“Pretty busted up?” Bertha pretended nobody’s feet were on fire to tear out for a look at the tragedy.
“I’ve towed worse, but nothin’ this weird.” The kid stepped to the doorway, looked toward his truck, and the kid wasn’t faking. He might be a little scared, but he was really and truly sad. “Two people,” he claimed. “A guy and a lady. Hell of a thing to do to a Buick.” The kid really was light on his feet, like a boxer or tumbler. “Folks from north of here,” he said to Bertha. “Up at the development.”
He talked about a housing project, and about how the road is situated. Bertha’s Beer and Bait, with pool tables and fuel dock, sits like a fulcrum for the road. Beer and Bait lies almost exactly halfway along the Canal, and the Canal runs from the head of Puget Sound to the state capitol in Olympia.
At the north end of the road, thirty miles from Beer and Bait sits Al’s Dock, known locally as the Rough and Randy. Just north of Rough and Randy, where the dead people came from, sits a high-priced housing project for retired presidents, white-collar criminals, stock market types, and other folk for whom no one on the Canal has any time. “Because,” as Sugar Bear Smith often explained, “if you got morals you might as well use ’em.”
About thirty-five miles south of Beer and Bait, near the Capitol building in Olympia, Lee’s China Bay Taverna flaunts pinballs, fantan, cribbage, tap beer, a bartender who is wise, and Lee, as wily an Oriental as can be found in any moving picture. For a number of reasons that will later appear, a sense of magic and mystery always hovers around China Bay.
To the west stand mountains, to the east the Canal, and everything not road or water is covered by trees. Rain keeps things nicely washed nine months out of twelve, and skies turn blue for tourist season. On clear nights Greek Annie looks to the stars and puts curses on satellites sailing high above; curses indiscriminate toward nationality or economic belief. Through most of the year the skies seep gray rain, or fill with lowflying cloud scud.
“A’ course it’s busted up a little,” the kid said about the Buick. The kid was not going to be denied the reputation he had coming. The fisherman, kinder than required, took a final pull at his beer. “Got to git,” he said. “Still got some cleanup on the boat.” He walked casual to the door like a man reluctant to go back to work, and he was worth admiring. The kid remained unsure, but hope just oozed from his pores. The fisherman hesitated in the doorway and reflected on the view. He said to no one in particular, “Better come look at this.” Charity, the preacher tells us, is the greatest of the virtues.
The kid was off the hook. Petey moved so casual anyone could see why he is such a good hustler. Bertha came from behind the bar and she carried a bar rag. That rag kind of advertised that she was too busy attending to the wreck to pretend she wasn’t.
There are some who claim a Buick is a pretty sorry sight to begin with, though none of them are Republicans. This Buick threw a chill across the sunlit afternoon. It sat on a trailer, being impossible to tow from a harness because the wheels could never, ever track. The car was not quite twisted into a corkscrew, but twisted it was; twisted so the gleamy grill had broken loose and dangled from one small bolt. The roof bulged, as though raised from within by a hydraulic jack; or it might be the bulge came from some sort of awful suction on the outside. The windshield had popped out and must now lie at the bottom of the Canal. The trunk lid stood half raised, and two deep scratches ran the length of the car, like it had slid away from something that grasped it with iron fingernails. Beneath sunlight, streaks of mud dried on royal purple paint.
The wreck would make the bravest man feel timid. When that windshield popped, water would have crashed in like a cold and suffocating hand. Those people would not have seen a thing, and maybe that was the only lucky part.
And, when it comes to the imagination, this wreck worked different from other wrecks where body metal shears, or glass shatters, or fires leave their imprints on paint. This wreck had done nothing to itself, no crash, no burn, no damage from hitting tree or telephone pole. This wreck had been done unto.
“You hear about it and it don’t seem real.” Bertha shuddered and looked at the Canal. “It’s real.” She spoke to the kid. “Did you see those folks?”
“…talked to a guy who did.” The kid had lost all his brass. He didn’t even pretend he wasn’t scared. “They were kind of blank. That’s all the guy said. Just kind of blank… I don’t know what that means… they weren’t in the water more than a couple days.”
“I’d be fearful just towing that thing,” Bertha said. “I give you credit.”
“It sure don’t beat a dish of ice cream,” the kid said. “It durn near don’t beat walking.”
Petey climbed on the trailer and looked through the window on the driver’s side. “Nothing broke. Sopping wet. Air conditioner switch on high. Headlight switch on. They were cruisin’.”
“I’ve got work on the boat but this drives me towards another beer.” The fisherman walked back into Beer and Bait.
“Me too,” the kid said. “One more beer won’t bust a Breathalyzer.”
The Wrecks—Three Views
The kid became a regular at Beer and Bait as he averaged a tow a week. His truck, all lights and hook, looked almost cautious as he hauled wrecks on a trailer. The wrecks still caused people’s hearts to go dull with fear and wonder.
The kid worked up a routine of two beers and talk at Bertha’s, because Beer and Bait is friendly. Then he hauled to the police lot outside the Capitol. Then he finished off with a beer or two at Lee’s China Bay Taverna. The kid became a kind of newspaper. He connected the south end of the road with the middle. Messages went back and forth.
“Lee’s bartender says the Canal’s no different than ever,” the kid confided to Bertha. “If something’s different, it’s not made of water. That’s a smart bartender.” The kid looked uneasy.
“…smart enough to stay away from here, anyway.” Bertha, who figures herself for smart, claimed people at the south end had no right judging what went on toward the middle. “Next we’ll hear from up north. Al’s Rough and Randy will form a posse.”
“Nothing too sober,” Petey told the kid. “Al’s is more randy than rough.”
While Bertha took to the kid in a motherly way, Petey hustled him like a father teaching a son about hazards. The kid proved brighter than he looked, catching on to Petey’s hustle in under fifty bucks. The kid, and everyone else, still shivered when looking at the wrecks.
Meanwhile, worry spread up and down the road as more local people saw more drowned cars:
Greek Annie found herself at the site of the biggest haul which was not even a car. A drowned tractor-trailer was pulled glowing like a red sunrise from beneath the water. Annie, who at twenty-two is young for a witch, and actually pretty gorgeous when she brushes her hair, watched from the woods where she gathered herbs. She muttered and promised to take a lesson about who and what she cursed. This was a wholesale grocery truck, and, while Annie could never remember cursing groceries, she thought she might have once said a word or two on behalf of trucks or truck drivers. She watched as the silver trailer slid back into dark water where it remains. She watched as the red tractor got pulled ashore. The fiberglass cab squashed inward, like someone ran it through a giant garbage compactor. When the coroner’s men pried the truck door Annie discovered that she had been watching about thirty seconds too long. She headed for Bertha’s Beer and Bait at a slow trudge, which is not her nature. Her elfin face can ordinarily find a smile, and her lithe body is that of a runner. She is often seen trotting like a college girl who jogs, hoping to impress a quarterback.