But “No Lucky Star,” or what was left of it, went out on the airwaves. In northern New Hampshire, there was a country radio station—my uncles’ favorite—that played it all the time. Uncle Martin had told Nora that he and Johan always sang along when “No Lucky Star” was on the radio, but my uncles would insert the original lyrics, which they knew by heart.

Before the turn, Uncle Johan had overtaken a car of fall foliage gawkers; the leaf peepers later reported that the brake lights of my uncles’ truck not once flickered on in the upcoming curve. My uncles knew the Kancamagus; Nora said they drove it all the time. But there were no skid marks on the road where Uncle Johan had missed the turn. A logging truck was coming toward them, through the pass; the logger later said that both men appeared to be singing, but their eyes were fixedly on the road. They were not speeding, the logger said, but their steadfast determination compelled the logger to keep watching their truck in his mirror.

The logger said Uncle Johan seemed to speed up as he drove off the Kancamagus; as Nora and I preferred to imagine, those two Norwegians never stopped singing. The logger stopped his truck, put on his hazard lights, and made his way to the wreck. Nora and I would imagine a cluster of trees, an outcropping of rocks. The leaf peepers had stopped their car, too; one of them followed the logger through the trees or over the rocks. They could hear the truck’s radio—it was still playing.

“The dumb guys had no lucky star,” Damaged Don was singing. “No, dumb guys have no lucky star.”

“Those two weren’t dumb—they knew how to have a good time, and they knew when to call it quits,” was the way Nora saw it.

It looked like an accident to the leaf peepers. Uncle Johan may not have been speeding, one of the foliage seekers reported, but he appeared to be driving too fast for the curve; maybe he misjudged the particular turn.

The logging truck driver saw it more the way Nora saw it. “Those guys looked like they knew what they were doing,” the logger said.

We’ll never know, but Uncle Martin and Uncle Johan weren’t cut out to be River Benders. Those two Norwegians were telemarking men; they liked to go telemarking through the trees. Their bend in the river was a turn in the road.

33. JUST SMALL ENOUGH