“This is interesting,” Lee said to the other guys. “I never saw crap stacked so high it could wear a suit.”
Petey, his hustle busted, as surely as he busted the rack of balls, almost indifferently ran the table. He banked the eight ball with no real satisfaction and picked up the driver’s twenty. “I reckon it’s time to travel.” He looked at the driver. “Unless you’re still hot and want healing.”
“Forget it,” the driver said. “And thanks. I needed the practice.” A very cool head, that driver.
Petey turned to the drunk, maybe because “Petey” and “Pinky” sound similar. “You attend the funeral?”
“Dead people shouldn’t look that calm,” the drunk said. “Like all the meanness had been sucked out of him.”
“Was he as nasty as you?” The bartender pretended interest. “Because perhaps we’ve discovered a cure.”
“He was vice president of a mortgage company.” Then the drunk realized he’d been insulted. “Suppose it was your car?”
“If it were my car,” the bartender told him, “and we’re talking authentic Jaguar here, I would erect a shrine in their mutual memory.”
“There must be something to all that bull about accidents,” Petey said. “I reckon I’d better get on home.” Then he paused. “You think somebody’s gone ugly?”
“Something isn’t square,” the bartender said. “I’m thinking about the problem. When I figure it out I’ll send word.”
“Avoid hustlers,” Lee told Petey, as Petey headed for the door. “I worry about you kids.”
The Complications of Love
On sunny days the Canal glosses over with a sheen of darkest green, and islands in the flooded landscape rise like wet clumps of moss above the darkness. The Canal covers all sorts of things acquired from the land: automobiles, boats, ships, tools, beer bottles, drowned kittens, corpses, crashed airplanes, sunken buoys, stolen electronics, wedding rings cast by the divorced and depressed, incriminating evidence, pistols, shotguns, rifles, hypodermics, butcher knives, as well as great numbers of other byproducts of the greatest civilization ever seen in all the history of the universe.
In the Canal’s depths, and they are deep, tumble more wrecks than we know. On the surface fishing boats cluster near tidal beaches where salmon runs grow thinner with each passing year, and where, in their seasons, shrimp and crabs and bottom fish are dragged flopping and gasping to the surface.
On dark days the Canal seems more itself. Waters ruffle before the wind, and breakers pound against the Hood Canal Bridge, against the shores, against the islands. Ships come down the Canal, Coast Guard icebreakers, Navy frigates, and atomic powered submarines. The Navy tells us a single sub carries more firepower than has been discharged by all the navies in all of history. Hard to believe, and sort of meaningless. Any boy on a schoolyard can tell you that it ain’t how much you swing, but where do you hit?
By the time Petey pulled onto the gravel lot at Beer and Bait, the westering sun stood smack dab on the mountaintops. On the last day of July that means a little after eight PM. Cars and pickups filled the lot, and from inside came the lonesome sound of guitars. The tape deck in the bar broadcast a country singer mourning loss; and perhaps the loss was a Cadillac, or maybe only a lover. Petey sat in his Plymouth, listened to imitation sorrow from the tape deck, and became aware that he had changed. For years, having made his living in the presence of fiddles that sounded like scalded cats, he did not even hear bar music. Now, though, he wished for nothing but silence, Bertha, and his dog. Petey asked himself if it was time to settle down, buy a little store or something, and pull a few hustles on the side. In other days such an idea would fill him with revulsion. Now the idea seemed almost smart. He told himself he was going through a phase. The road takes something out of a man.
Across the lot, two figures sat on the hood of a pick up as they soaked up last rays of sunlight. One appeared to be a fisherman, and the other bulked too big to be anyone but Sugar Bear. Petey climbed from the Plymouth and trudged toward them. He figured Sugar Bear would catch him up on the news and the fisherman would try, although fishermen are definitely at a disadvantage:
Fishermen, like hustlers, are often away for a month at a pop. While they are away news gets elaborated. While there’s not much time for talk on a fishing boat, there’s plenty of time for folks to misinform poor fishermen when the boat hails into port. Then, of course, the fishermen have to revise everything by asking quest ions. A new round of embroidered news lies waiting to greet the next returning boat. After a few boats arrive, the stories get as confused as trail mix. When blank spaces appear in a story, even an honest fisherman has to make things up.
This fisherman turned out to be the thoughtful one, and he scooched over to make a spot on the hood of the truck. “Petey,” the fisherman said, “do I just keep missing you, or the other way around?” The fisherman had been ashore for a while. His hair shone clean and he did not smell all that bad.
“I been to the big city,” Petey told him. “I’m glad nobody’s revoked your bail.” Petey eased up onto the hood, looked across the fisherman to Sugar Bear, and realized he’d screwed up with his crack about bail. “Things steady out your way?”
“The usual,” Sugar Bear said, but didn’t sound like he meant it. He looked at the last sunlight like a man headed for eternal darkness. His huge shoulders slumped. His hair, furry and curly, brown and thick, fluffed over his ears. His beard curled beneath a furry mustache, and his brown eyes filled with sorrow. He watched the sunlight like a man who sees it for the last time.
“You’re a smart guy,” the fisherman said to Petey. “We were just discussing women.”
“Actually, not exactly women,” Sugar Bear said. “It’s more like a what-the-hell-do-I-do-next discussion.”
“Because Sugar Bear has a thing for Annie,” the fisherman explained.
“And Sugar Bear is headed for jail sure as a bear craps in the woods.” Sugar Bear squinched up his face, which meant that a lot of hair moved around and his eyes blinked. “Suppose I tell her,” he said, “and suppose she likes me, which maybe that could happen, but maybe not. Then, when I make the slammer, she’s left behind. That wouldn’t be right. Everybody knows that. Hell, I know that.”
“I wouldn’t own your conscience if they gave me a winning lottery ticket,” the fisherman told him. “I wouldn’t keep your conscience unless I owned thirty damn churches.”
“Even if somebody gets shouting-drunk, and blabs, the cops would only have a b.s. story,” Petey said. “The cops don’t know the dead guy and the car are there. You’re hustling yourself.”
“You did that punk a favor,” the fisherman told Sugar Bear. “He didn’t suffer. You saved a fishing boat some trouble. The guy was a goner no matter how you slice it.”
“The cops will find the car,” Sugar Bear told Petey. “You ain’t been here. The cops got divers pulling out wrecks. They’re going through that water like you run tranny fluid through a strainer.” Music moaned through the open doorway of Beer and Bait, something about love letters stashed behind a commode. “Besides,” Sugar Bear said, “that’s not exactly the problem. I got to live with this.”
“You ought to talk to Annie,” Petey told him. “It looks like she has a stake.”
“Annie talks to bugs,” Sugar Bear said, as if he were explaining something.
“In other words,” the fisherman said thoughtfully, “we’re talking about you having a case of the hots. I figured we talked long term.” He made a motion to slide off the hood of the pickup, then decided to wait for an answer. On the Canal the first suggestion of mist hovered on the surface.