That he couldn’t remember was why the sheriff had eventually stopped drinking. Years ago, when Ketchum had first told Danny and his dad about “the new teetotaler in Coos County,” both the cook and his son had laughed about it-they’d positively howled.

“Cookie’s got to get out of Boston -that’s for starters,” Ketchum said now. “He ought to lose the Del Popolo, too. I’m going to tell him, but you’ve got to tell him, too, Danny. Your dad doesn’t always listen to me.”

“Ketchum, are you saying it’s inevitable that Pam will tell Carl everything?”

“As inevitable as the fact that one day, Danny, the cowboy is going to beat her up.”

“Jesus!” Danny suddenly cried. “What were you and Mom doing when she was supposed to be teaching you to read?”

“Talk to your dad, Danny-it’s not my business to tell you.”

“Were you sleeping with her?” Danny asked him.

“Talk to your dad, please,” Ketchum said. Danny couldn’t remember Ketchum ever saying the please word before.

“Does my dad know you slept with her?” Danny asked him.

“Constipated Christ!” Ketchum shouted into the phone. “Why do you think your dad busted half my head open with the damn skillet?”

“What did you just say?” Danny asked him.

“I’m drunk,” Ketchum told him. “Don’t listen to what I say.”

“I thought Carl cracked your head open with his Colt forty-five,” Danny said.

“Hell, if the cowboy had cracked my head open, I would have killed him!” Ketchum thundered. As soon as the logger said this, Danny knew it was true; Ketchum would never have tolerated having his head cracked open, unless Dominic had done it.

“I saw lights on in the cookhouse,” Ketchum began, suddenly sounding weary. “Your mom and dad were up late talking, and-in those days-drinking. I walked in the screen door to the kitchen. I didn’t know it was the night your mom told your dad about her and me.”

“I get it,” Danny said.

“Not all of it, you don’t. Talk to your dad,” Ketchum repeated.

“Did Jane know?” Danny asked.

“Shit, the Injun knew everything,” Ketchum told him.

“Ketchum?” Danny asked. “Does my dad know that you didn’t learn to read?”

“I’m trying to learn now,” Ketchum said defensively. “I think that schoolteacher lady is going to teach me. She said she would.”

“Does Dad know you can’t read?” the young man asked his father’s old friend.

“I suppose one of us will have to tell him,” Ketchum said. “Cookie is probably of the opinion that Rosie must have taught me something.”

“So that was why you called-what you meant by ‘Something’s up’ in your letter-is that it?” Danny asked him.

“I can’t believe you believed that bullshit about the fucking bear,” Ketchum said. The bear story had found its way, in a more remote form, into Daniel Baciagalupo’s first novel. But of course it hadn’t really been a bear that walked into the kitchen-it had just been Ketchum. And if the bear story hadn’t been planted in young Dan’s heart and mind, maybe he wouldn’t have reached for the eight-inch cast-iron skillet-maybe he wouldn’t have imagined that the sound of his father and Jane making love was the sound of a mauling-in-progress. Then maybe he wouldn’t have killed Jane.

“So there wasn’t a bear,” Danny said.

“Hell, there’s probably three thousand bears at any given time in northern New Hampshire -I’ve seen a bunch of bears. I’ve shot some,” Ketchum added. “But if a bear had walked into the cookhouse kitchen through that screen door, your father’s best way to save himself, and Rosie, would be if the two of them had exited the kitchen through the dining room-not running, either, or ever turning their backs on the bear, but just maintaining eye contact and backing up real slowly. No, you dummy, it wasn’t a bear-it was me! Anybody knows better than to hit a bear in the face with a fucking frying pan!”

“I wish I had never written about it,” was all Danny could say.

“There’s one more thing,” Ketchum told him. “It’s another kind of writing problem.”

“Jesus!” Danny said again. “How much have you been drinking?”

“You’re sounding more and more like your father,” Ketchum told him. “I just mean that you’re publishing a book, aren’t you? And have you thought about what it might mean if that book were to become a bestseller? If suddenly you were to become a popular writer, with your name and picture in the newspapers and magazines-you might even get to be on television!”

“It’s a first novel,” Danny said dismissively. “It will have only a small first printing, and not much publicity. It’s a literary novel, or I hope it is. It’s highly unlikely it’ll be a bestseller!”

“Think about it,” Ketchum said. “Anything’s possible, isn’t it? Don’t writers, even young ones, get lucky like other people-or unlucky, as the case may be?”

This time, Danny saw it coming-sooner than he’d seen it in Mr. Leary’s classroom at the Mickey when the old English teacher made his “bold suggestion” about the boy possibly losing the Baciagalupo. The pen-name proposition-it was coming again. Ketchum had first proposed a version of it to both Danny and his dad; now Ketchum was asking Dominic to lose the Del Popolo.

“Danny?” Ketchum asked. “Are you still there? What’s the name for it-when a writer chooses a name that’s not his or her given name? That George Eliot did it, didn’t she?”

“It’s called a pen name,” Danny told him. “Just how the fuck did you meet the schoolteacher lady in the library when you can’t even read?”

“Well, I can read some of the authors’ names and the titles,” Ketchum said indignantly. “I can borrow books and find someone to read them to me!”

“Oh,” Danny said. He guessed that was what Ketchum had done with his mother-this in lieu of learning to read. What had Ketchum called the reading-aloud part to Dominic? Foreplay, wasn’t it? (Actually, that had been Dominic’s word for it. Danny’s dad had told his son this funny story!)

“A pen name,” Ketchum repeated thoughtfully. “I believe there’s another phrase for it, something French-sounding.”

“A nom de plume,” Danny told him.

“That’s it!” Ketchum cried. “A nom de plume. Well, that’s what you need-just to be on the safe side.”

“I don’t suppose you have any suggestions,” Daniel Baciagalupo said.

“You’re the writer-that’s your job,” Ketchum told him. “Ketchum kind of goes with Daniel, doesn’t it? And it’s a fine old Coos County kind of name.”

“I’ll think about it,” Danny told him.

“I’m sure you can come up with something better,” Ketchum said.

“Tell me one thing,” Danny said. “If my mom hadn’t died that night in the river, which one of you would she have left? You or my dad? I can’t talk to my dad about that, Ketchum.”

“Shit!” Ketchum cried. “I heard you call that wife of yours ‘a free spirit.’ Katie was a lawless soul, a political radical, a fucking anarchist, and a coldhearted woman-you should have known better, Danny. But Rosie was a free spirit! She wouldn’t have left either of us-not ever! Your mom was a free spirit, Danny-like you young people today have never seen! Shit!” Ketchum cried again. “Sometimes you ask the dumbest questions-you make me think you’re still a college kid who can’t properly drive a car, or that you’re still a twelve-year-old, one your dad and Jane and I could still fool about the world, if we wanted to. Talk to your dad, Danny-talk to him.”

There was a click, followed by a dial tone, because Ketchum had disconnected the call, leaving the young writer alone with his thoughts.