John Irving - Last Night In Twisted River

It was Ketchum who clearly didn’t have a clue about how many people had overheard him and Pam, and both Ketchum and Six-Pack were unprepared for the diversity of opinion among the trailer-park residents, who had been glued to their television sets all morning. Given that the walls of their trailers were paper-thin, and that many of them had been talking with one another in the course of the day’s unfolding events, they’d expressed quite a variety of views-in regard to what some of them saw as the first installment of the Armageddon they were witnessing-and now this notoriously belligerent intruder had come into their small community bellowing , and the famously loudmouthed Ketchum (for the former river driver was indeed famous in Errol) seemed to be unaware of the developing news.

“Ain’t you heard, Ketchum?” an old man asked. He was stooped, almost bent over-wearing red-and-black wool hunting pants on this warm September day-with his suspenders loosely cupping his bony shoulders, and his bare, scrawny arms dangling from a white sleeveless undershirt.

“Is that you, Henry?” the logger asked the old man. Ketchum had not seen the sawyer since they’d shut down the sawmill in Paris -years before they had bulldozed it half-underground.

Henry held up his left hand with the missing thumb and index finger. “Sure it’s me, Ketchum,” the sawyer said. “It’s the war in the Middle East, the war between the Muslims and the Jews-it’s started here , Ketchum,” Henry said.

“It started long ago,” Ketchum told the sawyer. “What’s going on?” the logger asked Six-Pack.

“I’ve been tryin’ to tell ya!” Six-Pack screamed.

There was a young woman with an infant in her arms. “It’s a terrorist attack-no airport is safe. They’ve closed them all down,” she said to Ketchum.

Two teenage boys, brothers who’d skipped school, were barefoot; they wore jeans and were shirtless in the midday sun. “Hundreds of people are dead-maybe thousands,” one said.

“They were jumpin’ from skyscrapers!” the other boy said.

“The president is missing!” a woman with two small children said.

“Well, that’s good news!” Ketchum declared.

“Bush ain’t missin’-he’s just flyin’ around, stayin’ safe. I told ya,” Six-Pack said to the logger.

“Maybe the Jews did it-to make us think it was the Arabs!” a young man on crutches said.

“If it’s your brain that’s addled, you don’t need crutches,” the old woodsman told him. “Constipated Christ-let me have a look at the TV,” Ketchum said to Six-Pack. (The former river driver, now a reader, was possibly the only resident of Errol who didn’t own a television.)

They traipsed into Pam’s kitchen-not just Ketchum, with Danny holding Carmella’s arm, but also Henry, the old sawyer with the stumps instead of a thumb and an index finger, and two of the women with young children.

The young man on crutches had hobbled away. Outside, the teenage boys could be heard by the kennel. After exchanging pleasantries with the dogs, one of the teenagers said, “Look at the tough bastard with one ear-he’s been in a fight.”

“Some fight,” the second boy said. “It musta been with a cat.”

“Some cat!” the first boy said appreciatively.

On Pam’s kitchen TV, the media kept replaying that moment when Flight 175 crashed into the south tower of the World Trade Center-and of course those moments when first the south tower and then the north tower came down. “How many people were in those towers-how many cops and how many firemen were under those buildings when they fell?” Ketchum asked, but no one answered him; it was too early for those statistics.

At 1:04 P.M., speaking from Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana, President Bush said that all the appropriate security measures were being taken-including putting the U.S. military on high alert worldwide. “Well, that sure as shit makes us all feel safer!” Ketchum said.

“Make no mistake,” Bush said on the TV. “The United States will hunt down and punish those responsible for these cowardly acts.”

“Oh, boy,” Ketchum said. “It sounds to me like that’s what we should be afraid of next!”

“But they attacked us,” the young woman holding the infant said. “Don’t we have to attack them back?”

“They’re suicide bombers,” Ketchum said. “How do you attack them back?”

At 1:48, President Bush left Barksdale aboard Air Force One and flew to another base in Nebraska. “More flyin’ around,” Six-Pack commented.

“How many wars will that shit-for-brains start, do you imagine?” Ketchum asked them.

“Come on, Ketchum-he’s the president,” the sawyer said.

Ketchum reached out and took the old sawyer’s hand-the one with the missing thumb and index finger. “Did you ever make a mistake, Henry?” the veteran river driver asked.

“A couple,” Henry answered; everyone could see the two stumps.

“Well, you just wait and see, Henry,” Ketchum said. “This ass-wipe in the White House is the wrong man for the job-you just wait and see how many mistakes this penis-breath is going to make! On this mouse turd’s watch, there’s going to be a fucking myriad of mistakes!”

“A fuckin’ what?” Six-Pack said; she sounded frightened.

“A myriad!” Ketchum shouted.

“An indefinitely large number-countless,” Danny explained to Six-Pack.

Six-Pack looked sick, as if the confidence had been kicked out of her. “Maybe you’d like to watch the moose dancin’ tonight,” she said to Ketchum. “Maybe you and me-and Danny and Carmella, too-could go campin’. It’s gonna be a pretty night up by the cookhouse, and between you and me, Ketchum, we could come up with some extra sleepin’ bags, couldn’t we?”

“Shit,” Ketchum said. “There’s an undeclared war going on, and you want to watch the moose dancing! Not tonight, Six-Pack,” Ketchum told her. “Besides, Danny and I have some serious issues to discuss. I suppose they have a bar and a TV at The Balsams out in Dixville Notch, don’t they?” the logger asked Danny.

“I want to go home,” Carmella said. “I want to go back to Boston.”

“Not tonight,” Ketchum said again. “The terrorists aren’t going to bomb Boston, Carmella. Two of the planes flew out of Boston. If they were going to attack Boston, they would have done it.”

“I’ll drive you back to Boston tomorrow,” Danny told Carmella; he couldn’t look at Six-Pack, who seemed to be in despair.

“Leave me the dog-let me look after Hero,” Pam said to Ketchum. “They don’t take dogs at The Balsams-and you should stay the night there, Ketchum, ’cause you’ll be drinkin’.”

“Just so you’re paying,” Ketchum said to Danny.

“Of course I’m paying,” Danny said.

All the dogs had come in the dog door and were huddled in the kitchen. There’d been no more hollering-not since Ketchum had shouted, “A myriad!” -and the dogs were anxious about so many humans standing around in Six-Pack’s small kitchen without any yelling.

“Don’t get your balls crossed, Hero-I’ll be back tomorrow,” Ketchum told the bear hound. “You don’t have to work at the hospital tonight?” the former river driver asked Six-Pack.

“I can get out of it,” she told him disinterestedly. “They like me at the hospital.”

“Well, shit-I like you, too,” Ketchum told her awkwardly, but Six-Pack didn’t say anything; she’d seen her opportunity pass. All Pam could do was position her aching body between the two children (belonging to one of the young women) and that unreliable German shepherd; the dog was just plain bonkers. Six-Pack knew that her odds of preventing the shepherd from biting the kids were far better than the possibility that she could ever persuade Ketchum to live with her again. He’d even offered to pay for her hip replacement-at that fancy fucking hospital near Dartmouth-but Pam speculated that Ketchum’s generosity toward her damaged hip had more to do with the logger’s infinite regret that he’d not killed the cowboy than it served as a testimony to Ketchum’s enduring affection for her.