INTRODUCTION

I received word of Jack Cady’s death shortly before completion of my novel November Mourns, a story which, like much of my work, bears his stamp in some form or another. In November I incorporated Jack’s teachings of how the earth itself can often be heavily laden with the ghosts of the past. I dedicated the book to him, stating that he was “another of my fathers who will be dearly missed.” In no way did it even begin to articulate what I felt about him and what he meant to me. He was a mentor, a friend, an advisor, and a trusted guide. In short, he was everything to me that a father should be.

I first tumbled to Jack’s work in 1990, after purchasing the anthology Prime Evil, edited by Douglas Winter. After reading “By Reason of Darkness,” his brilliant novella of Vietnam veterans haunted not only by their war memories but by their strained bonds of their friendship as well as the spirits of the disturbed dead, I was so taken by his thematic vision and literate power that I shot off a fan letter. I was twenty-five and had just published my first dark fantasy in the field.

As was characteristic of him, he responded with a missive brimming with generosity and encouragement. From that moment on began a correspondence and a long-distance friendship that lasted until Jack’s death in January 2004. In that time I learned just how much he believed in the value of humanity, history, and charity. One of the tenets he taught, through his skills as a writer and his disposition as a man, was that we should all be willing to “receive and express love.” Boiled down like that it seems obvious and, perhaps, even effortless, but there’s nothing more difficult for any of us to learn how to do.

His work, like his life, was steeped in Americana. The myth of the nation as much as the reality of it. The back roads, the small towns, the places where history and legend meet on every street corner. Jack’s characters, whether they’re barkeeps, truck drivers, or lumberjacks, have a powerful mythical resonance. He looked upon humanity with a critical eye, but not a judgmental one. His protagonists often reflect this sentiment. They bear witness to bitter events around them but only to appraise, assess, and when the time comes, to forgive those who need absolution. What I remember most about Jack Cady was his assertive presence, a solidity that you could feel when you shook his hand, like he was rooted in the earth. He was a large and rugged, a rough and tumble kind of man full of physical strength and maverick personality. His hair was always worn wildly askew like a great Russian fur hat, and he had a wiry beard that wreathed his jawline and chin the way Lincoln’s did. It suited him. His appearance wasn’t dictated by modern fashions at all, but perhaps, it seemed, by past ones. He would’ve looked perfectly at home in one of those sepia-toned photographs of seated Civil War generals. He was a man out of the vault of history itself.

A conscientious objector during the Korean war, Jack still spent four years in the Coast Guard in Maine. He drove a truck through the Southeast, worked for a tree company in Boston, and became a foreman for a landscaping company in San Francisco. Along the winding route of his life, he also spent time as an auctioneer, warehouse worker, and, of course, a teacher. He taught writing at the University of Washington, Knox College in Illinois, Clarion College in Pennsylvania, and finally ended up at Pacific Lutheran University where he eventually retired. He married fellow writer Carol Orlock (author of the superb The Goddess Letters) in 1977 and they remained happily together until his death. Surviving him were four children from previous marriages.

A master of short fiction, and especially the novella form, Cady is perhaps best known for the Nebula-winning tale “The Night We Buried Road Dog.” For his imaginative, visionary work he was recognized with the Iowa Prize for Short Fiction, the Atlantic Monthly First Award, the Nebula Award, Bram Stoker Award, Philip K. Dick Award, and the World Fantasy Award.

His novels include The Hauntings of Hood Canal, The Off Season, Street, Inagehi, McDowell’s Ghost, The Jonah Watch, The Man Who Could Make Things Vanish, and Singleton, which Jack often expressed was a favorite of his.

The Well was Jack’s first published novel, and the great themes of his life, which he would revisit throughout the course of his career, are all present. How ghosts are forces representing the good and evil of the world at large. How history and time itself can be a powerful ally or fearsome foe. And how belief in God can be either a damning or saving grace, and sometimes both at once.

Although many of Jack’s horror and fantasy stories featured compelling and detailed depictions of areas around his home in Port Townsend, Washington, at the northeast tip of the Olympic Peninsula, The Well takes place in the Midwest (where Jack was born), at the bizarre mansion of the Tracker family. Built by three generations obsessed with superstition and terrified of Satan, the sprawling house is a labyrinth of booby traps set to catch the Devil. The corridors twist upon themselves and the flow of time twists with them.

John Tracker, who was raised in the house by his weak-willed father and his puritanical grandparents, has come home to clear away the mansion and make way for a new highway. He expects all of his family members to be long dead, but instead finds his embittered and possibly demented grandmother still alive. The ghosts of other ancestors prowl the corridors as well, some of them trapped in pockets of the past. Fascinated by the power of the house, and driven to confront its overbearing evil, John Tracker must attend to the lost generations of his family and outwit the traps that await him.

The Well takes the tropes of a classic haunted house novel and spins them into an extremely unsettling family saga. Each chapter begins with the personal history of some leaf off the family tree, and as we follow them we witness the growth of America itself, from its virtuous pinnacles to its corrupt depths.

Jack presented me with a copy of The Well bearing the inscription “To Tom, friend and fellow writer.” At the time I’d only had one novel and a handful of short stories published, but he knew how important it was for a young author to be considered a part of a grand literary family, and he welcomed me into it with open arms. It’s that kind of courtesy and thoughtfulness for which Jack will always be known among his friends and peers. I’ll always miss him dearly, and will always be thankful to have his letters and his books, which are so rich and full of his own vivid, captivating, dignified life.

Tom Piccirilli

Loveland, Colorado

August 29, 2007