About Walking Pocatello

Walking Pocatello is my love letter to the city. I first moved to Pocatello in 1972, and I've lived here, on and off, ever since. I was born in another state and grew up in another Idaho town, but Pocatello is my home.

Each month in the blog archive contains a piece or two of the collection. Some of the stories are accompanied by a "Facts Behind the Fiction" post.

In 1996, while living in Oklahoma, I began writing Walking Pocatello because I was homesick. I may have over-romanticized the town, because when I began reading the pieces in writing workshops, listeners would often come up afterward and say, "Pocatello sounds like a fascinating place!" I had to remind them that I was fictionalizing many of the people and events, although the locations were real.

When I returned to Pocatello in 1997, I was unemployed, so I sat in a tiny apartment in The Brentwood and wrote the rest of the collection. By the time I finished, my savings account was gone, but fortunately, I was then hired to teach at Idaho State University. ISU Press published Walking Pocatello a few years later. The book continues to sell modestly, but consistently.

After retiring from teaching in August of 2009, I began blogging and decided to publish the collection online. This allowed me to add photos to my narrative and also reach a wider reading audience.

To answer a few frequently-asked questions:

1. Yes, the places that lend their names to the titles are real. However, some of them have ceased to exist.

2. Yes, many of the events really happened to me or others in very much the way I describe.

3. Yes, a few of the characters are real people, but most of them are composites or completely invented.

4. No, I am not the main character or narrator of each story (except for the Prologue). Some of the first-person narrators are male.

I hope you enjoy "walking" Pocatello by reading these stories as much as I enjoyed writing them.

Walking Pocatello is available for purchase on Amazon.com or at the Idaho State University Bookstore, (208) 282-3237.  

To see photos of the beautiful landscapes surrounding Pocatello, visit my friend Ruth Moorhead's photo gallery at http://www.pbase.com/moorruth/root

Saturday Night at the First National Bar, Part III "White Bird"

Rachel starts to say something, but suddenly Shane looms above her. “Rachel! You’re looking good tonight.” He touches the tops of her shoulders lightly with the flattened palms of his hands. “Going to sing something with us?”

       Rachel puts her palms on top of his hands and leans back, looking up at him. She lifts his hands away from her shoulders and holds them a second before letting them go. “No, but she will,” she says, nodding at Tamsin. 

       Tamsin blushes and starts to protest, but Shane doesn’t look at her. He smiles down on the top of Rachel’s head. He takes Rachel’s hand and pulls her to her feet. “Come on. We’ll do some Black Crowes. Or some of your stuff. You can use my guitar.” Tamsin sits back in her chair, relieved, but a little disappointed. Frankie sidles up to the table, scoops up the old glasses, the dregs of their milky concoction diluted with melted ice. She deposits a fresh drink an inch to the left of a cocktail napkin.

       The Love Dogs move about the stage, repositioning mikes, swapping picks. The bass player quickly changes an exhausted string. Greg hunkers down behind his drums. Glumly, he watches Rachel tweak the keys of Shane’s guitar, bending her head close to the body of the instrument. Shane lowers his mike to Rachel’s level. She makes an experimental strum, then waits. Greg taps one-two-three-four on the high hat, and the lead guitar slides into the beginning of “Love Junkie.”

       “Put myself on the line one too many times,” sings Rachel, “irrational and romantic--need I need say more?” The dancers curl around each other, hips and arms churning and rubbing. The room warms. Rachel’s voice winds around the feet of the dancers, low and bittersweet. She lifts the microphone off its stand and holds it close to her lips. “Too many years of putting out and feeling down.”  Shane keeps the rhythm on the fish bell. Greg opens his mouth to join Rachel on the chorus, but sees Shane’s warning frown and shuts it again.
       Plaid Shirt has temporarily left his vigil near the pay phone and is whirling around by himself in a corner of the dance floor, his eyes closed, his scraggly goatee pointed at the ceiling. Above the music, the cockatoo screeches its version of the song. 

       An old man with a long, ragged beard and tattered overcoat comes in the side door of the bar.  He has a stack of well-thumbed papers under one arm, and although it’s warm tonight, a tired woolen scarf is wound around his neck. He moves from table to table in a friendly way, shaking hands like a host and greeting several people by name. He’s also begging for change, which he gets, along with an occasional one- or five-dollar bill. He whisks these into the pocket of his overcoat before moving on to the next table. The old man negotiates his way across the dance floor, pausing now and then to join in. He executes a couple of tricky jitterbug steps with a pretty secretary, twirling her under his arm and back into her partner’s embrace and never losing his grip on the stack of papers. When he reaches the back of the room, he checks the pay phone coin return slot before entering the men’s restroom.

       Onstage, Rachel is singing another of her own compositions now, accompanying herself on Shane’s guitar. The music swells, and Rachel’s words rise above it, cool and clear: “Ten thousand silver blades...are better than what you gave to me,” she sings.
       Greg sits numbly behind his drums. He stares at the back of Rachel’s head and idly rotates the drumstick in his left hand. Shane leans close to Rachel’s mike and harmonizes on the chorus. His shoulder touches hers, and she doesn’t draw away.
       The old man comes out of the men’s room, wiping his hands on his rumpled overcoat and smoothing his beard. He says something to Plaid Shirt, who shakes his head and points to the pay phone, then gestures at the pet carrier on the floor. Plaid Shirt lifts the carrier to shoulder level, and the old man puts his face close to it. The yellow beak arches out of the small opening. It snags one of the long, grey hairs from the man’s beard. It tugs, and the man laughs. Plaid Shirt laughs and slaps the old man on the back, then sets the pet carrier on the table and opens its door. He holds his fist in front of the open door, and the cockatoo hops right up on it, curving its long toes over Plaid Shirt’s clenched fingers. Plaid Shirt holds the cockatoo out toward the old man, who draws back a little. The cockatoo strains forward toward the man’s beard, its yellow beak snapping. The man pulls back farther. Plaid Shirt laughs again and holds the cockatoo up on his fist. He looks over his shoulder at the bar to see if anyone else is watching this.
       Suddenly, the air is full of white bird.

       The cockatoo whirs by Tamsin’s head, making straight for the dance floor. She ducks, and the bird swoops low over the dancers. It takes a few seconds for them to realize what’s happening, then a woman shrieks. Her partner cringes and flings his arms over his head. The bird circles the dance floor, then darts toward the open front door, and the bartender snaps a towel at it as it goes by. The bird whirls right and circles the room again. Plaid Shirt jumps in the air, trying to grab it as it passes over him, but he misses by at least three feet and lands off balance, knocking the old man against the pay phone. People are shouting and laughing. The Love Dogs falter a bit--Shane and Rachel have both stopped singing--but Greg keeps a beat going, and the bass gamely keeps on strumming. Some of the dancers shuffle in place to the music; others are frozen in mid-dance, staring after the bird. Frankie closes the side door of the bar, then, as the cockatoo wheels in her direction, holds her tray up in front of her face.
       The bird is beginning to exhaust now; it droops lower as it passes overhead. It skims over the bar, heading for the open front door again. It’s just about to pass Myers Afraid-of-Bear for the third time, when Myers raises his arms above his head, as if to intercept a football pass. His huge hands close firmly around the bird, and he plucks it from the air and hugs it to his chest. The cockatoo lets out one terrific screech, struggles briefly, then goes still.

       “Don’t squeeze him! Don’t squeeze him!” The young man in the plaid shirt leaps toward Myers, arms outstretched. “Give him here!” he pants. 

       Myers looks down at the ruffled bird in his hands. He thrusts the cockatoo toward the young man, who grabs it and cradles it against his chest. He soothes the bird’s plumage. He croons to it and covers it with the plaid shirt. He carries it back across the room and places it gently in the pet carrier, then latches the carrier door. Glancing once again at the silent pay phone, the young man picks up the carrier and slowly makes his way to the door and out into the night.

       The Love Dogs pick up the dropped thread of Rachel’s song. Her voice rises in the final chorus. The dancers resume their dancing, the drinkers their drinking. Dr. Innes’s lost blonde clings to one of the frat boys who gives a thumbs-up signal behind her back to his pals. The biker chicks lean against the bar, silent, their arms linked, watching the dancers. Myers stands over his barstool and drains another glass.

       “Thanks,” Rachel says quietly as the music finally ends. She passes the microphone to Shane, lifts the guitar strap over her head, and leans the instrument against the wall behind the keyboard player. A smattering of applause accompanies her exit from the stage, and she makes a little skipping curtsy and heads for her table and her waiting drink. The drummer taps up a new beat, and the music begins again.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

This is the last post in the on-line version of Walking Pocatello. Thanks to Sherrod Parkhouse for his contribution to some of the photos used with these posts. Thanks, also, to Connie Rodriguez-Flatten for use of some of her photos of Old Town Pocatello at night. Future posts on this blog will be related "Facts Behind the Fiction" and new stories about Pocatello.


[To order a copy of the book, Walking Pocatello, call the Idaho State University Bookstore, (208) 282-3237, or send me an email.]

Saturday Night at the First National Bar, Part II "Strike Out"

Back on stage, Shane ends “Take Me to the River” with a long-held final note and an angry glare at Greg who sustains his flatted note an instant longer than Shane's and then crashes his sticks against cymbals in a tinny flourish. “We’ll take a break and be right back,” Shane growls into the microphone, then whirls around to Greg. Rachel and Tamsin are close enough to the stage to hear Shane hiss, “Listen, you asshole, if you can’t stay on the note, just shut the fuck up. One more time, and I’m turning your mike off."
       "Oh, lay off, man.” Greg slaps his sticks together on the metal edge of his snare.

       “No, you lay off." Shane leans over and pinches the drumsticks together with one meaty hand. The muscle that runs along Shane’s jaw flexes, just like the bicep of the arm holding the drumsticks. Both men tighten their grips on the sticks and glare at each other, their faces strained and hot. Shane pulls the sticks close to his chest, and although Greg resists, he’s off-balance reaching over his drums, and he staggers forward. Shane lets go with a throwing motion, and Greg reels backward, jostling the cymbals. He jerks himself back into balance, hands clenched at his sides, and makes a lunge toward Shane, but Shane has already stepped off the stage and is headed for the bar. Greg starts to follow, then stops and bends over to sort the snakepiles of cords that connect the mikes and instruments with the amplifiers.
       “He’s looking at you,” Tamsin tells Rachel, trying to talk without moving her lips.

       “I know he is,” Rachel replies in a low voice, holding her glass close to hers. “But it’s over. He just needs to get that through his head.”
       Tamsin pushes her chair away from the table. “Gotta go to the bathroom. I’ll help you ignore him when I get back.”  

       The plaid-shirted man is dialing as Tamsin passes him on her way to the door marked “Ladies.” He holds the receiver to his ear for an instant, then slams it down and resumes his pacing. Tamsin sees a flash of white against the holes of the cat carrier under the table.
       When she comes out of the restroom, the man in the plaid shirt is again holding the pet carrier up to his face. “Whatcha got there?” Tamsin asks. He extends it toward her at arm’s length. Peering through the holes in the door of the carrier, she sees a large white bird. It cocks a bright turquoise eye sideways and peers back.
       “What is it?  A parrot?”

       “Cockatoo.”

       “Does it talk?”

       “Yeah, but not in here. Too much noise. Wanna hold it?”
       Tamsin shakes her head. Plaid Shirt holds his finger to the carrier and a sharp yellow beak jabs at it through the small opening. “Looks vicious,” Tamsin says, “or hungry.”

       “Naw, just nervous.” He sets the carrier down again and pushes it back under the table. “I’m waitin’ for a call. My girlfriend’s s’posed to call me. Don’t know what’s keepin’ her.” He goes back to the pay phone and stares at it, rocking back and forth on his heels, his hands in his back pockets.
       Tamsin goes to the bar and orders two more White Russians. Myers Afraid-of-Bear is standing quietly, stolidly, by his corner stool. He’s laid a twenty-dollar-bill on the bar in front of him, and he runs his thumb over it gently, smoothing the wrinkles and the folded edges. The biker chicks are deep in consultation. The one with the helmet has set it on the floor. She balances a booted foot on it and leans close to her companion. Her voice is tense. “I don’t care what he does,” she says, “you’re not going up there tonight.”

       The other woman sighs heavily. “You don’t understand.” She’s taken off her leather gloves and put them on the bar. There’s a slave ring on her left hand. Its silver chain loops around her wrist and trails across the back of her hand to a heavily-sculpted serpent wrapped around her middle finger. “What else can I do?” she says.
       The band starts up once more. Tamsin hands the bartender a five-dollar bill and he passes her the drinks. She carries them back to the table, and she and Rachel sit and sip and watch the band. Shane leans into the microphone, his mouth wide, his eyes squeezed shut. Tamsin likes the way Shane’s black Zildjian t-shirt hugs his chest and shoulders, the way his long, dark blond hair hangs around his face. Rachel’s scanning the crowd. She points at a small man sitting alone. “Look.  There’s Dr. Innes, our math teacher. He’s always in here by himself.” 

       Ralph Innes is short, nudging forty, wears a lot of brown, and drives a sports car he bought a couple of years ago when his wife divorced him, about the time he started writing poetry. His hair is full and of one solid color, which makes it look like a toupee. In class, he’s very particular. Before he begins his lecture, he arranges his papers in two neat piles--one pile for lecture notes and another for overhead projector transparencies which he lifts with two careful fingers and places, smudgeless, on the glass plate of the machine. His calculator and mechanical pencil are always arranged on the desk exactly parallel to the papers, their top edges perfectly aligned with the top of the stacks. Occasionally, he will interrupt himself to readjust the alignment of these materials before continuing his lecture about logarithmic progression and skewed curves.
       Rachel and Tamsin watch as Dr. Innes lifts his beer for a long draught. His eyes never stop scanning the room. Suddenly they lock on three women at a table on the opposite side of the dance floor. He takes another long drink and wipes his lips with a folded handkerchief he takes from his breast pocket. Setting his glass down firmly, he rises and straightens the shoulders of his brown tweed jacket, then walks across the dance floor, stepping carefully around the couples swaying to the Love Dogs’ rendition of “Mustang Sally.” The women see him coming. Two of them--one plump, one slightly sallow--look at him expectantly. Their slim, blonde friend studies her fingernails. Dr. Innes leans close to the blonde, one hand on the back of her chair, one hand flat on the table near her drink. He speaks long and apparently earnestly in her ear. She raises her head and rakes her hair back over her shoulders with one hand, then turns her face away from his and says something to her two companions. They glance at Dr. Innes and giggle nervously. He straightens and takes his hand off the table. He stares at the blonde, but she continues to look away. Slowly, he turns around and recrosses the dance floor. When he gets to his table, he drains his glass, standing up, then counts some coins into the table’s ashtray and heads for the door. He doesn’t look back. The music ends abruptly as the door closes behind him.

Saturday Night at the First National Bar, Part I "Open the Doors and See All the People"

It’s hot in the First Nash tonight. They’ve got both doors propped open: the front door that says “First National Bar” in gold letters and the side door that opens on Harrison Street, which is really just a glorified alley between the backs of the bars on Main Street and the west edge of the railroad yard.

A few of the regulars are straddling the dozen or so stools that are bolted up to the bar. Brando is showing off his newest tattoo to a tall, good-looking man wearing a black eye patch. Brando rolls the sleeve of his t-shirt high on his shoulder and prods the swollen flesh. The man with the patch inspects the tattoo amiably, leaning against the bar, one long leg thrown casually over the nearest stool.

Myers Afraid-of-Bear has claimed the corner barstool near the front door, and everyone who comes in that way has to maneuver around his massive six-foot-six frame. Myers doesn’t actually sit on his barstool; he stands over it like a guard dog while he drains glass after glass of Budweiser. Sometimes, toward the end of the evening, if there aren’t too many people left in the bar, he’ll stand on his barstool and let loose his coyote call, one of the most mournful and beautiful sounds ever heard. Most weekend nights, Myers makes a little walking trip up Harrison Street, stopping at each of the bars along the way, where he stands tall and silent in the smoky gloom or the raucous hilarity of the different establishments. The First Nash and the Bourbon Barrel are his favorites, but he dutifully visits the Whitman and the Grand Saloon and the Wheel Club, although he is quickly thrown out of the Wheel, because the owner there doesn’t like him or his coyote call.
       Heather, a young woman with closely-cropped, bright yellow hair stops to admire Brando’s tattoo, and he hands her one of his business cards. She flirts for a moment with the man in the eye patch, then passes on down the length of the bar, exchanging a word or two with the other customers sitting there. She stops behind two men, the older one of them in a battered cap and rubber boots caked with earth. Putting a hand on each man’s shoulder, she massages their backs. “Keep your hands to yourself, honey,” says the older of the two men. He playfully slaps Heather’s hand away from his friend’s shoulder and replaces it with his own, massaging the younger man’s back with large, circular motions. All three of them laugh, and Heather passes on.   

       The Love Dogs are playing tonight, and the drummer, Greg, is flipping his sticks high in the air and singing loudly and tunelessly. Two young women in jeans and tie-dyed cotton shirts watch him from their places at a small table near the stage. One of them--Rachel--smokes and keeps time with the music, waggling her cigarette in one slender hand. Her roommate, Tamsin, sits with an arm slung over the back of her chair. She taps her knuckles lightly against the wood and occasionally hums a few words of the song.

The two women can see that Shane, the lead singer, is throwing the drummer looks of annoyance, because Greg’s supposed to just drum--something he does well--and not sing--something he doesn’t do well. Greg knows that Shane is pissed, but he keeps on singing. Tamsin bets Rachel that there’ll be a fight before the night’s over. 

       The Nash is filling up quickly. Besides the regulars, there are a few grad students in jeans and jackets and a handful of guys who work for the railroad and the potato processing plant. The tables ringing the dance floor are filled with groups of secretaries, freshly curled and lipsticked for their “Girls’ Night Out,” and trios of frat boys and used car salesmen, the former in skull-hugging baseball caps, the latter in crotch-hugging polyester slacks.

       Frankie, one of the owners of the First Nash, is waiting tables tonight, helping out the new bartender. Frankie’s dressed in stringy drapes and beads, and her frosted hair shoots around her head at odd angles. She claps whiskey shots and beer bottles down on the bar in front of the regulars, then balances a tray loaded with more bottles and shots on one bony, jutting hip and winds her way around the crowded tables, repeating drink orders and laughing one-liners out the side of her purple-lipsticked mouth. She replaces soggy cocktail napkins with dry ones and sets new drinks down in the center of each table. Rachel and Tamsin are drinking White Russians. Rachel stirs the milky liquid with her finger, then repositions the glass in the middle of her cocktail napkin.
       At the back of the room, a young man in a faded red and grey plaid shirt and a fledgling goatee paces around the pay phone that hangs on the wall near the twin doors marked “Gents” and “Ladies.” He stops and drags a blue plastic pet carrier from under a table in the corner, lifting it to eye level and peering through the perforated front panel. He pokes his littlest finger through a small opening in the door of the carrier and strokes the creature inside. The young man whispers to the animal, then sets the carrier down on the floor again, pushes it back under the table with his boot, and glances anxiously at the unresponsive pay phone.

       Two women in biker leathers come in and stand near the bar. One holds her helmet in front of her like a shield. The other runs a leather-gloved hand through her fried blonde hair and looks around for a place to sit. The bartender motions the women toward a couple of vacant stools at the far end of the bar. He leans over the bar to hear their order above the music, then turns to draw two mugs of beer.


*Photo of First National Bar courtesy of Connie Rodriguez-Flatten, 2011

Facts Behind the Fiction: The Hump Yard

Here's a link to a YouTube video of a pneumatic hump yard. This sound is familiar to anyone who lived in Old Town Pocatello before the hump yard was closed in 2002:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ndryMwF41Kk&NR=1

Here's more information about Pocatello's hump yard, from http://utahrails.net/up/up-yards.php

Pocatello, Idaho
Pocatello was Union Pacific's first hump yard and was opened in 1947 (it was called a retarder yard when first completed). When the new Pocatello hump yard was opened, motive power consisted of single, and later, double sets of new NW2s. As rail traffic grew during the late 1940s, so did the number of trains operating through Pocatello. Train length was also increasing, necessitating increased use of double NW2s as hump power, with their attendent full, six-man switch crews. 

A news item about Union Pacific ordering seven double-rail Model 31 electro-pneumatic car retarders from Union Switch and Signal Company for use at their new Pocatello yard. (Railway Signaling. Volume 40, number 8, August 1947, p.504)

A news item about new two-way radios for Union Pacific's yard offices and Diesel switch engines. Also mentioned was that the new yard at Pocatello cost $2.6 million. (Railway Signaling. Volume 40, number 11, November 1947, p.727)

The Pocatello yard has a 14-track receiving yard, a 28-track classification yard (designed for 40 tracks), and an 11-track departure yard. Other facilities included a car repair yard and a locomotive fueling station. Pocatello is a junction for routes from four directions on Union Pacific. To the south is Salt Lake City and traffic destinations in southern California; to the east is a connection at Granger, Wyoming, with the original 1869 Omaha to Ogden mainline, and all destinations eastward; to the west are the destinations in Oregon and Washington; and to the north is the traffic points in eastern Idaho, and the mineral traffic and connections with Northern Pacific, Great Northern, and Milwaukee Road at Butte, Montana. The lines in Idaho, Oregon, and Washington originate large volumes of fruit, vegetables, lumber, phosphate, and live stock. Points in the Northwest are also the destinations for much coal and manufactured products. The amount of rail traffic through Pocatello varied with the seasons, but in the late 1940s when the new yard was opened, the peak was about 2,200 cars per day. 
Previously, switching at Pocatello was done in two flat yards that had become inadequate to handle the growing levels of rail traffic being moved through the terminal. The new yard required the purchase of 75 acres and the realignment of 4,400 feet of the adjacent Portneuf River. The ascending portion of the hump grade raises at 2 percent grade, and the descending portion was built with a short stretches of 4 percent, 1.6 percent, and 1.3 grades until a general west to east descending grade of 0.2 percent is attained. Included in the construction of the hump itself was a car inspection point, manned by five inspectors, that allowed inspection, with lighting and plate glass covered inspection pit, of both sides and the under side of each car as it passed over the hump. Access to the inspection pit was gained through a concrete passageway under the crest of the hump. The new yard also included the installation of a new 150-ton Fairbanks-Morse track scale and 30,000 gallon diesel fuel tank to service the seven Diesel switch engines assigned to switching duties in the yard. ("New Classification Yard on Union Pacific". Railway Signaling. Volume 41, number 1 (January 1948), pp.36-43. A general article about the new "recently constructed" yard at Pocatello, Idaho.)

[Magazine article] "This Modern Yard Expedites Traffic", (Railway Age. January 10, 1948, p.120)

Buddy's, Part XIV "The Hump Yard"

Henry S rustles his papers. “Uh, let’s see. Oh, yes. Describe an intimate moment that you and the subject shared.”

       “Well, if by intimate, you mean physical--”

       “Not necessarily,” says Henry S briskly.

       “I was there when Rose’s daughter was born.”

       “Good,” says Henry S, making a note.  “And?”

       “And we shared personal information--about boyfriends and lovers, stuff like that.”

       “Yes.” Bob-bob.

       “She held my head for me once when I was sick, drunk after my boyfriend and I split up. She stayed up all night, taking care of me. I threw up on her shoes.”

       Henry S wrinkles his nose. “That’s not exactly what I’m looking for.” His wire-rimmed glasses flash a little, reflecting the glow from a nearby cluster of faded chili pepper lights.

I must have dozed off for a while, because when I woke up, it wasn’t morning yet, but the room was no longer dark. Blue-grey moonlight came through the slats of the window blind, striping my arm and the blankets like those uniforms prisoners wear in old movies. Rose was breathing deeply and regularly, but when I turned toward her, I saw that her eyes were open. Her left arm was bent up above her head, and she was staring at the raku mask that hung on the wall near the foot of the bed. 

       “You’re still awake?”

       “Yeah.”  She shifted and yanked on the covers a little.

       I stuck one leg outside the blanket to cool off. “It’s hot in here.” My pillow had worked its way down between the mattress and the wall. I pulled it out, swatted it into fluffiness, and tucked it behind my head, pressing it into the curve at the back of my neck. I closed my eyes again, but I could imagine the stripes of moonlight and shadow as they lay across my face. “My god, I was sick,” I said. “I can’t remember ever throwing up that much. Sorry ‘bout your shoes.”

       “That’s okay.  They’re only Italian leather."

       I started to laugh, but that made my stomach hurt again, so I stopped and lay quietly, trying to breathe evenly. I was just about asleep again when Rose spoke softly, as if from a long, long way away. I wasn’t even sure she was talking to me. Her voice was like a voice in a dream. I didn’t open my eyes. 

       “My family stayed right here in this house one time. I was about ten. It used to belong to the Imperial 400 Motel next door. They rented it out by the night to families that were too big to stay in the regular rooms. My aunts and cousins and I stayed here for a couple of days while my folks looked for a new place to live. Can’t remember why we had to leave the old one. I slept in this bedroom--maybe even this bed--and I remember waking up about 4:30 in the morning. There must have been a full moon, because the room was pretty light, like it is now.”

       Rose stretched both her arms up over her head and slowly brought them down on top of the blanket. “What woke me up was this strange noise. It was kind of like a flute--a tonette, we used to call them in school--and it went from a long, low tone to a higher one, and a higher one, ’til it reached a note so high--it was almost like a musical scream, if there is such a thing. I couldn’t imagine where it was comin’ from. All I could think of was that someone in the next room or maybe next door must be playing some kind of flute. It was so eerie. I lay there for the longest time, listening to it, feelin’ kind of enchanted. Almost afraid. Then, just when the tone got so high I didn’t think it could go any higher, there was this terrible booming noise in the distance--walls crashing together, buses colliding, a big noise like that. Then nothing."

       I waited, but she didn’t say anything more.

       “Well, what was it?”

       “I didn’t get up to see. I fell back asleep, I guess. When I woke up later, I wasn’t sure if I’d dreamed it or not. Nobody else said anything about it.”

       “Did you ever find out what it was?”

       “Sure. You’ve heard it.”

       “I have? I haven’t heard anything like that here.”

       “Sure you have. It’s the trains. When they sort the trains over in the railroad yard, the hump yard. They ease the cars down this incline. The retarders--brakes--make the screaming flute sound, and the boom is the release of the pneumatic controls.”

       “Oh, yeah, I’ve heard that. But not in the middle of the night.”

       “It was the weirdest sound I’ve ever heard.” She yawned and turned to face me. “In the morning,” she said, her voice low, like she was telling me a secret, “I got dressed and walked across the street to the campus. It was really early. Nobody was out yet. The dew was really thick on the grass, and the air was so fresh, and the trees were so still, like they were waiting for the day to begin. Everything was just waking up. I remember thinking how beautiful and still and green it all was."

       I put my hand outside the covers and felt for her hand. Her long, cool fingers were smooth in my palm, like well-polished silver. 

       “I wish I could have been there, too,” I whispered. Rose didn’t say anything, and soon I was back asleep.

“How would you characterize the subject, in relation to yourself?” Henry S’s pen hovers over several small boxes. Reading upside-down, I can see choices such as “Spouse,” “Friend,” “Neighbor,” and “Co-worker.” I don’t see one that says “Beautiful Dark Soul” or “Sister Spirit” or even “Mentor.” 

       “She was my best friend,” I say. 

       Henry S bobs his head and makes his final note.




[To order a copy of the book, Walking Pocatello, call the Idaho State University Bookstore, (208) 282-3237, or send me an email.]

Buddy's, Part XIII "The State Trooper"

The last time, on my last visit to Pocatello, I sat in Buddy’s waiting for Rose. Waiting on my barstool by the jukebox, drinking beer and playing song after song, until I had to go break another twenty for quarters, and while I was standing by the cash register, the Idaho State trooper came in and looked around and then walked right up to me and said, “Ms. Lish? Jackie Lish?” I nodded, wondering why a State trooper would be patrolling Buddy’s parking lot and what did I do? Forget to re-register my plates? Then he said, “Ms. Lish, I’m sorry to have to tell you that your friend has been in an accident,” and I knew that it must be bad, because they don’t send State troopers into Buddy’s to get you if everything’s going to be all right.

       Rose was killed almost instantly, in spite of the helmet she was wearing, and Tamsin’s father died, too, a few days later, without regaining consciousness. Tamsin was going to graduate from high school in a few days, and I was in town for that and to help celebrate her eighteenth birthday. After the funeral, I called and quit my job and had a friend pack up the stuff in my apartment and send it to me, and I’ve lived here in Pocatello ever since.   

       Actually, that bad night wasn’t the last time Rose and I met at Buddy’s. It would have been if she’d showed up, but, of course, she didn’t. The last time we met at Buddy’s was when I came back for my mother’s funeral, a couple of years earlier. I hadn’t been to Paris in a long time, and my brother Kip had to hunt me down by calling the University Alumni Office. Rose met me at the airport and drove me straight to Buddy’s for lunch. She said I needed the garlic to help me get through the funeral and seeing all my relatives after being away for so long. She was right: all afternoon I sucked the fumes of my own breath, reminding myself that as soon as it was over, I could leave and go to Rose’s house, where no one would ask me wasn’t I married yet? and when was I going to come back to Paris? and did I know that DeMaughn Young’s wife died last winter and his two cute little children sure missed having a mommy?  Not “their mommy,” just “a mommy.”

Buddy's, Part XII "Two Dead Rats"

“And these difficulties,” says Henry S, “these differences were usually resolved in what way?”
     “Oh, we’d spend a few days apart, but one of us would usually call or stop by before long, and--like I said--we could pick up where we left off. Pick up where we were before the argument.”
     “Admirable,” Henry S says to his notebook.

*

       “If I had two dead rats, I’d give you one,” said Rose when I opened my back door about two weeks later.  She held up two neatly-rolled joints.

       I opened the door wider. “Get out of here, you slut. I’m still mad at you.” She stepped through the doorway, and I gave her a hug, making an exaggerated grab for the joints at the same time. She hugged me back, and we struggled, still embracing, into my kitchen.

       Rose flopped into a chair and put the joints on the table. They formed a yellow paper arrow, ends touching and pointing at me as if asking a question.

       “I’m sorry, Rose. You were right. He’s a jerk, and I knew it all along. But, you know how it is, I wanted to believe it was different.” I sat down in the chair opposite hers and put my hands, palms up, on the table.

       “Forget him.”  She looked around the room. “I’m assuming he’s gone?”

       “Came and got his stuff last week.” I laughed one short ha! “After I got home that night, I stayed up, thinking. First I was mad at you. Then I was mad at him. Then I cried and fell asleep for a couple of hours. When I woke up, he still wasn’t home, so I sat here and worked out this whole speech I was going to give him when he got here. By then it was about five in the morning, and I sat here talking to myself, talking myself right up into being angry and then back down into this really calm, really tight place. This went on for about an hour, when suddenly I realized he wasn’t coming home.”

       Rose nodded and touched the joints, aligning them into a more perfect arrow, still pointing my way.

       “So, I got out a bunch of those big Orbie bags that I use for the trash, and I started loading them up with all his stuff. All his clothes and football shit and those stupid trophies. I put them out on the curb next to the grass clippings.”

       “Perfect! They got hauled away with the garbage!”

       “No.  It wasn’t trash day. They sat there for a couple of days, and then they disappeared. He must have come by when I was at school. But he did take the grass clippings.” We both laughed. 

       “I think he moved back into the dorms. I can’t afford to stay here by myself. I don’t even want to. So, I’ve been looking for another place. Found a little apartment over on the west side of town.”

       “I’ll help you move,” said Rose. “I’ve got a friend who’ll loan me his truck.”

       “Saturday okay?” 

       Rose nodded.

       “Good,” I said. “That was easy. Now, fire up one of those dead rats.” 

       Rose pulled her little box of matches out of her pocket.

The waiter brings me another beer and another bottled water for Henry S. Maybe it’s the beer, but I’m feeling pretty relaxed.
“One time we got high. I don’t know if you ought to put that in, though, about getting high.” Henry S nods, and I go on. “And we modge-podged everything in my house.” Henry S’s pen writes m-o-d and hesitates. He looks up.

       “It’s a craft thing. Like glue, only clear. You paint it over pictures and stuff, and they stick to whatever you put them on.” I make painting motions on the side of my water glass, then rotate it as if to show him the design.

       “And it’s called ‘mod pod?’ ‘Mod podge?’”

       “We always called it ‘modge-podge.’ I don’t know. It’s in craft stores. I still have a lot of the stuff we made. Ashtrays with pictures on the bottom, pencil holders and trays, a cigar box with a Kliban cat cartoon on it. Two cats are sitting on a fence in the moonlight, and one cat says to the other, ‘If I had two dead rats, I’d give you one.’”

       Henry S arrests himself halfway into a bob. “I’m not sure I understand.”

       I shake my head. “Not important.” I point at his sheet of questions. “How many do we have left?”

       “Just a couple.” He moves his pen over the list. “Describe the last time you saw the subject.”

       I look at the little red tricycle hanging over Henry S’s head. “Can’t say that I can remember exactly when that was. I’d been living out of state, you know, there at the end.”


*Cartoon from Cat by B. Kliban, 1975

Buddy's, Part XI "Kip's Story"

I thought of the first time I met Joe, right after I got to Pocatello. I was in the Corner Pocket using the pay phone to call some friends who said I could crash at their place. Their line was busy, and while I waited, I watched these three guys playing pool. I could tell they were football players by the way they stood--kinda hunched, with their arms away from their bodies. The best-looking one kept turning around to stare at me before he took his shot, giving me the come-on in a “look-at-me-aren’t-I-cool?” sorta way. And then he started talking to me, only it was like he was really talking to his friends. Or the other way around. Saying stuff like, “Never had me a farm girl. A big ol’ Idaho farm girl,” in a drawling, mock-country voice. The way he was talking to me, about me, I remember wondering when or--terrible thought--if I would ever shake off the look of Paris, Idaho.

       He kept talking and flirting, and by the time the game of pool was over, he had bought me a couple of beers, and I was standing with his arm looped around my shoulders and neck, ready to go home with him. I never did call my friends. We went back to the little house on Fifth, and I didn’t even get out of bed for the next four days, except to go to the bathroom or get something to eat. I just lay around, watching TV, reading magazines, and painting my toenails, until Joe would get home from class or football practice and we’d get into the shower together and then spend the rest of the evening fooling around.

       When I thought about how Joe liked to razz me, talking in his fake country accent about “big ol’ farm girls,” I began to understand what Rose was telling me. I remembered Joe saying something about having “a Chinese chick” one time, just to see what “Chink Poontang,” as he called it, was like.

       I stood up, swatted some leaves off the seat of my pants, and went into the Student Union. I put a quarter in the pay ‘phone by the door and dialed my own number. It rang six times before Joe answered. He must have been asleep; his “hello” was deep and blurry.

       “I just had an interesting talk with your girlfriend,” I said, making my voice as dry and cold as I could. I didn’t feel dry and cold; I was sweating, and my hand was shaking.

       “Whazzat?”

       “Your old girlfriend, Portland Rose Harris.” I pronounced each of Rose’s names slowly and deliberately.

       There were a few seconds of silence, then, “Aw, Jack. That was a long time ago. She ain’t nothin’.”

       Just my best friend, I thought.

       “Jack? Jackie? You there? What’ve you been doin’, baby? Com’on home.”

       I didn’t say anything. I held the receiver tightly and looked at the little plate in the middle of the dial. Someone had scratched over the printed numbers with a ball-point pen. I could read the “(208) 232-” but the rest was obliterated.

       “Baby, you there? Come home. Let’s get some dinner goin’. Jack?”

       “Joe?”

       “Yeah.”

       “My dad used to have this gun, this old twenty-two pistol. Not big enough for hunting. He used it for plinkin’. Target practice, you know?”

       “Yeah.”

       “He never cleaned it, and it was in pretty bad shape, but he liked to carry it around. In his pocket.”  I looked at the ball-point pen scratches. Why would you do that? I wondered.

       I went on. “He used to take it with him to the bar. Liked to show off, I guess, with the handle of it sticking out of his pocket. But one night he got all liquored up, and he took the gun out--just to show to somebody, you know--and the bartender got mad and told him to get rid of it or he couldn’t stay in the bar. So he gave it to my brother, Kip, who happened to be in there playing pool with some friends, and Kip took it out and put in under the seat in his truck.” I stopped. I noticed that I wasn’t sweating anymore, and the telephone receiver was light and dry in my hand.

       “So?  Jack?”

       “So, nothing. Kip drove around with the gun under the seat of his truck for several weeks--months, maybe.”

       “Is that it?” Joe exhaled heavily into the ‘phone. “What’s the point?”

       “No point,” I said. “Except one day, Kip’s cleaning out his truck, and he remembers the gun. Reaches under the seat and gets it out, puts it on the seat, thinking he’ll give it back to Dad next time he sees him. Drives around for a couple of days, then one day goes by the house to drop off the gun. Stops the truck, opens the door and starts to get out, when BLAM! The gun goes off. Shoots Kip in the leg.”

       “Shit!”

       “Yeah.”

       “Was he hurt? I mean, bad?”

       “No, not too. It was just a twenty-two. He was laid up for a few days, ‘til his leg healed, but he’s okay, now. Doesn’t limp or anything. Does have a scar, though. Little round hole near the top of his thigh. Looks like a big dimple.”

       Neither of us said anything for a few seconds.

       “Uh, Jack?  You comin’ home now?”

       “Yeah.  I’ll be there in a few minutes.” A few more seconds of silence, then, “Joe?” I said.

       “Yeah?”

       “I don’t really feel like seeing you when I get home. Don’t you have someplace you could go?”

       “Uh, yeah, I guess. Yeah.”

       “Okay. Good. ‘Bye.” I heard his “Bye, Jack,” as I hung up.

Buddy's, Part X "Sucker!"

Just then, the front door of the restaurant opened, and Rose came in, rushing a little and waving at me. She called her order to our waitress as she crossed the room to the table. I decided not to wait until she got too comfortable.

       “Why didn’t you tell me you knew Joe?” I said as soon as she sat down.

       Rose looked a little surprised. “I did. First day we met.”

       “No, I mean knew Joe. Slept with him. You were his girlfriend.”

       This time she looked a lot surprised, but something else, too. Several expressions, including what I thought were anger and sadness, passed over her face. “Jack, I wasn’t his ‘girlfriend,’” she said finally. 

       “Everyone in here seems to think so, including” --I tossed my head in Susie’s direction--“the waitress.” I paused. Rose was looking down at her hands. She wasn’t wearing nail polish these days; in fact her nails were stained and chipped on the ends, and she picked at the rough skin of a callous that had formed on her right palm. I repeated my question. “So, why didn’t you tell me? D’you think I’d be jealous?”

       “No.”

       “Well, what?”

       Rose looked up. “Are you gonna break up with him, Jack?”

       “No.  I don’t know.” I tried to read her face, but all I could see was that she was concentrating--the look that she had the first time we met, when she crossed the street. “Maybe. But I don’t get it. I thought you were my friend. How come you didn’t tell me  Do you still have a thing for him?”

       “No!”  The word came out louder than she probably meant it to. The people at the next table looked our way.

       “No,” Rose repeated. “I don’t ‘have a thing’ for him. And you shouldn’t, either.”

       “Hey, I love Joe. He’s been really great to me. I can’t help it if he dumped you and--”

       “He didn’t dump me. It isn’t like you think.”

       “So tell me how it is.”

       Rose exhales heavily. She looked angry again, her brow creased and her dark eyes glittering. “It isn’t. I don’t want him  He doesn’t want me. But he’s a creep, Jackie, and I don’t want you--"

       "Oh, stop it!” I interrupted. “We’ve been friends for a year. Why didn’t either of you say anything?”

       “He probably doesn’t remember.”

       “Whattaya mean? Because he was drunk?”

       “Well, he was drunk, we both were, but that’s not why. I... I wasn’t anything to him, Jack. Just something he wanted to do. An experience he wanted to have.”

       I didn’t know quite what to make of this, but, I didn’t like it, so I got up, pushing my chair back hard against the wall. Susie had just come up to our table carrying glasses of ice water in both hands. I brushed past her roughly, making her spill the water, and I ran out of the restaurant and down the block toward home. I don’t think Rose tried to follow me, because after I slowed down and looked back at Buddy’s, there was no one on the sidewalk.

       It was only a few blocks to my house, but I didn’t want to go home right away, so I angled up toward the campus and cut across the quad to the Student Union. It was just about dusk, and nobody much was around. I sat down on the steps by the Union. I felt like crying, but I didn’t. 

       I sat there breathing kind of hard and watching the bats that come out that time of the evening. They flapped out of the big trees that ring the quad and looped, one by one, around the grassy square. I remembered watching my brothers “fish” for bats from the front porch of our house in Paris. They’d tie a small sinker on the end of their fishing line and cast it up in the air toward the trees in our yard. The bats, mistaking it for some kind of flying bug, would swoop out of the trees at the sinker, pulling up at the last minute, when they realized it wasn’t something to eat after all. “Sucker!” my brothers would yell at the bats and cast again.