And Chantrell George, whose visions are sometimes induced and sometimes not, took no lessons; that being his nature. He walked his bike along the shoulder of the road as a little foreign car was pulled ashore, squashed like the middle part of a sandwich. Chantrell stopped to watch while keeping fast hold on his bicycle. The bike has no chain because Chantrell doesn’t ride, but it has nice baskets front and rear. He pushes it along the shoulder as he peddles legal mushrooms, saving the other kind for himself and a select group of consumers. He sometimes comes up with a stone tool, or other Indian relic, scrounged from the forest. A village lies back there beneath an ancient mudslide. The relics bring a couple of bucks. Chantrell George just misses being a deadbeat, but scrapes by on small bills and change. Plus, some nights he tends bar.
Chantrell watched the car, this one orange, and as usual he looked like a raggedy scarecrow. His long brown hair lies greasy over thin shoulders, framing a thin face that carries amber eyes alight with things that to other people are unseen.
Visions lie behind those eyes, and in a vision Chantrell saw the orange car stewing in subterranean fires of an undersea volcano. Then the car rose through dark waters as it was trailed by pink sea lions. The orange and pink caused darkness to turn to sunrise, and sunrise changed the car into a chariot pulled by giant pigeons. The pigeons gradually tired and the chariot fell toward the sun. Chantrell George pushed his bicycle away from the scene as he analyzed the vision. He walked right past two state cops. He was too busy to have time for them, and they were too busy to notice the illegal merchandise riding openly in the front basket of the bike.
Still, Sugar Bear Smith, who is pretty as his name, and as big, had it worst. Sugar Bear stumped his toe on a wreck scene as he meandered toward Bear and Bait. Sugar Bear arrived during late afternoon on one of those miserable northwest days when the thermometer hits seventy-five and proposes to go higher. Sugar Bear, whose beard and mustache are brown and furry, and whose hands can bend steel rebar, closed down his blacksmith forge, closed up his tool repair shop, and went on strike against the weather. He shambled from the woods as easygoing and smilely as a satisfied saint.
The police crane stood waiting. It snaked out a small, redwith-top-down sports car. The car came up empty. The driver’s spirit dwelt no doubt in heaven, or possibly elsewhere, but the driver’s remains were forever below in the Canal, along with all other mistakes people make in the presence of deep water.
Sugar Bear tsked, said a few prayerful words, hummed a couple bars of a hymn and felt he’d done his duty. His shamble turned into a stroll as he resumed his trip to Beer and Bait. Then his stroll ended.
A nice looking man and an attractive woman watched the red car dangle from the crane like a sea creature that has been hooked for so long it’s dead. The two were in their fifties, well-dressed, and the woman clung to her husband like someone about to slide from a cliff. He held her as close as love or fear can cause. His eyes blinked, his face ran with tears. He murmured to his wife, consoling words that did not console. Other people stood in a group, gawking. The gawkers watched the sorrow and took pleasure in sensation, like people reading headlines on papers at the grocery.
“Cheaters,” Sugar Bear said to himself about the gawkers. “Gyppers.” Sugar Bear walked quickly from the couple’s sorrow. He knows when he can help and when he can’t. If those people mourned a son or daughter lost forever in that dark water, their mourning deserved privacy. Sugar Bear walked quickly, because, while it takes a good bit to make him mad, he doesn’t like himself when he is mad. Vulgarity sometimes makes him explode. The cheaters probably didn’t know they were vulgar, and they sure didn’t know they were in danger; even if cops were present.
The Murder
Not all fishermen are thoughtful, or at least not around here, but the one thoughtful fisherman we do have would put it this way: “If a tree falls in the forest, and there is no one around to hear, there may not be any sound. It follows then, if a corpse gets pitched into the Canal when there are no witnesses, maybe there has been no murder.” This particular fisherman says stuff like this all the time, because, while he is thoughtful, most folks claim he isn’t very bright.
And then, there is Sugar Bear. Not all blacksmiths are dear men, but Sugar Bear is; a man who lives in a fairy tale or a poem. His blacksmith shop and tool repair sit in a mossy glade. If his small house sported a little gingerbread it would fit nicely in a children’s book. Or, if in a poem, Sugar Bear would fit with Longfellow’s, “Under a spreading chestnut tree / The village smithy stands; / The smith, a mighty man is he, / With large and sinewy hands…”
Of Sugar Bear’s transgression, if it was a transgression, a few things need saying. There were no witnesses to the dumping of the body but there were three witnesses to the transgression: Chantrell George, Greek Annie, and Jubal Jim, a combination that would make any defense lawyer believe in providence.
One other piece of business needs saying: this road, these trees, these mountains, and the Canal form a setting for people who forgive most mistakes, cut slack for others’ dumb opinions, but who will not budge the thickness of a sheet of paper when it comes to essentials. Some things here are not done, or if they are, the doer had best run to the nearest cop.
When it developed that a man who messed with children started hanging around the school, and when one kid came home crying, no one said a word to Sugar Bear because that’s the kind of thing Sugar Bear can’t stand. No one said anything to Bertha because everyone is fond of her. Besides, if she went to jail who would tend to Beer and Bait?
Talk happened among the men. The kid’s father was told to stay away and establish an alibi. The mother was told to say nothing. A couple of loggers cornered the guy in the woods behind the school. They managed to keep most of the bruises from showing. The loggers told the guy to get out of town or they’d set his pant cuffs on fire and watch the sparks rise upward. That should have done it. End of story. But, the man didn’t have a dab of sense. He enjoyed the attention, and kept hanging around the school.
This sort of thing had not happened here since days when the state was still a territory. Always before, bad men took the hint. This bad guy couldn’t get it through his head that boats leave these parts for open ocean every day, and he had a one-way ticket to the waters off Cape Flattery.
He lived in a never-never land more goofy than Chantrell’s visions. The guy was chubby of face, red of permed hair, skinny of frame, and survived by running his mouth. No vacuum cleaner salesman ever born had such confidence in a talent for weaving in and out of tight places. This guy’s mouth motored about a thousand miles an hour.
On the fatal day, and two days before his scheduled cruise, the guy sat in Beer and Bait complaining about loggers. Petey and a fisherman shot pool, and Sugar Bear sat drinking a bottle of pop while waiting for the next pool game. Light music played from a radio. Beyond the windows rain patted on the Canal which lay black as macadam. Trees seem darker on such days, conifers nearly ebony, and alders brushed with streaks of darkest gray. The guy nursed a beer, heckled the pool game, and spun fantastic scenes. His puffy face swelled and his mouth looked pouty. His imagination included complaints for assault, loggers busted, entire logging operations shut down, media attention, police photographs in evidence of scrapes and bruises, lawsuits; he was having a dandy time. He acted like an exhibitionist dropping his drawers in front of a Sunday school class.