John Irving: Last Night In Twisted River

“Well, whoever she is,” Danny said to Lupita on the phone, “she won’t show up here today-not in this storm.”

“She’ll show up there one day, or she’ll be back here-I just know it,” Lupita warned him. “Do you believe in witches, Mr. Writer?”

“Do you believe in angels?” Danny asked her.

“This woman was too dangerous-looking to be an angel,” Lupita told him.

“I’ll keep an eye out for her,” Danny said. “I’ll tell Hero she’s a bear.”

“You would be safer meeting a bear, Señor Writer,” Lupita told him.

As soon as their phone conversation ended, Danny found himself thinking that-fond of her as he was-Lupita was a superstitious old Mexican. Did Catholics believe in witches? the writer was wondering. (Danny didn’t know what Catholics believed-not to mention what Lupita, in particular, believed.) He was exasperated to have been interrupted from his writing; furthermore, Lupita had neglected to say when she’d confronted the giantess in Toronto. This morning, maybe-or was it last week? Moments ago, he’d been on track, plotting the course of his first chapter. A pointless phone call had completely derailed him; now even the weather was a distraction.

The inuksuk was buried under the snow. (“Never a good sign,” the writer could imagine Tireless saying.) And Danny couldn’t bear to look at that wind-bent little pine. The crippled tree was too much his father’s likeness today. The pine appeared near to perishing-cringing, snow-laden, in the storm.

If Danny looked southeast-in the direction of Pentecost Island, at the mouth of the Shawanaga River-there was a white void. There was absolutely nothing to see. There was no demarcation to indicate where the swirling white sky ended and the snow-covered bay began; there was no horizon. When he looked southwest, Burnt Island was invisible-gone, lost in the storm. Due east, Danny could make out only the tops of the tallest trees on the mainland, but not the mainland itself. Like the lost horizon, there was no trace of land in sight. In the narrowest part of the bay was an ice fisherman’s shack; perhaps the snowstorm had swept the shack away, or the ice fisherman’s shack had simply vanished from view (like everything else).

Danny thought that he’d better haul some extra pails of water to the main cabin from the lake while he could still see the lake. The new snow would have hidden the last hole he’d chopped in the ice; Danny and Hero would have to be careful not to fall through the thin ice covering that hole. There was no point in risking a trip to town today-Danny could thaw something from the freezer. He would take the day off from cutting wood, too.

Outside, the wind-borne snow stung Hero’s wide-open, lidless eye; the dog kept pawing at his face. “Just four buckets, Hero-only two trips to the bay and back,” Danny said to the bear hound. “We won’t be outside for long.” But the wind suddenly and totally dropped, just as Danny was hauling the second two buckets from the bay. Now the snow fell straight down in larger, softer flakes. The visibility was no better, but it was more comfortable to be out in the storm. “No wind, no pain, Hero-how about that?” Danny asked the Walker bluetick.

The dog’s spirits had notably improved. Danny watched Hero run after a red squirrel, and the writer hauled two more (a total of six) pails of water from the bay. Now he had more than enough water in the main cabin to ride out the storm-no matter how heavily the snow kept falling. And what did it matter how long the storm lasted? There were no roads to plow.

There was a lot of venison in the freezer. Two steaks looked like too much food, but maybe one wasn’t quite enough-Danny decided to thaw two. He had plenty of peppers and onions, and some mushrooms; he could stir-fry them together, and make a small green salad. He made a marinade for the venison-yogurt and fresh-squeezed lemon juice with cumin, turmeric, and chili. (This was a marinade he remembered from Mao’s.) Danny built up the fire in the woodstove in the main cabin; if he put the marinated venison near the woodstove, the steaks would thaw by dinnertime. It was only noon.

Danny gave Hero some fresh water and fixed himself a little lunch. The snowstorm had freed him from his usual afternoon chores; with any luck, Danny might get back to work in the writing shack. He felt that his first chapter was waiting for him. There would only be the bear hound’s farting to distract him.

“Under the logs,” the writer said aloud to Hero, testing the phrase as a chapter title. It was a good title for an opening chapter, Danny thought. “Come on, Hero,” he said to the dog, but they’d not left the main cabin when Danny’s cell phone rang again-the third call of the day. Most days, in the writer’s winter life on Charlotte’s island, the phone didn’t ring once.

“It’s the bear , Hero!” Danny said to the dog. “What do you bet that the big she-bear is coming?” But the phone call was from Andy Grant.

“I thought I better check up on you,” the builder said. “How are you and Hero surviving the storm?”

“Hero and I are surviving just fine-in fact, we’re very cozy,” Danny told him. “I’m thawing some of the deer you and I shot.”

“Not planning on going shopping, are you?” Andy asked him.

“I’m not planning on going anywhere,” Danny answered.

“That’s good,” Andy said. “You’ve got whiteout conditions at your place, have you?”

“Total whiteout,” Danny told him. “I can’t see Burnt Island-I can’t even see the mainland.”

“Not even from the back dock?” Andy asked him.

“I wouldn’t know,” Danny answered. “Hero and I are having a pretty lazy day. We haven’t ventured as far as the back dock.” There was a long pause-long enough to make Danny look at his cell-phone screen, to be sure they were still connected.

“You and Hero might want to go see what you can see off the back dock, Danny,” Andy Grant told the writer. “If I were you, I would wait about ten or fifteen minutes-then go take a look.”

“What am I looking for, Andy?” the writer asked.

“A visitor,” the builder told him. “There’s someone looking for you, Danny, and she seems real determined to find you.”

“Real determined,” Danny repeated.

SHE’D SHOWN UP at the nursing station in Pointe au Baril, asking for directions to Turner Island. The nurse had sent her to Andy. Everyone in town knew that Andy Grant was protective of the famous novelist’s privacy.

The big, strong-looking woman didn’t have her own airboat; she didn’t have a snowmobile, either. She didn’t even come with skis-just ski poles. Her backpack was huge, and strapped to it was a pair of snowshoes. If she’d had a car, it must have been a rental and she’d already gotten rid of it. Maybe she’d spent the night at Larry’s Tavern, or in some motel near Parry Sound. There was no way she could have driven the entire distance from Toronto to Pointe au Baril Station-not that morning, not in that snowstorm. The snow had blanketed Georgian Bay, from Manitoulin Island to Honey Harbour, and-according to Andy-it was supposed to snow all that night, too.

“She said she knows you,” Andy told the writer. “But if it turns out that she’s just a crazy fan, or some psycho autograph-seeker, there’s enough room in that backpack for all eight of your books-both the hardcover and the paperback editions. Then again, that backpack’s big enough to hold a shotgun.”

“She knows me how- she knew me when, and where?” Danny asked.

“All she said was, ‘We go back a ways.’ You’re not expecting a visit from an angry ex-girlfriend-are you, Danny?”