Tag: poverty

Poodie James

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town and the prospects. He listened carefully to the details of the
planning. The enthusiasm of his own replies still rang in Jeremy’s
mind.
“Dad, the state is only 13 years old. There’s opportunity everywhere.
East of the mountains, they’re bringing water to the land.
It’s going to bloom and it’s going to make people rich. It’s in the
center of the state, on the river, on the railroad that runs east and
west. They’re already shipping apples to Chicago and back east.
They’ll need a good newspaper. A paper can make a difference in
how that valley develops. The man who owns that paper will be an
influence.”
“And Winifred? Is it right to take your young wife away from all
she’s known, into a wilderness?”
“It is not a wilderness.” Jeremy reached into his breast pocket for
a post card and handed it to his father. Zeb Stone studied the
scene: A few buildings, a handful of carriages, a line of poles, the
blurred image of a man striding across a dirt street that stretched
into an infinity of sagebrush and bare hills. He looked up and contemplated
the club’s spread of gardens, fairways and trees. Jeremy
was determined to go west with or without his father’s approval,
but he ached for the endorsement. The perspiration and the dread
accumulated as he waited. The severity of the look his father
turned on him, his relief when a trace of a smile appeared and his
father offered to help with finances; it was all as clear as the day it
happened.
“As it is, sir, I’m going to use your money” Jeremy told him. “I
haven’t touched the trust fund since I turned 21. I’ll take money
from that and my savings and, if need be, Win will chip in from her
inheritance. We want to do this on our own.”
“If you ever decide to go back into banking, tell me,” Zeb Stone
said. “A growing town will need a good bank.”
Jeremy never dreamed that 25 years later he would turn his
newspaper over to his wife and plunge fully into banking. Winifred
had turned out to be as good a publisher as he was, and a better,
tougher editor. He had stayed out of the paper’s business since

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In the Quiet After Slaughter

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But their censure didn’t weaken her resolve. She savoured my
father’s embarrassment — and cursed his having been conceived
every step of the way home.
He drank with old navy buddies at one of the Canadian Legion
branches and foolishly denied doing so. He attempted to disguise
the alcohol on his breath with Halls Cough Drops. Tobacco fumes
clung to his clothes like an invisible lint. Sometimes my mother
alleged the scent of woman.
On occasion, it was true, my father would take off for a few days
—to where, no one knows. Going absent without leave guaranteed
an intensified resumption of their conflict at some future date. The
air in our house crackled in anticipation of the rematch.
Once, to regain entry, he claimed to have gone angling with
friends.Mymother circled him warily, a dog sniffing a fire hydrant.
– Lying bastard!
Punishment often entailed his eviction from their bedroom. Banishment
could stretch from three days to three months, depending.
He appeared relieved to be sentenced to an air mattress on the living-
room floor. Because mybrother Burt and I often took myfather’s
side, it was self-serve in the kitchen until a truce was reached. Our
body weights fluctuated accordingly.
I viewed my father’s carousing like this: he was born during the
First World War and orphaned in the Depression. He spent the best
part of his 20s fighting the Second World War. I reckoned the occasional
disappearance was his way of making up for lost time.
People sometimes remarked that my parents seemed to have little
in common. This may have been the case. But there had to be a reason
they were able to cohabit for as long as they did. I think they
were joined together, as many unions are, by the sum of their unfulfilled
expectations, and because as the years passed, options
decreased and habits fossilized.
My parents, you see, were either in love or at war. Rancour
seemed an aphrodisiac. There was no Switzerland, no neutral
ground. It was the one thing they seemed to agree on: the enemy of
love is indifference.
My mother, in anticipation of their evening fete, had passed the afternoon
tethered to the dresser. Her features had been transformed by …

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https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00731WSPE

Poodie James

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Poodie saluted. Spanger hesitated, then returned the salute
before he wheeled the cruiser around and headed toward the station.
Pete Torgerson cranked the steering wheel knob as he crossed the
Great Northern tracks and guided the Packard along the dirt road
between the river and town. His headlights swept the curves, illuminating
sagebrush and bunch grass. A jack rabbit bounded in
front of him for a few yards and faded into the blackness of the
road’s margin. Ahead, a few cars rested in a dusty parking area
around a pole supporting a flickering red neon sign that identified
Ted and Angie’s Chicken Inn. George Pearson’s Lincoln, and
Fred Lawrence’s Cadillac were there. He didn’t recognize the
other cars. Inside the two-story log heap, the air was heavy with
smoke and “Tuxedo Junction.” Ted waved from behind the bar. A
man Torgerson recognized as a clerk from the J.C. Penney mens
department pumped nickels into the juke box. At a corner table,
Angie was taking a dinner order from a man who sat alone. Slim
ankles and high heels were just disappearing from the top of the
stairs into the upper hallway. Torgerson heard a slur of a male voice
loudly ask, “Which room?” In a circle of light, four men studied
their cards at a table whose green cover was embellished with stains
and cigarette burns.
“Mr. Mayor,” Pearson greeted him, with a hint of derision,
Torgerson thought, “we just got started. Seven-card stud. Throw
in. It should be an interesting game.”
Torgerson nodded to Pearson, Lawrence and two orchardists
from the north side of Lake Chelan. The growers materialized at
Ted and Angie’s every fall when packing house business with Lawrence
provided an excuse for an overnight stay in town. Angie
delivered the mayor a whiskey sour. Nothing to eat, he told her, he
wouldn’t be staying long. Torgerson anteed. Lawrence dealt.
Torgerson examined his hand. Next time around he called, and
threw two dollars in the pot. The game was underway, and the
mayor got down to business.

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https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08W7SHCMV

Poodie James

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The chief reminded himself to be charitable
tonight and think of the A-rabs’ good works for crippled and burned
children when the Shriners and their bottle-fed mischief overflowed
from the hotels into the street. A mass of purple, white and brass, the
high school band and drill team crossed the intersection and the band
broke into “I’ll Be With You In Apple Blossom Time.” The drum
major blew his whistle, strutted and kicked toward the sky. Thirty
batons twirled high and back into the hands of the girls, whose smiles
had yet to reach the pasted-on stage. The parade was off to a good
start, Spanger thought as he watched two youngsters sitting on the
curb wide-eyed and laughing, gripping their popsicles. The first float,
a confection of white, pink and green, bore the festival queen and
princesses in their satin gowns. Princess Marcie Welch, her tiara a
double band of apple blossoms, waved to the crowd. When she saw
Poodie standing beside his wagon, she blew him a kiss. Grinning
broadly, he waved back. Well, Spanger thought, the kids in town do
seem to love that strange little man.
On the side of the blue Packard convertible that followed the
queen’s float, signs with block letters a foot high proclaimed
“Mayor and Mrs. Pete Torgerson.” The mayor perched atop the
backrest of the back seat, turning toward one side of the street then
the other, moving his arm in the way Spanger had seen in the
newsreels when the Pope blessed crowds in St. Peter’s Square.
Sue-Anne Torgerson now and then glanced at the onlookers and
lifted her hand, her head just visible above the side of the convertible.
Torgerson waved the chief to the side of the car.
“Did you see that?” he shouted over the band.
“What, Pete?”
“Poodie James, that’s what.”
Poodie had waved and smiled at the mayor’s car as it went by.
That smile, Torgerson thought, that mocking smile. Sure as hell,
he knows. He remembers.
“He’s watching the parade,” Spanger said, striding alongside the
car. Even with Torgerson sitting on the backrest, the chief’s head
was nearly level with the mayor’s.

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Poodie James

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“Seen Ray Thompson?” the man said.
“No, I expect he’ll be back in a few minutes. Anything I can do
for you? I’m Pete Torgerson.”
The ranger gave no sign of recognition.
“I have a message for Ray. Got a call up at the station. Only
phone around here. Know where I might find him.”
“He’s over at the dining hall.”
“Thanks,” the man said, and left.
Torgerson sat on Thompson’s bunk and leafed through a tattered
copy of Life, trying not to think about the boy. Five minutes
later, Thompson was back.
“Pete, I have a problem. The ranger station got a call from my
neighbor in town. My wife had an appendicitis attack. She’s in the
hospital. I’ve got to go down there right now. It’s going to burst if
they don’t operate. I want to be there when she comes out of the
anesthetic. There’s no one up here but kid counselors, and I can’t
leave one of them in charge. I hate to ask because I know how
much you’ve got on your hands, but….”
“You don’t have to ask. Go on. Just stop by the garage. Tell
them what’s happening, and have them give Sue-Anne a call.”
“If I can’t get back up here tommorow, I’ll have the Y send
somebody to take over. Noon, at the latest.”
“Run along, Ray.”
“Razor and all that stuff above the sink. Sorry I don’t have pajamas
for you. Don’t use ’em. Lights out at ten o’clock. You might
have to quiet ’em down.”
“Don’t worry about it. We’ll be fine. Scoot.”
In the log dining hall, Torgerson lined up with the children and
the counselors to shuffle past the steam table. A solemn woman in
a hair net and a white uniform ladled chipped beef on toast and
canned peas onto their trays. He thought of the army. After dinner,
he wandered over to a corner of the hall where a counselor sat
at an old upright piano playing a sonata he recognized but could
not name. She looked fifteen, maybe sixteen, he thought, and from
the back a little like Sue-Anne. When he came home, his wife was

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Poodie James

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He spoke at service club meetings. He lectured at
the college. He played golf as he always had, seldom and badly. It
was a way of socializing; he detested the game.
Sam restrained himself from meddling in the affairs of Winter
and Franklin; he promised his partner and his wife that he would
keep hands off the firm. Despite his efforts to stay busy, the boredom
of retirement began to overtake him. Pete Torgerson’s predecessor
as mayor asked Sam to fill the unexpired term of a full-time
municipal court judge who died. The term had less than a year to
run. When Sam told her about it, Liza was reluctant and then, the
more she thought about it, relieved. Sam accepted the judgeship.
On the bench and in chambers, he discovered in himself gravity
and patience, qualities that during his years of arguing before
judges he never imagined he had. He enjoyed the work. Before the
term ended, he announced himself a candidate for a superior court
seat. The bar association endorsed him. He won easily and was
nearing the end of his second term.
There was nothing official about it, but Sam Winter had
become a sort of guardian to Poodie. In 1934 when the bank foreclosed
on the Thorps, Jeremy Stone asked him to come up with a
legal guarantee that no one would throw Poodie off the property.
On Sam’s advice, the bank gave Poodie a life estate in the cabin.
That’s where he was now, reading, no doubt, Sam thought. The
little man came to the door in his shorts and sandals, grinning,
holding Breasted’s History of Egypt, a book the judge had always
meant to get around to.
“Listen, Poodie” Sam began.
Poodie’s grin expanded. He cupped his hand behind his ear and
cocked his head, eyes intent on Sam’s face.
“Oh, for heaven’s sake. Sorry, Poodie. I mean, we have to discuss
something. It’s about the mayor.”
The grin diminished. Poodie spoke a couple of sentences. Sam
hunched his shoulders and spread his hands.
“Better get your pad and pencil,” he said.
Poodie invited the judge inside.

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Poodie James

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heat of friction on his backside, and his spine raked over the door
jamb. He tried to raise up, but they jerked him backward down the
step and onto the ground. The clubbing began. He wrapped his
arms around his head and tucked into a ball.Two of them straightened
his body by pulling his hands and feet while the biggest man
alternated kicks with blows from a length of wood. The clubs and
boots battered his arms and legs, his torso, his shoulders. The pain
was like fire on his skin. The ache went to the center of his bones.
They let him go, then knocked him off his feet when he got up,
laughing at his contortions when he twisted and thrashed to evade
their clubs.They were killing him, he thought.He was going to die.
Suddenly, the big man was on his back and Engine Fred was on
top of him with a forearm bearing down on his windpipe. Poodie
sat up and saw the other two running down the lane. His head
throbbed. Three more hobos came down along the path from the
jungle. The man on the ground got an arm free, knocked Engine
Fred off balance and was up and running away. He disappeared
into the orchard, headed toward the river. Two of the hobos ran
after him, but came back shaking their heads. It all happened in the
space of a few minutes. The Thorps slept through it, but Engine
Fred told Poodie that he heard a scream. Poodie didn’t know that
he was capable of screaming.
Dan Thorp called the police the next morning. By then, the
hobos had hopped a freight. Poodie could not identify the thugs.
The bruises on his face and body took weeks to heal. Thorp put a
lock on the cabin door. The attack was the worst thing that had
happened to Poodie since his mother died. He lived it over in his
dreams night after night for months. Years later, he still awakened
in fear that the men would come back.
Alice Moore looked up to see Poodie James’s face floating just
above surface of the checkout desk, a stack of books next to it. She
had never seen that face without a smile. She looked at the books;
Howard Carter’s The Discovery of the Tomb of Tutankhamen, three
books about whales, a collection of de Maupassant stories.

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Poodie James

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back into the bay, “we ought to try a power gurdy. I don’t know if it
would control the lines any better, but it would speed things up.”
“I don’t trust them. The hand gurdy is fine.”
“But, Dad…..”
“Peter. I said the hand gurdy will do for us.”
“Look, I’ll pay for it. If you don’t like it, it goes, and it doesn’t
cost you anything.”
“No. I said no.” The steel of stubborness was in the old man’s
voice. “That’s the end of it.”
Evenings when the boat was in port, Peter rarely had supper
with his folks. He roamed. After midnight, they heard his quiet
steps on the stairs to his room.
“You must say something to him, Ivar,” his mother said. “He’s
going to find trouble.”
“He’s a grown man, Hilda.”
Then, after a few weeks back on the boat and more suggestions,
Pete argued with Ivar about how to do the work, occasionally at first,
and after a couple of years nearly without ceasing. The change in his
son troubled Ivar Torgerson. A scowl seemed engraved on the face of
the young man. Eagerness for work transmuted into a flow of resentment
and quarreling. He swore at people who got in his way when he
walked on the dock. Ivar heard reports of Peter picking fights in bars
and tormenting drunken Indians on the waterfront in Seattle. He
heard worse too, things he would not listen to, about Peter and sailors,
about the kinds of things some sailors do. At Christy’s Tavern, he
knocked Hans Karlson flat when Karlson began to tell him what he’d
heard. Ivar never asked his son where he went on his nights out alone.
He could not bring himself to mention what he knew Karlson and the
others whispered about.
On a Sunday evening, Ivar and Hilda strolled down the hill
toward the bay, relishing the softness of the springtime air and the
quietness of the streets. They looked in store windows, admired
flower beds, ambled along the dock.
“Ivar, you’re headed toward the boat. This is Sunday. Come on,
we’re turning around right now.”

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Poodie James

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He tried to raise up, but they jerked him backward down the
step and onto the ground. The clubbing began. He wrapped his
arms around his head and tucked into a ball.Two of them straightened
his body by pulling his hands and feet while the biggest man
alternated kicks with blows from a length of wood. The clubs and
boots battered his arms and legs, his torso, his shoulders. The pain
was like fire on his skin. The ache went to the center of his bones.
They let him go, then knocked him off his feet when he got up,
laughing at his contortions when he twisted and thrashed to evade
their clubs.Theywere killing him, he thought.Hewas going to die.
Suddenly, the big man was on his back and Engine Fred was on
top of him with a forearm bearing down on his windpipe. Poodie
sat up and saw the other two running down the lane. His head
throbbed. Three more hobos came down along the path from the
jungle. The man on the ground got an arm free, knocked Engine
Fred off balance and was up and running away. He disappeared
into the orchard, headed toward the river. Two of the hobos ran
after him, but came back shaking their heads. It all happened in the
space of a few minutes. The Thorps slept through it, but Engine
Fred told Poodie that he heard a scream. Poodie didn’t know that
he was capable of screaming.
Dan Thorp called the police the next morning. By then, the
hobos had hopped a freight. Poodie could not identify the thugs.
The bruises on his face and body took weeks to heal. Thorp put a
lock on the cabin door. The attack was the worst thing that had
happened to Poodie since his mother died. He lived it over in his
dreams night after night for months. Years later, he still awakened
in fear that the men would come back.
Alice Moore looked up to see Poodie James’s face floating just
above surface of the checkout desk, a stack of books next to it. She
had never seen that face without a smile. She looked at the books;
Howard Carter’s The Discovery of the Tomb of Tutankhamen, three
books about whales, a collection of de Maupassant stories.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08W7SHCMV

Poodie James

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“Sam, you’re smart enough. You wouldn’t work if your life
depended on it. You been a proper stiff all your miserable life?”
“Only since I was old enough to leave home fifty years ago.
‘Bout you?”
“Oh,” Engine Fred said as he uncapped one of the pints, “I had a
job, a wife, kids, a house, dogs, even a car. They had me, really. I
left all that behind. I had to get out from under.”
“Think you’ll ever go back to it?’
“If I did, it wouldn’t be there.”
Poodie watched, intent on the conversation, marveling that
these men rode freight trains, lived in the open, begged for food,
did odd jobs, wanted no home, and he had found a home. Engine
Fred offered him whiskey out of his tin cup.
“Just a sip, see how you like it.”
Engine Fred and Old Sam laughed at Poodie’s grimace and the
tears in his eyes.
“You’ll get used to it,” Old Sam said, peering at Poodie’s face.
Poodie shook his head and made low sounds. He got out his pad
and pencil, wrote, tore off the sheet and handed it to the old man.
Old Sam studied it, shrugged and passed the note to Engine Fred.
“What’s it say, Engine?”
“It says, ‘No more of that.’ See, Sam, I told you he was smart.”
Two nights later, Poodie made his way up to the jungle carrying a
bag of apples. As he came around the big boulder at the path’s final
turn, he saw Old Sam cowering near the bonfire, trying to shield
his head from the blows of a big man in black clothing wielding a
club, a cloth tied over his nose and mouth, his hat pulled low. Sam
twisted, arched his back, tried to tuck his chin into his chest. The
man kicked at Sam’s groin and aimed the club at his ribs, chest and
face. Poodie dropped the apples and stood frozen. The man suspended
his club in mid-strike and looked at Poodie. All that
Poodie could see of his face was eyes reflecting the firelight. The
attacker started toward him, then turned and ran toward the tracks.
Poodie rushed to Sam. The old man’s neck was bloody.

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