Fathoms (Collected Writings)

by Jack Cady

  “I’ve shot horses that looked healthier than you two guys,” he said, but said it sort of husky.

  Matt motioned toward the bulldozer. “This is illegal.”

  “Nobody ever claimed it wasn’t.” Mike was ready to fight if a fight was needed. “Anybody who don’t like it can turn around and walk.”

  “I like it,” Matt said. “It’s fitting and proper. But, if we’re caught there’s hell to pay.”

  “I like most everything and everybody,” Mike said, “except the government. They paw a man to death while he’s alive, then keep pawing his corpse. I’m saving Jesse a little trouble.”

  “They like to know that he’s dead and what killed him.”

  “Sorrow killed him,” Mike said. “Let it go at that.”

  Jesse killed himself, timing his tiredness and starvation just right, but I was willing to let it go, and Matt was too.

  “We’ll go along with you,” Matt said. “But, they’ll sell this place for taxes. Somebody will start digging sometime.”

  “Not for years and years. It’s deeded to me. Jesse fixed up papers. They’re on the kitchen table.” Mike turned toward the trailer. “We’re going to do this right, and there’s not much time.”

  We found a blanket and a quilt in the trailer. Mike opened a kitchen drawer and pulled out snapshots. Some looked pretty new, and some were faded: a man and woman in old fashioned clothes, a picture of two young boys in Sunday suits, pictures of cars and roadsigns, and pictures of two women who were maybe Sue Ellen and Sarah. Mike piled them like a deck of cards, snapped a rubber band around them, and checked the trailer. He picked up a pair of pale yellow sunglasses that some racers use for night driving. “You guys see anything else?”

  “His dogs,” Matt said. “He had pictures of his dogs.”

  We found them under a pillow, and it didn’t pay to think why they were there. Then we went to the Linc and wrapped Jesse real careful in the blanket. We spread the quilt over him, and laid his stuff on the floor beside the accelerator. Then Mike remembered something. He half unwrapped Jesse, went through his pockets, then wrapped him back up. He took Jesse’s keys and left them hanging in the ignition.

  The three of us stood beside the Linc, and Matt cleared his throat.

  “It’s my place to say it,” Mike told him. “This was my best friend.” Mike took off his cap. Moonlight lay thin on his bald head:

  “A lot of preachers will be glad this man is gone, and that’s one good thing you can say for him. He drove nice people crazy. This man was a hellion pure and simple; but what folks don’t understand is hellions have their place. They put everything on the line over nothing very much. Most guys worry so much about dying they never do any living. Jesse was so alive with living he never gave dying any thought. This man would roll 90 just to get to a bar before it closed.” Mike kind of choked up and stopped to listen. From the graveyard came the echoes of engines, and from highway 2 rose the thrum of a straight-eight crankshaft whipping in its bed. Dim light covered the graveyard, like a hundred sets of parking lights and not the moon.

  “This man kept adventure alive, when every place else it’s dying. There was nothing ever smug or safe about this man. If he had fears he laughed. This man never hit a woman or crossed a friend. He did tie the can on Betty Lou one night, but can’t be blamed. It was really The Dog who did that one. Jesse never had a problem until he climbed into that Studebaker.”

  So Mike had known all along. At least Mike knew something.

  “I could always run even with Jesse,” Mike said, “but I never could beat The Dog. The Dog could clear any track. And in a damn Studebaker.”

  “But a very swift Studebaker,” Matt muttered, like a Holy Roller answering the preacher.

  “Bored and stroked and rowdy,” Mike said, “and you can say the same for Jesse. Let that be the final word. Amen.”

  IV

  A little spark of flame dwelt at the stack of the dozer, and distant mountains lay white-capped and prophesied winter. Mike filled the graves quick. Matt got rakes and a shovel. I helped him mound the graves with only moonlight to go on, while Mike went to the trailer. He made coffee.

  “Drink up and git,” Mike told us when he poured the coffee. “Jesse’s got some friends who need to visit, and it will be morning pretty quick.”

  “Let them,” Matt said. “We’re no hindrance.”

  “You’re a smart man,” Mike told Matt, “but your smartness makes you dumb. You started to hinder the night you stopped driving beyond your headlights.” Mike didn’t know how to say it kind, so he said it rough. His red mustache and bald head made him look like a pirate in a picture.

  “You’re saying that I’m getting old.” Matt has known Mike long enough not to take offense.

  “Me too,” Mike said, “but not that old. When you get old you stop seeing them. Then you want to stop seeing them. Then you want to want to stop seeing them. You get afraid for your hide.”

  “You stop imagining?”

  “Shitfire,” Mike said, “you stop seeing. Imagination is something you use when you don’t have eyes.” He pulled a cigar out of his shirt pocket and was chawing it before he ever got it lit. “Ghosts have lost it all. Maybe they’re the ones the Lord didn’t love well enough. If you see them, but ain’t one, maybe you’re important.”

  Matt mulled that, and so did I. We’ve both wailed a lot of road for some sort of reason.

  “They’re kind of rough,” Matt said about ghosts. “They hitch rides but don’t want ’em. I’ve stopped for them and got laughed at. They fool themselves, or maybe they don’t.”

  “It’s a young man’s game,” Matt said.

  “It’s a game guys got to play. Jesse played the whole deck. He was who he was, whenever he was it. That’s the key. That’s the reason you slug cops when you gotta. It looks like Jesse died old, but he lived young longer than most. That’s the real mystery. How does a fella keep going?”

  “Before we leave,” I said, “how long did you know that Jesse was The Dog?”

  “Maybe a year and a half. About the time he started running crazy.”

  “And never said a word?”

  Mike looked at me like something you’d wipe off your boot. “Learn to ride your own fence,” he told me. “It was Jesse’s business.” Then he felt sorry for being rough. “Besides,” he said, “we were having fun. I expect that’s all over now.”

  Matt followed me to the Chrysler. We left the cemetery feeling tired and mournful. I shoved the car onto highway 2, heading toward Matt’s place.

  “Wring it out once for old times?”

  “Putter along,” Matt said. “I just entered the putter-stage of life, and may as well practice doing it.”

  In my mirrors a stream of headlights showed, then vanished one by one as cars turned into the graveyard. The moon had left the sky. Over toward South Dakota was a suggestion of first faint morning light. Mounded graves lay at my elbow, and so did Canada. On my left the road south ran fine and fast as a man can go. Mist rose from the roadside ditches, and maybe there was movement in the mist, maybe not.

  ═

  There’s little more to tell. Through fall and winter and spring and summer I drove to Sheridan. The Mormon turned out to be a pretty good man, for a Mormon. I kept at it, and drove through another autumn and another winter. Linda got convinced. We got married in the spring, and I expected trouble. Married people are supposed to fight, but nothing like that ever happened. We just worked hard, got our own place in a few years, and Linda birthed two girls. That disappointed the Mormon, but was a relief to me.

  And in those seasons of driving, when the roads were good for twenty mile an hour in snow, or eighty under sun, the road stood empty except for a couple times. Miss Molly showed up once early on to say a bridge was out. She might have showed up another time. Squinchy little taillights winked one night when it was late and I was highballing. Some guy jack-knifed a Freightliner, and his trailer lay across the road.

 
But I saw no other ghosts. I’d like to say that I saw the twins, John and Jesse standing by the road, giving the high sign or dancing, but it never happened.

  I did think of Jesse, though, and thought of one more thing. If Matt was right, then I saw how Jesse had to die before I got home. He had to, because I believed in Road Dog. My belief would have been just enough to bring John forward, and that would have been fatal too. If either one of them became too strong, they both of them lost. So Jesse had to do it.

  The graveyard sank beneath the weather. Mike tended it for awhile, but lost interest. Weather swept the mounds flat. Weed-covered markers tumbled to decay and dust, so that only one marble headstone stands solid beside highway 2. The marker doesn’t bend before the winter winds, nor does the little stone that me and Mike and Matt put there. It lays flat against the ground. You have to know where to look:

  ROAD DOG

  1931–1965

  2 MILLION MILES MORE-OR-LESS

  RUN AND RUN AS FAST AS WE CAN

  WE NEVER CAN CATCH THE GINGERBREAD MAN

  And now, even the great good cars are dead, or most of them. What with gas prices and wars and rumors of wars the cars these days are all suspensions. They’ll corner like a cat, but don’t have the scratch of a cat; and maybe that’s a good thing. The state posts fewer crosses.

  Still, there are some howlers left out there, and some guys are still howling. I lie in bed of nights and listen to the scorch of engines along highway 2. I hear them claw the darkness, stretching lonesome at the sky, scatting across the eternal land; younger guys running as young guys must; chasing each other, or chasing the land of dreams, or chasing into ghostland while hoping it ain’t true—guys running into darkness chasing each other, or chasing something—chasing road.

  Support Your Local Griffin

  The griffin is an exotic creature composed of one-half lion, one-half eagle. Because of these mixed media, ornithologists are in disagreement about the griffin.

  You will not, for example, find the griffin listed in The Sibley Guide to Birds. This is a pure piece of arrogance on the part of the National Audubon Society . . . but then, the society does not recognize the pterodactyl, either.

  I am getting a little sick of people running around ignoring the griffin. And the pterodactyl. And, even, the unicorn. I am tired as all-get-out of people who go around hollering about bears (oh, pah, bears), and rhinos they have tamed (oh, tish, rhinoceros), and platinum blondes (oh, yawn). When someone tells me that he keeps sharks in his hot tub I am bored. I detest this continuing sophism that would convince us that the mamba is in every way superior to the common hoop snake. Fah. Give me a sensible, well-ordered hoop snake any time.

  The whole sorry problem is caused by this century’s craze for science. People think that everything must be explained. They want every creature catalogued, embalmed in museums, put on display . . . and named Alfred. People believe that if science cannot show them a griffin, then griffins do not exist.

  Well, smarties, you are now in trouble. One of my best friends is a griffin. He lives in my chimney and his name is Hector. Hector is a magic griffin. He can shrink himself to about the size of a doughnut, and he can puff himself up to around the girth of your average rocket ship.

  When he is doughnut-sized he looks a lot like my pet cat. When he is rocketing, the whole town nigh gets blown away in the wind from his wings. This, as anyone around here can tell you, usually happens in winter.

  Hector will be exactly 2600 years old next Tuesday. I am giving him a party. The guests will be a couple of hoop snakes named Gloria and Lester, plus a unicorn named Uzz, and three pterodactyls named Prester John, Caligula, and Sam.

  For his birthday Hector is getting an evil charm purchased (after a lot of mayhem) from an obscure tribe in Australia. Hector needs that charm because he is just too good-natured. In 2600 years, and with all the opportunity in the world, Hector has eaten no more than 400 to 500 politicians. It is scarcely enough. He knows it. He knows that I know it. It is the only dark secret in his life that will make him blush.

  At first he tried to alibi. He claimed that the average politician has such bad taste . . . but, of course, that is no excuse. Anyone who lives for 2600 years cannot think it can be done without a certain amount of suffering.

  There are advantages to associating with a griffin. For one thing, you never have chimney fires. Every time Hector fluffs up his feathers, and gives his tail a twitch, stuff tumbles out of that chimney faster than banalities at a Sunday School picnic.

  In addition, griffins are interesting company. Having lived so long, Hector, even with his flaws, can tell you that a Republican tastes the same as a Commissar, and a Democrat greatly resembles a six-weeks-dead camel.

  I think we should all quit thinking about bears, and begin thinking about griffins. To push this idea, I am proclaiming the week before election as National Griffin Week. Support your local griffin, friends. It may be our last chance.

  A Poet in the School:

  Or, The Mystery of the Missing Mouse

  Alas, Claymore

  Not since Peter Rabbit got into old man MacGregor’s cabbage patch had there been such a fuss in the first grade. Jerome’s best friend, Sally, said so. Jerome would never have thought of calling Mr. MacGregor ‘old man’; but when he stopped to think about it, Jerome figured Mr. MacGregor probably was.

  The fuss happened because during Thanksgiving holiday a new bear arrived. No one knew where from. Plus, the stuffed mouse was missing. When the first grade came back after holiday, back to the chalk-smelling, paste-smelling and blunt-scissors classroom the bear sat on the table that held colored blocks, tinker toys, the stuffed rabbit named Henry; and which also held the paper mache alligator Candace. The raggedy mouse named Claymore had once sat on the table but he was no longer there.

  Claymore was stolen or maybe kidnapped by Mr. Keeper the janitor, and taken to the dump. Jerome did not believe that. He liked Mr. Keeper. Sally threw a fit, and Jerome helped. Jerome was going to miss Claymore pretty bad.

  The bear was a growly-type, carpety fur; dark brown carpety, and he wore a red beret. The bear was leaner and more sinewy than other bears, although it had a pot belly. For the first three days the bear talked to no one except the goldfishes who lived in a tank beside the sunny window. And it didn’t talk much to them. The fish were named Ebb and Flow and Waterbury.

  The teacher was Mrs. Keeper. She was a pill. She was fat and wore orange flowery dresses. She carried an orange and pink flowery satchel that bulged like a biscuit. She was the wife of Mr. Keeper the janitor. When Jerome asked what happened to Claymore the mouse Mrs. Keeper looked sad. Jerome could tell she was trying to think of something to say. “What mouse?” she said.

  Mrs. Keeper did not like the new bear and anybody could see that. At least Jerome told himself anybody could, and he told his best friend Sally that anybody could see that too.

  Sally was a rotten kid and proud of it. During Show and Tell, Sally had once held up a busted piece of bannister and said she came from a broken home. She happily announced that she had managed to break it all by herself. Sally said, but privately, that Mrs. Keeper stayed in the classroom during recess so she could pick her nose.

  “That new bear is watching Mrs. Keeper,” Sally whispered. “That bear is going to tell the principal about all the nose picking that goes on around here.”

  Sally was taller than Jerome, and she was not chubby like Jerome. Sally was downright skinny. She had blue eyes, and one of them sort of looked off to the left when she was thinking about being ornery. When she talked about the new bear, though, her eyes looked straight ahead and were dreamy. Sally’s browny-tan hair was cut short. She did not have pigtails like other girls.

  “I don’t approve of finks,” Sally whispered, “but I do like that bear.”

  Jerome was pretty sure he knew what ‘approve’ meant, but he was not sure about ‘fink’. It had something to do with television programs about brave and kindly policemen w
ho were all your friends, and who shot people. Jerome’s father watched those programs in the evening when Jerome was in bed, listening.

  On Thursday the bear cleared its throat, a firm ‘harrumph ‘.

  “Do you ever have a substitute teacher,” the bear asked Jerome. The bear spoke in a loud, growly voice. It did not seem to care that Mrs. Keeper had a rule against talking in the classroom. “An intelligent substitute?”

  “No,” Sally whispered to the bear, and Sally was mad and sad. “The only person who is ever missing around here is Claymore the mouse.”

  “Oh dear,” said the bear. Then it muttered a few things under its breath, words that Jerome had never even heard on television. Then the bear turned back to its conversation with the fish.

  Mrs. Keeper tapped her foot and looked at Sally. Jerome understood that Mrs. Keeper had heard Sally, but had not even heard the bear. He looked around. No one was watching. It seemed to him that only he and Sally heard the bear.

  On Friday Mrs. Keeper announced that there would be a ‘name the bear ‘ contest. Over the weekend everyone was to think of a name for the new bear. On Monday Mrs. Keeper would decide which name was best.

  “Are you a girl,” Sally whispered to the bear, “or are you a boy.” Sally did not just come right out and say that only girls could be rotten kids, but she sounded that way. She even sounded hopeful.

  “You are a girl,” the bear said to Sally, “and you are a boy,” the bear said to Jerome. “Me, I’m a poet.”

  “What is a poet,” Jerome whispered, even if Mrs. Keeper was tapping her foot and looking at him.

  “A poet,” said the bear, “is a sort of sublime detective. A poet treads the mists of reflection. A poet makes solid the tenuous fabric of dreams.”