?" the woodsman had asked. "Most nights, I expect, you fall sound asleep in an unlocked house--before your dad is back home."
"Mountains of moose shit--as you would say, Ketchum," Danny had replied.
That was just the way they did things in Toronto, the cook and his son explained to the veteran river driver. Danny and his dad had locked each other out of the house before; it was a nuisance. Now, when they went out, they left the house on Cluny Drive unlocked; when they were both back in the house for the night, the last one to go to bed locked the damn door.
"It's the red wine that troubles me a bit, Danny," Ketchum had told the writer. "With red wine, you fall asleep like a rock--you don't hear anything."
"If I drink only beer, I'm awake all night," Danny told the logger.
"I like the sound of that a little better," was all the woodsman had said.
But the red wine wasn't really the problem. Yes, Danny would occasionally drink more than a glass or two--and it did make him sleepy. Still, the wine was no more than a contributing factor, and the restaurant's new name wasn't part of what went wrong at all. The problem was that after all their efforts to elude the cowboy--and the dubious name changes, which would prove to be pointless--Ketchum had simply been followed.
THE COWBOY HAD FOLLOWED Ketchum before, but Carl was none the wiser for it. The retired deputy had twice trailed the logger on his hunting trips to Quebec; Carl had even tracked Ketchum all the way to Pointe au Baril Station one winter, only to assume that the younger man the old woodsman was camping with was just some Ontario hick. The cowboy had no idea who Danny was, or what Danny did; Carl had wildly concluded that possibly Ketchum was "queer," and that the younger man was the old logger's lover! No little fella with a limp had materialized on these adventures, and Carl had essentially given up on following Ketchum.
One word would change everything--the word and the fact that both Ketchum and the cowboy did their tire business at the same establishment in Milan. Tires, especially winter tires, were important in northern New Hampshire. Twitchell's was the name of the tire place that Ketchum and the cowboy frequented, though the grease monkey who did the important talking was a young Canuck named Croteau.
"That looks like Ketchum's rig," Carl had said to the French Canadian--this was a week or more before Christmas, and the cowboy had noticed Ketchum's truck on the hoist in the garage at Twitchell's. Croteau was changing all four tires.
"Yup," Croteau said. The retired deputy observed that the Canuck was removing Ketchum's studded tires and replacing them with un-studded snow tires.
"Does Ketchum have an inside tip that it's gonna be a mild winter?" Carl asked Croteau.
"Nope," Croteau said. "He just don't like the sound of the studs on the interstate, and it's mostly interstates between here and Toronto."
"Toronto," the cowboy repeated, but that wasn't the word that would change everything.
"Ketchum puts the studded tires back on when he comes home after Christmas," Croteau explained to the deputy, "but you don't need studs for highway drivin'--out on the interstates, regular snow tires will do."
"Ketchum goes to Toronto for Christmas?" Carl asked the Canuck.
"For as long as I can remember," Croteau said, which wasn't very long--not in the cowboy's estimation. Croteau was in his early twenties; he'd been changing tires only since he got out of high school.
"Does Ketchum have some lady friend in Toronto?" Carl asked. "Or a boyfriend, maybe?"
"Nope," Croteau replied. "Ketchum said he's got family there."
It was the family word that would change everything. The deputy sheriff knew that Ketchum didn't have a family--not in Canada, anyway. And what family he'd had, the old logger had lost; everyone knew that Ketchum was estranged from his children. Ketchum's kids were still living in New Hampshire, Carl knew. Ketchum's children were grown up now, with kids of their own, but they had never moved away from Coos County; they'd just cut their ties to Ketchum.
"Ketchum can't have any family in Toronto," the cowboy told the dumb Canuck.
"Well, that's what Ketchum said--he's got family there, in Toronto," Croteau insisted stubbornly.
Later, Danny would be touched that the old logger thought of him and his dad as family; yet that was what gave them away to Carl. The cowboy couldn't think of anyone whom Ketchum had absolutely taken to--or had seemed at all close to, in the manner of family--except the cook. Nor had it been hard for the ex-cop to follow Ketchum's truck, unnoticed. That truck burned a lot of oil; a black cloud of exhaust enveloped following vehicles, and Carl had wisely rented an anonymous-looking SUV with snow tires. That December, on the interstate highways of the northeastern United States--they would cross into Canada from Buffalo, over the Peace Bridge--the cowboy's car was as nondescript as they come. After all, Carl had been a cop; he knew how to tail people.
The cowboy knew how to stake out the house on Cluny Drive, too. It wasn't long before he was familiar with all of their comings and goings, including Ketchum's. Of course the cowboy was aware that Ketchum was just visiting. While Carl must have been tempted to kill all three of them, the deputy probably didn't want to risk going up against the old logger; Carl knew that Ketchum was armed. The house on Cluny Drive was never locked during the day, or at night, either--not until after the last of them, usually the cook, had limped home to go to bed.
It had been easy for the cowboy to get inside and have a good look at the house; that way, Carl knew who was sleeping in each room. But there was more that he didn't know.
The only gun in the house was the one in the guest bedroom, where it was clear to Carl that Ketchum was staying. The cowboy thought it was an odd gun, or at least an unsophisticated weapon, for Ketchum to be carrying--a youth-model Winchester 20-gauge. (A friggin' kid's shotgun, Carl was thinking.)
How could the deputy have known that the Winchester Ranger was Ketchum's Christmas present for Danny? The old logger didn't believe in wrapping paper, and the 20-gauge, pump-action shotgun was loaded and stashed under Ketchum's bed--exactly where the cowboy would have hidden a weapon. It never occurred to Carl that the 20-gauge wouldn't be going back to New Hampshire with the veteran river driver, whenever it was that Ketchum eventually returned to Coos County. The cowboy would just wait and see when that would be--then make his move.
Carl thought he had several options. He'd unlocked the door to the fire escape in Danny's third-floor writing room; if the writer didn't notice that the door was unlocked, the cowboy could enter the house that way. But if Danny saw that the door was unlocked, and re-locked it, Carl could come into the house through the unlocked front door--at any time of the evening, when the cook and his son were out. The cowboy had observed that Danny didn't go back to his third-floor writing room after he'd had dinner. (This was because of the beer and the red wine; when the writer had been drinking, he didn't even want to be in the same room with his writing.)
Whether Carl entered the property via the third-floor fire escape or walked in the front door, he would be safe hiding out in that third-floor room; the cowboy only had to be careful not to move around too much, not until the cook and his son were asleep. The floor creaked, Carl had noticed; so did the stairs leading down to the second-floor hall. But the cowboy would be wearing just socks on his feet. He would kill the cook first, Carl was thinking--then the son. Carl had seen the eight-inch cast-iron skillet hanging in the cook's bedroom; of course the cowboy knew the Injun-killing history of that skillet, because Six-Pack had told him. Carl had amused himself by thinking how funny it would be to be standing in the cook's bedroom, after he'd shot the little fucker, just waiting for the kid to come to his dad's rescue with the stupid skillet! Well, if that was how it worked out, that would be okay with the cowboy. What was important to Carl was that he kill them both, and that he drive across the U. S. border before the bodies were discovered. (With any luck, the cowboy could be back in Coos County before then.)
The old sheriff was a little worried about encountering the Mexican cleaning woman, whose comings and goings weren't as predictable as the cook's--or the no-less-observable habits of his writer son. Compared to Lupita suddenly showing up to do a load or two of laundry, or compulsively attacking the kitchen, even Ketchum's routine was reasonably consistent. The logger went to a Tae Kwon Do gym on Yonge Street for a couple of hours every day. The gym was called Champion Centre, and Ketchum had found the place by accident a few years ago; the master instructor was a former Iranian wrestler, now a boxer and a kickboxer. Ketchum said he was working on his "kicking skills."
"Dear God," the cook had complained. "Why would an eighty-three-year-old man have an interest in learning a martial art?"
"It's more mixed martial arts, Cookie," Ketchum explained. "It's boxing and kickboxing--and grappling, too. I'm just interested in finding new ways to get a fella down to the ground. Once I get a guy on the ground, I know what to do with him."
"But why, Ketchum?" the cook cried. "How many more fights are you planning to be in?"
"That's just it, Cookie--no one can plan on being in a fight. You just have to be ready!"
"Dear God," Dominic said again.
To Danny it seemed that Ketchum had always been getting ready for a war. Ketchum's Christmas present to the writer, the Winchester Ranger, with which Danny had killed three deer, appeared to emphasize this point.
"What would I want with a shotgun, Ketchum?" Danny had asked the old logger.
"You're not much of a deer hunter, Danny--I'll grant you that--and you might never go back to hunting deer," Ketchum began, "but every household should have a twenty-gauge."
"Every household," Danny repeated.
"Okay, maybe this household especially," Ketchum said. "You need to have a quick-handling, fast-action gun around--something you can't miss with, in a close situation."
"A close situation," the cook repeated, throwing his hands in the air.
"I don't know, Ketchum," Danny said.
"Just take the gun, Danny," the logger told him. "See that it's loaded, at all times--slip it under your bed, for safekeeping."
The first two rounds were buckshot, Danny knew--the third was the deer slug. At the time, he'd handled the Winchester appreciatively--not only to please Ketchum, but because the writer knew that his acceptance of the shotgun would exasperate his father. Danny was adept at getting Ketchum and his dad riled up at each other.
"Dear God," the cook started up again. "I won't sleep at all, knowing there's a loaded gun in the house!"
"That's okay with me, Cookie," Ketchum said. "In fact, I would say it would be ideal--if you don't sleep at all, I mean."
The Winchester Ranger had a birch-wood forestock and butt-stock, with a rubber recoil pad that the writer now rested against his shoulder. Danny had to admit that he loved listening to his dad and Ketchum going at it.
"God damn you, Ketchum," the cook was saying. "One night I'll get up to pee, and my son will shoot me--thinking I'm the cowboy!"
Danny laughed. "Come on, you two--it's Christmas! Let's try to have a Merry Christmas," the writer said.
But Ketchum wasn't in a merry mood. "Danny's not going to shoot you, Cookie," the logger said. "I just want you fucking fellas to be ready!"
"IN-UK-SHUK," Danny sometimes said in his sleep. Charlotte had taught him how to pronounce the Indian word; or, in Canada, was one supposed to say the Inuit word? (An Inuk word, Danny had also heard; he had no idea what was correct.) Danny had heard Charlotte say the inuksuk word many times.
When he woke up the morning after Christmas, Danny wondered if he should move the photograph of Charlotte from above the headboard of his bed--or perhaps exchange it for a different picture. In the photo in question, Charlotte is standing, wet and dripping, in a bathing suit, with her arms wrapped around herself; she's smiling, but she looks cold. In the distance, one can see the island's main dock--Charlotte was just swimming there--but nearer to her tall figure, between her and the dock, stands the unreadable inuksuk. This particular stone cairn was somewhat man-shaped but not really a human likeness. From the water, it might have been mistaken for a mark of navigation; some inuksuit (that was the plural form) were navigational markers, but not this one.
Two large rocks atop each other composed each manlike leg; a kind of shelf or tabletop possibly represented the figure's hips or waist. Four smaller rocks composed a potbellied upper body. The creature, if it was intended to have human features, had absurdly truncated arms; its arms were as disproportionately short as its legs were overlong. The head, if it was meant to be a head, suggested permanently windswept hair. The stone cairn was as stunted as the winter-beaten pines on the Georgian Bay islands. The cairn stood only as tall as Charlotte's hips, and given the perspective of the photograph above the headboard of Danny's bed--that is, with Charlotte in the foreground of the frame--the inuksuk looked even shorter than it was. Yet it also appeared to be indestructible; maybe that's why the word was on Danny's lips when he woke up.
There were countless inuksuit on those islands--and many more out on Route 69, between Parry Sound and Pointe au Baril, where Danny remembered a sign that said FIRST NATION, OJIBWAY TERRITORY. Not far from those summer cottages around Moonlight Bay, where Danny had driven in the boat with Charlotte one scorching day, there were some striking inuksuit near the Shawanaga Landing Indian Reserve.
But what were they, exactly? the writer now wondered, as he lay in bed the morning after Christmas. Not even Charlotte knew who had built the inuksuk on her island.
There'd been a carpenter from the Shawanaga Landing Indian Reserve on Andy Grant's crew, the summer the two sleeping cabins were under construction. Another summer, Danny remembered, one of the guys who brought the propane tanks to the island had a boat named First Nation. He'd told Danny he was a pure-blooded Ojibway, but Charlotte said it was "unlikely;" Danny hadn't asked her why she was skeptical.
"Maybe Granddaddy built your inuksuk," Danny had said to Charlotte. Perhaps, he'd thought, the various Indians who'd worked on Turner Island over the years had rebuilt the stone cairn whenever the rocks had fallen down.
"The rocks don't fall down," Charlotte said. "Granddaddy had nothing to do with our inuksuk. A native built it--it won't ever fall down."
"But what do they mean, exactly?" Danny asked her.
"They imply origins, respect, endurance," Charlotte answered, but this was too vague to satisfy the writer in Danny Angel; he remembered being surprised that Charlotte seemed satisfied with such a nonspecific description.
As for what an individual inuksuk meant--"Well, shit," as Ketchum had said, "it seems to matter which Injun you ask." (Ketchum believed that some inuksuit were nothing but meaningless heaps of rocks.)
Danny peered under his bed at the Winchester. Per Ketchum's instructions, the loaded shotgun lay in an open case; according to Ketchum, the case should remain unzipped, "because any fool intruder can hear a zipper."
The way the old logger put it was: "If the cowboy can hear the safety click off, he's already too close to you."
Danny looked first at the photograph of Charlotte with the inuksuk standing behind her, then at the 20-gauge shotgun under his bed. Perhaps the stone cairn and the Winchester Ranger both represented protection--the 20-gauge of a more specific kind. He was not unhappy to have the gun, Danny was thinking, though it seemed to him that every Christmas ushered in a morbid preoccupation--sometimes initiated by Ketchum (such as the Winchester) but at other times inspired by Danny or his dad. This Christmas Eve, for example, the cook could be blamed for beginning a downward spiral of gloominess.
"Just think of it," Dominic had said to his son and Ketchum. "If Joe were alive, he would be in his mid-thirties--probably with a couple of kids of his own."
"Joe would be older than Charlotte was when I first met her," Danny chimed in.
"Actually, Daniel," his father said, "Joe would be only a decade younger than you were--I mean, at the time Joe died."
"Whoa! Stop this shit!" Ketchum cried. "And if Injun Jane were still alive, she'd be eighty-fucking-eight! I doubt she'd even be speaking to any of us--not unless we somehow managed to elevate our conversation."
But the very next day, Ketchum had presented Danny with the 20-gauge shotgun--not exactly an elevation of their prevailing conversation, or their overriding fixation--and the cook had, seemingly out of the blue, begun to complain about "the sheer morbidity" of Daniel's book dedications.
True, Baby in the Road (as might be expected) was dedicated as follows: "My son, Joe--in memoriam." It was the second dedication to Joe--the third, overall, in memoriam. Dominic found this depressing.
"I can't help it if the people I know keep dying, Pop," Danny had said.
