Read Last Night in Twisted River for Free Online Page B

River—except when the river ran under the ice. But Danny must have fallen asleep as quickly as his father, because the twelve-year-old didn’t hear the truck. The light from the truck’s headlights had not shone into the cookhouse. Whoever was driving the truck must have been able to navigate the road from town in near-total darkness, because there wasn’t much moonlight that night—or else the driver was drunk and had forgotten to turn on the truck’s headlights.
    Danny thought he heard the door to the truck’s cab close. The mud, which was soft in the daytime, could get crunchy underfoot at night—it was still cold enough at night for the mud to freeze, and now there was a dusting of new snow. Perhaps he hadn’t heard a truck door close, Dan was thinking; that clunk might have been a sound in whatever dream the boy had been having. Outside the cookhouse, the footsteps on the frozen mud made a shuffling sound—ponderous and wary. Maybe it’s a bear, Danny thought.
    The cook kept a cooler outside the kitchen. The cooler was sealed tight, but it contained the ground lamb, for the lamb hash, and the bacon—and whatever other perishables wouldn’t fit in the fridge. What if the bear had smelled the meat in the cooler? Danny was thinking.
    “Dad?” the boy spoke out, but his father was probably fast asleep down the hall.
    Like everyone else, the bear seemed to be having trouble with the outer door to the cookhouse kitchen; it batted at the door with one paw. Young Dan heard grunting, too.
    “Dad!” Danny shouted; he heard his father swipe the cast-iron skillet off the hook on the bedroom wall. Like his dad, the boy had gone to bed in his long johns and a pair of socks. The floor in the upstairs hall felt cold to Danny, even with his socks on. He and his dad padded downstairs to the kitchen, which was dimly lit by the pilot lights flickering from the old Garland. The cook had a two-handed grip on the black skillet. When the outer door opened, the bear—if it was a bear—pushed against the screen door with its chest. It came inside in an upright position, albeit unsteadily. Its teeth were a long, white blur.
    “I’m not a bear, Cookie,” Ketchum said.
    The flash of white, which Danny had imagined was the bear’s bared teeth, was the new cast on Ketchum’s right forearm; the cast went from the middle of the big man’s palm to where his arm bent at the elbow. “Sorry I startled you fellas,” Ketchum added.
    “Close the outer door, will you? I’m trying to keep it warm in here,” the cook said. Danny saw his father put the skillet on the bottom step of the stairs. Ketchum struggled to secure the outer door with his left hand. “You’re drunk,” Dominic told him.
    “I’ve got one arm, Cookie, and I’m right-handed,” Ketchum said.
    “You’re still drunk, Ketchum,” Dominic Baciagalupo told his old friend.
    “I guess you remember what that’s like,” Ketchum said.
    Dan helped Ketchum close the outer door. “I’ll bet you’re real hungry,” he said to Ketchum. The big man, swaying slightly, ruffled the boy’s hair.
    “I don’t need to eat,” Ketchum said.
    “It might help to sober you up,” the cook said. Dominic opened the fridge. He told Ketchum: “I’ve got some meat loaf, which isn’t bad cold. You can have it with applesauce.”
    “I don’t need to eat,” the big man said again. “I need you to come with me, Cookie.”
    “Where are we going?” Dominic asked, but even young Dan knew when his father was pretending not to know something he clearly knew.
    “You know where,” Ketchum told the cook. “I just have trouble remembering the exact spot.”
    “That’s because you drink too much, Ketchum—that’s why you can’t remember,” Dominic said.
    When Ketchum lowered his head, he swayed more; for a moment, Danny thought that the logger might fall down. And by the way both men had lowered their voices, the boy understood that they were negotiating; they were also being