The Hauntings of Hood Canal

Petey and Bertha… and the Fisherman

Petey Mullholland generally hangs out at Bertha’s Beer and Bait Shoppe where pool tables are famous for being level. Beer and Bait is a dandy building fronting the road with the Canal running at its back. There’s a small finger pier with fuel pumps. The parking lot is large, graveled, and well drained, which is generally the way we build them in Washington state.

It was on a sunny day in that dark summer that Petey entered, knocked back a glass of lemonade and stared through an open window. The Canal lay tranquil as the mind of a monk, although beneath the surface anything could be going on. Beyond a back window, but before the Canal, Jubal Jim Johnson dozed in full sun, his nose twitching from dog dreams of chasing varmints. Petey wrinkled his own nose and seemed pleased with the way it worked. He turned to Bertha.

“I bin up and down the road. Everything looks the same except for some people we don’t want to know. State cops, mostly.” He unpacked his cue stick, screwed it together, and checked the premises for “live ones.” A fisherman sat in a far corner of the large room. He nursed his beer and cared nothing at all for a joust at pool with Petey.

“I know a girl who dated a cop, once. It was more-or-less an education.” Bertha, who is thirtyish and taller than Petey, sat at the end of the long bar. Her blond hair is nicely streaked with grayish tint, her eyes are blue and canny, her tones sound mostly gentle; although Bertha has never hired a bouncer, having seen no need to pay others for work she enjoys. Still, men along the road dream fond dreams of her. Simply told, Bertha is gorgeous.

“It’s either good or bad for business,” she said about the police and divers and the drowned. “Hard to tell which just yet.” She looked toward the Canal, then to the front door and the road. “But I see no business now.” She pulled her favorite cue from its place behind the bar.

They’ve shot pool for a real long time, this blond Norwegian, and Petey, who owns less pedigree than his dog. Petey is sort of Indian and sort of Spanish, both in the darker traditions; but his bald spot is English, his artistic hands no doubt Italian, or probably Portuguese. He’s maybe ten years older than Bertha. The two shoot a game so complicated only they understand rules they’ve made up. All standard pool games are too easy.

Jubal Jim Johnson snoozed beyond the windows, then gave a quick yip. A cloud ran across the sun. Jubal Jim came dashing through the doorway like a sudden shower. He looked real uneasy.

“Bear?” Bertha chalked her cue, talking to Jubal Jim, getting ready to razz him.

“Maybe.” Petey walked to the doorway, watched a passing Dodge, looked toward the mountains and forest and then stepped onto the porch. Jubal Jim sat behind the screen door pretending to be brave, which, if it was a bear, was possible.

The cloud cleared the sun. The world brightened. Petey walked toward the Canal. Water swirled near the shore. The water sort of humped up, then spread, then turned to wavelets. Petey shrugged, walked back inside, picked up his cue. “Better sleep on the porch,” he said to Jubal Jim. “And watch that show-off mouth.”

“Break,” Bertha said to Petey, “unless fear holds you back.” Her smile denied her words and her fingers touched her hair, pushing it back across her shoulder. Bertha looked like a teenage girl practicing seduction moves before a mirror.

Petey set the cueball beside the racked balls, gently popped it three rails to come back and tap the head ball. The rack broke a little, the one, two, and three balls drifting off a couple inches. The cueball nestled against the four, freezing the board.

“If I was a dog,” Petey said, like he talked to no one in particular, “I’d hire a cat to sleep out there by the water.”

“If you was a dog,” Bertha told him, “you could shoot pool better.” She fired a shot two rails. The cueball danced down on the one ball, tapping it into a corner pocket. The cueball drifted across and freed up the seven. “Cops,” Bertha said, “lead snoopy lives. Sniyn’ worse than hounds.” She looked at Jubal Jim. “You’ll forgive it.”

“Mom always told me the policeman was my friend.” Petey chalked his cue with moves delicate as a girl. He never rubs the chalk or smears it. It’s just dab, dab, dab until he gets a level surface. “Of course, Mom always claimed my daddy was my daddy.”

Sometimes his mouth gets ahead of his good sense. He turned to watch the Canal and hide his embarrassment. A yacht slid down the eastern shore, outward bound. Petey blushed red as a faded three ball.

They dance around each other, this blond Norwegian and her too-shy pool partner. For a while people took bets on how long it would take them to conjugate, but time ran on and the bets ran out. Then there was talk that neither one knows what themselves look like naked, being too shy to stand in front of a looking glass. Considering all the razzle-dazzle that goes on in beds around here, we find Bertha and Petey sort of endearing.

“Safety,” Bertha said in pool language and tapped the two ball one rail. The cueball touched the three ball, then sat solid as a stump behind racked balls. The three ball fled to the other end of the table and nestled against the rail like two-part harmony.

“These are state cops.” Petey tried to sound detached. “They’re different than city cops. Take my word.” Petey knows as much as a man needs about city cops. He has to journey to Seattle or Portland or Vancouver when his money runs low. He hustles pool, then returns to the Canal. He keeps his skills honed at Beer and Bait.

“Cops are cops.” Bertha watched Petey’s shot. He cued from behind the rack, heavy right-hand English, and the ball went two rails to end up maybe three-quarters of an inch from the three. Petey muttered something under his breath, something poolish.

“Gotcha,” Bertha said, “or at least I got a little run.” She set to work and it was a dazzler. Showtime. Balls falling, thump. Ringling Bros.

“Take my word,” Petey told her. “These cops are different.” He sat on a barstool watching Bertha loosen that rack, peel off a ball, sink it while loosening another. Sunlight set Beer and Bait aglow. The three pool tables stood like spectators beside a hardwood dance floor large enough for twenty couples smooched together tight; plus a bandstand large enough for piano, drums, and a couple guitars. Chairs and small tables surrounded the dance floor, the tables now sitting in gloom. Sunlight only stretched so far before petering off into shadow.

The fisherman stood, stretched, scratched, then walked to a window. He moved fisherman-smelly through late afternoon, a man home from a month’s work, walking easy and slouched with tiredness. He was not about to ask Bertha for another beer while she was in the middle of a run.

“It mostly happens nights,” he said. He continued to look through the window onto the Canal. “It’s humping again. Putting on quite a show.” Beyond the window a hump beneath the water moved toward the channel like the burp from a giant carp, a carp bigger than a walrus or a whale, bigger than a blimp. Water spread across the calm surface, roiled, and nothing showed—no fin, no rolling body. The fisherman turned to where Bertha knocked down the last of the run. He carried his empty beer bottle. Bertha stays friendly when you bus your own table. Beer and Bait is a nice place for people who are polite.

“And you’re right about those cops,” the fisherman said to Petey. Whereas Petey is about forty and sharp, this fisherman was mid-thirties and qualified as the thoughtful type. He carried wrinkles on his forehead and his face was craggy; like it claimed first cousin to a sea eagle. “These boys act like they know what they’re doing. Makes a nice change, copwise.”

The cops we know are generally not bright, and the cops we know enjoy being nosy. They like to pack.357 magnums, pistols so big that if they ever went off, would scare the living christmas out of their owners. Our cops like to pull pretty girl tourists over, give them a ten minute talking-to, then let them off with a warning. Our cops draw weekly pay and treat the locals like people in custody even when we aren’t. Our cops are country boys, plain and simple, who got jobs on the cops because their talents led them away from honest work.

“I could be wrong,” Bertha admitted. “I was wrong once before. When I bought into a mortgage.” She looked over the premises and her look was sweet. She checked out chipped Formica on the tables, looked at the polished sweep of the solid oak bar, at the twirly advertising hung here and there by beer salesmen. She counted herself lucky, as anyone could see, and even sunlight that showed certain imperfections—scratches on the dance floor—a bullet hole in the bandstand—did not take away her vision of the place.

Jubal Jim snored and gave a little woof as he dreamed of chasing varmints, then poked his nose farther between his paws and kept snoozing. The fisherman, thoughtful, watched him with envy. Petey murmured something low and doggy. Jubal Jim opened one eye, licked his nose, and went back to sleep. A beam of sunlight warmed his fur. Everybody felt pretty dreamy, thinking how it must be if you are a hound hanging out at a nice bar where you are obliged to sleep all day and run all night.

Of course, during the night you meet every kind of creature from rabbit to wolverine, and you learn to use good judgment. More than likely, you also run into whatever it is, out there, that makes the road turn ugly.

“Customers,” Bertha said as tires crunched gravel beyond the open doorway. “Go ahead and rack ’em,” she told Petey. “It’s an hour before things get busy.” Bertha did another flip at her hair, smiled broad as only a Norwegian can, and turned to greet whoever was just then slamming the door of a truck.