The near-perfect choreography in the kitchen would have been imperceptible to a stranger, but Danny and the Indian dishwasher were used to it. They saw that everything was always the same, right down to the cook holding the hot tray of scones with the oven mitts while the sawmill workers’ wives deftly got out of his way-one of them knocking the corn muffins out of the muffin tins into a big china bowl as she did so. No one bumped into anyone, big as they all were-save Danny and his dad, who were (in the present company) noticeably small.
In the cramped aisle between the countertop and the stove, where there was a pan or a pot on six of the eight burners, the cook and the Indian dishwasher passed back-to-back. This wasn’t new-it happened all the time-but Danny caught a nuance in their dance, and he overheard (as he previously hadn’t) the brief but distinct dialogue between them. As they passed, back-to-back, Jane deliberately bumped Dominic-she just touched her big rump to the middle of his back, because the top of the cook’s head came up only to Jane’s shoulders.
“Do-si-do your partner,” the dishwasher said.
Despite his limp, the cook caught his balance; not one scone slid off the hot tray. “Do-si-do,” Dominic Baciagalupo softly said. Injun Jane had already passed behind him. No one but Danny had noticed the contact, though if Ketchum had been there-drunk or sober-Ketchum surely would have noticed. (But Ketchum, of course, was outside-presumably, still pissing.)
CHAPTER 3. A WORLD OF ACCIDENTS
ANGEL POPE HAD GONE UNDER THE LOGS ON THURSDAY. After breakfast on Friday, Injun Jane drove Danny in her truck to the Paris Manufacturing Company School, on Phillips Brook, and then drove back to the cookhouse in Twisted River.
The river-driving crew would be prodding logs on a site just upstream of Dead Woman Dam. The cook and his kitchen helpers would prepare four midday meals; they would backpack two meals to the rivermen, and drive two meals to the loggers loading the trucks along the haul road between the town of Twisted River and the Pontook Reservoir.
Fridays were hard enough without the woe of losing Angel. Everyone was in too much of a hurry for the weekend to start, although weekends in Twisted River (in the cook’s opinion) amounted to little more than drinking too much and the usual sexual missteps-“not to mention the subsequent embarrassment or shame,” as Danny Baciagalupo had heard his dad say (repeatedly). And from Dominic’s point of view, the Friday-night meal in the cookhouse was the week’s most demanding. For the practicing Catholics among the French Canadians, the cook made his renowned meatless pizzas, but for the “non-mackerel-snappers”-as Ketchum was fond of describing himself, and most of the loggers and sawmill workers-a meatless pizza on a Friday night wouldn’t suffice.
When Injun Jane dropped Danny at the Paris school, she punched him lightly on his upper arm; it was where the older boys at school would hit him, if he was lucky. Naturally, the older boys hit him harder than Jane did-whether they hit him on the upper arm or somewhere else. “Keep your chin down, your shoulders relaxed, your elbows in, and your hands up around your face,” Jane told him. “You want to look like you’re going to throw a punch-then you kick the bastard in the balls.”
“I know,” the twelve-year-old told her. He had never thrown a punch at anyone-nor had he ever kicked someone in the balls. Jane’s instructions to the boy bewildered him; he thought that her directions must have been based on some advice Constable Carl had given her, but Jane only had to worry about the constable hitting her. Young Dan believed that nobody else would have dared to confront her-maybe not even Ketchum.
While Jane would kiss Danny good-bye at the cookhouse, or virtually anywhere in Twisted River, she never kissed him when she dropped him at the Paris Manufacturing Company School -or when she picked him up in the vicinity of Phillips Brook, where those West Dummer kids might be hanging out. If the older boys saw Injun Jane kiss Danny, they would give him more trouble than usual. On this particular Friday, the twelve-year-old just sat beside Jane in the truck, not moving. Young Dan might have momentarily forgotten where they were-in which case, he was expecting her to kiss him-or else he’d thought of a question to ask Jane about his mother.
“What is it, Danny?” the dishwasher said.
“Do you do-si-do my dad?” the boy asked her.
Jane smiled at him, but it was a more measured smile than he was used to seeing on her pretty face; that she didn’t answer made him anxious. “Don’t tell me to ask Ketchum,” the boy blurted out. This made Injun Jane laugh; her smile was more natural, and more immediately forthcoming. (As always, Chief Wahoo was madly grinning.)
“I was going to say that you should ask your father,” the dishwasher said. “Don’t be anxious,” she added, punching his upper arm again-this time a little harder. “Danny?” Jane said, as the twelve-year-old was climbing out of the truck cab. “Don’t ask Ketchum.”
IT WAS A WORLD of accidents, the cook was thinking. In the kitchen, he was cooking up a storm. The lamb hash, which he’d served for breakfast, would be good for a midday meal, too; he’d also made a chickpea soup (for the Catholics) and a venison stew with carrots and pearl onions. Yes, there was the infernal pot of baked beans, and the omnipresent pea soup with parsley. But there was little else that was standard logging-camp fare.
One of the sawmill workers’ wives was cooking some Italian sweet sausage on the griddle. The cook kept telling her to break up the sausage meat as she cooked it-whereupon another of the sawmill workers’ wives started singing. “Try beatin’ your meat with a spatula!” she sang to the unlikely but overfamiliar tune of “Vaya con Dios;” the other women joined in.
The lead singer among the sawmill workers’ wives was the woman the cook had put in charge of proofing the yeast for the pizza dough-he was keeping an eye on her. Dominic wanted to mix the pizza dough and start it rising before they drove off on the haul road to deliver the midday meals. (On a Friday night, there would be a bunch of pissed-off French Canadians if there weren’t enough meatless pizzas for the mackerel-snappers.)
The cook was making cornbread, too. He wanted to start the stuffing for the roast chickens he was also serving in the cookhouse Friday night; he would mix the sausage with the cornbread and some celery and sage, adding the eggs and butter when he got back to his kitchen from the river site and wherever they were loading the trucks. In a large saucepan, in which Danny had warmed the maple syrup, Dominic was boiling the butternut squash; he would mash it up and mix it with maple syrup, and add the butter when he returned to town. On Friday night, together with the stuffed roast chickens, he would serve scalloped potatoes with the whipped squash. This was arguably Ketchum’s favorite meal; most Fridays, Ketchum ate some of the meatless pizza, too.
Dominic was feeling sorry for Ketchum. The cook didn’t know if Ketchum truly believed they would find Angel in the spillway of the upper dam Sunday morning, or if Ketchum hoped they would never find the boy’s body. All the cook had determined was that he didn’t want young Daniel to see Angel’s body. Dominic Baciagalupo wasn’t sure if he wanted to see Angel’s body-or ever find the boy, either.
The pot of water-in which the cook had poured a couple of ounces of vinegar, for the poached eggs-was coming to a boil again. For breakfast, he’d served the lamb hash with poached eggs, but when he served the hash as a midday meal, he would just have lots of ketchup handy; poached eggs didn’t travel well. When the water and vinegar came to a boil, Dominic poured it over the cutting boards to sterilize them.
One of the sawmill workers’ wives had made about fifty bacon, lettuce, and tomato sandwiches with the leftover breakfast bacon. She was eating one of the sandwiches while she eyed the cook-some mischief was on her mind, Dominic could tell. Her name was Dot; she was far too large to be a Dot, and she’d had so many children that she seemed to be a woman who had abandoned every other capacity she’d ever conceivably possessed, except her appetite, which the cook didn’t like to think about at all. (She had too many appetites, Dominic imagined.)