Tag: vietnam-war

Poodie James

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excerpt

This was bound to be about the Poodie James story. Sonny’s face
was reddening. That meant they had a problem, but Sonny ran the
newsroom. She would not jump in. She reached for the pile of budget
sheets on her desk and got back to work, envying the editor and
reporter wrestling with a story. My god, would the price of newsprint
ever stabilize? She sank into the pages of figures, enjoying the whir
and the rhythm as she cranked the handle of the adding machine.
“Got a minute?” Winifred looked up at Sonny standing in her
doorway, with Pease a step behind him. “Ned has something you
ought to know about.” She pushed the budget aside.
“Well, Ned,” she said after she had heard Pease’s story, “nice
work, I must say. Poor George Pearson, carrying that around all
these years. But we can’t go with it. Sonny is right, it’s hearsay. The
hobo, Clarkson, thinks he saw Torgerson that night. You say
Clarkson told you Torgerson denied it. This certainly could
explain the mayor’s hatred of Poodie James, but we need the other
man to confirm Pearson’s story. Even then, Torgerson may not
confess. Have you gone back to Pearson to try to get the name?”
“Yes. He’s terrified,” Pease said. He won’t tell me any more. I
think he has visions of prison. He probably doesn’t know the statute
of limitations on assault.“
“More likely he has visions of his reputation and his business
going to hell,” Sonny said. “And he has a point.”
“I don’t know any other way to find out who was with
Torgerson and Pearson that night,” Pease said.
Winifred straightened up and fixed her gaze on the middle distance.
“I think I might,” she said after a few seconds. She pulled a
scrap of paper from a desk drawer, reached for the telephone,
propped the handset on her shoulder, started dialing and shooed
the men out of her office. They watched from Sonny’s desk. After
she hung up, she waved them back in.
“Ned,” she said, “you’re about to meet your first madam.” She
gave him a look of appraisal. “I hope she’s your first.”

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Poodie James

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“I’m glad to see you’re not hiding, Mr. Clarkson,” Pease said.
Fred hoisted himself up on an elbow and regarded the young
man. “Not hiding and still not talking about myself,” he said.
“I thought perhaps you’d be willing to confirm what I found out
about your background before we go with the story. It was fairly
simple to trace you through the state bar association. You had an
impressive career in the law.”
“Now, why would anyone care about that, Mr. Pease? It’s
ancient history.”
“I suppose no one would care if you hadn’t made yourself a hero
in the train rescue and come so eloquently to the defense of Poodie
James at the council hearing.”
Engine Fred indicated the captain’s chair. “Have a seat. I’ve been
thinking of something that might interest your readers far more than
anything you could write about this old hobo. Want to hear about it?”
“Do I sense the offer of a deal?” Pease said.
Fred’s eyebrows went up. “Does that offend your journalistic
sensibilities?”
“It depends on the nature of the deal and the quality of the
information,” Pease said.
Fred fell silent while he studied Pease’s schoolboy face, its earnestness,
its shock of hair over the forehead, the glasses losing their
struggle to stay in place. Pease returned his gaze without moving
his eyes, without a flicker of expression.
“Do you know the story of Poodie James being attacked and
beaten shortly after he moved to this valley?” Fred said.
“As of two days ago, I do,” Pease told him. “Winifred Stone told
me about it shortly before the council hearing. She directed me to
the clipping in our morgue. Sketchy story. Not much to go on. It’s
interesting that someone was attacking hobos around the same
time. 1927, a long time ago.”
“Matter of perspective,” Engine Fred said. “Seems like yesterday.
Still, it’s been sketchy for me, too, until recently.”
Pease looked at Fred, saying nothing, waiting.

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Poodie James

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“There’s no mistaking it, Mr. Mayor. I saw your face for fully
half a minute before you bucked me off and made your escape. I
have never forgotten your eyes, your distinctive eyes. I thought I
recognized you from the back of the hall when you spoke, but I had
to be certain. You know, indeed you know, what I’m talking
about.”
Torgerson glared across his desk at Engine Fred. “You expect
people to believe something dredged up from twenty years ago?”
Fred smiled. “I didn’t say how long ago it was, but your memory
is fairly accurate. It has been twenty-one years. Poodie James and I
were discussing it just this morning. As for people believing it, I
hope that it won’t be necessary for anyone to know. That includes
Poodie.”
“What do you mean?” Torgerson said.
“Poodie doesn’t know who beat him up. He doesn’t know who
attacked Old Sam, and he doesn’t know, as he puts it so simply,
why you don’t like him.”
Glowering at Engine Fred, Torgerson said, “I could have you
thrown out of here.”
“Yes, you could.”
Torgerson got up, turned around and stood looking at cars passing
on the street below. “What do you want?”
“I don’t know why you beat Poodie James when you were a
young man. I don’t know why you are persecuting him now. It
doesn’t matter. I want you to leave him alone, Mr. Torgerson. Just
leave him alone.”
Torgerson spun around and leaned across the desk. “I’ll tell you
why, mister. Because he’s a freak, an unclean little freak. He contaminates
the town. He should have left after he got his warning, but he
stayed here, dragging that wagon around, rummaging through peoples’
garbage, bothering children. All those things you said in the
hearing, all those things Gritzinger said, that’s crap. Poodie James is
nothing but a bum and a beggar. He’s bad for the town.”

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Poodie James

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“I came here to say what I know about hobos.You have been
told that we mean no harm. I believe that we cause none.”
Engine Fred paused to look at Stout. “No more harm than most
people do, and less than some.” He turned toward Torgerson and
halted again.
The room was suspended in silence.
“But now, this hearing about hobos turns into an attack on the
best, the bravest man I have known. He came to help after the train
ran off the tracks near the hobo jungle. If he hadn’t, I could not
have got the engineer out of the cab. I probably would have been
blown up trying. Mr. Stout says that Poodie James is my accomplice.
He says that Mr. James and I caused the train wreck so that
we could make ourselves look good. That is offensive, Mr. Stout. It
is also slanderous.”
The fat on Stout’s face quivered as he ratcheted his head in
Torgerson’s directon and back to Engine Fred.
“’If,’ I said. That’s what I said, ‘If.’ I was only raising a possibility.”
Stout’s voice had lost some of its vigor.
Engine Fred took a step in Stout’s direction. “That is the
defense of a bully and a coward. You made an accusation, Mr.
Stout.” He looked at Torgerson. “It did not occur to you that the
hobo or his accomplice would defend against it.”
He’s even better than I remembered, Sam Winter thought.
“Mr. Clarkson,” Spear’s voice cut through the tension, “under
the hearing rules, you may make a statement and answer questions.
You may not engage in debate.”
“Mr. Spear,” Engine Fred said, with the trace of a smile, “you’re
trying to be fair, of course. I’ll observe the rule.” He stepped back to
the lectern.
“I told the council that Poodie James is the bravest man I have
known. That is so not because he risked his life to save someone. It is
so because under circumstances that would defeat most of us, he lives
his life with independence, dignity and joy. He does not accept charity
and he does not seek institutional help. He makes his own way, gathering
and selling discarded newspapers and bottles.

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Poodie James

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“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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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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Poodie James

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“What’ll it be?” he said.
“Can of Prince Albert, please.”
Gritzinger walked to the shelves. Sam looked over at the big
man. Something about that voice.
The man glanced at him.
“Pardon me, sir,” Sam said, “is your name Clarkson?”
The stranger turned and looked steadily at him from behind
rimless glasses that imparted an air of orderliness to a man otherwise
in dishevelment.
“Why do you ask?”
“Years ago, I spent time in a courtroom with a lawyer by that
name, one of the best I was ever up against. He whipped me. That
rarely happened. I didn’t forget it.”
The man’s gaze softened a little as he continued to study Sam’s
face.
“Condolences on your loss,” the big man said at last. He handed
Gritizinger a few coins, slipped the can of tobacco into his jacket
pocket, dipped his head and said, “Good evening to you both.”
“Glad to see you after all these years,” Gritzinger said.
“And I you, sir. Good evening.”
Sam watched the man’s back as he walked out of the market and
headed north. He turned to Gritzinger only after the door closed
and the sound of the bell interrupted his musing.
“You know him,” he said.
“Used to”, Gritzinger said. “Haven’t seen him since before the
war. He’d come through here on freight trains and stay in that
hobo camp down by the old Thorp place. Poodie James brought
him around. Did a few odd jobs for me. Spent a day once stacking
two cords of cedar in the woodshed out back. Called himself Fred.”
Fred, Sam thought. Fred Clarkson?
When Darwin Spanger walked into the showroom of Torgerson
Packard, the proprietor was conducting a couple on a tour around a
black sedan. With a nod of his head, Torgerson directed Spanger…

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Poodie James

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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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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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