The Hauntings of Hood Canal

Annie

During the first two weeks of August a heat wave descended. Temperatures of eighty degrees cooked the forest, and while eighty is thought mild in many places, we’re not acclimated. Around here, summer visitors from the midwest usually wear sweaters, talk polite, and shake their heads in private. Sixty-five degrees and drizzling is considered ideal.

Heat brings dryness. Moss on roofs turns from green to black, and shrinks into little patches. Dust gathers golden on windshields because people aren’t in the habit of washing them. As hot day follows hot day, steam from the forest diminishes. Conifers take a grayish, sick look, and leaves of maple and alder show patches of yellow. Trees do not drop leaves until October, but drought speeds them up. When Annie walked in the forest, as she often did in August, the mat of needles from fir and pine no longer felt spongy.

She watched from behind the cover of trees like a small girl playing hide-and-seek. Police patrolled the road. One cop—who looked like a movie actor dressed up to play a cop—seemed to run the show. This cop cruised the road until divers found another wreck. Then he hustled in more cops and a crane. The cops closed one lane and shuffled traffic past in the other. Cars backed up, drivers sweating and disgusted. Little kids, who couldn’t hold it any longer, had to make quick dashes into the forest. People were kept from work, or from errands. The amount of cussing that went on would peel the paint off a steeple.

In the midst of it, Annie felt unsettled. She did not know that Petey thought of himself as going through a phase, but she knew she was. Vague thoughts never bothered Annie. Vague emotions did. Vague dreams made her scared. She felt, somehow, that life passed her by. She felt aimless, adrift, and with nebulous hankering to be of use to the world.

True, she battled satellites. The things flew overhead with never a by-your-leave. They interrupted the natural flow of the heavens, so when you first looked up and thought you had discovered a new star, it was only a peeping piece of tin.

Since leaving high school, and retiring in the woods, to the relief of her well-to-do family that lived in the housing project, Annie could look back on a few years of accomplishment. Certain herbs in the forest needed weeding to survive. When baby birds awkwardly left their nests in the spring someone needed to keep an eye on them, because housecats roamed the forest. Annie cast enchantments on submarines, and the enchantments worked since the subs always returned to base without discharging missiles. And sometimes, when no one was around to see, Annie arranged leaves and sticks and ferns in small displays, like artworks in a closed museum: for art is necessary even if not understood, and especially necessary if no one knows to look.

That Annie possesses talent cannot be denied. It is her loss, and ours, that her talent was never liberated through training. The talent came through the genes of a Greek grandmother, who, when Annie was a little girl, talked to trees. The trees always answered, and held odd, tree-like opinions; but Annie never really learned the language.

Annie was vaguely aware, in early August, that if she wanted a man, she could have her pick from half the unmarried guys in the neighborhood, and ninety percent of the married ones. The problem was not getting a man, but getting the right man; and the right one was Sugar Bear. In her imagination she saw herself in Sugar Bear’s kitchen which she knew well, and which would now be their’s. She saw herself weeding the garden, or sitting in the warm shop while Sugar Bear worked. Sometimes an occupied cradle sat near by. At other times she thrilled with the thought of the two of them hiking to the crest of a high ridge, and looking onto the Canal while feeling alive and free.

These imaginings had something to do with being of use to the world. Annie would not be the first young person to become flustered because life refused to take a proper shape. Annie didn’t know that. Perhaps it’s just as well. Had she known, she might have tried to help.

She was aware Sugar Bear liked her, sort of. She just couldn’t tell how much. She also knew Sugar Bear worried, and that the dead guy no doubt walked through Sugar Bear’s dreams. Annie may have been a kid, and accustomed to nebulous thoughts, but Annie can never be thought of as dumb. It seemed wrong that a good man should be in danger, just because the world spat forth a guy who should have gone out with the garbage.

And, because she had her cap set for Sugar Bear, she tried, really tried, to understand him. She told herself she was more practical, but in a way she understood. It must be awful to do something really, really, really bad, and not be able to undo it. It must be even worse to be the kind of person who could not shove the blame off on someone else; and it must be pretty bad to discover a streak in yourself so ugly it caused you to smash someone. She thought over the problem, and watched from the forest as backed-up traffic drew a colorful line along the dark road. Stink of exhaust swirled among dry smells of the forest. On the north side of trees, where moisture still lingered, roll-y bugs, little snails, slugs, and earwigs hid, and, buglike, did things to each other.

Sometimes Annie showed the knowledge owned by the Ancients, even if she was not very old and knew little of them. When, for example, she told Bertha that the thing in the Canal was a Fury, she was fairly sure she spoke true. Annie was not exactly clear about what a Fury was, but made a mental note.

Meantime, she showed the wisdom of the Ancients. For two days and nights she remained silent and listened to the sounds of Canal and forest. She cloaked herself in silence, and let the voice of wind, the lap of water, the snap of twigs and rustle of leaves speak their pieces. She heard flutters of wings, the birds long past mating season, and soon to fly south. Her mind could feel fingers of mist touching the Canal when sunlight faded and the forest grew black as shoal.

Solutions presented themselves. Some solutions made her hopeful, and some sad. She was urgently aware that police divers steadily moved closer to the dead guy. She understood that if she was going to do something, she had better do it right away.

The problem with spells is some worked, some didn’t, and some went off half-cocked. With time to experiment, she could learn what worked. There was no time. Plus, she felt sort of sad, and that made it possible to do something dumb.

She saw these options:

Move the dead guy’s car, and the dead guy, to deep, deep water where the divers would never find him.

Or, just move the dead guy.

Or, cause a distraction and shut down the whole operation. “It will take time,” she whispered to the forest. “I’ll have to stall for time.” Those, her first words in two days, dropped into the silence of the forest like an echoing voice from long ago. The forest remained silent, tranquil, and possibly as tired as August; and August is the tiredest month.

On the road a state cop who looked like a movie actor hassled traffic. He seemed really official out there. When he halted traffic with his hand, he wore his don’t-screw-around-with-me cop look. He also looked like a cop who needed a drink, and Annie thought—if he were not a cop—she would take him some lemonade.

She also thought she had better figure out a pretty good stall. It would take at least a couple of days to see if she could move the car, or the dead guy. Or whatever.