Tag: veterans

Poodie James

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excerpt

“From the standpoint of the police department,” Mr. Stout,
“things are well in hand.”
Spear waited for the crowd to settle down. “Now we come to the
matter of the train derailment and fire a while back.” For the first
time, Engine Fred thought, Spear seemed unsure of himself. “It
has been suggested that hobos from the jungle interfered with the
train and had help from someone in the neighborhood.”
Whispers coursed through the room. Albert Swan cleared his
throat. Clever of Torgerson, Spanger thought, to plant that notion
with Spear and let his political enemy make it public. “I’ve heard
the theory,” he said.
“I know you investigated personally, Chief. What did you find
out?”
“The railroad’s investigator told me the accident was the fault of
poor track maintenance. He said there was no evidence of sabotage.
We’re waiting for his formal report, but that was his finding.”
“And what do you think, Chief Spanger?” The question came
from Stout.
“I think that the head accident investigator for the Great Northern
knows his job. There is no reason to doubt him. Besides, why
would a hobo who depends on trains for his transportation want to
wreck one? Doesn’t make sense.”
“It might,” Stout said, leaning forward, “if the hobo and his
accomplice wrecked the train so they could come to the rescue and
be heroes.” He shifted his heft to the back of the chair. A buzz ran
through the audience.
So that was it, Sam Winter thought, the crackpot scheme to
draw Poodie James into the mayor’s campaign against hobos was in
the open without Torgerson’s having to spring it himself. He
looked over at Clarkson. Engine Fred sat staring at the front of the
room.
Spanger’s voice took on an edge. “That is a serious charge of
criminal activity, Mr. Stout. There is no evidence to support it,
none whatever.” Stout shrugged and gave Spanger a faint smile.

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In the Quiet After Slaughter

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He was making his way to the bar when a stranger blocked his
advance.
– What you want? the man said. One eye had been inexpertly
sewn shut. Dis a private establishment, pilgrim.
Redman’s muscles twitched. He enjoyed a good row, it was a
Yukon sport, but on his first night out? Besides, the fellow had
shoulders broad as a linebacker. His fists were the size of five-pin
bowling balls.
– You best turn around, mon.
Redman feigned resignation, retreated a few steps — but then
pushed into the crowd. Convinced he’d lost Cyclops, he slipped into
a vacant seat and ordered a beer.
A few drinks later a girl approached his table and began dancing.
Her plump black thighs glistened with perspiration. She had breasts
and lips women like Marge would pay to replicate. Her hair was a
tangle of dreadlocks.
Ace jumped to his feet and began to move.
Boom-boom-ba-boom . . .
Oh, yeah.
The girl led him deeper into the crush of dancers. And then he
was being nudged into the washroom, its only exit blocked. The girl
was waved away.
– What I tell you, mon, huh? Dis place not for your kind.
There were machetes and at least one pistol tucked into a waistband.
All attached to four very large and fierce Caribes. The Cyclops
appeared to be their leader.
– You a crazy motha, know that, pilgrim?
The heat and the booze had caught up to Redman. He was out of
gas and the odds were against him. So he approached the man with
one eye squeezed shut and played his only hand.
His name, he said, was Johnny Cool, and you bet he needed a job. It
seemed most able-bodied men on the island did. He was in the lobby
sucking on sugar cane when Redman stepped from the elevator the
next morning.
– The dancer, she yours? he asked.
– Dey all mine.
– Have her checked out. I’ll want to see the certificate.

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Poodie James

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excerpt

“Is there anything you’d like to add?” Spear asked.
“Just that something ought to be done to control these hobos.”
Spear banged his gavel to quiet another outbreak of chattering.
Pearson avoided looking at Torgerson. He felt the mayor’s gaze
follow him when he made his way to a seat in the audience. Those
eyes, Engine Fred thought. That man’s eyes are as cold as ice.
The next man at the lectern said, “I am Richard Brown, counsel
for the Great Northern Railway, here at the request of Mayor Peter
B. Torgerson. I have a short statement, Mr. President.”
“We don’t have a president, Mr. Brown,” Spear said. “I’m just
the man in charge today. Go ahead, please.”
“The Great Northern Railway prohibits passengers on its
freight trains and trespassers in its rail yards and rights of way.
Railroad detectives who apprehend violators hold them for local
law enforcement agencies and file appropriate complaints. That is
company policy in a nutshell. I am happy to answer your
questions.”
Spear looked up from the briefing paper he had begun to read,
his eyes wide.
“You said you are a lawyer, Mr. Brown?
“By training and license, yes, sir.”
“That is the shortest speech I have ever heard from a lawyer.”
People in the chamber chuckled.
“My question is this,” Spear said, “what does your railroad do to
keep hobos off the trains in the first place?
Brown appeared to be studying the air above Spear’s head.
‘’As I explained, our detectives regularly pull transients off the
trains, run them out of the yards and have the police arrest them.
Vagrancy convictions don’t put hobos in jail for long, and they’re
soon back on the road.”
Frank Stout strained himself upright in his chair. “So, what will
your railroad do to help us get rid of these bums? That’s what the
people of this town want to know.”
“The Great Northern, sir, is not authorized to interfere in local
policy or local law enforcement, nor do we wish to do so.

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Small Change

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I started walking, away from the fence. After about fifty yards, I came to an apron of freshly cut grass that bordered a wide road and a neighbourhood of the largest, most beautiful houses I had ever seen. Brick and fieldstone, white clapboard and freshly oiled cedar, some of them three and four storeys high, with ample porches and verandas and sprawling lawns. I limped a bit, but managed to make some progress along the wide, grassy median in the centre of the street I immediately thought of as a thoroughfare. What is this place, I wondered, and who lives here?
They were oddly dressed. The boy wore a striped tee shirt, a white cap which I later learned was a Polo hat, and knickers that were tucked into black stockings just below the knees. Two of the girls wore summer dresses in soft pastels, yellow and sky blue, with puffed shoulders, matching socks, and matching bows in their hair. They had white shoes with ankle straps, not sandals, exactly, but something like, and the third, taller girl wore white court shoes, white shorts with a white leather belt, and a vee necked tee shirt. Her honey blond pony tail hung half way to her waist and was tied with a white band.
I was astonished, but drawn toward them as if by a huge magnet. They seemed like sky children, but were so recognizably earth-bound I wanted to talk with them, to know what their lives were like. Especially her, with the startling eyes.
I stood very still until they became aware that I was watching them. They stared back, then they looked at each other. They seemed puzzled. I crossed back to the sidewalk and started up the lawn that sloped down from their slate grey house. They seemed hypnotized, or stilled by bewilderment, alarmed, but unable to break the spell of my dirty, sweat streaked face, torn jeans and bloody shirt.
Except for her. She looked straight at me, so directly and with such an open stare it stopped me in my tracks. I felt something I’d never felt before. It seeped into my chest and throat from a place I never knew was in me. It was as if I had seen her before, or known her all my life. Her face – the smooth skin, deeply tanned like her arms and legs, the full mouth, high cheekbones, and green, green eyes – burned itself into my memory and what I read there was not fear, but curiosity, because I was strange to her, and concern, because it was clear that I was hurt. There was something else too, and it made my heart accelerate.

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Poodie James

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Sam thought about the trajectory of his own career, the comfort
of his retirement, the adventure of his new work on the bench. He
wasn’t sure that he could trust words to say what he felt. He offered
his hand to the big man sitting in the coppery sunshine on the
stoop of Poodie’s cabin. Engine Fred grasped it and smiled.
“I talk too much,” he said.
As Sam backed his car around and headed down the lane,
Engine Fred shambled up the path through the bunch grass
toward the jungle. Poodie hefted the three boxes of reds into a
stack next to the cabin. He would put them on the wagon and take
them to Ralph Gritzinger at the market. With his apple money,
ten or twelve dollars a week from newspapers and bottles and what
he made stocking shelves and doing odd jobs for Gritzinger, he
was all right, he thought. He had a place to stay and people who
helped him. The YMCA let him swim laps in the indoor pool now
that the city pool was closed for the season. He wondered what
would happen to a man like him in another country, another time.
What would the Egyptians 4000 years ago have done with an
undersized deaf man whose talk was hard to understand, who
walked badly? Would the Pharaoh’s master builders have wanted
him to work on the pyramids? Maybe, he thought, if he was lucky.
Most likely, he would starve. He walked out into the field where
the orchard used to be and turned to face his cabin and trees. If he
was from a nice neighborhood in town, wouldn’t he think the
cabin was too small, too run down and dirty for anyone to live in,
with no running water and no bathroom? If he were an Egyptian
slave from 2680 BC, wouldn’t he think that living in such a place
would be a blessing?
He was blessed, he told himself; a lucky man. He would hate the
jobs the school for the deaf wanted him to take, fixing furniture,
repairing shoes, inside all the time, stuck in a routine. Poodie
thought about how hard most folks in the valley worked to pay for
their houses, buy their cars, raise their children. He thought about
Dan and Ruth Thorp losing their orchard and their house.

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In the Quiet After Slaughter

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The group visited a cultural village. They were greeted by locals
wearing heritage garb and playing traditional instruments. Theirs
was not the only vacationing group in attendance. Her travel companions
tallied the number of languages overheard in the gift shop.
Harold was hungover, Winnie exhausted. She felt the ground
rotate beneath her feet. That morning they took turns using the bathroom.
– Are you feeling all right? Karen asked her. They’d been ushered
into an uncovered grandstand and left to dehydrate.
– I know it can be a little overwhelming the first time.
– Better keep an eye on Harold, Winnie said. His ancestors were
Norwegian.
A translation was read aloud about the importance of the dance.
All Winnie remembered of it, she told the gals back home, was that
the jig had been enacted for thousands of years. The steps told a
story. Through a slit in the curtains she could see the performers
extinguishing cigarettes and changing out of their western clothes.
It surprised her to learn that in this troubled land much was made
of longevity. Repetition seemed sacrosanct; the past, one’s forefathers,
were worshipped like deities. As the dancers stomped across
the stage she considered how different it was from the true north
strong and free, where there was a 12-step program for every misfortune,
where one was encouraged to forget, to move on, let go. To
erase people and things as though they’d never existed.
And stitch quilts.
Their last night she decided to say something. She’d promised herself
she wouldn’t, but she couldn’t help herself. Days she neglected
to take her prescription, Winnie was quick to boil.
– I thought, she said to Harold, we’d do something together.
We’re going home tomorrow.
He sulked through dinner and complained afterwards of heartburn.
It disappeared when Phil came by.
She decided not to wait up or visit Donna’s room, where some of
the others would be comparing what they believed were bargains…

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Poodie James

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excerpt

couldn’t discuss a pending case and that there’s no pending case to
discuss. Typical Williams. It might even be true. Later, the chief
went down to the train wreck and talked with the Great Northern
inspector. That doesn’t mean there’s a connection.”
Winifred searched her memory of Angie Karn’s call.
“I told you that George Pearson’s name came up the other day.”
“I gave him a call,” Sonny said. “After it became obvious that I
knew about his meeting with the mayor, he told me that he agreed
to appear at the hearing. When I asked him what he knew about
Poodie James, he said that Poodie taught his daughter to swim and
is fond of him. Cute. I pressed him about whether Torgerson is
taking direct action against Poodie. I don’t think he knows.”
“We have run a story—only an announcement, really—about
the fact that the council will call a hearing, “ Winifred said. “It’s
probably time to have someone do a backgrounder on hobos in the
valley. The problem, of course, is that if we do, it gives credibility
to Torgerson’s strange little crusade.”
“Nonetheless,” Sonny said, “he’s pursuing it, the council is
involved, the story is alive. It’s news, Mother.”
“Oh, I know it. What an irritating man this Torgerson is. Keep
me up to date.”
Chief Darwin Spanger walked slowly between rows of trees in
his father’s orchard, pausing now and then to examine a cluster of
apples, clear a ditch, adjust a prop. At the orchard’s edge he came
into the last of the day’s sunlight pouring through the notch in the
saddle shaped rock formation at the top of the western ridge that
cradled the valley. Chill air sliding down the slopes met the
warmth rising off the orchard, and the leaves whispered their evening
song. The sun bathed Darwin’s face. He closed his eyes. His
mind began to clear itself of Torgerson, Poodie James, the train
wreck, the long, long day. When he looked up, he saw three figures
making their way along the shale fall below the rock, moving in
and out of light and shadow. Dan, the yellow Lab, took a seat
beside him, ears alert to the hikers’ laughter trickling down the
foothill. Darwin scratched the old dog behind the ears, thinking of…

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In the Quiet After Slaughter

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I possessed neither the strength to stop the torment nor the courage
to try.
– I’m going for more wood.
When I return Larry is flicking lighted matches at Lenore. Her
cheeks are stained with tears.
– Burn, witch!
Larry exits for a pee. Lenore and I face each other across the campfire.
I wonder what it would take to make the poor girl smile, so I use
my roasting stick to scratch a happy face in the dirt. Lenore uses hers
to erase the upturned mouth and replace it with a frown.
– Fee-fi-fo-fum, we hear Larry carolling. Wisely, Lenore retires.
Larry and I decide to sleep outside. We arrange our sleeping bags
around the fire.
– I’m going to move to the States one day, Larry says.
– That would be neat.
– I’m going to join the Marines. Special Forces, probably.
– Wow!
A log tumbles into the flames; a glowing ash disappears into
the star-spangled Washington night. People disappear from our
lives all the time. They move away, promise to write, don’t. They
go wacko, drop dead, find God. You say something stupid and
you’re ostracized for life. It doesn’t take much for us to abandon
each other.
When we were young my mother enrolled Burt and me in free
swim lessons in Stanley Park. The bus ride took an hour each way;
the lessons lasted 20 minutes. Hundreds of kids from East Van sat
shivering on the seawall at Lumberman’s Arch waiting their turn to
blow bubbles in the frigid surf. My brother always pissed in the
water. Later Mom would buy us fish and chips.
– I dreamed about Marilyn Monroe last night, Larry says. His
hands are folded behind his head.
– She’s something, that’s for sure.
– She was bare naked, he said. Just standing there with a tube of
coconut butter, begging, Do my thighs, Larry.
The next day we saw Cindy and Corrine riding in a convertible with
some older guys. They were racing along one of the back roads.
Cindy was standing up in the front seat, arms outstretched,

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Poodie James

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“What are you going to do?”
“If the railroad says there was sabotage, I’ll have my people run a
full investigation.”
“If they don’t?”
“I’ll give the mayor my report.”
“And?”
Spanger grinned.
“Thanks for your help, Paul. See you in court. Or somewhere.”
As he passed the checkers players, the old cackler was eyeing his
partner across the board.
Piles of broken ties, twisted rails and fragments of the blasted tank
car bordered Gellardy’s orchard. A section gang was tamping new
ties into place. The smell of creosote was heavy in the air. Spanger
saw the locomotive upright on the track near the hobo jungle, a
section of its cab wall bowed out, a sheet of steel dangling from it.
The crane, engine roaring and cables screeching, was beginning to
ease the distorted chassis of the tank car out of the depression
alongside the track. Spanger walked toward a half dozen men who
stood watching. He recognized all but one. As two of them greeted
him and moved aside to make room, he saw Poodie James. Poodie
looked up and made glottal sounds of greeting. The chief looked
from Poodie’s eager face to the blackenedwreckage and back again.
“It’s good to see you safe and sound today, Mr. James,” he said.
The inspector introduced himself as Lawrence Hall. Spanger
made small talk with the group of railroaders, then took the man
from Spokane aside.
“What have you found so far, Mr. Hall?”
“I’ve found a mess, Chief. There are no orderly derailments. I’ll
tell you, though, the fire department here did everything right and
kept this from becoming a first class disaster. Worst thing, of
course, is that we lost a good man. First death in a wreck since I’ve
been with the company. The coroner did an autopsy this afternoon
at my request and found that Mo d’Aleppo’s heart gave out. Massive
failure. I guess the crash triggered it. He’d had a couple of mild …

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Poodie James

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Spanger stepped back.
“If there’s evidence to support your suspicion, we’ll decide what
steps to take. The law mentions probable cause.”
Torgerson’s face darkened.
“I think, Mr. Police Chief, that when you take a closer look at
those tracks and that wreck that killed a man, you’ll find probable
cause to hold those two for a while. Now, why don’t you just have
some of your men round them up?”
“And charge them with what?”
“Suspected criminal activity. Material witnesses to a wrongful
death. Mopery. What do I care? Just get them in jail. The town’ll
be a better place with them off the street.”
“Mr. Mayor,” Spanger said. “We ought to discuss this with the
city attorney. It could lead to a lot of legal trouble. You can’t just
invent charges and lock people up.”
“Oh, those two don’t strike me as jailhouse lawyers, Darwin.
Don’t worry about that. Hell, one of ’em can’t even speak.”
“Mr. Mayor,” Spanger said, “I won’t help you use this train
wreck to make Poodie James and the hobos part of your election
campaign.”
Torgerson smiled and turned away from the wreck toward his
police chief. His eyes are the color of dirty ice, Spanger thought.
“Why, Darwin, I haven’t even decided to run again. You just go
ahead and investigate. You’ll find enough to lead you to your duty.
I expect you to protect the citizens of this town.”
Torgerson turned and strode down the tracks toward 13th
Street. Spanger watched until the mayor got into his big blue
Packard and drove away.
Albert Swan, the city attorney, cleared his throat and raised his fingers
to smooth his tie. As he spoke, he looked past the police chief.
Spanger turned to see if someone had entered the office. They
were alone.
“Darwin,” Swan said, “we don’t much get into criminal matters
in this office. It’s mostly city business, you know.”

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