The Well

by Jack Cady

  THE WELL

  Jack Cady was born in Hartford City, Indiana in 1932. He spent four years with the U.S. Coast Guard in Maine before earning a degree from the University of Louisville in 1961. A man of many skills, Cady’s occupations included jobs as a truck driver, auctioneer, and landscaper, and he also worked as a teacher, serving as an assistant professor at the University of Washington in Seattle from 1968 to 1973 and also teaching in Illinois, Pennsylvania, and at the University of Alaska in Sitka. For the thirteen years prior to his retirement in 1998, Cady taught creative writing at Pacific Lutheran University in Tacoma, Washington, where he won a distinguished teaching award in 1992.

  Cady’s first book, a collection of stories entitled The Burning, was published in 1972 by the University of Iowa Press and won the Iowa School of Letters Award for Short Fiction, earning praise from judge Joyce Carol Oates, who wrote, “It takes no special critical powers to recognize in Cady an exceptional writer, who is not just promising but has already achieved some remarkable feats.”

  Cady’s first novel, The Well, was published in 1980 to critical acclaim and has gone on to be considered a classic of the genre. Other novels included The Jonah Watch (1981) and McDowell’s Ghost (1982). Cady won numerous awards for his fiction, including the World Fantasy, Philip K. Dick, and Bram Stoker Awards, as well as the prestigious Nebula Award for his short story “The Night We Buried Road Dog.” Recognized as a master of the short story, Cady’s tales also appeared in the Best American Short Stories anthologies for 1971 and 1972.

  Cady married fellow writer Carol Orlock in 1977 and lived for many years in Port Townsend, Washington. He died in 2004.

  THE WELL

  JACK CADY

  With an introduction by

  TOM PICCIRILLI

  VALANCOURT BOOKS

  The Well by Jack Cady

  First published New York: Arbor House, 1980

  First Valancourt Books edition 2014

  Copyright © 1980 by Jack Cady

  Introduction © 2008 by Tom Piccirilli

  Published by Valancourt Books, Richmond, Virginia

  Publisher & Editor: James D. Jenkins

  20th Century Series Editor: Simon Stern, University of Toronto

  http://www.valancourtbooks.com

  All rights reserved. The use of any part of this publication reproduced, transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, or stored in a retrieval system, without prior written consent of the publisher, constitutes an infringement of the copyright law.

  isbn 978-1-939140-96-8 (trade paperback)

  Also available as an electronic book.

  All Valancourt Books publications are printed on acid free paper that meets all ANSI standards for archival quality paper.

  Cover by M. S. Corley

  Set in Dante MT 11/13.6

  INTRODUCTION

  I received word of Jack Cady’s death shortly before completion of my novel November Mourns, a story which, like much of my work, bears his stamp in some form or another. In November I incorporated Jack’s teachings of how the earth itself can often be heavily laden with the ghosts of the past. I dedicated the book to him, stating that he was “another of my fathers who will be dearly missed.” In no way did it even begin to articulate what I felt about him and what he meant to me. He was a mentor, a friend, an advisor, and a trusted guide. In short, he was everything to me that a father should be.

  I first tumbled to Jack’s work in 1990, after purchasing the anthology Prime Evil, edited by Douglas Winter. After reading “By Reason of Darkness,” his brilliant novella of Vietnam veterans haunted not only by their war memories but by their strained bonds of their friendship as well as the spirits of the disturbed dead, I was so taken by his thematic vision and literate power that I shot off a fan letter. I was twenty-five and had just published my first dark fantasy in the field.

  As was characteristic of him, he responded with a missive brimming with generosity and encouragement. From that moment on began a correspondence and a long-distance friendship that lasted until Jack’s death in January 2004. In that time I learned just how much he believed in the value of humanity, history, and charity. One of the tenets he taught, through his skills as a writer and his disposition as a man, was that we should all be willing to “receive and express love.” Boiled down like that it seems obvious and, perhaps, even effortless, but there’s nothing more difficult for any of us to learn how to do.

  His work, like his life, was steeped in Americana. The myth of the nation as much as the reality of it. The back roads, the small towns, the places where history and legend meet on every street corner. Jack’s characters, whether they’re barkeeps, truck drivers, or lumberjacks, have a powerful mythical resonance. He looked upon humanity with a critical eye, but not a judgmental one. His protagonists often reflect this sentiment. They bear witness to bitter events around them but only to appraise, assess, and when the time comes, to forgive those who need absolution. What I remember most about Jack Cady was his assertive presence, a solidity that you could feel when you shook his hand, like he was rooted in the earth. He was a large and rugged, a rough and tumble kind of man full of physical strength and maverick personality. His hair was always worn wildly askew like a great Russian fur hat, and he had a wiry beard that wreathed his jawline and chin the way Lincoln’s did. It suited him. His appearance wasn’t dictated by modern fashions at all, but perhaps, it seemed, by past ones. He would’ve looked perfectly at home in one of those sepia-toned photographs of seated Civil War generals. He was a man out of the vault of history itself.

  A conscientious objector during the Korean war, Jack still spent four years in the Coast Guard in Maine. He drove a truck through the Southeast, worked for a tree company in Boston, and became a foreman for a landscaping company in San Francisco. Along the winding route of his life, he also spent time as an auctioneer, warehouse worker, and, of course, a teacher. He taught writing at the University of Washington, Knox College in Illinois, Clarion College in Pennsylvania, and finally ended up at Pacific Lutheran University where he eventually retired. He married fellow writer Carol Orlock (author of the superb The Goddess Letters) in 1977 and they remained happily together until his death. Surviving him were four children from previous marriages.

  A master of short fiction, and especially the novella form, Cady is perhaps best known for the Nebula-winning tale “The Night We Buried Road Dog.” For his imaginative, visionary work he was recognized with the Iowa Prize for Short Fiction, the Atlantic Monthly First Award, the Nebula Award, Bram Stoker Award, Philip K. Dick Award, and the World Fantasy Award.

  His novels include The Hauntings of Hood Canal, The Off Season, Street, Inagehi, McDowell’s Ghost, The Jonah Watch, The Man Who Could Make Things Vanish, and Singleton, which Jack often expressed was a favorite of his.

  The Well was Jack’s first published novel, and the great themes of his life, which he would revisit throughout the course of his career, are all present. How ghosts are forces representing the good and evil of the world at large. How history and time itself can be a powerful ally or fearsome foe. And how belief in God can be either a damning or saving grace, and sometimes both at once.

  Although many of Jack’s horror and fantasy stories featured compelling and detailed depictions of areas around his home in Port Townsend, Washington, at the northeast tip of the Olympic Peninsula, The Well takes place in the Midwest (where Jack was born), at the bizarre mansion of the Tracker family. Built by three generations obsessed with superstition and terrified of Satan, the sprawling house is a labyrinth of booby traps set to catch the Devil. The
corridors twist upon themselves and the flow of time twists with them.

  John Tracker, who was raised in the house by his weak-willed father and his puritanical grandparents, has come home to clear away the mansion and make way for a new highway. He expects all of his family members to be long dead, but instead finds his embittered and possibly demented grandmother still alive. The ghosts of other ancestors prowl the corridors as well, some of them trapped in pockets of the past. Fascinated by the power of the house, and driven to confront its overbearing evil, John Tracker must attend to the lost generations of his family and outwit the traps that await him.

  The Well takes the tropes of a classic haunted house novel and spins them into an extremely unsettling family saga. Each chapter begins with the personal history of some leaf off the family tree, and as we follow them we witness the growth of America itself, from its virtuous pinnacles to its corrupt depths.

  Jack presented me with a copy of The Well bearing the inscription “To Tom, friend and fellow writer.” At the time I’d only had one novel and a handful of short stories published, but he knew how important it was for a young author to be considered a part of a grand literary family, and he welcomed me into it with open arms. It’s that kind of courtesy and thoughtfulness for which Jack will always be known among his friends and peers. I’ll always miss him dearly, and will always be thankful to have his letters and his books, which are so rich and full of his own vivid, captivating, dignified life.

  Tom Piccirilli

  Loveland, Colorado

  August 29, 2007

  THE WELL

  for Frank and Bev

  Phoebe

  Why have you not thrown open the doors,

  and called in witnesses? It is terrible

  to be here alone.

  The House of the Seven Gables

  Chapter One

  There are Things that do not love the sun. They weep and curse their own creation.

  Sometimes on earth a cruel shift takes place. Time splits.

  Corpses possessed at the moment of their death rise from tombs. The dark ages of history flow mindless from stagnant wells and lime-dripping cellars. The corpses, those creatures of possession, walk through ancient halls and rooms.

  The house of the Trackers stands. It was begun by Johan Traker, father of Theophilus Tracker, grandfather of Justice Tracker, and great grandfather of John Tracker.

  Through endless halls are dusks gathering like the memory of screams. There is a concatenation. Presences drift toward combination. Darkness rises and takes shape behind the sound of footsteps. The house prepares.

  Autumn rains followed the river, and the construction crews made a final effort. Men slogged through slick clay that stained the weeds blown dead by powerful chemicals. Grasses and leaves fell to decay.

  Fungus grew between the toes of men, with boots greasy with clay that dried overnight like well-fired pottery. The storm-thrown rain drove operators from high seats on machines that stood hefty in the puddling soil; the yellow compactors, the tough orange graders and the green buckets.

  The new highway stretched raw along the bottoms. It jumped creeks and cut hillsides. It drove a plumb line through the rolling country. For miles it was enclosed by burr and acid-loving weeds which insinuated seed into the soil of the sprayed ditches. In the third heavy frost all of the plants were dead, but the men were gone by then.

  The road ran in spurts like extended humps over mass graves. One section ran to the edge of an industrial city where stack flame and sulphur hung over the crowded population. Another section leap-frogged the Ohio River on the bluffs of southern Indiana. All sections were joined by a scheme on blueprints, and all were actually to be joined in the coming year.

  After the rain came arctic cold. The mud froze. As the winter turned into one of the worst ever recorded in Indiana, the highway became a mound of white. Storm followed storm. The new year opened with ferocious wind. Then, in the third week of the new year, there was a lull. The highway stretched toward the horizon, unmarked except by an occasional track of a fox or rabbit, a stain of blood when the tracks met.

  That is how John Tracker first saw the highway that cut him from property he had not seen since he was twenty, a house where he had not lived since he was ten. During his teens, when his father was normal, John had visited his father here. He had tried to push these years from his mind. Failing that, he had tried to press them into his memory and hide them. It was almost like those memories lived in a well of fear; and he had tried to cover that well. Now it seemed about to burst its cover. Tracker cursed the circumstances that brought him here.

  The mound of highway stood like a wall. Beyond that wall, the house of the Trackers.

  Fear. His spine felt numb, a contradiction, but true. It was as uncontrolled as a hanged man’s kicking. His shoulders were tight. The back of his neck felt like it was in a clamp.

  He had avoided thinking about this place. He had avoided dreaming of it. Usually John Tracker worked so hard that he believed the absorption of work kept him from dreaming. For years he had fought memory and believed it was whipped. Now he was finding that some of his memories were present like the events of yesterday. He told himself that of all men in the world he was best equipped to handle this place. While he thought it, he also thought that he might not be able to handle it at all. Memory pressed. He could nearly hear his own childish voice questioning:

  “What’s in the well?”

  “Nothin’ in that one, boy.” His grandfather, tall, gray haired, blue-jeaned and with tools at his belt. “Nothin’ in that one, atall. Don’t get nowhere near that other’n.”

  “Where is the other one?”

  “If you don’t know, then you got no troubles.”

  “What’s in the well?”

  “Water. Don’t fall in. Don’t go near any well.” His father was usually preoccupied, his brown hair curly and uncombed, his head bent over ledgers or old and crackling books.

  “What’s in the well?”

  “Fall in there and you’ll see, all right. Look in there and it’ll grab you.” His grandmother knew and was not telling. She was sharp-tongued and had no time for little boys, unless she was scaring them into silence.

  John Tracker sat in his car and watched the snowy grade. He was forty years old. For the last twenty years, since the last time he saw this place, he had admitted that there were at least two minds in his head. There was the business and decision-making mind. It was the mind that ruled him. It caused a little laughter, a lot of money-making and lately it was beginning to accept and enjoy pleasure.

  He thought of the girl. Amy seemed a long way off, which was not true. She was in the hotel in Indianapolis. He had slept beside her last night. Something beyond casual sex was happening between him and Amy. When he thought of it, it made him shake his head and concentrate on business.

  The other mind that lived in his head came from the past. It once lived in the passages of that house beyond the freeway. He controlled it pretty well, but now it seemed ready to make demands. Tracker knew enough of himself to know he was at least partly depraved. He knew enough about the world to believe that most other people were too, but he figured he was, somehow, a special case. He shook his head. Except for the girl, who was really a woman but who thought of herself as a girl, he was alone too much. Either that, or he was in the company of businessmen.

  He wished he were back in the hotel with Amy instead of sitting in his car looking at the snow-covered mound. She was a tall woman who showed a strange combination of sensuality, grace and sexual desire, mixed with prudishness. Tracker knew enough about women to understand that Amy sometimes worked under a lot of pressure that seemed unnecessary. It was like she made pressure so she would seem important when she solved the problem. She was still the best woman he had ever met, though she did not
seem to have had much experience with men.

  Amy was his traveling secretary, and had been for three years. They had always slept in separate rooms until this last week. Tracker again wished she were with him, right now, and the wish did not have much to do with sex. He slouched in his car and stared at the grade. The few automobiles that traveled this side road held farmers and small-townspeople who looked at his foreign car and were always talking as they passed. Talking in the stores, or on the courthouse lawn or in the churchyards on Sunday. Talk was the most plentiful commodity in the world. By evening the whole county would know that John Tracker had returned to the house of the Trackers.

  A low rumble vibrated in the back of his throat. His lower jaw dropped, and he felt his hands curling. A feral sound seemed to rise from his throat. It sounded to him like the warning of a cornered animal.

  He was shocked by it, he thought it was long past. He’d worked so hard to get rid of it. He knew that other people did not hear it; at least he was pretty sure they did not. But now, here in the presence of the house of the Trackers, it had returned, and even if others did not hear it, he did. Once again, he did.

  The story going around the county might say that John Tracker was eight feet tall and had the blood of babies on his breath. For a shocking moment he wished it were true. Actually he was 5’ 11” and muscular. His teeth were clean and even and unbloodied. He kept from fat by constant work and exercise. His face was weathered from the years before the first big money, and he had dark eyes that sometimes announced decisions well ahead of his voice. On this visit to the house he was dressed in wool shirt, work pants and boots. Usually he wore business suits.