John Irving - Last Night In Twisted River

“Drake is just a shit-disturber, Danny,” the trooper told him. “He’s a little trust-fund fuck-they never dare to do any real damage, because they know their parents would end up having to pay for it.”

The same small nuisances were everywhere, throughout the house. When they went to turn the lights out in the garage, Danny discovered a tube of toothpaste on the driver’s seat of Joe’s car; a toothbrush was tucked under the driver’s-side sun visor.

There was more of the same juvenile mischief in the guesthouse-the original farmhouse-where the music had been cranked up as loud as it would go and the soundless TV was on. Lamps were tipped on their sides, a pyramid of lampshades decorated the kitchen table, several pictures had been rehung (upside down), and the beds were unmade-in a manner that made you think someone had slept in them.

“This is irritating, but it’s mainly childish,” Danny said to the trooper.

“I agree,” Jimmy said.

“I’m selling the whole property anyway,” Danny told him.

“Not because of this , I hope,” the state trooper said.

“No, but this makes it easier,” the writer answered. Because Danny knew he was moving away, and the Putney property would have to be sold, maybe Roland Drake’s violation of the writer’s personal effects felt like less of an invasion than it truly was-that is, until Danny and Jimmy came to the famous author’s writing shack. Yes, all the lights were on, and some papers had been misplaced, but Drake had overstepped; he’d done some actual harm.

Danny had been proofreading the galleys of East of Bangor . As testimony to the novelist’s ceaseless need to re write-to tamper with, to endlessly revise-Danny had written more than the usual number of notes and queries in the margins of the galleys. This demonstration-namely, that Danny Angel was both a writer and a rewriter-must have been too much to take for a failed writer (a writer carpenter) like Roland Drake. The evidence of rewriting in the galleys of Danny’s soon-to-be-published next novel had pushed Drake over the edge.

With a Sharpie permanent marker, in deep black, Roland Drake had scrawled on the cover of the uncorrected proofs of East of Bangor , and inside the galleys, on every page, Drake had written his comments with a Sharpie fine-point red pen. Not that the writer carpenter’s commentary was either insightful or elaborate, but Drake had taken the time to defile every page; there were more than four hundred pages in the galleys of East of Bangor . Danny had proofread three quarters of the novel, and-notwithstanding what a rewriter he was-he’d written notes or queries on only about fifteen or twenty of the pages. Roland Drake had crossed out Danny’s notes and queries; he’d rendered the author’s revisions unreadable. Drake had purposely made a mess of the galleys, but it needn’t have cost Danny more than two weeks’ additional work-not even that, under normal circumstances, though Drake’s destruction of the writer’s uncorrected proofs seemed greater than a merely symbolic assault.

But at a time when the cook and his son were confronted with the chaos of going on the run again, Roland Drake’s attack on Danny’s sixth novel might delay the publication of East of Bangor by several months-conceivably, for as long as half a year. The novel was scheduled to be published in the fall of ’83. (Maybe not now-possibly, the book wouldn’t be published until the winter of ’84. With all that was newly happening in Danny’s life, it would take the author a while to remember the revisions he’d already made in the galleys-and to find the time to proofread the last quarter of the novel.)

“Revise the chickenshit title!” Drake had scribbled on the cover of East of Bangor , in deep black. “Change the author’s fake name!”

And in red, throughout the novel, while the writer carpenter’s criticism demonstrated no great range or in-depth perception, Drake had underlined a phrase or circled a word-on four-hundred-plus pages-and he’d added a cryptic comment, albeit only one per page. “This sucks!” and “Rewrite!” were the most repeated, along with “Cut!” and “Dog-killer!” Less common were “Lame!” and “Feeble!” More than once, “Lengthy!” had been scrawled across the entire page. Only twice, but memorably, Drake had written, “I fucked Franky, too!” (Perhaps Drake had slept with Franky, Danny only now considered; that might have contributed to the onetime writing student’s animosity toward the bestselling author.)

“Have a look, Jimmy,” Danny said to the trooper, handing him the desecrated copy of the galleys.

“Gee… this makes more work for you, I suppose,” Jimmy said, turning the pages. “ ‘Year of the Dog wouldn’t publish this shit!’” the state trooper read aloud, with deadpan puzzlement. Jimmy always looked pained by what he didn’t understand-at once heartbroken and baffled. For a cop who’d shot his share of dogs, Jimmy had the sad, droopy eyes of a Labrador retriever; tall and thin, with a long face, the trooper looked questioningly at Danny for some explanation of Roland Drake’s ravings.

“Year of the Dog was a small literary magazine,” Danny explained. “Either Windham College published it, or it was independently published by some Windham College students-I can’t remember.”

“Franky is a girl?” Jimmy asked, reading further.

“Yes,” the writer answered.

“That young woman who lived here for a while-that one, right?” the trooper asked.

“That’s her, Jimmy.”

“‘You write with a limp!’” Jimmy read aloud. “Gee…”

“Drake should bury his own dog-don’t you think, Jimmy?” Danny asked the trooper.

“I’ll take Roland’s dog back to him. We’ll have a little talk,” Jimmy said. “You could get a restraining order-”

“I don’t need one, Jimmy-I’m leaving, remember?” Danny said.

“I know how to talk to Roland,” the trooper said.

“Just watch out for the other dog, Jimmy-he comes at you from behind,” Danny warned him.

“I won’t shoot him if I don’t have to, Danny-I only shoot them when I have to,” the trooper said.

“I know,” Danny told him.

“It’s hard to imagine anyone out to get your dad,” Jimmy ventured. “I can’t conceive of someone having a score to settle with the cook. You want to tell me about that, Danny?” the cop asked.

Here was another intersection in the road, the writer thought. What were these junctions, where making a sharp-left or sharp-right turn from the previously chosen path presented a tempting possibility? Hadn’t there been an opportunity for Danny and his dad to go back to Twisted River, as if nothing had ever happened to Injun Jane? And of course there was the case of putting Paul Polcari back in the kitchen at Vicino di Napoli with Ketchum’s single-shot 20-gauge-instead of putting someone back there who might have pulled the fucking trigger!

Well, wasn’t this another opportunity to escape the conundrum? Just tell Jimmy everything! About Injun Jane, about Carl and Six-Pack Pam-about the retired deputy with his long-barreled Colt.45, that fucking cowboy! Short of asking Ketchum to kill the bastard, what other way out was there? And Danny knew that if he or his dad asked Ketchum outright, Ketchum would kill the cowboy. The old logger hadn’t murdered Lucky Pinette in his bed with a stamping hammer; Lucky was probably asleep at the time, but the killer couldn’t have been Ketchum, or there would be nothing holding Ketchum back from killing Carl.

But all Danny said to his state-trooper friend was, “It’s about a woman. A long time ago, my dad was sleeping with a logging-camp constable’s girlfriend. Later, the camp constable became a county deputy sheriff-and when he found out what had happened to his girlfriend, he came looking for my dad. The deputy is retired now, but we have reason to believe he might still be looking-he’s crazy.”