Rain covered the forest and patted on the Canal. Beer and Bait sat as restful as Jubal Jim who snoozed before the bar. Early afternoons are generally quiet. A boat or two may nose up to fuel pumps at the finger pier, or a tourist may stop for directions. Bertha uses those hours to sharpen up the joint—furniture polish on the piano, glass polish on the mirror behind the bar, wax on the dance floor, or play pool with Petey. Petey, though, had not yet returned from hustling the lower and middle elements of Seattle.
Bertha looked up to see the slim figure of a woman standing in the doorway. The woman stood framed in gray light from the chilly day. Bertha, were she less practical, would say the woman materialized out of mist. The light being what it was, Bertha could only see a slim figure with long hair, a figure wearing a dress far too stylish for early afternoon. To Bertha, wise in the ways of other women’s seductions even if her own did not work, the woman looked like a lady on the hunt. Either that or a hooker.
“We’re open,” Bertha said. “You just passing through?”
Annie stepped into bar light and away from grayness of the day. When Bertha recognized her Bertha played at being miffed. “Don’t ever cut the clowning. It’s too amusin’. Where’s your jeans and sweatshirt?” Bertha looked Annie up and down, saw hair washed and glistening and nearly silky. She saw a greeny-silky dress hitting an inch below the knee, and a face nicely washed and pretty without benefit of makeup.
“You’re a good-looking kid.” Bertha did not try to hide her astonishment. “You ought to do something with it. Make a name for yourself.”
“I gotta talk to you,” Annie’s voice sounded like a confused girl, not like an attractive young woman. “I’d love to talk about lots of stuff but I’m afraid somebody will come in and interrupt. I got man problems…”
“Who hasn’t?” Bertha grinned. “Hell, men have got man problems, what with chainsaws and pickups and marriage.” Bertha swiped at the bar with a bar rag and looked Annie over very, very carefully. “You preggers?”
“No.”
“You ain’t wet, either. How can you walk in here out of the rain and not be wet?”
“It happens sometimes,” Annie told her in a vague way. “Something to do with weather satellites I expect… How do you get a man to like you?”
If Bertha figured this would be the blind leading the blind she did not let on. “Depends on the man. If he’s like most of the bums who come in here you just show a little cleavage.”
“Sugar Bear,” Annie said, her voice shy. “He needs help… or something… I don’t know.”
“Sugar Bear,’ Bertha mused. “You won’t get anywhere helping him, not if he knows it. Times when a man like that needs help are the same times he resents it.”
“You help without him knowing it?” Confusion deepened Annie’s voice. “I’ve tried spells.”
“…and you’re not trying to help him, anyway,” Bertha told her. “Get honest. You’re trying to get him interested.”
“That’s helping. I’m sure it would help.”
“Tell it to a frog.” Bertha grinned and Jubal Jim thumped his tail. Then Jubal Jim eased onto a warm spot where breezes blow from the heater. His hound ears spread perfectly flat along the floor. He snuffied once, then dozed.
“Besides,” Bertha said, “sooner or later Sugar Bear will get busted. Too many people are talking. The talk will keep up until one of our jock cops decides to play like he’s on television.”
“They wouldn’t… they would. They really would.” Annie looked toward the Canal. In the distance water swelled, moved like the burp from a giant carp. “He can’t get busted.”
“Anybody can,” Bertha told her. “He’ll convict himself because he’s green when it comes to lying.” She also looked at the Canal. “It’s humping again. It must mean something.”
“It’s a Fury,” Annie said absent-mindedly, “maybe the only Water Fury in the whole world. It’s not even a very good one.”
“Child,” Bertha said, “it’s time for you to settle down.”
“That’s the plan,” Annie said. “As soon as I get him interested.”
“There’s lots of men,” Bertha told her. “You haven’t lived long enough to know all the kinds of men there are.”
“Maybe if I fixed my hair different, or got a cut…”
“Clean up your act,” Bertha told her. “You look real pretty. Try that first, and hope the stories stop before cops get interested.”
Inspiration shone in Annie’s eyes. “If they have something else to talk about they’ll forget to talk about Sugar Bear.” She reached to touch Bertha’s hand. “You’re so smart. I never would have thought of that.”
“Somebody did,” Bertha admitted, “but I can’t remember doin’ it.”
Determination can be a scary thing. When Annie left, her narrow shoulders were squared. She would make the world a better place by getting it to talk about something besides Sugar Bear. Also, she felt prepared to wear dresses and ribbons.
Mystery Women and Butterflies
Thinking back on last summer it’s easy to see how confusion spread up and down the road. While it takes no time at all for news to spread, it does take time for gossip to change ordinary news into facts that count as satisfying information. It’s only natural to review happenings in order to stay sane:
Sugar Bear did his hammer toss in early summer, along about mid-June. Annie decided to set her cap for him a week later while Petey left to hustle the good folk of Seattle. Cars started to dunk in late June, but state cops did not really show up with their crane until very near the end of July. It must have been mid-August, then, that the forest dried out; by which time, of course, Petey was back. Stories, mostly caused by Annie, were running from the top of the Canal to its bottom with all three beer joints involved. Part of the information rode with the kid who drove the wrecker.
Annie tried to push bar talk away from Sugar Bear the third week of June. She first tried whipping up a plague of locusts, but something went sour with the enchantment and only a few showed up; and seagulls got them. Then she tried a rumor saying the Navy aimed to move its base to the west side of the Canal, which was senseless, stupid, and governmental, thus likely. Most people yawned, but it seemed, at the time, the rumor caused speculation in building lots.
Later on, everyone became wiser, but that was later. All during the summer, “for sale” signs for real estate came down almost before they went up. In a three-mile stretch surrounding Beer and Bait, somebody bought every stitch of land.
Sugar Bear brooded all through June. People talked. Up north at Rough and Randy a betting pool started with guys making choices about who, at Beer and Bait, would be the next guy busted. Annie fought back and had a stroke of luck, because Annie is not old enough to be truly humorous. She bought women’s things at a distant thrift shop, sneaked to the post office before midnight, and ran the stuff up the flagpole. As luck would have it the outfit would fit a lady sumo wrestler, and there came wind. Daylight saw a display of giant pink balloons. Talk temporarily turned to the postmaster who cussed and protested, but seemed privately proud. Annie, too young to understand cheap shots, regarded her work and thought it good.
Then Annie conjured up a spell of silence that misfired. For a couple of days people walked around with their ears ringing. Then Annie scored big. She wore her nicest dress, hitched a ride to Rough and Randy where she demurely sipped iced tea. She sat at a table, legs crossed, but with one patent leather slipper dangling from her toes and claimed she waited to meet a guy. Annie is not too young to know how to handle the bad, bad boys at Rough and Randy. The guy she claimed to be meeting is a local cop, famous in these parts for breaking heads. Annie flirted and made certain she would be known as a mystery woman, then pretended she had been stood up and took her leave. She disappeared, maybe into the woods, but at any rate disappeared, and made it back home before midnight.