The Hauntings of Hood Canal

by Jack Cady

  Suburbs grew from cornfields faster than those same fields have ever produced grain. Universities expanded like the castles of wizardry. A transportation system of rails had been sufficient to run a war. It was insufficient to run a peace. The trucking industry doubled, then doubled again, then doubled again. In 1939 I remember being driven twenty miles so our family could ride on a new section of three-lane road. By 1945 that road was scrap, although it was still the best road around. By 1950 it was laughably obsolete. In 1944 it was still possible and practical, because of rationing, to make horse-drawn deliveries on the streets of major cities. By 1947 the vestigial remains of the work horse had disappeared. Our hero had no time to waste on inefficiency.

  The initial step of revolution was to build. For a while it did not make much difference what was being built, as long as one stone was placed on another. When concrete was poured for a new foundation no one asked why. No one cared to ask. Poor no more, they would be poor no more.

  . . . it was at moments such as these that he (Frank Hirsch) felt most alive he thought because he was seeing in his mind a deal like this and elaborating it and it was these moments that he lived for but not because during them and out of them he had developed his best money-making schemes that were now paying him dependable profits and someday the profits would be bigger a lot bigger, no. The thing itself was the thrill . . . .

  —James Jones, Some Came Running

  Like Gatsby, Nixon was a boy scout. That is here taken to mean of an innocence which suspects thought, a fatuousness that collects baseball cards of some denomination, and a respect for the conventional wisdom. J. Edgar Hoover was a boy scout. Gerald Ford appears in such a line-up as a Cub. These men, held to be representative of two separate generations, have as much to do with our hero’s generation as a balsa model of a Piper has to do with a Tri-motor. The Tri-motor was awkward and ungainly but it flew. The Piper is slick with glossy paper and enamel and it is powered by a rubber band.

  There never has been, and likely never will be again, a nation more enamored of education than was this nation in the late ‘40s and the ‘50s. At a time when one half of one percent of the British population ever saw the inside of a university, the U.S. opened every door and built new doors, sometimes for the sheer joy of opening them.

  What was meant by education is another matter. We look at then, look at now, shake our heads and understand. Poor no more. They went to school in order to achieve success. They were hungry enough to cultivate hunger of belly and mind against the time when there would never be hunger again, anywhere. When one considers that this was the age of the rebuilding of Europe, the rebuilding of Japan, the Marshall Plan, and the wild and indiscriminate sharing and spreading of wealth through the world, it is clear that this was not a generation of Gatsbys and Nixons. They were revolutionaries. They were idealists as well. The new faith was a faith in universal wealth. In the ‘60s the faith would turn to dogma as it became clear that the revolution was lost. My friend remembers her father, our hero, as an exciting man when she was a child. He invented things, worked incredible hours and taught radical ideas. As she grew older, it seemed to her that he changed.

  The faith turned to dogma because of the education they sought. That generation produced few philosophers and fewer theologians. It produced countless scientists, social scientists and designers of systems. There was no system they could not design, and today, as the systems wear thin and fall apart, it is not because of the original design but because of the overload . . . and they were not philosophers.

  The Reformation of the ‘60s was a direct result of a lack of philosophy in these revolutionary idealists. They had broken the old rules and they had paid the price in madness, guilt and suicide. Now they would pay another price. Since they had no philosophy to teach their kids, they had thoughtlessly trotted out the philosophy they had learned as kids. It was a way of life tailored and tested for community in a fundamentally agrarian system. It still worked well in Kansas, though not too well in Topeka.

  I realize you have this very big love and you want to do some very fine things with it. But I’m afraid you won’t be able to do anything beneficial until you really start to think and get inside what’s causing this love. You are going to have to think very clearly about basics and about the moves you can make to bring about changes in the things you see wrong. It doesn’t do any good to get angry. It doesn’t do any good for you to sit here with me unless you can find in all this something of your own to say.

  —Buckminster Fuller

  As the system failed, and it did most starkly fail, the revolution died. Our hero watched his friends become dogmatic and he felt the same. To this day he does not understand what happened, and neither do I, and perhaps no one does. I do know this:

  They raised a generation of kids to believe in expectations that became increasingly unreal in the world that was building. Their attitude was unreal. If I have heard it once, I have heard it ten thousand times that, “My kid is not going to have to put up with what we went through.”

  When they turned out a predictable percentage of spoiled brats they could not understand why. When their peers, through affluence, began to turn into aging spoiled brats, they did not understand why. When the kids began demonstrating and the boy scouts shrieked of God and Patriotism and “Love it or leave it,” they felt betrayed. In protecting their revolution some turned to hatred, some to indignation, and most became silent . . . a silent majority that feared the failure that was now upon them. A majority facing more banality and lies and exploitation, as they had faced it since 1920. Piles of red tape lay at their feet. This is not what they had meant; it is not what they had meant at all. There was no way to say what they had meant. They had forgotten to try to put it into words and it was too late to put it into tears.

  . . . 1973 Newport Jazz Festival . . . Gene Krupa, his health rapidly deteriorating, had dragged his weary body to make the gig . . . He (Benny) was deeply concerned, as were those who knew how sick Gene really was, and as I look back upon it now, I have the feeling that the reason that Benny didn’t play especially well that evening was because for one of the few times in his life he was concerned with something that mattered even more than his music.

  —George Simon

  Soon it will be time for them to pass from the scene. They will take their contrary mules, their memories of bread lines, their hallowed halls without ivy. They will pack them up and go. It is predictable that they will pass in silence. There is nothing more to say.

  It was a vision, perhaps. Perhaps it was only an illusion. It was the memory of the memory of a dream. It was awkward and maybe as useless as a grounded silver plane with its nose pointed at the air; and yes, yes, dear friend, it all happened before the Theatre of the Absurd.

  Welcome Sweet Springtime

  As winter turns to spring the woodpile gets to looking small and lost and lonesome. Wind still humps along this northwest coast, bringing snow and rain from out of Alaska. People still hunch before stoves while admiring the thought of daffodils. Sometimes even the oldest heads and hands get caught with knowing we’ve got more winter than they’ve got woodpile. That’s what happened to Mitchell around crocus time, and a month before the daffodils.

  You’d think the man would blush. He’s been at this business of living for eighty-four years, and he’s shoved enough fir and pine and alder into stoves. He’s toasted his shins with heat from maple, cherry, pear and apple. During the Great Depression he even heated with dry corn mixed with rabbit droppings. The man has seen his share.

  He still got caught, though, and had to go out hunting; which, when you’re eighty-four, means firing up the rusting pickup and chugging down to Water Street which runs long and pretty empty this time of year. Mitchell doesn’t much hold with chainsaws, but doesn’t mind buying wood from men who do. In this small town there won’t be many jobs until spring tourist season.

  Our young guys rob timber company slash piles, then park their trucks on Water S
treet. People walk along checking the loads. A good mix of seasoned fir and madronna brings the highest price.

  So Mitchell went out shopping, and probably told himself and everybody else that they don’t grow firewood like they used to.

  He likely fussed and poked and prodded and thumped like a man adrift in a melon patch. He’d never stoop to haggling, but you can bet he claimed prices were mighty dear. Anyway, he comes home in triumph, trailed by a wide-side pickup full of wood. The youngster driving is grateful and hiding it. Cordwood brings ninety dollars, and the kid sure needs ninety dollars. You can tell by looking at his truck.

  The whole business turns out sort of liberating. Winter around here tucks us into our houses. We wave across wet or snowy lawns as we trundle to the woodpiles. There’s Dave and Sally’s small place, and it couldn’t be more clean and tidy if it was Dutch. Across the street sit the disabled apartments where social workers put up folks who need a lift. There’ s my place next to them, and Mitchell across from me. Christine and Ed live in the apartments and kind of make the place a point of interest.

  Ed is blind and in a wheelchair, but he’s got a good mind for stories. He records them on tape for others who have his problem.

  And there’s the crazy lady, Sarah Jane, who cranks up volume on her record player and dances before her front window, usually wearing clothes. She owns a good heart, though. Mostly. But that’s getting ahead of the story.

  Just as the wood truck backs into Mitchell’s yard, along comes a break in the clouds. The snow is nearly melted after rain, and it’s like nature spoofs Mitchell who got nervous and bought wood. It’s like nature says, “Mitchell, old son, I’ve tricked you all over again, because here comes a warm spring. “

  The break in the clouds is just enough so everyone can get out and superintend the wood truck, plus catch up on all the happenings. I go over, and my new pup bought before Christmas trails along; the new dog in the neighborhood.

  Ed and Christine’s dog is Shadow, but Shadow doesn’t live here anymore except in memory; which we all have lots of. I’m the youngster in this neighborhood, being only sixty-one.

  The pup makes a hit with the kid, and of course that takes time from unloading. The black-haired kid and the brown-furred pup go skylarking off somewhere, and I ease up to the firewood with a critical eye. Mitchell stands looking proud and shamed; proud because he’s bought well-seasoned fir, and shamed because he had to in the first place.

  “It looks real good,” I tell him. He grunts, still standing tall as a ladder, but bent as a warped board, and ready to change the subject. His hands are larger than his thin arms say they ought to be. He’ll be two days stacking that wood. Maybe Dave and I will help, if Mitchell’s pride can handle it.

  Dave and Sally step from their house and walk toward us, Dave walking straight, like the soldier he once was; Sally wearing a red scarf and looking pretty frail. If Dave did not check the load he’d bust.

  From out of a stand of scraggly weeds the pup pops loose in that jack-rabbity way pups have. The kid comes back to his truck, breathing deep but not winded. Now we’ve got a crowd. The kid starts to unload. Balks of fir fly, hit the ground, thump and roll.

  We talk about firewood and pups. Then we talk about Sarah Jane who went to hospital yesterday. Sarah Jane didn’t take her medicine, and that made her get a butcher knife and go after Christine. Christine ducked in the house and called 911. Ed couldn’t see a blamed thing, being blind, and, being in a wheelchair, in no shape to tussle a knife.

  This business about Sarah Jane is news because sometimes I forget to open my drapes. When 911 came I missed it. I tsk and tush and figure something will happen next.

  The kid has his load coming off thumpity-thump. I’m holding the pup so she won’t dance under a flying hunk of fir. Christine comes from her apartment. She’s still a pretty woman, but care­worn. She has her hardships, but still congregates real easy. It isn’t the firewood that draws her, but the first meeting of the neighborhood this spring.

  A squincy lot of snow still lingers among some weeds, and Christine has to get enough together so the pup can chase her first snowball. Christine throws the ball about eight feet, and the pup does what we expect. She jumps after the snowball and gets all confused when the thing falls apart. In between dead weeds a little green is starting to perk, and that’s a good sign of early spring, and a good sign Mitchell’s been bamboozled.

  “She’s going to look like a beerkeg on stilts,” Christine says about the pup, who is half lab and half spaniel.

  “But with a very fine smile,” I tell her. The break in the clouds disappears, and gray northwest mist sits high in the trees.

  “I dread the day when we lose ours,” Sally says, and everybody is polite. Dave and Sally have a mutt who is nobody’s favorite, being a bad-tempered loudmouth, and rowdy. Sally just got over a dead-serious bout at the hospital, and now she’s got to make it through spring; because, have you ever noticed, how, if old folks are going to slide, they do it just before spring?

  “I couldn’t bear to get another dog,” Sally says, and everybody thinks the same thing but nobody talks. Dogs live ten or twelve years. There isn’t a mother’s son or daughter in the neighborhood with a real long chance of outliving a pup, even though it’s a responsibility; something I’d better think about.

  The kid bangs his fingers between a couple hunks of wood, and cusses under his breath but not loud. That means he’s had some raising from somebody.

  “Things got sort of exciting yesterday.” Sally says this noncommittal in case Christine doesn’t want to talk about it, but Christine does.

  “I hope she’s going to be all right,” Christine says. “I worry over Ed. He feels helpless as it is.”

  “Sarah Jane’s okay when she takes her medicine. “ Dave thinks Sarah Jane is a nut, but defends her. Defending folks is what Dave does best.

  We stand around thinking about all this. The doctors say Sarah Jane is paranoid schizophrenic, and it’s probably something wrong with her system and not her brain. She talks to herself a lot, but, hell, I talk to myself a lot.

  “I honestly don’t know whether I hope she comes home or not. “ Christine looks kind of guilty. “We have our own problems. I feel like a hypocrite. “

  “It’s cheaper to buy wood midsummer,” Mitchell murmurs.

  He’s not wandering, exactly. He’s trying to change the subject because Sarah Jane scares the spit out of him. When his wife died, Mitchell got defensive. Nobody was around to stand between him and reality. Mitchell’s one of those dreamers without the steam to make dreams happen. He’s just cruised these many years. Then he lost Mary, and Mary is now like Shadow; living here just in memory.

  The pup wiggles in my arms. The last of the wood flies off the truck. The kid has broken a good sweat, a tall kid and kind of skinny. The pup wiggles harder. She’s found a new friend, and she’s ready for more skylarking.

  “The state people might not let her come back,” Dave says about Sarah Jane. “Those government people don’t like inconvenience. “

  “Nothing to feel guilty about,” Sally tells Christine. She touches Christine’ s hand, kind of sympathetic, then holds onto Dave’s arm.

  I set the pup on the ground. Sarah Jane has her own personal grocery cart that she pushes four blocks to the store. The store manager puts up with it. I wonder if 911 returned the grocery cart. Meanwhile, Mitchell heads toward his house to get money for the kid. Sally and Dave and Christine sort of drift away. Sally leans a little on Dave, her red scarf a spot of color on this gray northwest afternoon. Skylarking starts up between pup and kid. A breeze comes by, promising the temperature will hit sixty.

  It looks like all of us will make it through another spring.

  I look at the heap of wood, knowing that winters and woodpiles and lives never come out exactly even; but the red and golden fir is beautiful to see. Young creatures are beautiful. I watch the kid and pup. The kid throws a stick. The pup knows exactly what to do.
It’s easy to understand why Sarah Jane goes crazy, but I’m not sure my reasons and her reasons match.

  About the Authors

  Jack Cady (1932-2004) won the Atlantic Monthly “First” award in 1965 for his story, “The Burning.” He continued writing and authored nearly a dozen novels, one book of critical analysis of American literature, and more than fifty short stories. Over the course of his literary career, he won the Iowa Prize for Short Fiction, the National Literary Anthology Award, the Washington State Governor’s Award, the Nebula Award, the Bram Stoker Award, and the World Fantasy Award.

  Prior to a lengthy career in education, Jack worked as a tree high climber, a Coast Guard seaman, an auctioneer, and a long-distance truck driver. He held teaching positions at the University of Washington, Clarion College, Knox College, the University of Alaska at Sitka, and Pacific Lutheran University. He spent many years living in Port Townsend, Washington.

  Resurrection House, through its Underland Press imprint, is publishing a comprehensive retrospective of his work in a project called The Cady Collection.

  Nathan Ballingrud was born in Massachusetts in 1970, but has spent most of his life in the South where he studied literature at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and at the University of New Orleans. In addition to writing, he’s been a cook on oil rigs and barges, a bouncer at a strip club, and a bartender in New Orleans. His first collection, North American Lake Monsters from Small Beer Press, won the Shirley Jackson Award, and was shortlisted for the World Fantasy, British Fantasy, and Bram Stoker Awards.

  The Hauntings of Hood Canal is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used in an absolutely fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons—living or dead—is entirely coincidental.