Poodie James

Excerpt

once in a while. We worked it out.”
Poodie, nodded, smiled and settled back.
“Home. That’s good,” he grunted. It took Fred a few seconds to
piece together the distorted syllables
“Learned that,” Engine Fred said. “Home is good.”
They fell into the comfort of a long silence.
“It’s so transparent, so obvious,” Sonny Stone told his mother.
“Torgerson is trying to drum up an issue, bring attention to himself
with this hobo thing. That’s plain enough. What I don’t understand
is what he hopes to gain by going after Poodie James. If
Poodie has other enemies, who could they be?”
Winifred Stone stood at her office window in The Dispatch
watching cars go in and out of the hotel garage on the corner. She
thought of her conversation with Angie Karn.
“He seems to have friends all over town, all kinds,” she said. “The
mayor thinks he can tar Poodie with the hobo brush. In a funny way,
Poodie’s joining the hobo in that rescue might helpTorgerson’s cause.
It’s hard for me to believe that people think much about hobos one
way or the other around here, but it wouldn’t be the first time a politician
was able to get the populace stirred up about an imaginary
threat. Demagoguery works.”
She turned to Sonny.
“The question is, what is our responsibility in this situation? We
said we’d keep an eye on it. So far we have covered a meeting in
which the mayor urged the council to take action. The council
called for a hearing, but didn’t set a date. The mayor is drumming
up support. Nothing illegal, or even untoward, there, but I can’t
avoid the suspicion that Torgerson is doing more, doing something
sleazy. What are we looking into? Who’s on the story?”
“Ned Pease and Earl Potter are trying to pick up what they can
on their rounds at city hall and the courthouse,” the managing editor
said. “So far, there’s not much. Earl says he saw Chief Spanger
and the D.A. huddling in front of the courthouse this afternoon.
He asked Paul Williams what it was about. The D.A. told him…

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In the Quiet After Slaughter

excerpt

Momacted up in public she crossed one of these invisible demarcations.
We’d find her suicide notes magnetized to the fridge door
like shopping lists. Rough drafts, she called them. At the end of one
such letter, as though the deed had been accomplished, shewrote, I
was bored.
Asked what was stopping her from carrying out the threat, she
replied, Have you seen the price of natural gas lately?
The procedure was always the same: as soon as she began behaving
strangely, the cops were notified; an ambulance followed. A caring
social worker wrote a lengthy report.
We knew when it was time. Mom hid behind the curtains and
spied on passersby. School kids jeered. Eventually she would do
something deemed a danger to herself or others — the line. Cops
were alerted; an ambulance followed. A caring social worker wrote
a lengthy report.
Doctors began with pills. None worked. Electric shock therapy—
Edison medicine — did. A psychiatrist at the bughouse called us in
for a chat after the first session. He directed us to the patients’
lounge. We found Mom playing Scrabble.
– I haven’t felt this good in years! she beamed. She was unrecognizably
radiant. We gathered her things.
My father wanted to believe his wife had been cured; we all did.
The doctor did nothing to dissuade us. But the electrical charge had
the lasting power of a flashlight battery. My mother’s sanity waned
like the trailing notes of an orchestra. Follow-up drugs gave her the
shakes. She soon stopped taking them.
– I’m fine now, she declared. A-okay.
But she wasn’t A-okay. There was a look . . . that look. She slipped
away from us incrementally. In time, she was gone for good.
Exhausted from their shopping spree, Mr. and Mrs. Cameron turn in
early. Lenore stays up with us, bravely trading a tent shaking with
snores for the certain terror of being left alone with her brother.
Larry pelts his sister with marshmallows.
– Stop it! she cries.
– Make me, he challenges.
– I’m telling!
– You’ll die.

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Poodie James

excerpt

He studied the chief’s face. “You’re not joking.”
“He came right next door to ordering me to arrest Poodie and
this guy called Engine Fred on suspicion of vandalism or sabotage
or something, anything to get them in jail.”
“Oh,” Williams said, “oh, of course. I mean, I figured it was just
a piece of Torgerson craziness, that business about rounding up all
the hobos and running them out of town. Does this have something
to do with that?”
“Looks that way to me.”
They watched two old men arrive at a table three trees away and
set up their checker game.
“The law,” Spanger said.” is that a police officer can make an
arrest without a warrant if he has probable cause to believe that
someone has committed a felony. I’m no lawyer, but I don’t think
the mayor telling me ‘do it’ is probable cause.”
“I don’t think so either, Darwin. Unless there is hard evidence,
this arrest wouldn’t stand up. I’m certainly not going to file an
information without evidence, and it doesn’t look to me like grand
jury material. But maybe Torgerson’s onto something, knows
something you don’t. Maybe he has the goods on these crooks.”
“Now who’s joking? I don’t think it matters to him whether the
charges stick. He wants to harass the hobos and Poodie, and he
probably thinks that if an arrest makes it into the newspaper and
onto the radio, folks will wonder if maybe there isn’t something to
this hobo threat after all.”
They looked at the checker players. One of the old men was
cackling in glee as the other kinged him.
“Pretty early in the game for that,” Williams said. “He’s not up
for reelection for a year. It doesn’t look to me like an issue, but it
may be a mistake to underestimate peoples’ willingness to be scared
by what they don’t understand. Back to the train wreck. Is there
anything to suggest that it wasn’t an accident?”
“The Great Northern guys are down there now. They brought
an inspector over from Spokane. I’m going to see them at three
o’clock. Torgerson wants an arrest today.”

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Poodie James

excerpt

around talking and staring. She was polite, but she had to be careful
not to seem to encourage men like Jim because she knew what
they were thinking. The ranks of apples passed by. She thought of
the golden delicious as the golden apples of the Hesperides, Juno’s
wedding present from the goddess of the Earth. She never mentioned
such thoughts to her friends. They would think she was
being snooty. Talking about clothes and boys and movies was part
of what was so boring about this town, this valley. Poodie James
was a reader, but she couldn’t discuss books with him. She couldn’t
discuss anything with him. He couldn’t talk, which was why she
decided to visit him last summer. Maybe she should learn sign language.
She knew that he spent hours reading in the library. She
saw books in his cabin. She did not regret having gone to see him
there, but she had decided it would be foolish to go again. I do
know where babies come from. I was lucky. We were lucky. Poodie
was a dear little man, intelligent and funny, but who in town knew
that, or cared?
“More boxes, Miss.”
Good grief, Jim was still standing there, still staring. Marcie
gave him her biggest smile.
“Thank you, Jim. Goodbye.”
“Oh, “better get back to work,” he said, as if he had thought of it
himself.
The day’s run of goldens was ending. Marcie looked down the
line and saw the first rows of reds advancing. “Where the apple
reddens, never pry—Lest we lose our Edens, Eve and I.” That was
Browning sneaking up on me. I hope I haven’t lost my Eden. She
watched her hand pluck a red delicious from the mass of fruit passing
by and tried to picture that man in Spain.

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