The Hauntings of Hood Canal

A Fearsome Result

Along the Canal, motels are few and rich guys shared them with visionaries. As poolers tended toward Beer and Bait, while being buffeted by wind, motels also hosted several realists. The visionaries were poolers who were better’n average, but did not have a Protestant’s chance in Purgatory when it came to contests that included hustlers.

Realists were practical folk; percentage players, real hustlers ready to make a wage from side bets. Since only one team would come away with top prize, the realists knew where the big money lay.

Motel registers carried names: John Jones, L. Smith, Peter Jones, Alexander Smith, George Smith, and Samuel Green. When translated the registers actually said: Shi Shi John, Peanut Louise, Issaquah Pete, Vancouver Alex, Jaybird George, and Sammy the Snooze.

The realists’ autos told tales: ’78 Buick pimpmobile with leopard skin seats, once the property of a Tacoma optimist who thought he could play pool; ’49 Ford pickup packing four barrels and electric pink paint; Dodge van, at present rather weary but once customized beyond yearly i.d.; Humber of indeterminate age, veddy, veddy shiny, black, and British; ’82 Cad reputed to carry bulletproof glass; ’47 Packard hearse with custom interior and fold-down bed.

Along the narrow roadway, traffic crept in bursts of up to probably three mph, and a fisherman managed to catch up on his cussing. Camper trucks pulled over when drivers found spaces between trees, or beside cars already parked. Tents sprouted like flowers, red, green, orange, blue, khaki, as campers hunched back­-to-wind, trying to heat beans over fires that blew sideways. Here and there a child shouted, skipped, danced in the wind, and colorful baseball caps blew from heads in a happy abandon of words: “Beulah’s Beagles,” “Bremerton Bowl,” “G.M.C. Trucks,” “Kitty’s Koffee Klatch,” “Poulsbo A.C.,” “A Rage Of Catnip,” and “Feckless in Seattle.”

Police cars cruised, hassled guys who parked too near the road, and cops were stone-y, unfeeling, colder’n beer in the coolers. Cops played tough, watched the Canal, and stayed close to their cars even when hassling. If cops were afraid, their fear didn’t show.

Matters were otherwise festive. Some folk complained of a missionary-type who passed out pamphlets, a small annoyance; but no cop could find the guy among other opportunists who set up shop along the road: selling roasted corn, hot dogs, souvenirs: mostly plaster seagulls and shopworn pennants of Northwest sporting pride: Mariners, Seahawks, Sonics; plus colors of the greatest and most enthusiastic university in the history of football.

There were so many gorgeous things: carved totem poles, authentic, made in Japan, and pins reading “Sex Is Good, Irish Is Best,” or “Cows Do It Butter.” Ah, such gorgeous things. Helium balloons reading “Bankshot,” “Shoot the Moon,” “Pool Guy,” “Corner Pocket,” and “Acme Pool School and Latte Palace.”

And things for kiddies: mostly dolls with nipples or erections; and bubble gum that carried trading cards of super heroes: The Joker, Rambo, Barfman.

And of course, there was nostalgia: tie-dyed tee shirts, sticks of incense, tinkly strings of bells, clay pipes, and lids of Mary Jane. Bikers packed sand-filled socks, and Harleys barked their sainted song into the wind; wind that blew the song into the forest where deer stood puzzled, then disgusted, and where bears took the week off to go hunting in the foothills.

In the parking lot of Beer and Bait a new Cadillac sat beside Bertha’s Chrysler, while California cars mixed with plates from Oregon and Idaho, a geographic cohabitation of machinery parked tight as the curl in a little pig’s tail. Here and there, in the parking lot, a Kenworth loomed above cars and pickups, including the tow truck kid’s V10 Dodge.

As the fisherman inched along, stuck on the only road that led to Sugar Bear, he heard noise from Beer and Bait that mixed with blare from the tape deck. Bertha had loaded the thing with mellow stuff, tranquilizer stuff, but mighty loud. The fisherman viewed the parking lot, saw one guy checking cars for orphan goods… the fisherman, startled, thought of Chantrell. Then he saw it was not Chantrell but some other deadbeat. Meanwhile, from the tape deck, no fewer than a thousand violins belted “Stranger in the Night.”

Traffic stalled so bad a guy had to set stakes to see it move. The fisherman could only follow a state-owned dump truck, painted orange, fulla rip-rap, driven by a guy forced into overtime without pay. In the fisherman’s mirrors a Dodge crummy-wagon, muddy and glass-cracked, followed too close since it probably had no brakes.

Likely, the fisherman told himself, very likely this day before pool tournament would be worst. As days wore on, optimists would fail, do sideways betting, and go home busted. Amateurs would tire and hustlers would stay until easy money ran out. Locals would be in and out, some wistful; it was hard to tell what rich guys would do.

Because oncoming traffic from the north held expensive iron, Cads and Lines and Jags, plus campers longer than a bad girl’s dreams. Rich guys were coming in for another contest, were gonna get blown out… the fisherman paused, watched the orange back-end of the dump truck and told himself, naw, nope, no way. Rich guys might be dumb about pool hustle, but they weren’t dumb about hustle. They would not make the same mistake twice; well, with women, maybe, but not with money.

And riding beside the drivers, a butterfly perched on the passenger side of each car. The butterflies seemed confined when they should be aery. But, how colorful they were, how lovely. At least from distance.

The state dump truck showed turn signal to the right, and the fisherman realized the three-mile-an-hour crawl had brought them to the dunk site. Air brakes hissed and the truck pulled off the road. The fisherman found himself behind a new Ford pickup pulling a new utility trailer; the truck too snazzy to use as a truck, the trailer full of trashed electronics: outmoded record players, typewriters, computers, and the dead eyes of televisions.

The fisherman looked into the dunk site where a two-foot hunk of rebar lay on churned ground pounded clean of vegetation. Shrubs that once concealed Petey and the fisherman looked like they had barely survived the worst storm of an unhappy year. Douglas fir stood shorn of lower branches. The yellow crane stood tilted, but not quite enough to be scary. It hovered above cuts and gullies where something had scooped or cut, like giant claws.

A ‘course, the dump truck would not be here because of the battle of a while ago. Rip-rap would have been ordered earlier. It looked like something a government would figure, rip-rap over shingle, concrete over rip-rap, and a wall rising above concrete; the whole business sliding into the Canal in the first really bad winter.

In the fisherman’s mirrors the crummy-wagon began to steam as low speed caused overheating. The driver revved the engine to rush air through his radiator. Wind showered the road with fir tips. The driver gave up and pulled off the road. Behind him, the fisherman now saw a cop car. The cop pulled over. He stopped beside, and not behind, the crummy-wagon. Now, in the fisherman’s mirrors, and following too close, a Volvo station wagon rolled in quiet Swedish snootiness.

The fisherman watched as the cop climbed from his car. This was an older cop, a guy who should be flying a desk and not running road. He walked to the crummy-wagon, careful to keep the junker between himself and the Canal.

With the Ford in front and the Volvo behind, the fisherman inched along like the middle part of a vehicle-sandwich. Wind continued steady at twenty. The fisherman looked at the back of his hands as they hung on the steering wheel. He tried to feel something, horror or sadness or anger, and felt nothing. He figured he must still be in shock. His hands seemed mere curiosities. They held wrinkles he could not remember. One hand twisted, cramped, but at least it was alive and painful. His wrists seemed thinner. When he finally reached the turnoff to Sugar Bear’s place, he cursed himself for vanity. He actually feared being seen. Then he thought of Annie, and feared what he was about to see.

Sugar Bear’s pickup stood with its front bumper hovering over the front step of the fairy-tale house. Sugar Bear, or maybe Annie had at least managed to get to the front door. The fisherman pulled toward the shop, backed, got his own truck pointed back toward the road. Cut the engine. Watched.

Maple leaves large as hubcaps blew across the ground, dry and crispy, some skeletal. When rains came the leaves would slick up, then molder and turn to soil. When the fisherman stepped from his truck, though, the leaves crunched and crackled and seemed satisfied. From the forest, where wind moved the tops, dead twigs rattled as they fell.

Windows in the shop were dark, windows in the house even darker. Light seemed blown away by wind as afternoon turned to gloaming. The fisherman rubbed his crippled hand, wondered why he felt distant from his own problems. He thought that he thought too much.

He stepped from his truck, walked to the door, knocked and entered.

Small wrinkles on her upper lip, strands of gray in hair long, flowing, but having twisted also by a turmoil of wind. Annie stood before the stove waiting for water to heat. Dim light of gloaming lay across her face as early evening marched through windows to cast dark shadows and turn solid objects gray. Annie, girl-like even now, brushed hair from her cheek with fingertips, looked apologetically at the fisherman, looked more closely. She stood mute.

“Where?” The fisherman figured Sugar Bear was still alive, or Annie would not be heating water. Annie would be weeping.

She pointed to the bedroom, turned her attention back to the stove. Her shoulders slumped, but her body tensed against fear or fatigue. Her shoulders seemed thinner.

The fisherman wished to go to her, told himself, “No.” He was not an intimate part of her world. He was a shadow against larger scenery, a helping shadow maybe, but nothing about him, was, for Annie, very real.

When he walked to the bedroom he expected worse than what he first saw. Sugar Bear lay propped on pillows and one hand beckoned, while the other moved. His arms were not dead like the cop’s. Sugar Bear’s furry face looked nearly jovial, a man telling a joke, a guy about to deliver a punch line.

“Katzanjammers,” Sugar Bear said. “Aloysius. Sardines. Bejab­bers.” His voice filled with laughter. Then he became serious, explaining: “Best if you fried it. Seventeen naughty miles. I gotta girl from whatchamazoo, zoo, zoom-ly.” He shook a finger, like an admonishing mom, or like a teacher ticking off point one, point two. “The hunny bunny hunny hop,” he said with satisfaction, as if some complex matter had been explained.

“You’re full of it,” the fisherman told him, hoping there was something in Sugar Bear’s wrecked mind that could hear. “Quit crappin’ me around.”

Sugar Bear smiled broad, like the painted smile of a clown. Darkness in the room gathered around the smile, and face-fur moved like it tried to clasp the mouth shut. Sugar Bear smiled and smiled.

The fisherman returned through darkness to the kitchen. It seemed that no amount of light could fully illuminate this small house. “Tell me.”

“It manifested.” Annie now sat at the kitchen table. On the stove something simmered and smelled herbal. “It looked almost like the dead guy, only not quite finished.” She looked at the backs of her hands, took a strand of long hair and brought it forward, studied streaks of gray, puzzled. “Why did he hafta? We could have run. Have to? What’s wrong with guys? What are we going to do?”

She was aware of how she looked and wasn’t exactly thinking of it, but the girl part still reacted. She brushed tangled hair with her fingers, automatic; trying to put a shape to things, arranging life.

“Gonna do?” He stood puzzled. “We figure what we can do, or what we can’t. Tell me more.”

“We were attacked in daytime, right here. Coldness came into this kitchen and it was strong. It wouldn’t run.”

The fisherman remembered how coldness had entered the house once before, and how Annie chased it away. “It wouldn’t leave?”

“So Sugar Bear went after it. I went because he feared leaving me alone. What came from the Canal made sounds that were almost words. It was redhead like the dead guy, and it simpered. Like it was happy about being awful.”

The fisherman thought of Annie’s fear, of his own, that Sugar Bear might tangle with something he couldn’t handle. “How close were you?”

“There wasn’t a fight,” Annie said, “or at least not much. When Sugar Bear went after it stuff started happening in the water. Water flying everywhere.” Annie studied wrinkles on the backs of her hands. “I could feel it crawling on me.” She stared, almost impassive. “What has happened? What has? I just turned twenty-three.”

“It steals life,” the fisherman told her. He looked toward the bedroom. “Now it steals consciousness.” He understood that the power of thought was what the thing needed to completely manifest.

“There’s a war going on,” he told Annie, “but not a bull-war, a real one. Something ugly tries to get free of the Canal and something very big and very old tries to prevent it.” He told what he knew.

“Why here? Why us?” She looked toward the bedroom.

Windows darkened as gloaming faded to night. In the forest deer bedded down, cougars began to stretch and move like kings among the lesser night animals. Mice instinctively sought cover although wind kept owls from accurate flight. From the bedroom Sugar Bear hummed a show tune and spoke in clear pronouncements of the joys of root beer and cabbage.

Annie stood, walked to the stove, tasted whatever simmered there. “I don’t know enough,” she whispered. “I should have paid more attention.”

It was the second time she had said that. The fisherman knew that Annie had learned from a grandmother. He did not know what or how much.

“This won’t work,” she whispered, “but it’s all I know.” She watched the simmering pan like she could read messages. “You got to eat something,” she said to the fisherman. “So does Sugar Bear. Me too. I’ll fix it.” She turned to the refrigerator, not like an old, old woman, but not like a young one. “Don’t leave us,” she said. “It might come back. Please.”

He could sleep across the truck seat. It would not be the first time. He figured nothing was going to happen. Whatever darkness dwelt in the Canal had been wounded. But, she needed him here.

“Sleep in the shop,” she said. “We’ve got sleeping bags.”