Джек Кейди - The Hauntings of Hood Canal

The goldfish burped. The Dragon-Lady-red doors swung open and an itinerant entered. The fisherman looked up, looked twice, looked three times. He was actually surprised that he could still feel even mild shock. He dealt cards.

“I bring truth,” Chantrell told the bartender.

“How cunning of you. Will you be using the parking lot today?” The bartender placed a can of pop and a barroom sausage before Chantrell.

“Thus doth the Lord provide,” Chantrell told the bartender, “and you, his beloved servant.”

“I’m actually a bartender.” The bartender smiled, and turned away so Chantrell could wolf his handout with some dignity. From the stockroom Lee’s voice mixed Chinese and English cuss words.

“Pearl of the Orient,” the bartender said, “we’re about to get company. Save back some curses. One must not run short.”

Sometimes the bartender’s eyes are blue, sometimes gray, but this day nearly black. The bartender looked the joint over, gaze benevolent. “A bully pulpit, the parking lot. Perhaps the mission of this joint is to supply souls for you to save.” The bartender’s voice sounded droll, but not unkind.

The fisherman discovered that he felt almost happy. Chantrell had made it. He had made it in about the way a guy would have to expect; clumsy, sort of dumb and awful sincere, but unstoned. The mushroom kid had moved up a slot or two.

“If you wonder too much about the Mysteries,” the old man told the fisherman, “insanity becomes part of the package.”

“What?”

“You are wondering if a small step forward is worth the attendant destruction.” The guy chuckled. “I am very, very old, and very wise, and a helluva lot smarter than you. It pays to pay attention.”

The fisherman glanced again at the Canal. “I make it to rain in five minutes.”

“You see,” the old man told him.

“That guy used to be a junkie,” the fisherman explained about Chantrell.

“Perhaps he still is,” the oldster mused, “there’s all kinds of junk. On the other hand, it takes moxie to stand preaching in the rain.” The old man moved pegs. “Needfulness clusters around joints. There’s a sufficiency of needfulness.”

“Is there such a thing as an honest hustle?” The fisherman remembered telling the tow truck kid there was no such thing. “Maybe being mistaken, or even wrong, doesn’t have much to do with being honest.”

“It’s something to think about,” the oldster admitted. He glanced toward the Dragon-Lady-red doors. “What happens next may explain quite a bit.” He shuffled and dealt.

A red-hair thing entered, simpering. Its hair was permed, and it exuded a light stench. It walked to the bar with all the ease of slime draining from a garbage truck. It looked the bar over, then took a seat beside Chantrell.

Chantrell stood. He looked at the red-hair the way a cop looks at drunken vomit. “There’s things I’m not strong enough to handle,” he told the bartender. Chantrell’s voice was actually calm. “But I grow stronger every day.” He moved toward the door. “Parking lot,” he said quietly. “Grace is like rain. It can happen anywhere. Take my word.”

“We’re fresh out of strychnine,” the bartender told the red­-hair. The bartender watched Chantrell leave, watched rain begin to patter on the Canal. “You have certainly settled for a shabby incarnation this time,” the bartender told the red-hair. “I thought you’d pick something attractive, something people would like.”

“They like this,” the thing said. “I gave it a lot of thought. This incarnation is actually perfect. It’s that sort of time in history.”

“Suppose I grant your point,” the bartender said. “Which, of course, I do not.”

“You may take my word about what losers like,” the red-hair said. “I’ve been at this for a long, long time.”

“As have I,” the bartender murmured. “And sometimes the days move slowly.” The bartender turned toward the back room. “We have among us a creature of urges and low desires.”

Cussing flowered, then sparked, then threatened to blister paint. Lee came from the back room, gray shirt, orange tie, wrinkled face. “Didn’t we just do this?”

“Time flies,” the red-hair suggested.

“Hear what I say and trust it,” the oldster whispered to the fisherman. “Every three or four centuries there’s a meeting of these forces. Every three or four centuries some nation begins to slide. When that happens you get this caucus. I am a superior diplomat.”

“Incarnation or not…”

“Stay out of it,” the oldster insisted. “You are truly helpless. That thing is a force. It can empty you as it emptied others. Lee and the bartender are forces. They play on a stage too big for your imagining.”

“People are dead.” The fisherman did not lower his voice.

The red-hair turned. “Death is not a thing I enjoy. Where necessary, yes, but death is not an object. My pleasure comes from damage, wounds, wreckage, broken and fractured things.” The red-hair simpered. “I enjoy you, your ruptured hand, your age, your feeble indignation.” The red-hair stopped simpering. “And now you must shut up.”

“Are you not premature?” the bartender asked. “It took a goodly while for you to manifest this time. You were hardily opposed.”

“Perhaps a little,” the red-hair admitted. “Always before it’s been a walk. But the stage has become bigger.”

“Always before,” the oldster whispered, “the battle lay within the heart of one or another nation. This time it’s in the heart of the western world.”

“One thing puzzles me,” the bartender said. “Why here? Why manifest in this small and unimportant place?”

“The cities are already mine,” the red-hair said. “They did it to themselves. But there are small pockets out here in the boonies where people stumble around and bump into each other. They aren’t particularly good, or particularly bright, but they halfway try to take care of each other. They actually try to protect their worlds. I’m doing a mopping up operation, nearly meaningless, an amusement, actually. Most enjoyable.”

Lee loosened his tie. “The next time we go through this you won’t find me owning a joint. Next time through I’ll raise mangos or cabbages. Or, maybe I’ll seed clouds.” Lee’s scorn was so great the fisherman thought he could hear it sizzle. “The problem with a joint,” Lee told the red-hair, “is there’s too many guys like you… look the same… talk the same…” Lee wrinkled his nose. “…smell the same… and too stupid to zip their drawers.”

“It’s my specialty,” the red-hair simpered. “Intelligence doesn’t damage things, just lack of it.” The red-hair snickered.

“Gimmie a time-line,” Lee said, “then get the hell out.”

“Be careful,” the red-hair told him. “If it were not for me, folks like you would have no work.”

“What a delightful idea,” the bartender said. “Or, as Grandma used to put it, ‘Land of Goshen’… or did she say, ‘my stars and garters.’” The bartender smiled broadly.

“There will now be negotiation,” the oldster whispered. “Dreadfully boring. All about wealth and lack of it, ideas or lack of them, offers and counter offers. Lee will choose a new continent to bring to prominence. The bartender will work at protecting history. The red-hair will fake and giggle and hustle.”

“I got nothin’ to lose,” the fisherman said, and knew he talked like a kid. “I could get in one good swing.”

“You have everything to lose,” the oldster whispered. “That thing is immortal. Go now, and wend your way; but take this with you: although a civilization dies, it does not mean that intelligence must. Thought and honor are that thing’s enemies, and thought and honor are individual. You may remain strong in the midst of squalor. Protect your loves if you can. Protect their worlds if you can. Wend your way.” The oldster moved pegs. “Crib,” he said.