The Hauntings of Hood Canal

A Kid Arrives

Footsteps danced on the porch, then a young man who seemed filled with promise came through the doorway and blinked as his eyes adjusted to inside. He stood no taller than Petey but as muscular, and he moved like a kid practicing ballet or karate. Nothing about him suggested anything but a deep thirst, plus a regular dose of young lust. He looked around for girls, saw none, and figured thirst was the only itch he could scratch. He seemed polite, hazel-eyed, dishwater blond, only a little dense, possibly shy. He said, “Howdy.”

The fisherman sat at one end of the bar pretending to ignore the kid. Petey leaned against a pool table waiting for the next game. Bertha smiled, drew the kid a beer, and for some motherly reason stayed to talk.

“You’ve not been in before,” Bertha said. “Passing through?”

“Hauling wrecks,” the kid said. “Wet ones.” He tried to say it conversational but it was a failure. Bertha gave him credit for trying.

“One of them fish they’re pulling from the creek?” Bertha looked toward the Canal but stayed rooted behind that bar. She was absolutely, completely, one-hundred-percent not going to be first to head out and look at the wreck. The fisherman did not budge. Petey stroked the cueball two rails into a corner pocket while whistling a show tune. The kid, being a kid, expected more. He took a lick of the beer. “Nice dog,” he said. Jubal Jim opened one eye, growled, returned to snoozing.

“Pretty busted up?” Bertha pretended nobody’s feet were on fire to tear out for a look at the tragedy.

“I’ve towed worse, but nothin’ this weird.” The kid stepped to the doorway, looked toward his truck, and the kid wasn’t faking. He might be a little scared, but he was really and truly sad. “Two people,” he claimed. “A guy and a lady. Hell of a thing to do to a Buick.” The kid really was light on his feet, like a boxer or tumbler. “Folks from north of here,” he said to Bertha. “Up at the development.”

He talked about a housing project, and about how the road is situated. Bertha’s Beer and Bait, with pool tables and fuel dock, sits like a fulcrum for the road. Beer and Bait lies almost exactly halfway along the Canal, and the Canal runs from the head of Puget Sound to the state capitol in Olympia.

At the north end of the road, thirty miles from Beer and Bait sits Al’s Dock, known locally as the Rough and Randy. Just north of Rough and Randy, where the dead people came from, sits a high-priced housing project for retired presidents, white-collar criminals, stock market types, and other folk for whom no one on the Canal has any time. “Because,” as Sugar Bear Smith often explained, “if you got morals you might as well use ’em.”

About thirty-five miles south of Beer and Bait, near the Capitol building in Olympia, Lee’s China Bay Taverna flaunts pinballs, fantan, cribbage, tap beer, a bartender who is wise, and Lee, as wily an Oriental as can be found in any moving picture. For a number of reasons that will later appear, a sense of magic and mystery always hovers around China Bay.

To the west stand mountains, to the east the Canal, and everything not road or water is covered by trees. Rain keeps things nicely washed nine months out of twelve, and skies turn blue for tourist season. On clear nights Greek Annie looks to the stars and puts curses on satellites sailing high above; curses indiscriminate toward nationality or economic belief. Through most of the year the skies seep gray rain, or fill with lowflying cloud scud.

“A’ course it’s busted up a little,” the kid said about the Buick. The kid was not going to be denied the reputation he had coming. The fisherman, kinder than required, took a final pull at his beer. “Got to git,” he said. “Still got some cleanup on the boat.” He walked casual to the door like a man reluctant to go back to work, and he was worth admiring. The kid remained unsure, but hope just oozed from his pores. The fisherman hesitated in the doorway and reflected on the view. He said to no one in particular, “Better come look at this.” Charity, the preacher tells us, is the greatest of the virtues.

The kid was off the hook. Petey moved so casual anyone could see why he is such a good hustler. Bertha came from behind the bar and she carried a bar rag. That rag kind of advertised that she was too busy attending to the wreck to pretend she wasn’t.

There are some who claim a Buick is a pretty sorry sight to begin with, though none of them are Republicans. This Buick threw a chill across the sunlit afternoon. It sat on a trailer, being impossible to tow from a harness because the wheels could never, ever track. The car was not quite twisted into a corkscrew, but twisted it was; twisted so the gleamy grill had broken loose and dangled from one small bolt. The roof bulged, as though raised from within by a hydraulic jack; or it might be the bulge came from some sort of awful suction on the outside. The windshield had popped out and must now lie at the bottom of the Canal. The trunk lid stood half raised, and two deep scratches ran the length of the car, like it had slid away from something that grasped it with iron fingernails. Beneath sunlight, streaks of mud dried on royal purple paint.

The wreck would make the bravest man feel timid. When that windshield popped, water would have crashed in like a cold and suffocating hand. Those people would not have seen a thing, and maybe that was the only lucky part.

And, when it comes to the imagination, this wreck worked different from other wrecks where body metal shears, or glass shatters, or fires leave their imprints on paint. This wreck had done nothing to itself, no crash, no burn, no damage from hitting tree or telephone pole. This wreck had been done unto.

“You hear about it and it don’t seem real.” Bertha shuddered and looked at the Canal. “It’s real.” She spoke to the kid. “Did you see those folks?”

“…talked to a guy who did.” The kid had lost all his brass. He didn’t even pretend he wasn’t scared. “They were kind of blank. That’s all the guy said. Just kind of blank… I don’t know what that means… they weren’t in the water more than a couple days.”

“I’d be fearful just towing that thing,” Bertha said. “I give you credit.”

“It sure don’t beat a dish of ice cream,” the kid said. “It durn near don’t beat walking.”

Petey climbed on the trailer and looked through the window on the driver’s side. “Nothing broke. Sopping wet. Air conditioner switch on high. Headlight switch on. They were cruisin’.”

“I’ve got work on the boat but this drives me towards another beer.” The fisherman walked back into Beer and Bait.

“Me too,” the kid said. “One more beer won’t bust a Breathalyzer.”