One day, maybe, the world at large will discover Jack Cady, and copies of his books will tumble from over-stocked shelves. He will be spoken of in the same breath as Ray Bradbury and Fred Chappell. The Hauntings of Hood Canal will be fire the imaginations of a thousand young, ambitious writers hoping to do half as well. Until that day comes, though, you and I will have to keep it alive. By reading it, by talking about it, and by passing it on.
The Road
The road beside the Hood Canal runs snaky, the Canal branching from dark waters of Puget Sound and growing even darker as it runs a black furrow east of the Olympic Mountain range. The Canal was carved by the last ice age. It is dolomite and granite walled, wider than the Mississippi, and darker than a bad man’s thoughts. It runs with geologic indifference before trailer parks, boat moorings, bars, bait shops, and villages. Cresting waves break wild as oceans when our world lies flogged by storms, although on windless days the Canal holds the calm of a black and nigh bottomless lake.
In daylight the road carries locals who are easy in their minds and tourists who are tightlipped and white-knuckled. Since tourists are accustomed to freeways the road seems to them a narrow path beside a watery hell. There are no guardrails.
Locals know the road and stay off after midnight. Bars and roadhouses close at eleven PM. Men pack up pool cues, or put away their darts. Wives or girlfriends bundle up against the wind. Everyone gets home before the road “turns ugly.”
During long night hours when the road is ugly a few trucks pass this way, or a traveling salesman, or a tourist who has ventured too far from cities. If the Canal reaches out and swallows a car, or if the road dumps a truck into those cold waters, the people who perish are strangers.
And, sometimes, people turn ugly. More than a few “sensitives” have roamed these parts:
Chantrell George once wore visions at his throat, having made necklaces of hallucinogenic mushrooms.
Sugar Bear Smith had a girl’s pretty looks, and a girl’s gentle ways, but those things slipped after he killed a man.
Greek Annie is a witch who talks to frogs and reptiles, and who lately called down storms.
Petey Mullholland and Bertha, of Bertha’s Beer and Bait Shoppe, resemble pool sharks.
And Miscellaneous, which is to say, there’s a scatter of beer drinkers, top fallers, wharf rats, loggers, and other humble but possibly sainted folk; the most inconspicuous being a thoughtful character known as the fisherman, the youngest being a truck driver called the tow-truck kid.
Even some animals act better than they should. Jubal Jim Johnson, who runs with Petey, and who is a blue tick hound, likes to bay cuss words across dark water, raising his snout toward a clouded moon while pretending he is a wolf.
There wasn’t a dangerous one among them. Even Sugar Bear was angelic. He only killed a man because that man messed with children. If Sugar Bear hadn’t, someone else would feel obliged.
So, when the road and Canal seemed to get ambition, and took more cars than usual, folks first looked to see if anyone had “gone ugly.” During last summer and fall thirteen cars—at least thirteen we know about—got swallowed by the waters. That was different. Always before the Canal only took one car a year, or at most, two. The wholesale dunking began after Sugar Bear killed the man.
Police divers came up from the state capital. Police, who knew nothing of the murder, swarmed that road, held roadblocks for testing booze, and before it was over lost one of their own.
The best cop of the lot, a nice guy, seemed fated. He was swallowed by darkness; and we learned it was not a person or the road that pulled cars into the Canal and caused drownings.
But, it took a long time to learn that. Everybody waited while traffic experts measured sight distances. Engineers found the only way to put up guardrails would be to sink pilings along the entire road, a job too expensive for dreaming. Then cars stopped drowning willy-nilly and concentrated in one spot.
A crane worked full time. It snaked cars like lifeless fish when divers found them. The cars held bodies, mostly, although two people got free of the cars; a mixed blessing. The Canal is not only cold; it’s hungry.
Petey and Bertha… and the Fisherman
Petey Mullholland generally hangs out at Bertha’s Beer and Bait Shoppe where pool tables are famous for being level. Beer and Bait is a dandy building fronting the road with the Canal running at its back. There’s a small finger pier with fuel pumps. The parking lot is large, graveled, and well drained, which is generally the way we build them in Washington state.
It was on a sunny day in that dark summer that Petey entered, knocked back a glass of lemonade and stared through an open window. The Canal lay tranquil as the mind of a monk, although beneath the surface anything could be going on. Beyond a back window, but before the Canal, Jubal Jim Johnson dozed in full sun, his nose twitching from dog dreams of chasing varmints. Petey wrinkled his own nose and seemed pleased with the way it worked. He turned to Bertha.
“I bin up and down the road. Everything looks the same except for some people we don’t want to know. State cops, mostly.” He unpacked his cue stick, screwed it together, and checked the premises for “live ones.” A fisherman sat in a far corner of the large room. He nursed his beer and cared nothing at all for a joust at pool with Petey.
“I know a girl who dated a cop, once. It was more-or-less an education.” Bertha, who is thirtyish and taller than Petey, sat at the end of the long bar. Her blond hair is nicely streaked with grayish tint, her eyes are blue and canny, her tones sound mostly gentle; although Bertha has never hired a bouncer, having seen no need to pay others for work she enjoys. Still, men along the road dream fond dreams of her. Simply told, Bertha is gorgeous.
“It’s either good or bad for business,” she said about the police and divers and the drowned. “Hard to tell which just yet.” She looked toward the Canal, then to the front door and the road. “But I see no business now.” She pulled her favorite cue from its place behind the bar.
They’ve shot pool for a real long time, this blond Norwegian, and Petey, who owns less pedigree than his dog. Petey is sort of Indian and sort of Spanish, both in the darker traditions; but his bald spot is English, his artistic hands no doubt Italian, or probably Portuguese. He’s maybe ten years older than Bertha. The two shoot a game so complicated only they understand rules they’ve made up. All standard pool games are too easy.
Jubal Jim Johnson snoozed beyond the windows, then gave a quick yip. A cloud ran across the sun. Jubal Jim came dashing through the doorway like a sudden shower. He looked real uneasy.
“Bear?” Bertha chalked her cue, talking to Jubal Jim, getting ready to razz him.
“Maybe.” Petey walked to the doorway, watched a passing Dodge, looked toward the mountains and forest and then stepped onto the porch. Jubal Jim sat behind the screen door pretending to be brave, which, if it was a bear, was possible.
The cloud cleared the sun. The world brightened. Petey walked toward the Canal. Water swirled near the shore. The water sort of humped up, then spread, then turned to wavelets. Petey shrugged, walked back inside, picked up his cue. “Better sleep on the porch,” he said to Jubal Jim. “And watch that show-off mouth.”