Fathoms (Collected Writings)

by Jack Cady

  Mac and Sarah and Debbie opened the bar. Or rather, Mac opened the bar while Sarah made morning coffee and Debbie loafed. Mac brushed pool tables and cleaned rest rooms. Sarah drank coffee and watched the road. Sarah, who is nobody’s mother, looks like she would do for the sainted mother of us all. Her face is sweet, her hair hangs in long braids, her figure is slightly dumpy. Her hands are workworn because she lives by cleaning houses of corporation people. If Sarah has a problem, and Sarah does, it’s because she’s a sucker for any new trend. She keeps ideas the way other people keep goldfish. Like goldfish, the ideas swim in all directions.

  When Jeremiah entered the bar, rain glistened on his black suit and dripped from ends of his white hair. Wrinkles in his face looked like channels for rain. He sniffed the morning smells of the bar, stale tobacco, the stench of disinfectant. The smell of fresh coffee seemed to draw Jeremiah. He sat beside Sarah who was, at least for the moment, one of his parishioners.

  “Praise the Lord,” said Sarah.

  “You got that right.” Jeremiah gave a couple of sniffs and asked for coffee. He hunched above his coffee cup. His black suit made him look like a raven regarding road-kill. “Although,” he said to Sarah, “if we must unceasingly praise the Lord, does that mean the Lord has an inferiority complex? If the Lord needs constant praise we may be dealing with a major case of insecurity.”

  Mac used a narrow broom to sweep between bar and barstools. Jeremiah’s question stopped him. He shook his head. “I got to wonder whose side you’re on?”

  “I like you more positive.” Sarah’s voice did not tremble, but she seemed alarmed. “The Lord is supposed to let people feel safe, and stuff . . . like, no mystery stuff.”

  “Thank God for mysteries.” Jeremiah’s voice sounded nebulous as mist, although his words did not. “Life without mystery would be life without dreams. The universe would be dull indeed.” Outside, at the intersection of roads, a truck engine roared as its driver revved, then caught a higher gear.

  “For instance,” and Jeremiah looked at Mac, not Sarah or Debbie, “do cattle dream? Does a young heifer or steer muse beyond that next mouthful of grass? Are there great cattle-questions? Better yet, are there herd dreams? Does the herd graze according to music tuned only to bovine ears?” Jeremiah’s voice seemed not exactly sad, but he certainly was not joking.

  “And do ghosts dream?” Jeremiah looked into mist, at the road that leads down to the sea. “A ghost may actually be a dream. After someone dies, maybe a leftover dream stands up and walks.”

  “Quit scaring me,” Sarah whispered. She raised work-worn hands to cover her ears.

  “I hope to scare you, because faith may not be as productive as doubt. Doubt asks questions and faith does not.” Jeremiah’s voice was not kind. He paused. “Is there some dread realm where human dreams and the dreams of cattle are appreciably the same?” He looked across the road at Hell-Fer-Certain. “If so, what does that say about all of us?”

  At the time Sarah didn’t get it, and Mac didn’t either. Knowing Mac, though, it was a lead-pipe cinch he’d catch on sooner or later. He leaned against the bar. “Bartenders and preachers have a lot going,” he told Jeremiah. “Both have something to sell, both exercise control over others, both serve as handy ears for the confessions of sinners.” Mac grinned like a naughty three-year-old. “Both flip a certain amount of bull, and what they sell wears off after a good night’s sleep.”

  “I’d fault your logic if it was worth my time.” Jeremiah pushed his coffee away. “Also, I asked about difference, not similarity.”

  “My mistake.” Mac sounded like a ten-year-old kid caught stealing nickels.

  “Meanwhile, suppose a ghost really is a leftover dream?” Jeremiah stood, stretched, looked through the windows at mist and rain. Then he looked at Mac with distaste, like a man regarding a favorite nephew arrested on a burglary rap. “You can think more clearly than you have.”

  “You know it,” Mac said, “and I know it.”

  “When I was young,” Jeremiah told him, “I wanted to change the world . . . wanted to make things better . . . figured to find a cure for common hatreds, ignorance, wanted to defeat war . . . prejudice . . . .” He seemed as puzzled as Mac. He looked across the road at the fading colors of Hell-Fer-Certain. When he left the bar he walked slower than usual.

  ═

  Atonement became the name of our game. Redemption became more than a word in a sermon. Our problem came because we didn’t know what needed atoning. If anybody needed redemption it couldn’t happen until we figured out our original foul-up.

  But anyone with brains could see that Jeremiah made a bold if harsh play for the heart and soul of one man, Mac. Jeremiah seemed old as King Solomon, at least in experience, and maybe as wise. Being old, he knew he had little time left. What he’d said about wanting to change the world told us he wasn’t fooling when he talked about dreams. We supposed if he couldn’t change the world, he figured to change one man.

  And, if Mac made less money, our local hustler, Pop, made more. As the bar became a place for interesting topics, guys stayed sober, longer. Pop enjoyed a surge of prosperity because a good hustle depends on the full attention of the guy being hustled. Sober guys have longer attention spans. It was during a lull in sober conversation that an awful thing happened.

  On a fog-bound afternoon when headlights on the road appeared as silver discs, and as fog muffled the sound of engines, Mac absent-mindedly drew a beer. He set it before a customer, and muttered to himself, “He’s trying to figure out what happens when dreams fizzle . . . the death of dreams . . . .”

  Only Pop and Debbie heard. Debbie touched her wine glass, gave a dry little sob, and sat silent. Pop looked at Debbie, then at Mac. “You’d better not lay that one on the table,” he whispered. “It will empty out the joint.”

  Mac emptied the bar, anyway. During the next hour he grew completely silent, then surly. If he was angry at himself and taking it out on customers, or his bar, or the universe, or on Jeremiah, no one could say. All we knew is that Mac was not jolly. As afternoon misted toward evening, customers stepped through the doorway into mist. By happy hour only Pop and Debbie remained. Bar neon glowed through mist like a token of sorrow, or like the subdued symbol of a small and unimportant corner of Hell.

  “Everybody had big plans at one time or other.” Pop murmured this, more to himself than to Debbie or Mac. “Time was when I didn’t make a living with a pool cue.” He looked at Mac in a kindly way, a way no one expects to see in a pool hustler. “We’re gettin’ old,” Pop told Mac. “I guess we expected more . . . .” He looked around the bar, at twirly beer lights and the green felt of pool tables. “. . . didn’t expect more of the world, maybe. Expected more of ourselves.”

  “I’m headed home,” Debbie whispered. “Art is not an illusion. I used to know that.” She shrugged into her jacket and looked at the men. “Pay no attention. I don’t understand it, either.”

  ═

  Fire struck our land during early morning hours. It drank deeply of wind, flared and flamed through mist like a maddened imp squalling in the middle of fields. It blasted the farmhouse of Indian Hill Farm.

  Indian Hill’s house stood ramshackle and wrecked a thousand yards from the road. As the first touch of dawn moved grayly above fields, fire towered and blew sideways, tongues of flame lapping at mist. Mist blew into the flames, mixed with flames, and steam exhaled from the very mouth of fire. Wind carried the fire, and fire flamed ascendent above wet fields. By full dawn, Indian Hill farmhouse lay as embers beneath a steady morning rain.

  That first fire saddened us. Bar talk remembered people who once owned Indian Hill, their sons, daughters, cousins; even the name of their collie-shepherd mix, once known as the best cattle-herding dog in the valley. Bar talk remembered August days of cutting or baling hay, or of trucks pulling silver-colored tank trailers, making milk pick-ups at each valley farm. A drunk wrote “I miss you so goodam much,” on the wall of the men’s can, but
Mac painted it over right away.

  The cattle corporation uses the old barns to store equipment, even though the farmhouses are abandoned. The corporation brought in a bulldozer, cleaned up the burn site, and seeded it with grass. The bulldozer knocked down outbuildings. The old barn stood solitary in the middle of fields. It seemed a testament to memories.

  The second fire took the house of Valley View Farm which stood behind a stubby lane, and up a little rise. That house had become a fearful thing. Because of the short lane, and the rise, the house brooded above the road like a specter. It was larger than most farmhouses, and two fanlights had once looked toward the road like colorful eyes. With abandonment the glass had been broken. The eyes stared toward the road, hollow as eyes of the blind.

  This second fire was hard for us to talk away, think away, or drink away. It continued to flame in the minds of those who saw it (and most everyone did) long after rain washed ashes down the rise. The fire began just after nightfall on a Tuesday when the valley stood empty of tractor-trailers, of truckers, and reduced by some few hundred cattle. As fire towered above the road, pickups pulled to the side, parked, and people talked or stared. Mist once more blew into flames, turned to steam, and steam blew across the road and into our faces. The stench of burning carried in the mist, but something worse walked to us.

  Cattle were in the fields. Against all nature, the cattle drifted toward the fire. The herd formed a semi-circle in the wind-blown mist. White faces of cattle stared through mist, were reddened by reflections from the fire. The cattle stared not at fire, but stared in ghostly illumination at the road where we stood helpless to affect events, and watched; where we spoke excitedly, or with sadness, or, with but a murmur. The cattle seemed to stand as witness to our lives, their eyes blank as the blind eyes of the dying house.

  ═

  The corporation bulldozed, seeded, and called the sheriff. One fire might be accidental. Two fires spelled arson. The sheriff went through motions, but couldn’t see the point. After all, the houses were worthless.

  ═

  “It’s a trick question,” Mac confided to Debbie on one of those afternoons when wind drops and fog gathers thick enough to hinder traffic. Across the road Hell-Fer-Certain stood in the fog like a ghost. “The difference between a bartender and a preacher is no difference at all.”

  “Because?”

  “Because jobs have nothing to do with the basic guy.” Mac looked around his bar like he saw it for the first time. “That preacher is not a beat-up church, and this bartender is not a bar. You got it?”

  “If you came to that smart an answer,” Debbie told him, “then it wasn’t a trick question.”

  If Mac had changed, and if Jeremiah was using different images, Debbie changed as well. Although she told no one, images of fire occupied her, as did sadness. “There’s a word called ‘expiation,’” she said in a low voice. “I think we’ll learn about it.”

  The third fire took Heather Hill Farm, and the fourth took River View. By then August was long past, September waning, as fall rains began in earnest. The valley filled with flame and steam. Cattle now grazed nearer the road, stood looking across fences in that dumb, animal manner that seems asking for explanation.

  Then, on a night when the sky seemed to seep absolute darkness, as well as seeping rain, Debbie trudged toward the bar. Throughout the valley, as fires continued, sadness had become not only ordinary but a custom. We did not understand that it was not simply a few old houses being burned away. Symbolically, flame engulfed our history. People headed to the bar where night could not be defeated, but could be allayed. Neon signs colored our night world. Cone-lights above pool tables suggested focus and illumination. As Debbie passed the reader-board in front of Hell-Fer-Certain she sensed movement in the darkness. She gave a small, involuntary gasp.

  “It’s only me.” Mac’s voice sounded controlled, but fearful. “Pop is running the joint for an hour or two.”

  “You’re standing in rain before a church that drives you nuts. Plus you’ve been acting spooky. Are you the arsonist?” Debbie hesitated, thought about fires and Mac’s whereabouts. “You couldn’t be unless you’re setting them with a timer. You were behind the bar for two fires out of four.”

  Mac made a vague motion toward the church. “He is,” Mac said.

  “For the love of God.” Jeremiah’s voice came from darkness before the church. “For other loves as well.”

  “You’re helping him?” Debbie asked Mac. She felt for a moment that she should flee. “What are you doing out here if you’re not helping him?”

  “Because I thought I liked the guy. Because I’m sick-a selling beer. Because it isn’t raining inside . . . how the hell do I know . . . .” Mac’s voice turned apologetic. “. . . sorry . . . I’m not sure why I’m here, but I am sure that hell is about to start popping. Look west.”

  Debbie turned. “You guys are scaring me. You are.” In the west, like beginning sunset, a slight glow of orange showed at docks and cannery. “Mass fire, massive,” Debbie whispered to herself. “If any of that goes, all of it goes.”

  “No water down there except what’s in the ocean.” Mac turned to where Jeremiah stood in darkness. “I reckon this is supposed to mean something?”

  “I reckon it does.” Jeremiah’s voice did not sound preacherly, but grim. “Or maybe it’s just a reckoning.”

  “Why are you doing this?” Debbie sensed Jeremiah’s presence but could not find him in the darkness. Rain patted on her hooded parka. It puddled at her feet. “Everybody was getting by,” she said. “Things aren’t great but we were making it.” She watched as the orange glow increased. “I won’t cop on you,” she whispered to Jeremiah, “or at least I guess I won’t. But, you’d do well to have an explanation.” She turned to Mac. “Everybody will be going down there pretty quick. Drive me.”

  Mac stood quiet, a man afraid, or maybe only indecisive. Debbie took his arm. She turned toward the darkness before the church. “Go ahead and tell me this is the will of the Lord,” Debbie said to Jeremiah. “Then I’ll know you’re nuts.” She walked toward Mac’s pickup.

  “Redemption by fire.” Jeremiah’s harsh whisper came from shadows before the church. “I don’t think the Lord has much to do with it. You’re an artist. Figure it out.”

  ═

  Immense fires, fires as big as cities burning, cast heat so huge they must warm the toes of heaven. Lesser fires, like the burning of a way of life, are localized, thus more spectacular.

  By the time Mac and Debbie arrived, fire already covered docks and rose into the night through the roofs of warehouses. Sounds of burning, the crash of timbers, the roar of volcanic updrafts silenced the sounds of seawind and surf. Fire moved toward the enormous cannery as heat melted asphalt on the road between warehouses. When the road began to burn, a stench of petroleum mixed with dry smells of woodsmoke from flaming walls and floors; this while rain wept and blew across the scene, sizzled, pattered through mist.

  Mac and Debbie stood halfway down a hill leading to the cannery. Heat coasted up the side of the hill and stopped their advance. Behind them, cresting the hill, headlights of old pickups pointed toward the fire as people arrived, the beams of light swallowed by fire. Firelight rose toward the scud of low-flying clouds, and black smoke crisscrossed through the light as heat mixed and churned the winds. As more and more people arrived headlights were switched off. People milled, clustered together, sought an illusion of unity, of safety. Fire swept into the broken doors of the cannery. Fire illuminated faces in the crowd. Firelight glowed orange on cheeks and hands. It glossed clothing with a sheen of red. Fire caused shadows, made eyes seem like hollows of night.

  “Is this expiation?” Debbie whispered beneath the roar of fire. She watched as flame burst through the high roof of the cannery. Then, because it seemed nothing so awful could be focus for good, she looked away, then gasped. She tried to turn, tried to look back up the hill, or at the wet and weeping heavens, or anywhere exce
pt where her gaze finally was forced to focus.

  On the periphery of the fire vague movement began in blowing mist. At first the movement seemed only swirls of mist, then shapes began to coalesce. Shapes drifted like unimportant murmurs. Mist blew among them, seemed to offer substance, and the shapes became human figures drifting toward fire, unhesitating, herd-like and passive; not, after all, only the ghosts of fishermen drowned, but the ghosts of dreams summoned to the burning; dreams that like threatened beasts gave final screams, then fell into mute acceptance.

  . . . and Debbie saw a young Mac bouncing a basketball while coaching kids, and a young Jeremiah standing before a mission school. Mostly, though, she saw a young woman sitting before canvas, saw the turn of a young wrist properly pointing a brush, sensing the depth of colors in the palette, saw a young woman alive with the high dreams of art; then watched the diminishing form of that young and lovely woman, a woman aspiring to creation, drift slowly, inexorably, to disappear into the roar of flames.

  “I think,” said Mac in a voice too husky to come from anything but tears, “that it’s time to get the hell out.”

  “And I think,” said Debbie, “that your expression is apt. But I’m not sure I like you anymore. Go back without me. I’ll catch a ride.” She managed to control her voice.

  ═

  Climax and anti-climax. Fire swept across the scene in fountains and waves. When the cannery roof fell machinery glowed red. Water pipes and steam pipes twisted, boilers stood like the crimson cauldrons of medieval hell, and people gradually stopped exclaiming, because nothing, it seems, can be remarkable forever. People climbed in their trucks, turned around, and told themselves and each other that what they really needed was a drink. The show was over, the festivities ended, a way of life had passed and no one even knew it.

  Debbie, riding four-to-a-cab in a rickety pickup, looked beyond headlights and into mist. She felt slugged in the stomach. A glow stood in the sky.