The Hauntings of Hood Canal

by Jack Cady

  In the parking lot of Beer and Bait a new Cadillac sat beside Bertha’s Chrysler, while California cars mixed with plates from Oregon and Idaho, a geographic cohabitation of machinery parked tight as the curl in a little pig’s tail. Here and there, in the parking lot, a Kenworth loomed above cars and pickups, including the tow truck kid’s V10 Dodge.

  As the fisherman inched along, stuck on the only road that led to Sugar Bear, he heard noise from Beer and Bait that mixed with blare from the tape deck. Bertha had loaded the thing with mellow stuff, tranquilizer stuff, but mighty loud. The fisherman viewed the parking lot, saw one guy checking cars for orphan goods . . . the fisherman, startled, thought of Chantrell. Then he saw it was not Chantrell but some other deadbeat. Meanwhile, from the tape deck, no fewer than a thousand violins belted “Stranger in the Night.”

  Traffic stalled so bad a guy had to set stakes to see it move. The fisherman could only follow a state-owned dump truck, painted orange, fulla rip-rap, driven by a guy forced into overtime without pay. In the fisherman’s mirrors a Dodge crummy-wagon, muddy and glass-cracked, followed too close since it probably had no brakes.

  Likely, the fisherman told himself, very likely this day before pool tournament would be worst. As days wore on, optimists would fail, do sideways betting, and go home busted. Amateurs would tire and hustlers would stay until easy money ran out. Locals would be in and out, some wistful; it was hard to tell what rich guys would do.

  Because oncoming traffic from the north held expensive iron, Cads and Lines and Jags, plus campers longer than a bad girl’s dreams. Rich guys were coming in for another contest, were gonna get blown out . . . the fisherman paused, watched the orange back-end of the dump truck and told himself, naw, nope, no way. Rich guys might be dumb about pool hustle, but they weren’t dumb about hustle. They would not make the same mistake twice; well, with women, maybe, but not with money.

  And riding beside the drivers, a butterfly perched on the passenger side of each car. The butterflies seemed confined when they should be aery. But, how colorful they were, how lovely. At least from distance.

  The state dump truck showed turn signal to the right, and the fisherman realized the three-mile-an-hour crawl had brought them to the dunk site. Air brakes hissed and the truck pulled off the road. The fisherman found himself behind a new Ford pickup pulling a new utility trailer; the truck too snazzy to use as a truck, the trailer full of trashed electronics: outmoded record players, typewriters, computers, and the dead eyes of televisions.

  The fisherman looked into the dunk site where a two-foot hunk of rebar lay on churned ground pounded clean of vegetation. Shrubs that once concealed Petey and the fisherman looked like they had barely survived the worst storm of an unhappy year. Douglas fir stood shorn of lower branches. The yellow crane stood tilted, but not quite enough to be scary. It hovered above cuts and gullies where something had scooped or cut, like giant claws.

  A ‘course, the dump truck would not be here because of the battle of a while ago. Rip-rap would have been ordered earlier. It looked like something a government would figure, rip-rap over shingle, concrete over rip-rap, and a wall rising above concrete; the whole business sliding into the Canal in the first really bad winter.

  In the fisherman’s mirrors the crummy-wagon began to steam as low speed caused overheating. The driver revved the engine to rush air through his radiator. Wind showered the road with fir tips. The driver gave up and pulled off the road. Behind him, the fisherman now saw a cop car. The cop pulled over. He stopped beside, and not behind, the crummy-wagon. Now, in the fisherman’s mirrors, and following too close, a Volvo station wagon rolled in quiet Swedish snootiness.

  The fisherman watched as the cop climbed from his car. This was an older cop, a guy who should be flying a desk and not running road. He walked to the crummy-wagon, careful to keep the junker between himself and the Canal.

  With the Ford in front and the Volvo behind, the fisherman inched along like the middle part of a vehicle-sandwich. Wind continued steady at twenty. The fisherman looked at the back of his hands as they hung on the steering wheel. He tried to feel something, horror or sadness or anger, and felt nothing. He figured he must still be in shock. His hands seemed mere curiosities. They held wrinkles he could not remember. One hand twisted, cramped, but at least it was alive and painful. His wrists seemed thinner. When he finally reached the turnoff to Sugar Bear’s place, he cursed himself for vanity. He actually feared being seen. Then he thought of Annie, and feared what he was about to see.

  Sugar Bear’s pickup stood with its front bumper hovering over the front step of the fairy-tale house. Sugar Bear, or maybe Annie had at least managed to get to the front door. The fisherman pulled toward the shop, backed, got his own truck pointed back toward the road. Cut the engine. Watched.

  Maple leaves large as hubcaps blew across the ground, dry and crispy, some skeletal. When rains came the leaves would slick up, then molder and turn to soil. When the fisherman stepped from his truck, though, the leaves crunched and crackled and seemed satisfied. From the forest, where wind moved the tops, dead twigs rattled as they fell.

  Windows in the shop were dark, windows in the house even darker. Light seemed blown away by wind as afternoon turned to gloaming. The fisherman rubbed his crippled hand, wondered why he felt distant from his own problems. He thought that he thought too much.

  He stepped from his truck, walked to the door, knocked and entered.

  ═

  Small wrinkles on her upper lip, strands of gray in hair long, flowing, but having twisted also by a turmoil of wind. Annie stood before the stove waiting for water to heat. Dim light of gloaming lay across her face as early evening marched through windows to cast dark shadows and turn solid objects gray. Annie, girl-like even now, brushed hair from her cheek with fingertips, looked apologetically at the fisherman, looked more closely. She stood mute.

  “Where?” The fisherman figured Sugar Bear was still alive, or Annie would not be heating water. Annie would be weeping.

  She pointed to the bedroom, turned her attention back to the stove. Her shoulders slumped, but her body tensed against fear or fatigue. Her shoulders seemed thinner.

  The fisherman wished to go to her, told himself, “No.” He was not an intimate part of her world. He was a shadow against larger scenery, a helping shadow maybe, but nothing about him, was, for Annie, very real.

  When he walked to the bedroom he expected worse than what he first saw. Sugar Bear lay propped on pillows and one hand beckoned, while the other moved. His arms were not dead like the cop’s. Sugar Bear’s furry face looked nearly jovial, a man telling a joke, a guy about to deliver a punch line.

  “Katzanjammers,” Sugar Bear said. “Aloysius. Sardines. Bejab­bers.” His voice filled with laughter. Then he became serious, explaining: “Best if you fried it. Seventeen naughty miles. I gotta girl from whatchamazoo, zoo, zoom-ly.” He shook a finger, like an admonishing mom, or like a teacher ticking off point one, point two. “The hunny bunny hunny hop,” he said with satisfaction, as if some complex matter had been explained.

  “You’re full of it,” the fisherman told him, hoping there was something in Sugar Bear’s wrecked mind that could hear. “Quit crappin’ me around.”

  Sugar Bear smiled broad, like the painted smile of a clown. Darkness in the room gathered around the smile, and face-fur moved like it tried to clasp the mouth shut. Sugar Bear smiled and smiled.

  The fisherman returned through darkness to the kitchen. It seemed that no amount of light could fully illuminate this small house. “Tell me.”

  “It manifested.” Annie now sat at the kitchen table. On the stove something simmered and smelled herbal. “It looked almost like the dead guy, only not quite finished.” She looked at the backs of her hands, took a strand of long hair and brought it forward, studied streaks of gray, puzzled. “Why did he hafta? We could have run. Have to? What’s wrong with guys? What are we going to do?”

  She was aware of how she loo
ked and wasn’t exactly thinking of it, but the girl part still reacted. She brushed tangled hair with her fingers, automatic; trying to put a shape to things, arranging life.

  “Gonna do?” He stood puzzled. “We figure what we can do, or what we can’t. Tell me more.”

  “We were attacked in daytime, right here. Coldness came into this kitchen and it was strong. It wouldn’t run.”

  The fisherman remembered how coldness had entered the house once before, and how Annie chased it away. “It wouldn’t leave?”

  “So Sugar Bear went after it. I went because he feared leaving me alone. What came from the Canal made sounds that were almost words. It was redhead like the dead guy, and it simpered. Like it was happy about being awful.”

  The fisherman thought of Annie’s fear, of his own, that Sugar Bear might tangle with something he couldn’t handle. “How close were you?”

  “There wasn’t a fight,” Annie said, “or at least not much. When Sugar Bear went after it stuff started happening in the water. Water flying everywhere.” Annie studied wrinkles on the backs of her hands. “I could feel it crawling on me.” She stared, almost impassive. “What has happened? What has? I just turned twenty-three.”

  “It steals life,” the fisherman told her. He looked toward the bedroom. “Now it steals consciousness.” He understood that the power of thought was what the thing needed to completely manifest.

  “There’s a war going on,” he told Annie, “but not a bull-war, a real one. Something ugly tries to get free of the Canal and something very big and very old tries to prevent it.” He told what he knew.

  “Why here? Why us?” She looked toward the bedroom.

  Windows darkened as gloaming faded to night. In the forest deer bedded down, cougars began to stretch and move like kings among the lesser night animals. Mice instinctively sought cover although wind kept owls from accurate flight. From the bedroom Sugar Bear hummed a show tune and spoke in clear pronouncements of the joys of root beer and cabbage.

  Annie stood, walked to the stove, tasted whatever simmered there. “I don’t know enough,” she whispered. “I should have paid more attention.”

  It was the second time she had said that. The fisherman knew that Annie had learned from a grandmother. He did not know what or how much.

  “This won’t work,” she whispered, “but it’s all I know.” She watched the simmering pan like she could read messages. “You got to eat something,” she said to the fisherman. “So does Sugar Bear. Me too. I’ll fix it.” She turned to the refrigerator, not like an old, old woman, but not like a young one. “Don’t leave us,” she said. “It might come back. Please.”

  He could sleep across the truck seat. It would not be the first time. He figured nothing was going to happen. Whatever darkness dwelt in the Canal had been wounded. But, she needed him here.

  “Sleep in the shop,” she said. “We’ve got sleeping bags.”

  Bertha Troubled

  Night blew into the northwest, wind backing and shifting as it rose from the ocean. Sleepy sailors stood watch on bows and bridges of tankers, tugs, destroyers, container ships and cutters. Sailors wore foul weather gear and thought of storms birthing out of Russia, the Aleutians, and Japan.

  Along beaches tiny filaments of sand flew like mist above sturdier grains, and thin moonlight pressed through blown mist. Wind walked from beach to land, blew into cities as cops cruised three AM streets, and street people huddled beneath freeway overpasses.

  And wind wrapped around joints. It tumbled butts and crud from the paved parking lot of China Bay. It nagged at cedar shakes roofing Beer and Bait. It salted Rough and Randy with needles of fir. At the housing project yachts rocked against fenders, and wind, as if it held dour opinions, blew on past and headed for Montana.

  In the joints a few things happened. At Rough and Randy two rats nibbled spilled potato chips beneath a red nightlight. At China Bay an aura of luminescence appeared above the bar, maybe reflection from the moon, maybe.

  At Beer and Bait, Bertha sat, sleepy, but in charge of an empty bar, that come ten AM would fill with poolish hopefuls. Bertha did not quite know what she felt, or why. She was tired from stocking and icing beer, storing nuts and chips and microwave sandwiches, pickled eggs and sausages to serve a mob of poolers snacking their ways hour to hour.

  She ought to sleep but her mind raced with fears and problems. Talk along the road claimed the cop was dead, or if not dead, dying, or if not dying so wrecked he’d never work again. A lot of talk was bull, but Bertha knew Canal stories and this was serious.

  Bull said other things. Cops were gonna rampage. Joints would be closed . . . but Bertha figured herself an expert on Canal stories and discounted all that.

  In dim light from beer signs, this tall, well-formed woman, almost scandalously beautiful, not a little troubled, and only mildly mercenary, wanted a man; and had just lost what might have been a good one . . . but that was not the point.

  Bertha wondered how guilty she was, and did she actually have anything to do with this? She had led the cop on and then run him off. Bertha experienced a dark night of the soul, the kind once talked about by an old-timey saint who saw dark nights as opportunities for learning something.

  But, people having dark nights generally don’t think of opportunity, plus they can’t sleep. Beyond the windows wind whacked trees, blowing at twenty knots. Thin moonlight lay on the water. Across the shaft of light a hump moved, slower than usual, like an underwater limp.

  She mourned the cop. She might’ve said something, or done something that would have kept bad stuff away, but she did not know what. Bertha, who was older than Annie, but not as old as the fisherman, had business experience. She did not have much experience of other kinds. This was her first brush with losing somebody who meant something, or might’ve meant something; a real person hurt and gone.

  And if that wasn’t bad enough, Petey’s hustle did not include her, because Petey would’ve said something by now. A ‘course, Petey was still playing at being dead.

  And if that wasn’t bad enough, her arrangement with rich guy had her fearful. He put up prize money, she hosted the tournament and he supplied help, a secretary for himself, a couple of kid bartenders for Bertha. He paid the secretary. Bertha paid the bartenders. Plus, she was overstocked, heavily, with enough stuff to run the joint for two months and enough cash to pay for half of it.

  The whole day had been confused. At opening time rich guy showed up with a secretary and two kid bartenders. The kids were quick, funny, and smart enough not to play games at the cash register. She stored stuff, then mostly sat and watched.

  The secretary registered a long, long string of poolers, collecting ten bucks a pop. Guys signed up in teams, or if they had no team were assigned partners. The secretary restricted time on each pool table to fifteen minutes because poolers needed to learn the tables. Guys stood watching other guys, estimated the roll, the possible tilt, saw where one cushion was a little low which might cause the ball to hop. They ran fingertips across the mouths of pockets, feeling for ridges or declivities that might louse up a gentle shot. On this day before tournament, poolers drank beer like it was nourishment. When the tournament started beer sales would drop.

  Rich guy stayed in the background. When player lists were posted Bertha spotted part of the setup. Each rich guy was teamed with a known hustler, which meant, of course, that the winner was already decided.

  Bertha did the math because she had to. She figured the rich guys invested ten thou, were taking back three from sign-ups, and would split the ten thou prize with the hustlers. That totaled an eight thousand buck take-back for rich guys. If that was the case, there remained a two thousand dollar investment that was not covered; but the hustler-factor was present. Likely, most likely, rich guys figured to split side bets with hustlers, which ought to mean a small profit. Otherwise, the only thing that made sense was revenge; but was revenge worth two thousand bucks?

  In subdued light from a couple be
er signs Bertha did not know whether to mourn or fear, but knew both needed doing. When the pool lists came out, the name, Petey Mulholland, was nowhere seen. It wasn’t normal, it was fearful, actually . . . the all time champ hustler of the entire northwest, with a ten grand pot . . . and Bertha needed him like never before. Love had something to do with it, but not a helluva lot. In the dimness of Beer and Bait, Bertha tried to persuade herself that rich guy was not running his own hustle. She was not succeeding.

  Petey would know. Maybe Petey did know. If Petey did know, Petey would maybe save her . . . or maybe Petey wouldn’t. She felt such fears, even as Jubal Jim lay snoozing but protective at her feet.

  Beyond the windows where wind moved tips of branches, moonlight cast a streak across water; and clouds blew past, sometimes making the streak go dark. Along the streak the hump patrolled, like it sought moonlight, or at least, light. It moved across the mile long width of the Canal, back and forth, like a prisoner pacing a jail cell, or a caged animal; except the movement was so slow. To Bertha it seemed the entire weary world was going sour. Things had been pretty good until that monster showed up. She told herself, “Slow down. Get a grip. You’re scared and blaming anything that comes along.”

  She watched the hump move along the path of light. It meant something, probably, but it might mean nothing to her. Or maybe, like her, it mourned the cop, or, like her, felt guilty.

  Or maybe it was a wakeup call telling her to keep close watch. Because, truth to tell, while she knew she was a good pool shot, she had fooled herself She understood that pool was one thing, hustling quite another; and she was a failed hustler.

  Everybody Is Doing What Everybody Does on Sunday

  How gay and glorious dawned the day. What optimism ran from hearts bent to poolish competition, or corruption. And what fair chance dictated this day of sun? And everything so lovely, as traffic backed up and the last maple leaves of autumn danced before a twenty-knot wind.