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"Well, Ketchum was bein' your friend," she said, letting the cook limp past her to the door in the kitchen area. "Watch that step, second from the top," she reminded him.
"You ought to ask Ketchum to fix that step for you," Dominic said.
"Ketchum removed the step--so he could hear someone comin' up the stairs, or sneakin' down," Six-Pack informed the cook.
There was no doubt Ketchum had to take certain precautions, Dominic was thinking, as he let himself out the door. The missing step awaited him--he stepped over it carefully. The depressing music from the dance hall hit him on the stairs. Teresa Brewer was singing "Till I Waltz Again with You" when the wind blew open the door the cook thought he had closed.
"Shit!" he heard Pam say.
Either the wind or the dance-hall music momentarily revived Ketchum--enough for the riverman to make a final comment before Six-Pack slammed the door. "Not so fucking lucky now--are you, Lucky?" Ketchum asked the windy night.
Poor Pinette, Dominic Baciagalupo was thinking. Lucky Pinette may already have been past hearing the question--that is, the first time Ketchum had asked it, if he'd really asked it. (Certainly, Lucky was long past hearing anything now.)
The cook skirted the shabby hostelry bars with their broken, interrupted lettering.
NO MINO S! the neon blinked at him.
TH RD BEER FR E! another sign blinked.
After he passed the neon announcements, Dominic would realize he'd forgotten his flashlight. He was pretty sure that Six-Pack wouldn't be friendly if he went back for it. The cook tasted the blood from his split lip before he put his hand to his mouth and looked at the blood on his fingers. But the available light in Twisted River was dim and growing dimmer. The dance-hall door blew (or was slammed) closed, cutting off Teresa Brewer as suddenly as if Six-Pack had taken the singer's slender throat in her hands. When the dance-hall door blew (or was kicked) open again, Tony Bennett was crooning "Rags to Riches." Dominic didn't for a moment doubt that the town's eternal violence was partly spawned by irredeemable music.
Out in front of the saloon where the Beebe twins had been fighting, there was no evidence of a brawl; Charlie Clough and Earl Dinsmore had managed to pick themselves up from the muddy ground. The Beaudette brothers, either murdered or passed out, had roused themselves (or been removed) from the old Lombard forwarder forever occupying the lane alongside the dance hall, which it would almost certainly outlive.
Dominic Baciagalupo wove his way forward in the darkness, where his limp could easily have been mistaken for the tentative progress of a drunk. At the bar near the hostelry most frequented by the French Canadian itinerants, a familiar figure lurched toward Dominic out of the dark, but before the cook could be certain it was Constable Carl, a flashlight blinded him. "Halt! That means 'Stop!' Arrete, if you're fuckin' French," the cowboy said.
"Good evening, Constable," Dominic said, squinting into the light. Both the flashlight and the windblown sawdust were causing him problems.
"You're out kinda late, Cookie--and you're bleedin'," the constable said.
"I was checking up on a friend," the cook replied.
"Whoever hit you wasn't your friend," the cowboy said, stepping closer.
"I forgot my flashlight--I just bumped into something, Carl."
"Like a knee ... or an elbow, maybe," Constable Carl speculated; his flashlight was almost touching Dominic's bloody lower lip. The boilermakers on the constable's rank breath were as evident as the sawdust stinging the cook's face.
As luck would have it, someone had upped the volume on the music from the dance hall, where the virtual revolving door was flung open again--Doris Day singing "Secret Love"--while Injun Jane's two lovers stood face-to-face, the drunken cowboy patiently examining the sober cook's lip injury. Just then, the favorite hostelry of the French Canadian itinerants rudely disgorged one of the night's luckless souls. Young Lucien Charest, yipping like a coyote pup, was hurled out naked and landed on all fours in the muddy road. The constable swung his flashlight toward the frightened Frenchman.
It was deathly quiet then, as the dance-hall door slammed shut on Doris Day--as abruptly as the indiscriminate door had released "Secret Love" into the night--and both Dominic Baciagalupo and Lucien Charest clearly heard the knuckle-cracking sound of Constable Carl cocking his absurd Colt .45.
"Jesus, Carl, don't ..." Dominic was saying, as the constable took aim at the young Frenchman.
"Get your naked French ass back indoors where you belong!" the constable shouted. "Before I blow your balls off, and your pecker with 'em!"
On all fours, Lucien Charest peed straight down at the ground--the puddle of piss quickly spreading to his muddy knees. The Frenchman turned and, still on all fours, scampered like a dog toward the hostelry, where the mischief-makers who'd thrown the young man outside now greeted him at the hostelry door as if his naked life depended on it. (It probably did.) Cries of "Lucien!" were followed by French-speaking gibberish too fast and hysterical for either the cook or the constable to comprehend. When Charest was safely back inside the hostelry, Constable Carl turned off his flashlight. The ridiculous Colt .45 was still cocked; the cook was disconcerted that the cowboy slowly uncocked the weapon while it was pointed at the knee of Dominic Baciagalupo's good leg.
"You want me to walk you home, little Cookie?" Carl asked.
"I'm okay," Dominic answered. They could both make out the lights of the cookhouse, uphill from the river-basin end of town.
"I see you got my darlin' Jane workin' late again tonight," the constable said. Before the cook had time to consider a careful reply, Carl added: "Isn't that boy of yours gettin' old enough to put himself to bed?"
"Daniel's old enough," Dominic answered. "I just don't like leaving him alone at night, and he's wicked fond of Jane."
"That makes two of us," Constable Carl said, spitting.
That makes three of us! Dominic Baciagalupo was thinking, but the cook said nothing. He was also remembering how Pam had pressed his face between her breasts, and how close she had come to suffocating him. He felt ashamed, and disloyal to Jane, because Six-Pack had also aroused him--in a peculiarly life-threatening way.
