The Hauntings of Hood Canal

by Jack Cady

  The Hauntings of Hood Canal

  Jack Cady

  Underland Press

  For Stephen Becker (1927–1999)

  Great man, great friend, great writer

  “I don’t like either one of us, you sonovabitch, but I’m sorry.”

  Nathan Ballingrud

  Jack Cady is one of those writers whom I keep expecting to make a big splash, but who never quite never caught on with the public imagination. He’s what’s known as a writer’s writer, which is at once the highest compliment and the kiss of death. Cady wrote prolifically and beautifully, gliding with an almost unbelievable grace over the perceived limitations of genre. His body of work offers all the particular satisfactions of fantasy while at the same time—to borrow a phrase from Salman Rushdie—it “aspires to the condition of literature.”

  My first encounter with Jack Cady’s fiction came when I was in my early twenties. My friend, the writer Dale Bailey, turned me on to a story called “The Night We Buried Road Dog,” published in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction. I was a young writer with ambitions of my own, and this story seemed like a revelation to me. Cady wrote with a lyrical beauty of a kind very rarely encountered in genre fiction—or anywhere, really—and, equally as striking to me, he wrote about country people. They may have been from the Northwest, about as far from my own Southern context as one might get and still be in the contiguous United States, but I recognized those people all the same: poor, struggling, often born wretched, yet striving for some personal definition of nobility.

  Jack Cady showed me how wide the sweep of fantasy fiction could be, and how beautiful its expression. I went on to read much more: The Well, The Off Season, The Sons of Noah. Then we separated for a while, as often happens between a reader and a writer when both continue to grow and evolve. Cady became a pleasant abstraction to me; an atmosphere I might access from time to time, as though I were an astronaut visiting a favorite moon.

  Coming to The Hauntings of Hood Canal, all these years later, I am struck by how my perception of his writing has changed. While I am as hypnotized as I ever was by his poet’s eye for specificity and lyricism, I realize now that the people he was writing about—indeed, the world he created, over and over again—was less grounded in objective reality than in a kind of dream-America, a fantastical construction based on our best possibilities, both as a country and as individuals. In this novel especially, we are offered a kind of American myth, in which the the urge for justice must come to some kind of reconciliation with the moral ramifications of achieving that justice.

  The protagonists of this book are misfits. They are bartenders, hustlers, truckers, and the assortment of peripheral oddballs that populate every small town. They are, for the most part, an honest people. Even the hustlers adhere to a moral code. There is a nobility to the con, a right way to do it and a wrong way. The hustler is a romantic figure here; he is a rebel, an individualist, an anti-government agent in the spirit of Thoreau. (You only have to read Cady’s eloquent and damning letter to the IRS, called “Dear Friends”, to see how personal this spirit is.) [Editor’s note: see the recent collection, Fathoms, for this piece.]

  Even the dog—the loftily named Jubal Jim Johnson—is treated as an equal by these folks, with deference shown to his opinions and forgiveness given to his eccentricities. He is respected equally by Cady himself, who provides him with his own point of view chapters, in which we are provided an interpretation of the proceedings according to his peculiar wisdom.

  At first blush, some of these depictions might come across as naive. It might seem that Cady is indulging in a nostalgia for a time that never really existed at all. But he is cannier than that. This all serves a purpose.

  There are signs of incursions into this charmingly dissolute world. Land developments to the north, slumming visitors from a more affluent city, and, as we are told in the first chapter, a man who “messed with children.” A darkness is falling.

  Running through town, and through the narrative itself, is Hood Canal, “branching from dark waters of Puget Sound and growing even darker as it runs a black furrow east of the Olympic Mountain range.” The canal “runs with geologic indifference before trailer parks, boat moorings, bars, bait shops, and villages. Cresting waves break wild as oceans when our world lies flogged by storms, although on windless days the Canal holds the calm of a black and nigh bottomless lake.”

  Lately Hood Canal has “turned ugly,” and has taken to swallowing cars whole. Only fools and out-of-towners ride along its banks at night.

  And on the second page of the book, we learn that gentle, “angelic” Sugar Bear killed the man who messed with children. “If Sugar Bear hadn’t, someone else would feel obliged.”

  Cady takes his community of noble misfits and sends it crashing into the morally ambiguous territory of modern life, and it is from this collision that The Hauntings of Hood Canal derives its power. What follows is a complex drama of good people operating at cross purposes, love struggling to be born, tragedies and betrayals, and, yes, a monster dragging people into the canal to drown. As the title indicates, there is more than one kind of haunting in this story.

  “All this had to happen,” Sugar Bear says at one point, wrestling with the magnitude of what he’s done. “There’s stuff that’s gonna happen no matter what anybody does, and this was some of that stuff. That don’t mean it’s right.”

  And later, speaking to the man he killed: “I can’t alibi you. I can’t alibi me. I don’t like either one of us, you sonovabitch, but I’m sorry.”

  The Hauntings of Hood Canal is a wrenching examination of a system of ethics which runs hard against the end of its viability, and of what happens to it then. And shot through it all is the beautiful prose for which Cady is so famous, the kind of writing which makes other writers jealous.

  A woman watching the stars sees a satellite winking across them, “a peeping piece of tin.” This same woman, a few moments later, remembers talking to the trees as a little girl. “The trees always answered, and held odd, tree-like opinions.”

  And here is the reminiscence of a fisherman, whose “long lines had brought from the depths colorful creatures, gasping and strange. The lines snagged an occasional carcass, sea lion, or seal, or other things. Since much of this happened in mist, and since mist is ghostly, the fisherman (like most of his clan) had seen many-a-thing walking across the water, some of those things vaguely human.”

  The book you have here is something rare and amazing. It’s full of wisdom, poetry, hope, and sadness. As in real life, not all hope is rewarded, and not all sadness goes unsolved. There is a monster here, and there are good people who wonder if goodness is a thing that can be held onto. There is not necessarily an answer to that question.

  One day, maybe, the world at large will discover Jack Cady, and copies of his books will tumble from over-stocked shelves. He will be spoken of in the same breath as Ray Bradbury and Fred Chappell. The Hauntings of Hood Canal will be fire the imaginations of a thousand young, ambitious writers hoping to do half as well. Until that day comes, though, you and I will have to keep it alive. By reading it, by talking about it, and by passing it on.

  —Nathan Ballingrud

  March 2016

  And then the headman turns to the bones. For the bones a platform has been built of oak; and a stout tanned hide shelters the bones from wind and rain. The bones are of several small people, perhaps children, perhaps the smaller forefathers that figure in ceremonial tales of the ancient hot green land to the south. Thirty years ago, when these bones were taken, the headman declared that they were old, indeed, older than any bones yet seen by him, older than any head taken by the Wild Wa; perhaps even older than the headman
's grandfather's grandfather's grandfather. In those days men and gods roamed the earth together, and copulated freely; these bones are surely the relics of living gods.

  —Stephen Becker, The Blue-Eyed Shan

  The Road

  The road beside the Hood Canal runs snaky, the Canal branching from dark waters of Puget Sound and growing even darker as it runs a black furrow east of the Olympic Mountain range. The Canal was carved by the last ice age. It is dolomite and granite­ walled, wider than the Mississippi, and darker than a bad man’s thoughts. It runs with geologic indifference before trailer parks, boat moorings, bars, bait shops, and villages. Cresting waves break wild as oceans when our world lies flogged by storms, although on windless days the Canal holds the calm of a black and nigh bottomless lake.

  In daylight the road carries locals who are easy in their minds and tourists who are tightlipped and white-knuckled. Since tourists are accustomed to freeways the road seems to them a narrow path beside a watery hell. There are no guardrails.

  Locals know the road and stay off after midnight. Bars and roadhouses close at eleven PM. Men pack up pool cues, or put away their darts. Wives or girlfriends bundle up against the wind. Everyone gets home before the road “turns ugly.”

  During long night hours when the road is ugly a few trucks pass this way, or a traveling salesman, or a tourist who has ventured too far from cities. If the Canal reaches out and swallows a car, or if the road dumps a truck into those cold waters, the people who perish are strangers.

  And, sometimes, people turn ugly. More than a few “sensitives” have roamed these parts:

  Chantrell George once wore visions at his throat, having made necklaces of hallucinogenic mushrooms.

  Sugar Bear Smith had a girl’s pretty looks, and a girl’s gentle ways, but those things slipped after he killed a man.

  Greek Annie is a witch who talks to frogs and reptiles, and who lately called down storms.

  Petey Mullholland and Bertha, of Bertha’s Beer and Bait Shoppe, resemble pool sharks.

  And Miscellaneous, which is to say, there’s a scatter of beer drinkers, top fallers, wharf rats, loggers, and other humble but possibly sainted folk; the most inconspicuous being a thoughtful character known as the fisherman, the youngest being a truck driver called the tow-truck kid.

  Even some animals act better than they should. Jubal Jim Johnson, who runs with Petey, and who is a blue tick hound, likes to bay cuss words across dark water, raising his snout toward a clouded moon while pretending he is a wolf.

  There wasn’t a dangerous one among them. Even Sugar Bear was angelic. He only killed a man because that man messed with children. If Sugar Bear hadn’t, someone else would feel obliged.

  So, when the road and Canal seemed to get ambition, and took more cars than usual, folks first looked to see if anyone had “gone ugly.” During last summer and fall thirteen cars—at least thirteen we know about—got swallowed by the waters. That was different. Always before the Canal only took one car a year, or at most, two. The wholesale dunking began after Sugar Bear killed the man.

  Police divers came up from the state capital. Police, who knew nothing of the murder, swarmed that road, held roadblocks for testing booze, and before it was over lost one of their own.

  The best cop of the lot, a nice guy, seemed fated. He was swallowed by darkness; and we learned it was not a person or the road that pulled cars into the Canal and caused drownings.

  But, it took a long time to learn that. Everybody waited while traffic experts measured sight distances. Engineers found the only way to put up guardrails would be to sink pilings along the entire road, a job too expensive for dreaming. Then cars stopped drowning willy-nilly and concentrated in one spot.

  A crane worked full time. It snaked cars like lifeless fish when divers found them. The cars held bodies, mostly, although two people got free of the cars; a mixed blessing. The Canal is not only cold; it’s hungry.

  Petey and Bertha . . . and the Fisherman

  Petey Mullholland generally hangs out at Bertha’s Beer and Bait Shoppe where pool tables are famous for being level. Beer and Bait is a dandy building fronting the road with the Canal running at its back. There’s a small finger pier with fuel pumps. The parking lot is large, graveled, and well drained, which is generally the way we build them in Washington state.

  It was on a sunny day in that dark summer that Petey entered, knocked back a glass of lemonade and stared through an open window. The Canal lay tranquil as the mind of a monk, although beneath the surface anything could be going on. Beyond a back window, but before the Canal, Jubal Jim Johnson dozed in full sun, his nose twitching from dog dreams of chasing varmints. Petey wrinkled his own nose and seemed pleased with the way it worked. He turned to Bertha.

  “I bin up and down the road. Everything looks the same except for some people we don’t want to know. State cops, mostly.” He unpacked his cue stick, screwed it together, and checked the premises for “live ones.” A fisherman sat in a far corner of the large room. He nursed his beer and cared nothing at all for a joust at pool with Petey.

  “I know a girl who dated a cop, once. It was more-or-less an education.” Bertha, who is thirtyish and taller than Petey, sat at the end of the long bar. Her blond hair is nicely streaked with grayish tint, her eyes are blue and canny, her tones sound mostly gentle; although Bertha has never hired a bouncer, having seen no need to pay others for work she enjoys. Still, men along the road dream fond dreams of her. Simply told, Bertha is gorgeous.

  “It’s either good or bad for business,’’ she said about the police and divers and the drowned. “Hard to tell which just yet.” She looked toward the Canal, then to the front door and the road. “But I see no business now.” She pulled her favorite cue from its place behind the bar.

  They’ve shot pool for a real long time, this blond Norwegian, and Petey, who owns less pedigree than his dog. Petey is sort of Indian and sort of Spanish, both in the darker traditions; but his bald spot is English, his artistic hands no doubt Italian, or probably Portuguese. He’s maybe ten years older than Bertha. The two shoot a game so complicated only they understand rules they’ve made up. All standard pool games are too easy.

  Jubal Jim Johnson snoozed beyond the windows, then gave a quick yip. A cloud ran across the sun. Jubal Jim came dashing through the doorway like a sudden shower. He looked real uneasy.

  “Bear?” Bertha chalked her cue, talking to Jubal Jim, getting ready to razz him.

  “Maybe.” Petey walked to the doorway, watched a passing Dodge, looked toward the mountains and forest and then stepped onto the porch. Jubal Jim sat behind the screen door pretending to be brave, which, if it was a bear, was possible.

  The cloud cleared the sun. The world brightened. Petey walked toward the Canal. Water swirled near the shore. The water sort of humped up, then spread, then turned to wavelets. Petey shrugged, walked back inside, picked up his cue. “Better sleep on the porch,” he said to Jubal Jim. “And watch that show-off mouth.”

  “Break,” Bertha said to Petey, “unless fear holds you back.” Her smile denied her words and her fingers touched her hair, pushing it back across her shoulder. Bertha looked like a teenage girl practicing seduction moves before a mirror.

  Petey set the cueball beside the racked balls, gently popped it three rails to come back and tap the head ball. The rack broke a little, the one, two, and three balls drifting off a couple inches. The cueball nestled against the four, freezing the board.

  “If I was a dog,” Petey said, like he talked to no one in particular, “I’d hire a cat to sleep out there by the water.”

  “If you was a dog,” Bertha told him, “you could shoot pool better.” She fired a shot two rails. The cueball danced down on the one ball, tapping it into a corner pocket. The cueball drifted across and freed up the seven. “Cops,” Bertha said, “lead snoopy lives. Sniyn’ worse than hounds.” She looked at Jubal Jim. “You’ll forgive it.”

  “Mom always told me the p
oliceman was my friend.” Petey chalked his cue with moves delicate as a girl. He never rubs the chalk or smears it. It’s just dab, dab, dab until he gets a level surface. “Of course, Mom always claimed my daddy was my daddy.”

  Sometimes his mouth gets ahead of his good sense. He turned to watch the Canal and hide his embarrassment. A yacht slid down the eastern shore, outward bound. Petey blushed red as a faded three ball.

  They dance around each other, this blond Norwegian and her too-shy pool partner. For a while people took bets on how long it would take them to conjugate, but time ran on and the bets ran out. Then there was talk that neither one knows what themselves look like naked, being too shy to stand in front of a looking glass. Considering all the razzle-dazzle that goes on in beds around here, we find Bertha and Petey sort of endearing.

  “Safety,” Bertha said in pool language and tapped the two ball one rail. The cueball touched the three ball, then sat solid as a stump behind racked balls. The three ball fled to the other end of the table and nestled against the rail like two-part harmony.

  “These are state cops.” Petey tried to sound detached. “They’re different than city cops. Take my word.” Petey knows as much as a man needs about city cops. He has to journey to Seattle or Portland or Vancouver when his money runs low. He hustles pool, then returns to the Canal. He keeps his skills honed at Beer and Bait.

  “Cops are cops.” Bertha watched Petey’s shot. He cued from behind the rack, heavy right-hand English, and the ball went two rails to end up maybe three-quarters of an inch from the three. Petey muttered something under his breath, something poolish.

  “Gotcha,” Bertha said, “or at least I got a little run.” She set to work and it was a dazzler. Showtime. Balls falling, thump. Ringling Bros.

  “Take my word,” Petey told her. “These cops are different.” He sat on a barstool watching Bertha loosen that rack, peel off a ball, sink it while loosening another. Sunlight set Beer and Bait aglow. The three pool tables stood like spectators beside a hardwood dance floor large enough for twenty couples smooched together tight; plus a bandstand large enough for piano, drums, and a couple guitars. Chairs and small tables surrounded the dance floor, the tables now sitting in gloom. Sunlight only stretched so far before petering off into shadow.