John Irving - Last Night In Twisted River

I could leave Vermont today , the writer was thinking. Danny did not feel an attachment to his Putney property that nearly approximated his dad’s love of Avellino in Brattleboro, or his father’s life there. After Dot and May’s appearance in the restaurant-not to mention Roland Drake’s visit, and Drake’s dead dog on the dining-room table-Danny felt that he could leave Vermont forever, and never look back.

When Carl eventually encountered those bad old broads Dot and May, the cowboy would get to Vermont too late. With Armando and Mary DeSimone’s help, Danny had sold the Putney property by then; there was no writer’s compound remaining on Hickory Ridge Road. And Windham College, where the writer Danny Angel had taught, was a college with a different name (and purpose) now- Landmark College, a leading institution for learning-disabled students. By the time the cowboy showed up in Brattleboro, Avellino itself would be gone-and wherever Greg, the sous chef, went, Carl wouldn’t find him. At the cook’s urging, Celeste and her daughter, Loretta (and Loretta’s kid), left town. The cowboy would come up empty, once again, but there was no question that Dot and May had blabbed their best to him.

Was it possible that Carl was as much of an imbecile as Ketchum had, at times, maintained? Did the cowboy possess no better detective skills than those of Ketchum’s much-maligned pinch of coon shit? Or was it simply that, throughout the retired deputy’s investigations in Vermont, the Angel name had not come up? In Brattleboro, evidently, the cowboy had not inquired about the cook and his son at The Book Cellar!

“You knew Cookie was in Vermont -you knew it all along, didn’t you, Ketchum?” Carl would one day ask the old logger.

“Cookie? Is he still around?” Ketchum said to the cowboy. “I wouldn’t have figured that a little fella with a limp like his would be so long-lasting-would you, Carl?”

“Keep it up, Ketchum-you just keep it up,” Carl said.

“Oh, I will-I’ll keep it up, all right,” Ketchum told the cowboy.

But Danny couldn’t wait to leave Vermont; after the night he and Jimmy found the dead dog on the writer’s dining-room table, Danny Angel wanted to be gone.

That night he’d driven no farther out the back road to Westminster West than the bottom of Barrett’s long, uphill driveway. He had backed his car onto the animal lover’s property. Danny knew that Barrett went to bed early, and that she wouldn’t be aware of a car parked in her driveway-so far away from her horse farm that not even her horses would be disturbed by its presence. Besides, Danny had turned off the engine and his headlights. He just sat in the car, which was facing Westminster West with all the windows open.

It was a warm, windless night. Danny knew he could hear a gunshot for a couple of miles on such a night. What he didn’t know at first was: Did he really want to hear it? And what would hearing or not hearing that gunshot signify, exactly? It was more than the survival or the death of Roland Drake’s bite-you-from-behind husky-shepherd mix that the writer was listening for.

At forty-one, Danny felt like a twelve-year-old all over again; it didn’t help that it had started to rain. He remembered the misty night he and his dad had left Twisted River in the Pontiac Chieftain-how he’d sat waiting in the station wagon, which was parked near Six-Pack Pam’s. Danny had been listening for the discharge of Carl’s Colt.45, which would mean his dad was dead. Upon the sound of that shot, the boy would have run up the stairs to Six-Pack’s place; he would have begged her to let him in, and then Ketchum would have taken care of him. That had been the plan, and Danny had done his part; he’d sat in the car, in the falling rain, waiting to hear the gunshot that never came, though there were times when Danny felt he was still waiting to hear it.

On the back road to Westminster West-at the foot of his former lover’s driveway-the writer Danny Angel was listening as alertly as he could. He was hoping he would never hear that shot-the earsplitting discharge of the cowboy’s Colt.45-but it was with that shot in mind that the writer began to indulge the dangerous, what-if side of his imagination. What if the state trooper didn’t have to shoot Roland Drake’s other dog -what if , somehow, Jimmy could persuade the writer carpenter and his shepherd-husky mix that, truly, enough was enough? Might that signify an end to the violence, or to the threat of violence?

It was then that the writer was aware of what he was listening for: nothing. It was nothing that he hoped he would hear. It was the no-shot that might mean his dad would be safe-that the cowboy, like Paul Polcari, might never pull the trigger.

Danny was trying not to think about what Jimmy had told him-this was concerning the tube of toothpaste and the toothbrush in Joe’s car. Possibly, they’d not been put there by Roland Drake; maybe the toothpaste and the toothbrush hadn’t been part of Drake’s mischief.

“I hate to tell you this, Danny, but I’ve busted lots of kids who’ve been drinking in their cars,” the trooper had said. “The kids often have toothpaste and a toothbrush handy-so their parents don’t smell what they’ve been drinking on their breath, when they come home.” But Danny preferred to think that the toothpaste and the toothbrush had been more of Drake’s childish business. The writer didn’t like to think about his son drinking and driving.

Was Danny superstitious? (Most writers who believe in plot are.) Danny didn’t like to think about what Lady Sky had said to Joe, either. “If you’re ever in trouble, I’ll be back,” she’d said to the two-year-old, kissing his forehead. Well, not on a night as dark as this one, the writer thought. On a night as dark as this one, no skydiver-not even Lady Sky-could see where to land.

Now the rain had blotted out what little moonlight there was; the rain was coming in the open windows of Danny’s car, and the water had beaded on the windshield, which made the darkness more impenetrable.

Surely, the state trooper had already arrived in Drake’s junkyard of a driveway. And what would Jimmy do then? Danny was wondering. Just sit in the patrol car until Drake had noticed the car was there and came outside to talk to him? (And would Roland have come out alone, or would he have brought the back-biting dog with him?) Then again, it was raining; out of consideration for the hippie carpenter, and because it was late, the trooper might have gotten out of his car and knocked on Drake’s door.

At that thought came a knocking on the passenger-side door of Danny’s car; a flashlight shone in the writer’s face. “Oh, heart be still-it’s just you,” he heard Barrett say. His former lover, who was carrying a rifle, opened the car door and slipped inside to sit beside him. She was wearing her knee-high rubber stable boots and an oil-skin poncho. She’d pushed back the hood when she got into the car, and her long white hair was unbraided-as if she’d gone to bed hours ago, and had suddenly been woken up. Barrett’s thighs were bare; under the poncho, she was wearing nothing. (Danny knew, of course, that Barrett slept naked.) “Were you missing me, Danny?” she asked him.

“You’re up late, aren’t you?” Danny asked her.

“About an hour ago, I had to put one of my horses down-it was too late to call the bloody vet,” Barrett told him. She sat like a man, with her knees spread apart; the carbine, with the barrel pointed to the floor, rested between her pretty dancer’s legs. It was an old bolt-action Remington-a.30-06 Springfield, she’d explained to him, some years ago, when she’d shown up on his Putney property, where she was hunting deer. Barrett still hunted deer there; there was an untended apple orchard on the land, and Barrett had shot more than one deer in that orchard. (What had the cook called her-a “selective” animal lover, was it? Danny knew more than a few like her.)