The Hauntings of Hood Canal

by Jack Cady

  The fisherman stood, stretched, scratched, then walked to a window. He moved fisherman-smelly through late afternoon, a man home from a month’s work, walking easy and slouched with tiredness. He was not about to ask Bertha for another beer while she was in the middle of a run.

  “It mostly happens nights,” he said. He continued to look through the window onto the Canal. “It’s humping again. Putting on quite a show.” Beyond the window a hump beneath the water moved toward the channel like the burp from a giant carp, a carp bigger than a walrus or a whale, bigger than a blimp. Water spread across the calm surface, roiled, and nothing showed—no fin, no rolling body. The fisherman turned to where Bertha knocked down the last of the run. He carried his empty beer bottle. Bertha stays friendly when you bus your own table. Beer and Bait is a nice place for people who are polite.

  “And you’re right about those cops,” the fisherman said to Petey. Whereas Petey is about forty and sharp, this fisherman was mid-thirties and qualified as the thoughtful type. He carried wrinkles on his forehead and his face was craggy; like it claimed first cousin to a sea eagle. “These boys act like they know what they’re doing. Makes a nice change, copwise.”

  The cops we know are generally not bright, and the cops we know enjoy being nosy. They like to pack .357 magnums, pistols so big that if they ever went off, would scare the living christmas out of their owners. Our cops like to pull pretty girl tourists over, give them a ten minute talking-to, then let them off with a warning. Our cops draw weekly pay and treat the locals like people in custody even when we aren’t. Our cops are country boys, plain and simple, who got jobs on the cops because their talents led them away from honest work.

  “I could be wrong,” Bertha admitted. “I was wrong once before. When I bought into a mortgage.” She looked over the premises and her look was sweet. She checked out chipped Formica on the tables, looked at the polished sweep of the solid oak bar, at the twirly advertising hung here and there by beer salesmen. She counted herself lucky, as anyone could see, and even sunlight that showed certain imperfections—scratches on the dance floor—a bullet hole in the bandstand—did not take away her vision of the place.

  Jubal Jim snored and gave a little woof as he dreamed of chasing varmints, then poked his nose farther between his paws and kept snoozing. The fisherman, thoughtful, watched him with envy. Petey murmured something low and doggy. Jubal Jim opened one eye, licked his nose, and went back to sleep. A beam of sunlight warmed his fur. Everybody felt pretty dreamy, thinking how it must be if you are a hound hanging out at a nice bar where you are obliged to sleep all day and run all night.

  Of course, during the night you meet every kind of creature from rabbit to wolverine, and you learn to use good judgment. More than likely, you also run into whatever it is, out there, that makes the road turn ugly.

  “Customers,” Bertha said as tires crunched gravel beyond the open doorway. “Go ahead and rack ’em,” she told Petey. “It’s an hour before things get busy.” Bertha did another flip at her hair, smiled broad as only a Norwegian can, and turned to greet whoever was just then slamming the door of a truck.

  A Kid Arrives

  Footsteps danced on the porch, then a young man who seemed filled with promise came through the doorway and blinked as his eyes adjusted to inside. He stood no taller than Petey but as muscular, and he moved like a kid practicing ballet or karate. Nothing about him suggested anything but a deep thirst, plus a regular dose of young lust. He looked around for girls, saw none, and figured thirst was the only itch he could scratch. He seemed polite, hazel-eyed, dishwater blond, only a little dense, possibly shy. He said, “Howdy.”

  The fisherman sat at one end of the bar pretending to ignore the kid. Petey leaned against a pool table waiting for the next game. Bertha smiled, drew the kid a beer, and for some motherly reason stayed to talk.

  “You’ve not been in before,” Bertha said. “Passing through?”

  “Hauling wrecks,” the kid said. “Wet ones.” He tried to say it conversational but it was a failure. Bertha gave him credit for trying.

  “One of them fish they’re pulling from the creek?” Bertha looked toward the Canal but stayed rooted behind that bar. She was absolutely, completely, one-hundred-percent not going to be first to head out and look at the wreck. The fisherman did not budge. Petey stroked the cueball two rails into a corner pocket while whistling a show tune. The kid, being a kid, expected more. He took a lick of the beer. “Nice dog,” he said. Jubal Jim opened one eye, growled, returned to snoozing.

  “Pretty busted up?” Bertha pretended nobody’s feet were on fire to tear out for a look at the tragedy.

  “I’ve towed worse, but nothin’ this weird.” The kid stepped to the doorway, looked toward his truck, and the kid wasn’t faking. He might be a little scared, but he was really and truly sad. “Two people,” he claimed. “A guy and a lady. Hell of a thing to do to a Buick.” The kid really was light on his feet, like a boxer or tumbler. “Folks from north of here,” he said to Bertha. “Up at the development.”

  ═

  He talked about a housing project, and about how the road is situated. Bertha’s Beer and Bait, with pool tables and fuel dock, sits like a fulcrum for the road. Beer and Bait lies almost exactly halfway along the Canal, and the Canal runs from the head of Puget Sound to the state capitol in Olympia.

  At the north end of the road, thirty miles from Beer and Bait sits Al’s Dock, known locally as the Rough and Randy. Just north of Rough and Randy, where the dead people came from, sits a high-priced housing project for retired presidents, white-collar criminals, stock market types, and other folk for whom no one on the Canal has any time. “Because,” as Sugar Bear Smith often explained, “if you got morals you might as well use ’em.”

  About thirty-five miles south of Beer and Bait, near the Capitol building in Olympia, Lee’s China Bay Taverna flaunts pinballs, fantan, cribbage, tap beer, a bartender who is wise, and Lee, as wily an Oriental as can be found in any moving picture. For a number of reasons that will later appear, a sense of magic and mystery always hovers around China Bay.

  To the west stand mountains, to the east the Canal, and everything not road or water is covered by trees. Rain keeps things nicely washed nine months out of twelve, and skies turn blue for tourist season. On clear nights Greek Annie looks to the stars and puts curses on satellites sailing high above; curses indiscriminate toward nationality or economic belief. Through most of the year the skies seep gray rain, or fill with lowflying cloud scud.

  ═

  “A’ course it’s busted up a little,” the kid said about the Buick. The kid was not going to be denied the reputation he had coming. The fisherman, kinder than required, took a final pull at his beer. “Got to git,” he said. “Still got some cleanup on the boat.” He walked casual to the door like a man reluctant to go back to work, and he was worth admiring. The kid remained unsure, but hope just oozed from his pores. The fisherman hesitated in the doorway and reflected on the view. He said to no one in particular, “Better come look at this.” Charity, the preacher tells us, is the greatest of the virtues.

  The kid was off the hook. Petey moved so casual anyone could see why he is such a good hustler. Bertha came from behind the bar and she carried a bar rag. That rag kind of advertised that she was too busy attending to the wreck to pretend she wasn’t.

  There are some who claim a Buick is a pretty sorry sight to begin with, though none of them are Republicans. This Buick threw a chill across the sunlit afternoon. It sat on a trailer, being impossible to tow from a harness because the wheels could never, ever track. The car was not quite twisted into a corkscrew, but twisted it was; twisted so the gleamy grill had broken loose and dangled from one small bolt. The roof bulged, as though raised from within by a hydraulic jack; or it might be the bulge came from some sort of awful suction on the outside. The windshield had popped out and must now lie at the bottom of the Canal. The trunk lid stood half raised, and two deep scratches ran the
length of the car, like it had slid away from something that grasped it with iron fingernails. Beneath sunlight, streaks of mud dried on royal purple paint.

  The wreck would make the bravest man feel timid. When that windshield popped, water would have crashed in like a cold and suffocating hand. Those people would not have seen a thing, and maybe that was the only lucky part.

  And, when it comes to the imagination, this wreck worked different from other wrecks where body metal shears, or glass shatters, or fires leave their imprints on paint. This wreck had done nothing to itself, no crash, no burn, no damage from hitting tree or telephone pole. This wreck had been done unto.

  “You hear about it and it don’t seem real.” Bertha shuddered and looked at the Canal. “It’s real.” She spoke to the kid. “Did you see those folks?”

  “. . . talked to a guy who did.” The kid had lost all his brass. He didn’t even pretend he wasn’t scared. “They were kind of blank. That’s all the guy said. Just kind of blank . . . I don’t know what that means . . . they weren’t in the water more than a couple days.”

  “I’d be fearful just towing that thing,” Bertha said. “I give you credit.”

  “It sure don’t beat a dish of ice cream,” the kid said. “It durn near don’t beat walking.”

  Petey climbed on the trailer and looked through the window on the driver’s side. “Nothing broke. Sopping wet. Air conditioner switch on high. Headlight switch on. They were cruisin’.”

  “I’ve got work on the boat but this drives me towards another beer.” The fisherman walked back into Beer and Bait.

  “Me too,” the kid said. “One more beer won’t bust a Breathalyzer.”

  The Wrecks—Three Views

  The kid became a regular at Beer and Bait as he averaged a tow a week. His truck, all lights and hook, looked almost cautious as he hauled wrecks on a trailer. The wrecks still caused people’s hearts to go dull with fear and wonder.

  The kid worked up a routine of two beers and talk at Bertha’s, because Beer and Bait is friendly. Then he hauled to the police lot outside the Capitol. Then he finished off with a beer or two at Lee’s China Bay Taverna. The kid became a kind of newspaper. He connected the south end of the road with the middle. Messages went back and forth.

  “Lee’s bartender says the Canal’s no different than ever,” the kid confided to Bertha. “If something’s different, it’s not made of water. That’s a smart bartender.” The kid looked uneasy.

  “. . . smart enough to stay away from here, anyway.” Bertha, who figures herself for smart, claimed people at the south end had no right judging what went on toward the middle. “Next we’ll hear from up north. Al’s Rough and Randy will form a posse.”

  “Nothing too sober,” Petey told the kid. “Al’s is more randy than rough.”

  While Bertha took to the kid in a motherly way, Petey hustled him like a father teaching a son about hazards. The kid proved brighter than he looked, catching on to Petey’s hustle in under fifty bucks. The kid, and everyone else, still shivered when looking at the wrecks.

  Meanwhile, worry spread up and down the road as more local people saw more drowned cars:

  Greek Annie found herself at the site of the biggest haul which was not even a car. A drowned tractor-trailer was pulled glowing like a red sunrise from beneath the water. Annie, who at twenty-two is young for a witch, and actually pretty gorgeous when she brushes her hair, watched from the woods where she gathered herbs. She muttered and promised to take a lesson about who and what she cursed. This was a wholesale grocery truck, and, while Annie could never remember cursing groceries, she thought she might have once said a word or two on behalf of trucks or truck drivers. She watched as the silver trailer slid back into dark water where it remains. She watched as the red tractor got pulled ashore. The fiberglass cab squashed inward, like someone ran it through a giant garbage compactor. When the coroner’s men pried the truck door Annie discovered that she had been watching about thirty seconds too long. She headed for Bertha’s Beer and Bait at a slow trudge, which is not her nature. Her elfin face can ordinarily find a smile, and her lithe body is that of a runner. She is often seen trotting like a college girl who jogs, hoping to impress a quarterback.

  ═

  And Chantrell George, whose visions are sometimes induced and sometimes not, took no lessons; that being his nature. He walked his bike along the shoulder of the road as a little foreign car was pulled ashore, squashed like the middle part of a sandwich. Chantrell stopped to watch while keeping fast hold on his bicycle. The bike has no chain because Chantrell doesn’t ride, but it has nice baskets front and rear. He pushes it along the shoulder as he peddles legal mushrooms, saving the other kind for himself and a select group of consumers. He sometimes comes up with a stone tool, or other Indian relic, scrounged from the forest. A village lies back there beneath an ancient mudslide. The relics bring a couple of bucks. Chantrell George just misses being a deadbeat, but scrapes by on small bills and change. Plus, some nights he tends bar.

  Chantrell watched the car, this one orange, and as usual he looked like a raggedy scarecrow. His long brown hair lies greasy over thin shoulders, framing a thin face that carries amber eyes alight with things that to other people are unseen.

  Visions lie behind those eyes, and in a vision Chantrell saw the orange car stewing in subterranean fires of an undersea volcano. Then the car rose through dark waters as it was trailed by pink sea lions. The orange and pink caused darkness to turn to sunrise, and sunrise changed the car into a chariot pulled by giant pigeons. The pigeons gradually tired and the chariot fell toward the sun. Chantrell George pushed his bicycle away from the scene as he analyzed the vision. He walked right past two state cops. He was too busy to have time for them, and they were too busy to notice the illegal merchandise riding openly in the front basket of the bike.

  ═

  Still, Sugar Bear Smith, who is pretty as his name, and as big, had it worst. Sugar Bear stumped his toe on a wreck scene as he meandered toward Bear and Bait. Sugar Bear arrived during late afternoon on one of those miserable northwest days when the thermometer hits seventy-five and proposes to go higher. Sugar Bear, whose beard and mustache are brown and furry, and whose hands can bend steel rebar, closed down his blacksmith forge, closed up his tool repair shop, and went on strike against the weather. He shambled from the woods as easygoing and smilely as a satisfied saint.

  The police crane stood waiting. It snaked out a small, red­with-top-down sports car. The car came up empty. The driver’s spirit dwelt no doubt in heaven, or possibly elsewhere, but the driver’s remains were forever below in the Canal, along with all other mistakes people make in the presence of deep water.

  Sugar Bear tsked, said a few prayerful words, hummed a couple bars of a hymn and felt he’d done his duty. His shamble turned into a stroll as he resumed his trip to Beer and Bait. Then his stroll ended.

  A nice looking man and an attractive woman watched the red car dangle from the crane like a sea creature that has been hooked for so long it’s dead. The two were in their fifties, well-dressed, and the woman clung to her husband like someone about to slide from a cliff. He held her as close as love or fear can cause. His eyes blinked, his face ran with tears. He murmured to his wife, consoling words that did not console. Other people stood in a group, gawking. The gawkers watched the sorrow and took pleasure in sensation, like people reading headlines on papers at the grocery.

  “Cheaters,” Sugar Bear said to himself about the gawkers. “Gyppers.” Sugar Bear walked quickly from the couple’s sorrow. He knows when he can help and when he can’t. If those people mourned a son or daughter lost forever in that dark water, their mourning deserved privacy. Sugar Bear walked quickly, because, while it takes a good bit to make him mad, he doesn’t like himself when he is mad. Vulgarity sometimes makes him explode. The cheaters probably didn’t know they were vulgar, and they sure didn’t know they were in danger; even if cops were present.

  The Murder
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  Not all fishermen are thoughtful, or at least not around here, but the one thoughtful fisherman we do have would put it this way: “If a tree falls in the forest, and there is no one around to hear, there may not be any sound. It follows then, if a corpse gets pitched into the Canal when there are no witnesses, maybe there has been no murder.” This particular fisherman says stuff like this all the time, because, while he is thoughtful, most folks claim he isn’t very bright.

  And then, there is Sugar Bear. Not all blacksmiths are dear men, but Sugar Bear is; a man who lives in a fairy tale or a poem. His blacksmith shop and tool repair sit in a mossy glade. If his small house sported a little gingerbread it would fit nicely in a children’s book. Or, if in a poem, Sugar Bear would fit with Longfellow’s, “Under a spreading chestnut tree / The village smithy stands; / The smith, a mighty man is he, / With large and sinewy hands . . .”

  Of Sugar Bear’s transgression, if it was a transgression, a few things need saying. There were no witnesses to the dumping of the body but there were three witnesses to the transgression: Chantrell George, Greek Annie, and Jubal Jim, a combination that would make any defense lawyer believe in providence.

  One other piece of business needs saying: this road, these trees, these mountains, and the Canal form a setting for people who forgive most mistakes, cut slack for others’ dumb opinions, but who will not budge the thickness of a sheet of paper when it comes to essentials. Some things here are not done, or if they are, the doer had best run to the nearest cop.