Fathoms (Collected Writings)

by Jack Cady

  Small movement came at our feet. A collie dog lay curled, panting, distorted, in throes of dying. I stepped aside and around. These sorts of visions are why folk stay close to home.

  Our worst memories stalk the fog, take shape. It has been forty years or better since I struck that dog while driving in the fog, an animal surprised by silver discs of headlights as it crossed the road. I had climbed from the truck, could not find a rock or knife to kill it. It was almost dead anyway. On the return trip I saw the body in a field. The animal had dragged itself, and I had caused it hours of unneeded suffering.

  How do we reckon with this river? Like any river, it can get dangerous. Like any river, it will threaten to flood you out in springtimes. And not all parts of it fog up. It’s here and there that fog rises, which is true of most rivers.

  But it sings to us, sometimes, and it makes our livings. And we somehow love it while knowing that it doesn’t give a damn. It’s just a river. If only the thing didn’t sometimes take from us . . .

  Whispers sounded through the rain of fog, and a whisper sounded beside me. “I needed to keep my girl.” Annie stopped and waited, listening to what started as an echo, became a murmur, then grew to a low roar like animals snarling over kill . . . the sound of a distant mob. The sound rose, wavered, was swallowed by mist. Annie’s voice rose. “Keep my girl, I summon . . . summon.”

  And, as if attentive to her voice, the apparition drifted to us; spectral hands seemed clasped in prayer. It shimmered out of the mist, and its prayerful hands were only satiny-smooth fog. They steepled, and from within an echo lived just above a whisper. The echo sounded like the gabble of a mob.

  Then, somewhere in the fog a child cried for its mother. Distant weeping and a woman’s sorrow changed to hope, midsentence . . .”Don’t move, Jennie. Keep talking and Mommie will come to you,” sounded near to hand. I remembered how the river had taken a woman not yet a year ago, a woman looking for a child named Jennie, the child later found wandering the center of the fog-bound road.

  The apparition paused for the length of a long second, gave a stiff little bow, then drifted in the direction of the river. From far off, the mob-sound still rolled, then went quiet. We heard nothing but the soft fall of fog.

  “There’s some who ain’t happy except when they’re takin’.” Annie’s voice, a touch hysterical, followed the apparition. “So don’t be happy. I got what you took, ‘cause your ‘took’ didn’t hold up.”

  “It didn’t have crooked arms.” I whispered as much to myself as to Annie. “Professor had crooked arms.”

  “It’s not the professor.” Pete’s voice sounded soft as the fall of fog. He appeared from the fog to stand beside Annie, protective. “How you ever,” he said to Annie, “skippered that boat for all those years is more than this child can figure. You lather up too easy.” He touched her shoulder, friend to friend. “If Sally looks for her daddy she’ll stay close. She’s got to sleep. She’s got to eat. She’ll show up.”

  To me he said, “Might be a mistake, bein’ out here. I reckon I know what that thing is, and it ain’t the professor.”

  “What?”

  “It ain’t Klan. It only sorta looks like Klan because of here and now. In times past it’s looked like sumthin’ else.” And for the moment, that’s all Pete would say.

  II

  For three mornings Annie waited in my store, but walked and watched for Sally when fog burned off in afternoons. One night, when fog ran thin, she made her way to Stinky Lou. Light burned greenish in the cabin and her shadow could be seen moving, reaching, touching, perhaps. There was no other shadow.

  “Sometimes he’s there, but ain’t,” she told me about Rufus Middling. “Seems like it depends on thickness of fog. Sometimes he’s but a whisper. Other times, we can talk. There be times when I can see him.”

  Annie changed, and not a little. She laid dungarees aside and wore neatly pressed house dresses. She arranged her hair, even scrubbed her fingernails. I remembered her as a girl and how she had been beautiful. “When Sally shows,” she said, “she’s not be ashamed of her ma.”

  Sally showed up on the fourth afternoon. It was a day of mixed signs, because word from the river said that Professor was back. A riverman saw him stooped over. In dense fog he showed as a bent and crooked figure, and the apparition only just visible beside him. The riverman also said that through mist he heard Millard Dee Grubs, now old, and sounding like the croak of a frog.

  Sally hesitated in the doorway, slowly looked around, then drew a long breath of store smells that seemed a comfort. I recalled that she had been raised by Indians, and how she would have learned to use her nose as well as eyes and ears.

  Sally stood lean and tall like Rufus, and lean as Annie. Cream-color skin glowed warm in muted store light. Dark hair fell nearly to her waist, tied loose, and she could almost be mistaken for a gypsy. When she spoke, her voice was warm.

  “Mr. Joe?” She remained in the doorway.

  “You’ve come for your daddy,” I told her. “Come in. Chair by the stove.”

  “I’ve heard stories,” she said. “Stories called me here . . . can’t figure if anything is true.”

  “In these parts,” I told her, “truth sort of comes and goes. But I can tell you what was, and what now seems to be. Your daddy’s here. So is your ma.”

  The story took time to tell, and Sally sat unmoving as silence. She listened, weighed, pursed her lips, and, by turn, looked happy or sad. I watched her and remember thinking that, if I had ever had a daughter, I would wish her to be this beautiful, this smart.

  “Your ma and daddy thought to leave the country,” I told her. “Go abroad.”

  “Not north?”

  “North was just as ugly.”

  “’Twas never a matter of forgiveness,” she murmured. “Folks do what they must. I just needed to know.” She stood, thanked me most kindly, and went to find Annie. I heard nothing more from either of them that day. That night, light appeared in the cabin of Stinky Lou.

  That night also saw talk of the professor. Frightened women from the apartments kept their children close. The store’s phone rang, as men who worked the river called and left messages for their families. The community clustered toward each other. Most folks here had only heard stories, and not believed them. Now one of the stories had grown legs. It walked in the fog.

  “Seems like Professor’s come for Sally,” Pete told me. “After all this time. Can’t write it off. Can’t let go.”

  “How? He’s dead as he’ll ever be.”

  Pete looked at me like he couldn’t believe what he’d just heard. “Professor will have help.” His voice sounded grim as a tomb. He looked resigned, almost defeated. “We’ll watch it grow,” he told me, “and we’ll cuss it. And we’ll even wrestle it, maybe, and it’ll just keep growin’.”

  “What’s it?”

  “I expect,” Pete told me, “that it has a name, but ain’t to be named. Wait, watch, and grieve.” He studied what he was going to say next, hesitated, then told me, “Gangrene stinks. We’ll smell it before we touch it.”

  On days when fog glowed thin, people moved about, came to the store, chatted. The store has always been a neighborhood meeting place; news, gossip, weather, and talk of the river.

  Frightened women claimed Sally ought to leave. They forbade their children to go anywhere near Annie. “’Twas Sally,” they said, “who brought trouble to the river.” The women stopped pushing strollers and held their toddlers in arms.

  Men claimed Rufus Middling was out there raising hell, and they called him “Reverend Meddling.” Anxiousness filled the store, and people bought food for a week, not for a day.

  “They blame who they can see,” Pete told me about the women. “Professor’s naught but a nightmare. Sally’s real to them. They’re like a pike hitting a lure. Jump at what they think they know.”

  On days of heavy fog I closed the store for an hour at lunch. The road lay deserted. Side roads sat silent. From the r
iver, fog horns honked, screeched, moaned. No one moved in the fog, and from the fog came distant yells, murmurs, whispers, sounds of sorrow.

  On such days I would take my ease beside the stove and watch fog lean against my windows. On one noon the apparition drifted to the glass, oval eyes staring empty into the store, hands clasped together in some sort of prayer. This time it seemed to live independent of fog. It did not shimmer. Instead, it drew all light from the store. Light flowed into it and turned to darkness; and darkness fell across the inside of the store. The form of a hood took the shape of a hook, changed back to hood, became Fylfot cross—a swastika, thence took full-throated breaths of light into glowing robes, then exhaled darkness and the chill of fog. Luminescence fled into the fog and changed the world milky white.

  Twice, Professor appeared, paused, as if about to enter. His eyes were hollow as the eyes of the Hand, his mouth twisted. Fog, or drool, ran from his lips. Scraggly hair hung wet and straight, and he seemed to holler, though I heard no sound. Then Professor limped away, crooked-armed.

  And once, Millard Dee showed up to rattle the doorknob and send curses. He stood at the window, face twisted in rage. He still wore his clerical collar, which was soiled, and a dirty tie. His white hair melted into the grayness of fog, so that mostly what I saw were eyes filled with hate. When I moved to unlock the door, he moved even more quickly. I am old, but so is he, and I can take him. “Run, Reverend Bunny,” I hollered after him. “Next time bring a weapon. We’ll play.”

  The professor and Millard Dee never appeared on days of sun, but Annie always did. So did Pete. They both showed up on a sunny Saturday. It was the last happy day before sorrow descended. Children played before the apartments while mothers took the sun and relaxed. Tendrils of fog still floated low on the river.

  “My man has his head set,” Annie told us. She perched beside a cold stove. Habit. We get no chill on sunny afternoons. Pete leaned against my front counter. He smelled fishy and riverish. Through the windows of the store I could see the small bow of Stinky Lou rise from the mud bank. Cars whizzed along the road. Shouts of playing children put a happy feel into the afternoon.

  “Rufus wasn’t gonna do a thing,” Annie told us. “He figured Professor made his own hell, so to hell with Professor. But talk says Professor has come for Sally. I tell him ‘leave it be,’ but my man is out there hunting.”

  “A ghost hunts down a ghost?” I didn’t smile, but thought of it.

  “It ain’t ghosts.” Pete sounded a little too quiet. “This is about spirits.” To Annie, he said, “You and Sally go down river for a time. What happens next makes Hell look like a vacation.”

  “Sally won’t leave her pa. I won’t.”

  Pete shrugged. “Before you get your back up, check with your man. He’ll know to run you out of here.”

  Three things happened that night after fog closed road and river, but we first learned about only two of them. While shrieks and whistles and moans of fog horns dwelt in the fog, a light odor of rot drifted in eddies and swirls. As night deepened, the smell turned to the smell of open and rotting graves. We looked at each other, wondered, shivered.

  Men came to the store, bought beer, stepped outside to drink, and drew shallow breaths. They stood in small clusters and whispered. Sometimes a man moved from one cluster to another. They muttered and swore that somewhere nearby the Hand floated. They figured it a curse. They whispered about weapons, action, fighting back . . . when I caught the drift of what was happening, I closed the store.

  “I know you gents,” I told them. “You’re good men. Take care of your own hearths. Quit talking trouble.”

  Some of them listened, then drifted toward their homes. One cluster, though, stuck together and disappeared into fog. Nearby I heard the rough and gaspy voice of Millard Dee, still preaching. “Seed of Satan . . . woman of evil . . .”

  I had endured enough of Millard Dee. “If you are the one that brings this stench,” I said into the fog, “you’re running shoal water.”

  Explosion blew the back half of Annie’s cottage to pieces just after midnight. The crack of explosive dulled in the fog, but still had an edge. Since Annie’s cottage is just next door, I knew, even as I came out of bed, that destruction stood at hand. Before other folks arrived, I led Annie inside my store, with the front door locked and only a night light showing. I walked her through darkness and shadow, somehow knowing the store must seem closed.

  Annie sat stunned. She looked smaller than life. Blood from a cut flowed off her forehead, ran into gray hair, dripped onto her gown and smeared down her arms. She looked like she was dying, but was not. Head wounds always bleed heavy.

  “I didn’t find Sally,” I told her.

  “Visiting her daddy.”

  From the apartments, and from moored vessels, people poured into the fog. They fumbled their ways to the wrecked cottage. From inside the store I could hear shouts, exclamations, and frightened talk. When Pete showed up I unlocked the door. Stench layered in the fog, unpleasant but bearable.

  “Lock it back up,” Pete told me as he entered. “The misery’s only just started.” He walked to Annie and began treating her wound. In the near-darkness of the store he looked more like a shadow than a real person. “When that heals up,” he said about Annie’s head wound, “you’ll find I’ve given you a twinkly little smile. Might help someday.” To me, he said, “Hold them off for a good ten minutes. We’ll meet you out back.”

  It was a difficult ten minutes. I held them off for five before I heard glass break. That being the case, I turned on lights and opened the door. Men poured in headed for the beer cases, some slouched, nearly ashamed; others talked rough to prove they had a right to commit wrong. As soon as I was able I slipped through the front doorway and out back.

  “If you are a prayerful man,” Pete said, “start praying that no one gets any news. Another child’s been taken. We might have caught that one earlier.”

  We hung on to each other as Pete steered his way through fog like he had radar. Of course, Pete mostly lives in the fog. When we got to Stinky Lou the stench increased, and a tall, black man turned to Annie. “My dear,” he said, “we escape south in a liberated momomoy. Join your daughter. Better do it now.” His voice was gentle, the way one wishes fog would be gentle. “Go along now; there is man’s work here.”

  And Annie, who could be as sassy as any woman who ever put foot to ground, reached to touch Rufus Middling’s hand, sniffled, and hurried to waterside, where her voice joined with Sally’s . . . something about visiting the Indians who raised Sally.

  Rufus turned to us. “What you’re smelling,” he said, “lies over yon, and I’m in a hurry. And, while this is not the end of horrors, this will be the end of one. But I must not waste time.” The musical voice that had charmed so many congregations seemed nearly ready to rise and sing. Yet all he did was lead us to the broken-boned professor. Professor lay moaning.

  “Weren’t you happy in hell?” It sounded like an honest question. Rufus stirred the body with his foot. He turned to us. “I used to love sinners. Still do, because I’ve been a sinner myself, but some creatures can’t be loved.” He looked down at the professor, and the professor issued groans and stench. “You came for me and you killed me,” Rufus told Professor. “That I forgive. You tried to kill my child. That is not forgiven. How could he be so stupid as to try it twice?” He looked at Pete.

  “I’ve been figuring on it,” Pete said.

  “And so this is my curse,” Rufus Middling said. “For as long as time lasts there will be no Professor, no heart or soul or memory. But for all time there will be the professor’s pain, and the professor’s stench, that those who live may someday figure a way to live without them.” He turned and left us, and he left a broken-armed figure of pain blasted permanently into the mud of the riverbank. When a black arm raised and threw a flaming torch aboard Stinky Lou, I knew their escape would be a success. I thought of all the oil soaked into those oak decks through the yea
rs. The old tug would send them safely away because now all attention must be paid to keep fire from spreading to the fleet.

  “Not an answer,” Pete said, and he was not talking about fire. “I reckon he thought he left an answer.” Pete backed away from Professor. “Smells like rotten muskrat. Let’s get the hell out, because there’s gonna be company.”

  Fire mounted almost immediately and men came running. By the time they had fire hoses and axes aboard, the tug was a sheet of flame. Flame rose in the fog, steamed high above the river, fell back as rain. Flame illuminated the other craft, and it thinned the fog, but not so much that Pete and I could not get away unnoticed.

  We sat on the stoop of my plundered store. At my hand was a package of crappie hooks, dropped and deemed too useless to pick up. A child’s doll dangled grotesque among a display of toys. Here and there beer bottles stood half empty. Take it all for all my neighbors had stolen, but they mostly tried not to leave a mess. I paid attention to panting coming from the distance.

  When the manifestation showed, it might have been anything; witchery, no doubt, but something greater. It rose before us robed in enough silken mist for a parachute. Oval eyes, but they didn’t stare so much as recall ancient and other evenings of force and fire.

  “I understand,” Pete said. “Why bring only destruction?”

  A thought spread, not a voice. “Destruction was already here. Since you abided it, I’ve left it for you, and I brought a chance at light. See to it.” The thought was rounded and precise.

  From behind a piece of tipped shelving came a woman’s muffled sobs. These changed to desperate and pained battle, and the thin cry of a child . . . See what you are made of . . . the thought, not the words, filled the air. For one ugly moment I watched a dying collie, choking and dragging itself. I set it aside, as Pete and I hurried forward.