The Hauntings of Hood Canal

Concerning Real Estate and Cops

Wind picked up during afternoon, gusting at first, then changing to a steady blow. The Canal ruffled with heavy chop, and the chop turned to waves that crashed along the shore. A few fishing boats headed to sea as Navy ships fled into port, heavy weather being tiresome to the Navy.

As wind continued, police divers shut up shop. Cops took down orange barriers blocking one lane, and the yellow crane parked. The crane looked like a heron hovering over a fishing spot, and its color matched yellow dive gear being packed into a police van. Turbulence along the shore shifted remains of fallen trees as it churned water. Divers could not see a foot ahead of them. Whether the wind and wave action was enough to tumble wrecked cars was anybody’s guess, but folks hanging out at Beer and Bait argued the possibility. Everyone figured the blow would drop when the tide changed.

Afternoon progressed toward evening, the tide turned, and wind, if anything, picked up. The parking lot at Beer and Bait came alive with rumbles of diesels as log truck drivers understood there was no other place to go, except home. The trucks are rarely fancy. They occasionally display a snazzy striping job, or an extra smidgen of chrome, but for the most part are working machines; bulky, sort of beautiful like a herd of colorful metal bison. The trucks congregated because drivers knew, what with wind, all logging operations would shut down. The forest rapidly turned to tinder where even the spark from a chainsaw could spell catastrophe. Drivers relaxed at Beer and Bait, grumbled, and were secretly glad to take a break, though everyone worried. It was no longer a question of: will there be a forest fire? That seemed certain as an owl hoots. The only way out was miracles or magic.

As a good crowd gathered, Chantrell George wandered toward Beer and Bait. Wind snatched at his raggedy orange shirt and his equally raggedy green pants. His shoes in summer are aerated, allowing breathing space for toes. Before entering Beer and Bait he used his sleeve to make sure his nose didn’t drip. He combed his hair with his fingers. Bertha, who sensed a big night, put Chantrell to work right away. She figured he would be pretty well cleaned up, for a junkie. What with the heat, his mushroom source was temporarily closed. The shy creatures prefer lots of moisture and a muted sky.

Sugar Bear sat at a table in the exact center of the room, looking like a mountain of sorrow rising above foothills of routine cares. A few fisherman scattered among loggers, and beefed about wind. A few tradesmen clustered near windows and talked shop. Wives and girlfriends chatted, laughed, or patted the backs of their men’s hands, as the men worried over truck payments.

After the first dust got washed from throats, and the first beer-buzz made the world more palatable to most, Bertha turned the whole show over to Chantrell. She sat at the far end of the bar, the end away from the door. She hassled pool games and tried to figure if it was time to give up on Petey, because he’d made no big moves since coming home.

As wind continued to crash, Bertha turned the tape deck down instead of up. Chatter competing with music did not ordinarily cause her to bat an ear, but today seemed different. She felt an edge of impatience—not the best sort of feeling for the owner of a joint; impatient with herself, impatient with Petey, plus the weather was enough to make a preacher cuss. What with wind and general unrest, Bertha suffered a bout of melancholy.

That afternoon she and Petey had been playing their first truly private game of pool since Petey’s return. The only other soul present was Jubal Jim, a-snooze on the floor. Or, it might be someone sat outside on the front steps, relaxing in the sun, and listening. If that “someone” was there, he probably made bets with himself on how far the line of traffic would stack up.

Part of Bertha’s frustration came from want of privacy. Since Petey’s return they hardly had a single moment. What with cars backing up halfway to Timbuctoo, and with the usual run of tourists who managed to feel lost on a road where you couldn’t get lost; and what with logging drivers mildly suicidal and longing for a beer to settle nerves, privacy became a memory. Quiet afternoons playing pool with Petey belonged to a past so remote somebody should have written books about it.

That afternoon Petey almost got something said. Now, with the lengthening shadows of evening, Bertha sat at the end of the bar watching him run a routine hustle on a logger. She had to admit Petey was not the handsomest man in the room. He was not, for example, as pretty as his dog. On the other hand, he had appeal no other man could touch. Bertha, a Scandinavian descended from Norsemen, held an appreciation for piracy… she hesitated… suddenly remembering the women from the housing project. Those women really might start something poolish.

It didn’t figure. Women like that generally competed against each other, but might gang up for revenge or profit. Or, they might let that beetle lady run a number just for the fun of seeing somebody get burned. And… what were those women doing in a beer joint in the first place? That never happened before.

Bertha knew her joint and knew her guys. Most acted like civilians until placed behind a pool cue. The majority of men at Beer and Bait were not particularly courageous, and not good at fighting, even when pumped up by adrenalin and beer. Put them behind a pool cue, though, and they wouldn’t leave two sticks nailed together when it came to dismantling bank accounts of rich guys at the development. Behind a pool cue Bertha’s boys turned into a bunch of heathen savages.

She figured the development could not handle savages. If her boys romped too freely it would eventually mean cops. Rich guys had a way of getting back. Rich guys were not a hell of a lot different than regular guys. They took themselves serious.

She did not know which part of life was the biggest mess. She looked at Petey, and, to give him credit, knew he suffered from the same problems of privacy. That afternoon, alone and studying a complicated layout on the table, he muttered, “Thinking of settling down a little. Go into business, maybe.” His voice had nearly been a whisper, and he blushed. Since there was nothing to blush about when it came to going into business, he had to be blushing about something else.

“A business can be fun.” Bertha had spoken carefully, although she couldn’t picture Petey behind a bar or a counter. Her head was telling her “Go Slow” and her heart was saying “This is it. This is the big It.”

“Because,” Petey whispered, “this bein’ on the road gets to a guy.” He hid behind his shot, banking three rails on the seven ball that sat like a purple blush two inches off the pocket. The ball fell with a little click, an itsy sigh, and a thump.

“What kind of business?” Bertha made a point of keeping her back to him. She stepped behind the bar where she picked up a fresh piece of pool chalk.

“I dunno,” Petey said, and then almost choked. “I figured maybe we could talk about it.” He sounded, to Bertha, like a man strangling.

“We can do just that,” she whispered. “I know about business stuff…”

That was as far as she got. They were so concentrated on each other they did not hear tires crunching gravel in the parking lot.

Heels clicked on the front steps and a stranger appeared. He was slick-haired, suited, vested, shoe-polished, wearing a red tie and a smile so cheery as to brand him severely retarded, or a phony. He stood taller than Petey, tried to appear languid, and could not even look relaxed. Everything about him said “failed hustler.”

Bertha figured him for an electronics guy, pinballs and videos. She wiped the counter, ready to say that she called the tunes in Beer and Bait, not some drunk with a buck for a jukebox.

“Passing through?” she asked.

“Business in the area.” He tried to sound reasonable, but still looked like someone peddling pukey-green refrigerators to Eskimos. He passed Bertha his card. Real estate.

“I have a buyer. Wants to retire. Looking for a small business in a quiet place.”

“Cemetery lots in Miami,” Bertha told him. “Big market. Lots of quiet.” She said it, but sounded mildly interested.

“…thinks a bar would do nicely. We’re talking money in front.” The real estate guy named a figure only slightly higher than reasonable.

“Whose shot?” Bertha asked Petey. To the guy she said, “I make my mortgage.” She turned to the table and looked at a reasonably easy shot. Instead, she chose to show off. She popped the cueball between the eight and nine, a really narrow space. The cueball Englished its way two rails off the corner, ran the length of the table, caromed off the ten and tapped the eleven into the pocket. “Suppose I sell the joint for a wad,” she told the guy. “I have to move someplace, buy another joint, and joints don’t come cheap. There’s no profit in it.”

“I might come up with a deal on the other end.”

“Do that.” Bertha said. “Make it a major, major deal, or give it to your retired guy.”

“You’ve got my card.” The guy sort of slithered from the barstool and disappeared into the dry and windy day. Bertha turned to Petey, and she saw Petey was lost in some kind of Hustler’s Revelation. Their magic moment was lost as Petey put together plans.

“One of the problems with business,” Bertha said to Petey, “is you got no privacy. We’ll talk.” She said it just as gravel crunched in the parking lot. Two guys from the phone company arrived, guys on their third lunch hour of the day.

Now she sat in early evening and listened to wind bang and holler against windows. She wondered why she had been dumb enough to say something dumb about business. Then she wondered if she still felt good about Petey, or if he was just habit. She did not wonder about her own shyness, because Bertha, being of the Norwegians, prided herself on being “old school.” Some things are done, some things are not. It was up to the gentleman to get matters started. Bertha knew little of the last twelve centuries of Norwegian history, but she knew a lot about Lutheran guilt.

She did not exactly trust her premonitions, but she did not distrust them. It seemed like all the bad stuff that got tossed up in the air since last spring was about to land. Cops closed in on Sugar Bear’s little problem. Annie was acting her age, which was dangerous. A forest fire would drive away tourists, and while she might joust with a real estate guy, it was true that bank balances got thin during slow seasons. And, if a pool tournament took place at the development, all hell would pop. She looked toward the open doorway while keeping an eye on Chantrell, or rather, on how Chantrell handled the cash register. Sunlight still lay behind the western ridges, so shadows crossed the road before running into a line of golden light reflected from high clouds. The tape deck played pop tunes of the ’40s and ’50s. A couple stood in the middle of the dance floor, swaying somewhat, mostly rubbing, while swirling light from a beer sign crossed their married faces; married, but not to each other.

Bertha became aware of unrest near the doorway. At her elbow Petey studied a shot and said something to a logger.

“The police radio,” Petey said to the logger, as Petey made a little run and the logger cussed, “claims another car dunked. Hambone radio.”

“That won’t do nothin’ to the baseball standings, either way,” the logger said. “This late in the season…”

“A Mariners fan,” Petey told him, “is the hopefulest damn fool in the nation. Tell me you ain’t a Mariners fan.”

“If a car has dunked,” the logger said, “that makes number eight or nine. I’m losing count.”

The disturbance near the door increased as people searched for places at tables, and got as far away from that end of the bar as they could without looking too guilty. They scattered like a flock of sparrows before a cat, but what stepped through the doorway was no kitty.

A state cop, who had to know he was where he wasn’t wanted, took a seat near the door. Bertha reacted; shocked, then angry, then ready for a scrap. She quietly reviewed her own transgressions. None of them seemed serious enough to warrant a state cop. She looked over the house, saw customers shrinking into shadows, and a few obscene gestures waving toward the cop’s back. This, the best crowd of the summer, was about to be chased home, or up to Rough and Randy, by a cop who obviously had not been raised to know his place.

Think of it as a dance, even while being surprised about who is dancing. Into Beer and Bait walks a thirsty man in a cop suit. The poor fellow can’t have a beer because of the suit, but he’s almost dry as the forest. He perches near the doorway, looks around, and orders lemonade from a visionary bartender—and the cop has enough experience to guess where those visions come from. This cop knows that every mother’s son and daughter in that bar is guilty of something, because all of us doubtless are; but the cop doesn’t know what, and doesn’t give a flush. When he wants is to drink and be left alone. Which doesn’t work. The dance begins, because the cop sees Bertha and things start happening like it’s daytime television.

The cop sees a lady who, if she wished, could shake out a six-by-nine carpet like it was a ragrug. Bertha tops six feet, has blond hair with sexy streaks, and a figure that causes despair among the average run of housewives. Bertha’s Norwegian blue eyes are smiley above a full and smiley mouth (most days). She has artistic hands. Bertha, in other words, is a knockout when a man is sober, and the stuff of mooshy dreams when a man is not.

And what did our second dancer, Bertha, see?

The cop, were he not a cop, was himself not indistinct. The cop bulked big as Sugar Bear, but without Sugar Bear’s easy ways. This cop had been up and down a few roads. He turned a little too far east on his barstool, and looked into the mirror in back of the bar. This cop, Bertha admitted, would be mighty attractive as a TV repairman, or a garage door installer. He might do as a farmer, a house painter, or a dentist. As a cop, though, he amounted to just one more pretty-boy. He watched her with that sideways, indifferent look guys use when they pretend they aren’t interested. Man or woman, there wasn’t a good looking bartender in all of history who had not picked up on that look; maybe even that wiseass at China Bay.

This cop looked filled with fantasies of moonlight, but Bertha could see he should not even think of women, at least not now. He looked tired to the point of exhaustion, hot, miserable, ready to tell the state to take its cop-job, and its traffic, and its political pizazz, and shove it all in a sunless place. Bertha also knew if the guy got a good night’s sleep, and woke in time for an extra cup of coffee, he’d be right back on top of matters. He’d put in another day. If Bertha knew anything at all, it was certain she knew workingmen. Meanwhile, matters in Bear and Bait grew tippy.

“We got a cop,” the logger muttered to himself, “and I got a hot chainsaw in back of the pickup.” He looked at Petey. “Your dog gonna allow this?” Jubal Jim was nowhere seen.

“This ain’t strictly a dog type of problem.” Petey looked toward the cop. “He wants somebody, but I ain’t done nothing. Lately.” Petey checked himself for violations. He wore his going­-to-town clothes, stripedy shirt, narrow pants—you can hardly get good sharkskin anymore—and a baseball cap reading “Alaska Tours and Travel.” He cued and missed an easy shot. The logger saw an opening and seemed somewhat cheered.

Sugar Bear sat unmoving. His shoulders slumped. He seemed fatalistic, resigned. He obviously did not even think of running, or hiding, or digging foxholes.

Chantrell gave a little moan. His eyes widened, the way eyes do in animated cartoons. A fine tremble developed in his hands. Bertha did her best to steady him.

“Nothing’s wrong,” she whispered. “It ain’t got a thing to do with you… or does it? Do we need an alibi?”

Chantrell plucked aimless as a dying man at the front of his shirt. A necklace of illegal stuff might be soaking up sweat beneath that shirt. Chantrell looked guilty enough to hang, to have precise hallucinations when it came to jail.

Bertha glanced toward the cop, listened to whispers and the click of pool balls at her back, and Bertha gave a little giggle, then felt calm. The cop was still checking her out. Her giggle was not enough to get rid of her anger, but enough to keep her from doing something idiotic.

“He don’t care a thing about you,” she told Chantrell. “Act normal as you can. All he knows is you’re a health violation.”

She turned from Chantrell and looked over the crowd. People would drift away if the cop did not leave. For one horrible second Bertha imagined a gloomy and empty bar, the windows beaten by a dry wind, and no one to cast away the gloom. She imagined Sugar Bear sitting alone in the center of gloom while carnival music danced from the tape deck and across an empty dance floor. Bertha shuddered, turned back to the bar. The cop had knocked back his first lemonade. Now he motioned to Chantrell for another. Matters were getting serious.

She paused, thinking if the joint emptied she could get Petey to stay. They could have the privacy they needed… then Bertha told herself she must be nuts. She was not going to drive away the best crowd of the summer just so Petey could practice some line he learned from a movie. Nesting instinct or not, business was business. She changed the tape deck, discarding pop music in favor of guitars and country boys.

She stepped behind the bar, trying to look official but not too tough. If the cop did a number on himself it would be dumb to break the spell. Every eye in the house was on her. It was like being on stage.

“Missing children?” she asked the cop. Up close this cop was more interesting. From a distance she had not seen little crow’s feet around his eyes, or beginning wrinkles on his forehead. His mouth didn’t really seem cop-like, being a little on the smiley side; crinkles in the right places. He looked like he should be a forest ranger, or a fifth grade teacher… something to do with wildlife.

“Tough afternoon,” the cop said, then went into a sort of explanation, and his explanation was mostly a crock. Bertha watched him check out her ring finger. She began to feel a teensy bit warm.

“You got a nice place.”

“Plain folks,” Bertha said. “Just hard working folks.” She leaned forward, like this was intimate, and whispered, “Folks will feel more comfy when you ditch the suit.”

The cop was only mildly dense. He picked up on what he figured was an invitation, while Bertha silently wondered if she should cuss herself.

“Got to get moving,” the cop said. “I’ve done a hand of work in my day.”

“Just plain honest folks,” Bertha said, and watched the cop “show off” as he stood in the doorway with his back to the crowd. When the cop walked toward his car, Bertha went to the door and watched. He climbed in, tired as a winded horse; an outcast driven from among his own kind, but, Bertha mused, the damn fool brought it on himself. No one asked him to be a cop.

Nobody asked her to extend an invitation, either. She announced that the cop was gone, then returned to her seat. The three pool tables began clicking. Murmurs started to liven as Bertha turned up the hick music. She told herself to take a couple minutes and figure things out.

She should have told the cop that lemonade at China Bay was the way to go. Instead, she somehow managed to tell him to come back when he ditched the cop suit.

She sat, vaguely aware that Petey leaned on his cue and whispered, and Petey looked like a hustler who had been hustled. He whiffed another shot. The logger watched in cynical disbelief, because Petey does not shank easy shots unless he’s hustling.

“Gotcha,” the logger said, “or at least I gotcha if I don’t screw up.”

“Run ’em out,” Petey told him about the game. “That cop…” and Petey nearly strangled on the words, “that cop is gonna be back. That cop saw something interesting.”

“As long as it wasn’t my hot chainsaw,” the logger said. “This is the last time I do business with teenagers. They ain’t discreet.”

“He seen the bartender,” Petey said in a tentative way, like he wondered if he could trust the logger.

“Chantrell’s been busted before,” the logger said, “it’s not like he’s a virgin.”

Petey shut up, because he wasn’t talking about Chantrell, and the idea of virgins makes him break out in hives.

“Maybe,” Petey said and changed the subject, “this wind will put that car to the bottom of the ditch. Maybe it will clean the whole shoreline.”

“Cars weigh a helluva lot,” the logger said, his voice a little tense because he was in the middle of a run.

“They don’t weigh much under water,” Petey said. “The water lifts ’em, sort of.”

Bertha listened in a half-hearted way, being not a little distracted. Bertha generally thinks honesty is the best policy when dealing with yourself, so figured she must be lonesome. The first fine-looking man who came along, and who smiled at her… and she fell for it. She acted as innocent and dumb as Annie. She told herself, sure as the wind blew, if that cop came back wearing work clothes she’d forget he was a cop. She would not lie to herself and say she felt a little too warm just because of a warm evening.

“And if the shoreline gets cleaned,” Petey said, “some problems around here might get cleaned up too.” He glanced toward Sugar Bear who sat in the center of the room like a mountain of sadness.

“He sure is takin’ it good,” the logger said, and his voice filled with admiration. “Sugar Bear just sat there and faced that cop down. He didn’t run away, or nothin’.”