Poodie James

excerpt

up Kittitas Street. Sitting in his wagon was a crying boy, about two
years old. Poodie walked backward as he pulled, making sounds at
the child. Spanger eased the car back into its place, contemplated
for a moment, then got out and walked across the street. When
Poodie saw the chief, he transferred his chatter to Spanger, gesturing
toward the little boy, the parade, the wagon and something up
the hill.
Leaning down to Poodie, Spanger said, “I see you’ve become a
father.”
Poodie thrust the wagon handle toward Spanger with one hand
and reached for his pad with the other. Holding the wagon, the
chief faintly heard the end of the Marine Corps Hymn.
“Not my boy. Lost,” Poodie wrote. “Taking him to police station.”
“Good idea,” the chief said, ”but maybe we should try to find his
parents first.”
Poodie hunched his shoulders, spread his arms and grunted a
sentence.
“Well, let’s look again,” Spanger said. “Come on.”
Poodie turned the wagon around and followed the chief back
down the hill. At the avenue, Spanger used his handkerchief to
wipe away tears and traces of ice cream on the boy’s face. He
hoisted the child onto his shoulders. Perched above the crowd, his
hands around the big man’s neck, the boy laughed as a float packed
with elves drifted by. Poodie went from one spectator to another,
tugging on sleeves, pointing up at the boy. No one claimed the
child. Halfway down the block, a young woman, her face strained
in worry, squeezed along the sidewalk through the crowd, pushing
a baby in a stroller. Poodie planted himself in front of her and
turned to point toward Spanger and his passenger.
“Willie,” he saw her say, “oh, Willie.”
Grinning, Poodie led her to the corner. People turned away
from the parade to watch the reunion and the mother’s tearful
thanks.
“Mr. James, we make a pretty good team,” Spanger told Poodie.

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

Poodie James

excerpt

woman for the first time since he and Millie said goodbye. Dear
Millie. Dear Marcie. Poodie considered lighting the kerosene
lamp and reaching for his History of Egypt. He was asleep before
the thought ended.
Chief Darwin Spanger eased his cruiser into the parking place he
had ordered reserved alongside the Columbia Hotel. The parade
was two blocks down the avenue, headed north toward the center
of town. The population today was ten times normal. More than
100,000 folks were packed along the parade route, some of them
there since sunup. The image of a red delicious surrounded by
apple blossoms topped every lamp post and telephone pole. Bunting
trailed above the street in white and green swoops. Six deep on
the sidewalks, people fanned themselves with festival programs.
Summer weather was a month early. The urgencies of a Sousa
march wafted up the hot asphalt and melded with the babble of the
crowd craning their necks as they watched a skywriter finish his
message. It stretched above the valley from the Columbia to the
rocky outcroppings on the foothills west of town, “Welcome To
The Apple Capital Of The World.” Chief Spanger saw two of his
men on opposite sides of the avenue moving barely fast enough to
keep their motorcycles upright, herding impatient youngsters back
to the curb. The parade’s outriders followed. Tassles on their red
fezes flew as the Shriners cut figure eights and do-si-doed up the
street, grinning and waving on miniature motor scooters and tiny
cars powered by one-lung engines. The tin signs on their handlebars
read “Al Azhar Temple, Calgary, Alberta,” and “Zelzah
Shrine Temple, Las Vegas,” “Al Bedoo Temple, Billings,Montana,”
Ben Ali Temple, Sacramento, California,” “Calam, Lewiston,
Idaho.” “Masada, Yakima, Wash.,” “Bagdad, Butte, Montana,”
“Afifi, Tacoma,” “Moses Lake,” “Seattle,” “Portland,” “Spokane,”
hundreds of old men zooming and cavorting, waves of cartoon characters
driving cartoon vehicles. The crowd was laughing.
“From them signs, it looks like an A-rab invasion,” Spanger
heard a parade watcher tell his wife, “but them guys damn sure…

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Poodie James

excerpt

He watched Thompson make his way along the path to the big
log dining hall. The air was heavy with the scent of the pines. A
counselor and half a dozen campers sat in a story-telling circle on
the sand. Torgerson was lost in thought about the absence of complications
in young lives when he felt a finger poking into his side.
He looked down into the face of a boy in a swimming suit. The
boy’s head, its hair nearly white from the sun, was even with
Torgerson’s hip. The boy had a bottle of citronella in his hand.
“Here, please,” he handed Torgerson the bottle. “I’m getting
bitted all over.”
“That’s ‘bitten,’ Torgerson said. “You’re getting bitten all over.”
“Yes, I am.”
“I suppose you want me to put this on you.”
The boy stared mournfully at Torgerson.
“All right, then. Just a minute.”
He took off his jacket, folded it, placed it on the bench behind him
and rolled up his shirt sleeves.Hemade a circle with his forefinger and
the boy turned around. Torgerson applied the oily citronella to the
boy’s back and shoulders, his hands covering half of the little body. He
worked the fluid over the backs of the boy’s legs, then took him by the
shoulders and turned him around to rub it on his front. In the cooling
air, Torgerson felt moisture on his forehead and rising pressure in his
veins. The boy looked at him without expression. Torgerson finished
with the citronella and handed the bottle back to the boy.
“That should keep those mosquitoes away.”
“Thank you, mister.”
“What’s your name?”
“Dwayne Elwood Mortensen. I’m six.”
“Glad to meet you, Dwayne Elwood Mortensen.”
“I have to go now,” the boy said, and walked along the porch to
the uphill side, then to the cabin next door and disappeared inside.
Torgerson went into Thompson’s cabin to wash the citronella
from his hands and slumped against the basin, steadying himself
against his trembling. “Damn me,” he muttered. He looked up to
see a forest ranger standing in the doorway.

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Poodie James

excerpt

Sam had neither unusual height nor muscularity. The features
of his face were rounder than those of most lean men and highlighted
by brown eyes of striking depth and softness. The attention
of those eyes on people he spoke to, the resonance of his voice, his
breadth of knowlege and angular humor brought Sam Winter
notice, much of it from young women. After calling on a few of
them, in 1910 he married Liza Franklin, the daughter of one of the
town’s leading doctors. In 1912, Liza gave birth to identical twin
daughters, their only children. “That’s enough,” Liza told friends,
“a double handful.” Sam’s prosperity as an attorney came steadily.
By 1920, his clients included many of the town’s most prominent
business and professional people, an impressive list of the region’s
big fruit companies and the massive hardware and orchard supply
house of White and Wills. He became active in community affairs,
served on commissions and organizations. He took a seat on the
board of the Valley Bank. In 1922 he brought into his firm as a
partner Richard Franklin, a cousin of his wife who was five years
younger than Sam and had done well in his own practice. Within a
year, they added four bright young lawyers. The Winter and
Franklin firm’s practice flourished during the 1920s, managed to
stay intact through the deepest decline of the depression years and
by the end of the 1930s recovered with the highest billings in its
history.
In 1939, when he was 57, Sam ceased active practice, turned the
firm’s day-to-day operation over to Franklin and became senior
partner emeritus. He and Liza devoted nearly a year to a grand tour
of the United States. In the fall of 1939, the Winters’ daughters,
their husbands and the grandchildren went by train to Chicago to
meet Sam and Liza for a family tour of museums, theaters and restaurants
and a week of luxury at the Palmer House. Increasing tensions
in Europe led the Winters to cancel a trip to England they
had been planning for the spring. Back at home, Sam resumed
activity on the boards of the bank, the public utility district

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

Poodie James

excerpt

“No one wants to farm down here any more, Poodie,” the
banker said. “We can’t sell the orchard and we can’t leave it to
become diseased and die. Some day the land will be used for something
else.”
Stone saw the alarm in Poodie’s eyes.
“Don’t worry. You can stay in your cabin,” he said. “I’ll see to
that.”
Poodie scurried into the cabin and returned with his pad and
pencil.
“Glad about cabin,” he scribbled. “Thank you. But no trees bad.
Need trees. Keep these?”
Stone looked at six trees behind and to the sides of the cabin. He
walked over to the cabin steps and sat looking at Poodie. He
motioned him closer.
All right. They are your responsibility. Watering, pruning,
picking, everything. If the trees don’t get care, they have to come
out.”
“Okay,” Poodie laughed as he wrote. “My trees. Good care.”
The crew sawed the orchard into firewood. They uprooted the
stumps and dragged them into piles for burning. When the men
finished their work, they dumped two cords of apple wood next to
the cabin. Poodie stacked it beneath the eaves. That November, he
watched the heaps of stumps smouldering and pictured the children
playing long ago in the orchard. In the smoke he saw the
night of his first summer there when three men came into his cabin
and pulled him out of bed. He dreamed about them, their laughing
faces indistinct in the moonlight.
The door knob. After so many years, Poodie remembered it. He
had just turned over in bed and his eyes opened for one semiconscious
moment. Moonlight flooded through the window and he
saw the door knob turn. He sank back into sleep, then they were
yanking the covers off and pulling him out of bed by his feet. His
head hit the edge of the cot and slammed onto the floor.

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