Phantoms

by Jack Cady

  There are hill people and there are sorry people. Between the two there is as much difference as between a stump preacher and a theologian.

  Mink was well named. I have known a thousand like him. Sly, shifty, and with long teeth. He moved with no dignity of age or experience. His clothes and cabin stank. The permanent coal dust that gets into the skin of miners circled his eyes; and his eyes were dull and clouded and suspicious. His gaze only seemed vacant. He looked more like a dying raccoon. One that could still bite.

  His shack was empty but there was the mark of a woman and children. Pictures had been clipped from catalogs and religious magazines. A worn doll was tossed in a corner. The family was away visiting. They would return when we left.

  "Let’s unroll the sleeping bags outside," I said.

  "Mosquitos," Frazier told me. His voice carried a warning I did not understand.

  We ate from our packs and lay bundled on the floor. The trek in had been exhausting. There would still be the inspection of wreckage and the trek out. The coroner was old, Frazier told me. When the wreck was more than hearsay a deputy would bring the body out by helicopter. The inquest was a rubber stamp.

  Two days of heat and fatigue. Now I sat in Frazier’s long, low timbered room and stared at the shield of dark. To have to consider murder after two days of fatigue and fear and wreckage.

  The wings had sheared from the plane and were tossed far enough that they did not burn. The identification numbers, white on the red wings, were like remote signals from a space of trees. The forest was dull in late summer. The pines held no gloss. Deciduous trees were chewed and ragged from August storms and insects. The fuselage lay on its side and was half-gutted by fire. I had not wanted to do the necessary work because it was terrible, and because I had known the man.

  Where steel was exposed there was rust, and the aluminum skin was curled from fire. I watched twisted metal and tried to keep my hands from trembling. A year’s accumulation of dirt lay in tiny pockets and waves of metal. The engine twisted away from the cockpit. I looked, tried to speak, motioned to Frazier.

  "No animal would do this." I turned to check the forest. Where was Mink? I felt the place between my shoulders where a bullet might enter, turned, felt the same place in my chest.

  "Spirits of the dark," Frazier muttered. "No animal could."

  "Where is he?"

  "Keep working. Lawyers don’t get hysterics."

  There had been only silence, and the silence lasted all through the long trek back. Now I sat in Frazier’s living room, my thoughts scattered. Mink would get by with it. There was no love here for Erickson. There was no proof that a scavenger had not gotten to the body. Of course, Mink was stupid. He would betray himself if questioned. But who would bring him out unless there was some old grudge?

  How stupid was he? I rose from the chair. Had he thought it over in his dull-minded, murderer’s way and thought of his danger? Had he followed us? I know these people.

  The muffled sounds of the night pulsed. The door stood open to the darkness, and the black shield seemed to move. The dark soul of the night. The dark heart of these people who have always bred revenge and killers. There was no mystery here. There was only fear and greed and violence.

  I wanted to call to Frazier and stepped toward the doorway. Then I stopped. He had said that he was like them. The night was a glowering spirit of fear. It was the only spirit in this place.

  Terror passed slowly. By the time Frazier returned I felt under control. Resignation replaced fear.

  When he stepped from the dark it was like the appearance of a specter. His hair and face and clothing were shining with mist. He brushed at his sleeves. His shirt was damp and showed the mark of his hand.

  "Why do you defend Mink?"

  "I defend no one," he said. "That’s in your line."

  "I defend what I can understand."

  "Then understand this."

  "Impossible."

  "No," Frazier said, "it’s possible. You have been away too long. If you were in a foreign country you would be more generous. Man, this is not Madrid or Paris. These are the hills."

  "Murder is murder."

  "Tell Erickson about it." He crossed the room to choose a recording. The room was designed for music, the measured address of an orchestra perfectly transmitted. One did not think of volume. The room lived in music, and the music was surely Bach. Frazier walked the length of the room to sit by the cold fireplace.

  I waited for one more lecture or protest. This had been going on most of my life. It would have been better for both of us if we had never been friends.

  "Erickson may have been hurt," Frazier said. "Forget what’s missing because Mink hid some bone broken by his bullet. It’s twenty miles from anywhere on Hanger Mountain, at least two days to a doctor."

  "But to kill . . ."

  "Sometimes around here a dog gets snake bit. We shoot it quick."

  "And to rob."

  "Dammit, how do you know? He’s ignorant and was afraid and had to try to burn the plane, but Mink is a decent man. At least as decent as the rest."

  "And he did not report."

  "Yes," Frazier said. "That’s what really bothers you. On the other hand, why do you intrude with your five thousand dollars and pure intentions?" He leaned back, stretched his long legs and waited. The music surrounded us. I remained silent to force him to speak.

  "Erickson was dead when he took the first course in engineering at that cow college," Frazier said. "He was dead the first time he spent ten cents on mineral rights."

  "All three of us went to that college."

  "And all three of us chose how we would die." There was a rush of music. "Illusions," he said. "Such a splendid choice of illusions, and so we made our choices."

  "We’re talking about Mink."

  "It’s dark out there." Frazier motioned at the now-closed door. "Mink is not much different, and most of the darkness is only natural darkness. It cares nothing for our concerns, law, poetry, business, what does it matter?"

  "My friend . . ."

  "Yes," he said, "but the rest . . . it’s the darkness of the mind. Toy monkeys on sticks. A dime a jump if you jump high." He broke off and sat watching me with neither judgment nor affection.

  "You remember when I came here," he said presently. "All of you, my friends, cautioned me against being a fool. You cautioned me. Yet, you have known me longest. You know how high I climbed my stick, did my tumbles, tipped my hat and mumbled and grimaced out there." He motioned to the closed door.

  "You are famous."

  "Enough to choose. I spend my time with a mule, a cow, a few chickens and a small garden. I occupy myself sorting Presbyterian ghosts, spirits, devils and haunts that are all illusory because they cloud the few real mysteries of these hills. My death is on my face, wrinkled, hawkish, and I feed my beasts and listen to The Art of the Fugue."

  "Are you dying?"

  "Yes. Listen. Erickson was no different. I speak of dying. All of us, all of our lives tied to these hills. We left because our fathers had jobs in the city. Erickson became rich, I became famous, and you . . ."

  "Have done my job."

  ". . . have also chosen."

  "And Mink could not choose? Pity is a poor thing."

  "And waste is a lousy thing, but you are right about pity. Mink spent his life in the mines."

  "Which belonged to Erickson. You are getting childish. Are you really dying?"

  "Hell, the mines belong to whoever owns mines, and I am getting angry. We do not speak of equity or irony. The whole lot of us are only representative props in a two-bit melodrama. By God!" His lips were drawn and white.

  "Props," he said. "Whatever we do, whoever we are, but the props fail because of the human heart . . . Mink’s work was harsh work."

  "I don’t want to feed your anger," I told him, "but everyone works and gets old."

  "Yes. Except Mink had no pretense about work or the hills. We were trapped in illusion. Trapped in the
immemorial darkness that will always be one of the true mysteries." He paused. Glanced at the closed door. "Your life was worth the price of a bullet a while ago. You were vulnerable. No pretense. No illusion. I sat beneath a poplar and watched. Had you come for the right reason . . ." Frazier stood, but did not walk to the record shelves. He crossed the open room to the kitchen area and began to brew tea from a local herb. With the door closed the night sounds were muted but still present. For a moment the room seemed like a lighted cave.

  "This whole matter was none of our affair," he said. "Erickson intruded. He had no right to be here with those intentions and his pitiful business. He had no right to come sailing over Mink. He had no right to crash on Mink’s place and leave wreckage to plague another man. Will the concerned heirs pay to have that junk removed? Erickson’s last intrusion on Mink was just one of a thousand."

  "What in the hell are you preaching?" I felt that he really must be dying and raving in the face of it.

  "You don’t see it," he said. "Forget it. But, man, you are alien. You have interfered and have no right to interfere further. Come on a true visit, or send me your letters, but stay away from these hills with your intrusions. This tea is always a little bitter."

  "As bitter as the host?"

  "Even now," Frazier said, "you intrude on Mink. You are going to give him money."

  "Or press charges."

  "Try to understand."

  I felt that I should be angry and was not. The murmur of the night lay just beyond the heavy drapes. I could hear it, restless, throbbing and certain.

  "The wreck looks worse than it was. Maybe Erickson was hurt. Maybe he was only unconscious." Frazier sipped at his tea. "There is no way to know what Erickson thought, and there is no way to know what Mink thought because his mind is heavy and dead and he would not remember. He would tell you that Erickson was snake bit, and around here that is a cliché."

  "The man is an animal."

  "The man has become an animal, now an animal with five thousand dollars."

  "You object to the money?"

  "The immemorial darkness," Frazier said. "Already folks call it blood money. They would not lend a mule to help in the matter. I would not myself. Mink might have lived in that hollow for the rest of his life and been buried by his children. Predict his future now? I would not dare." Frazier motioned to the delicate porcelain cup that was as strange in this place as a mule would be in a law office.

  "My anger passes," he said. "When I die the people here will bury me. Then, without discussing it, they will divide the plunder. I have made provisions for the manuscripts and a few of the books."

  "What does that have to do with anything?"

  "Everything. It’s what remains from all the things that happen, and which we believe and which have no meaning. Are you so layered with illusion that you do not believe in revenge, which is another of the true mysteries. Man, I’m not just talking about the spirit of these hills."

  ". . . that they will destroy or steal your property?"

  "That Erickson had his, I have had mine and you are engaged in yours. It’s sodden revenge. That’s all. There is no heat to it. We are old."

  "Maybe you are."

  "We are old. Old as revenge."

  "And you are a fool," I said. "I do my job."

  "Yes, yes, and well, there is the Bach. Sometimes, even now, there is poetry. Around here people can sing very sweet. They do that. Some make their own musical instruments. There are new ways to mine and new ways to build airplanes. The quality of rifles improves each year from army surplus. I listen to the Bach, walk through the natural darkness, and protest against intrusion. Sometimes when there is a gray dawn the forest and pasture are silver when I walk down to feed the mule, and those dawns always happen in winter. The chickens are safe behind wire fences because the valley runs with hounds and foxes."

  He looked at me and his face was creased, gaunt, shadowed in the low light and filled with his particular madness. "You leave in the morning," he told me. "File your report, send Mink the money, ignore the rest. It is none of your business." He walked to the door.

  "Will you stay?"

  "Here," he said. "Yes, right here, but for now I go to check on the beasts." He opened the door, stepped through the black shield and was engulfed. I saw him no more that night and he was uncommunicative in the morning.

  I left in a dawn that promised high humidity and heat. We rode in Frazier’s old car along broken road. My driver was yet another silent man from the community. We bumped along and connected with a state road. I was carried to Ashland.

  My plane flew over mountains that were like waves of green light and glaring heat. They shone in the sunshine and reflected the shadow of the plane. The shadow ran beneath the left wing and appeared and disappeared below us. The cuts between the mountains, the hollows and ravines, the dark gullies and slashes on the landscape swallowed the shadow only to throw it onto the next bright mountaintop. The shadow traveled like a gray imp, a faded demon, and for those stretches where the landscape was altered it was nearly invisible. Erickson had been dead for a year. Frazier was dying in his chosen place and time and manner, and I was responsible for the affairs of others . . . but damn him, to be told that I had no right to be here.

  The pilot banked above a river and followed it north. The shadow ran beneath us and only a little forward. It pointed toward the world that I had chosen.

  All right. Maybe the son of a bitch was correct in his madness. I would respect it enough to respect his wish about Mink: and let him be correct. It was his world that was helpless, not mine. But he still had no right to tell me that I had no right to be here.

  Seven Sisters

  I

  In this worn town on the Washington coast, rain seeps through darkness and turns silver on fir needles when dawn rises gray as tired spirits. Rain washes thick clumps of black moss from decaying cedar roofs. On the edge of town stand the Seven Sisters; mansions once gay with lights and finery, now silent and nigh-lightless except when sounds of rain are overcome by sounds of weeping.

  To understand Seven Sisters, one need know somewhat of the town. In the long ago, back in the 1890s, buildings along our main street rose elegant as Victorian architects could contrive. Turrets soared, ornamented. Lamplight gleamed through stained glass windows. Our wharves bustled with offloading of goods from the Far East, including bond slaves and opium. Money flowed with the abundance of rain.

  Harlotry, shanghai, and murder were common. Yet, though many people died, at the time no specters were reported. It has taken a bit over a century for haunted figures to congregate in group portraits of anguish.

  Some of us see these creatures during gray dawns, and in gray sunsets when black clouds cover the sky but leave a streak of blue along the horizon. As the sun sinks, and blue sky turns orange, long shadows cross our streets. Faces appear through mist, whorish faces, bookish faces, and a few young girls. Some of the faces seem fragmented, as if these spirits have pieces ripped away. Others hover and seem howling; their fear beyond our imagining, their gathering power a dread force.

  And to further understand the town, one need know something of Gentleman Julian (‘King Julie’) Babcock who was a renegade religionist, a renegade showman, a business mogul, and a scamp. During the meetings of this town’s Historical Society (there are three of us, I, Peter Green, once haberdasher to gentlemen, and costumer; the barrister Jabez Johnson who once sat on the bench; and our female member, Catherine ‘Cat’ Peterson, actress, who in her age has become less scandalous) we find ourselves still musing over Gentleman Julie.

  "A finer tomkitty never yowled from the top of a fence. A more randy hound pup never bayed at the moon." This from Cat who, though old, cannot help being beautiful, if bawdy. It is true she will not capture the eye of youth, but experienced men find themselves reassured. She proves to them that they could still make fools of themselves over a woman. Her silver hair gleams more brightly than our silver mist. Her face is crease
d rather than wrinkled, and her gray eyes are alight with potent life. She dresses in ornamental silks, long skirts sweeping to occasionally display a well-turned ankle. She remembers King Julie well, as do I and the Barrister.

  "A silver tongue had Julie. He was a charmer. A spellbinder." The Barrister, like Julie, also strode the speaker’s platform in his day. He was once a powerful orator. "We can thank every star in the firmament that Julie never went into politics." The Barrister’ s voice seems bigger than his body. Age has shrunk him to a mite of a man, although he remains formal in dress. In the days when he was on the bench he was strict. He was known for his standard statement to the guilty: "For you, sir, a spot of jail will be instructional." In fairness, it can be said that if he was firm with miscreants, he has always been equally firm with himself. People joke that he wears suit and tie when he sleeps.

  "We can also thank every star in the firmament," Cat adds, "that our Julie was sterile. Otherwise, we’d be up to our eyelids in third-generation-Julies." And, she shudders. "Tomkitty."

  "He made my fortune," I am forced to admit. "He dressed like a star of moving pictures, and the demand for costumes was endless."

  "Costumes that still hang in place, and in darkness," the Barrister mutters. "One shudders to think of it."

  He refers to closets and dressing rooms in number five of the Seven Sisters, known as Thespia. Julie, who built Seven Sisters, had a fondness for highflown names.

  When Julie came to our town, the town was surprised into shaking off its infancy. The story of the town is not unlike the story of King Julie who entered the frontier just as the Klondike gold rush opened in the 1880s. He did not own one plugged nickle. Equally, at the time, this town was a dismal settlement, wet and gray.

  Julie began his career in Seattle, which was then a small town clinging to the shores of Puget Sound. Seattle rapidly turned into a frontier city where money flowed like wind in the sails of clipper ships. Seattle supplied adventurers who headed for the gold fields of Alaska.