Rose & Poe

by Jack Todd

  Rose heaved her bulk out of the bleachers and strolled onto the field, ignoring the players in their colorful uniforms leaping and tackling and spitting blood and cursing all around her, the referees’ whistles, and the catcalls from the crowd. She marched up to the coach and explained the facts of life to him. “My Poe ain’t like most young fellas. He’s strong as a Clydesdale, but he ain’t been raised to hurt nobody. You want Poe to hurt them poor little children out there but he ain’t goin to do it, for you nor nobody else.”

  Then she took Poe by the hand. “Come, Poe. We’re goin home. Mama’s goin to make you a great big bowl of pea soup with a corn dodger and then I’ll read you to sleep.” Poe followed her home, still in the oversized football gear the coach had ordered all the way from Boston, docile as a lamb.

  When his supper was done and the dishes had been cleared and washed, when they had listened to the Grand Ole Opry on the radio and Poe had changed into the pajamas Rose had sewed for him because there were none in the Monkey Ward catalog near big enough, she tucked him into his narrow bed and sat next to him on her rocking chair and took out the only book she owned other than the Bible, a volume of poems by Edgar Allan Poe acquired for thirty-five cents from a book bin in Bunker’s Corner. Then, only pretending to read, she recited the poem she had learned by heart.

  Once upon a midnight dreary,

  while I pondered, weak and weary,

  Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore

  Once Poe was old enough to help, he and Rose found plenty of work. Word got around. If your septic tank was backed up, if your kitchen hadn’t been cleaned in months, if your barn needed to be mucked out, if you had a tumbledown stone wall that needed to be put back up, someone would say, “You need Rose’n’Poe. They can handle most any job, and they work cheap, ’cause they don’t know no better.”

  One phone call and the pair of them would show up at the appointed time on the appointed day, with Rose leading the way and Poe following in her wake like a great amiable water buffalo, Rose in her work boots and shapeless gray smock, Poe with his shoulders straining the seams of an old peacoat, a battered and sweat-stained Red Sox cap perched sideways on his enormous head, his OshKosh B’gosh coveralls stuffed with odds and ends in every pocket. As the first item of business, Rose always explained how it was with Poe’s addlements and particularities.

  ~

  Don’t let the stars get in your eyes

  Poe barely had time to blow out the eighteen candles on his birthday cake before the Belle Coeur County draft board sent him for a physical. He was classified 1-A despite his size, extra digits, and obvious lack of reading, writing, and arithmetic. A month after the physical, Poe received a letter from the president himself. Greeting. You are hereby ordered to report for induction in the armed forces of the United States.

  Rose knew all the words except “induction.” She paid a visit to Pastor Hendricks at the Lamb of Jesus Gospel Church to make sure she was clear on the meaning. “Poe can’t do the army. You know what he’s like.”

  “The army has lowered its standards because of the war,” the preacher said. “Still, you’re right about Poe not belonging. I’ll make a call to the draft board and see if there has been some mistake.”

  “I’d be grateful.”

  It took the reverend most of the afternoon to get through to someone at the Selective Service. The way he explained it to Rose after, Poe had won the lottery that decided who got that letter from the president and who didn’t. Poe’s lottery number, based on his birthdate, was three, which meant that as long as he was in good physical health, he was bound to be drafted.

  Rose had seen the war on her tiny black-and-white TV set. Helicopters coming in whuck-whuck-whuck-whuck, soldiers jumping out and running into the jungle. Machine guns firing at them from somewhere in the tree line. Men falling, other men picking them up and carrying them on stretchers and loading them onto the helicopters. Alive or dead, you couldn’t tell. Three boys from Belle Coeur County were sent home in body bags, and others came home in pieces even though they could still walk and talk and seemed alright on the outside. Rose didn’t know much about war but she knew about hunting. Hunting Poe would be simple. He was big as a moose. He was inclined to get dazed and confused and just stand there. If he went to the war, he’d come home in one of them body bags, if they had one big enough.

  “Where do you suppose they’ll send him? He’ll be hereabouts, won’t he?”

  “I can’t say, Rose. There are forts all over these United States. There’s Fort Dix in New Jersey, Fort Benning down in Georgia, Fort Lewis all the way out in Washington, almost to the Pacific Ocean. I was in the army myself, during the Korean thing, and they sent me to a fort down in Texas.”

  Rose sat pondering this calamity that had come into their lives. She rubbed her face with her hands, a habit she had when something caused her great stress. Then she seemed to make up her mind.

  “I thank you kindly, Reverend. Wherever they send him, I expect I’ll have to go along to look after my boy.”

  “Oh, they won’t allow that, Rose. He’ll be on an army base. You won’t be permitted there.”

  “Well, I’ll be close by, then. They won’t keep him long. Poe ain’t suited to no man’s army. When they figure that out, I want to be right there handy to bring my boy home.”

  Rose took the bus to the airport with Poe, so they could practice making the call and he could tell her where he was being sent. She located the pay phones inside the airport and showed him how to pick up the receiver, dial “0,” and wait for the operator’s voice, then ask to make a collect call to Miss Rose Didelot.

  The day he was sworn in, Rose couldn’t clean house, she couldn’t make cheese, she couldn’t do a solitary thing but wait for the phone to ring. The squat black machine sat there on its little round table next to the davenport, silent as the grave. Rose had dozed off when it finally rang. She fumbled for the receiver.

  “What?”

  “I have a Mister Poe on the line for a Miss Rose. Will you accept the charges?”

  “How’s that?”

  “I said I have Mister Poe on the line. He wishes to place a collect call to Miss Rose Didelot.”

  Poe on the line. Rose’s mind was still in a fog after her nap. Whatever did the woman mean by that? She thought of a fisherman reeling in Poe, the rod bent double with his weight. Then it clicked. “Oh, you mean it’s my boy Poe calling? Why didn’t you say so? Sure, I’ll accept the charge, ma’am. You just go right ahead and put him through. Poe? Poe, is that you?”

  There was a click, a hollow sound like the phone was empty inside, then his voice, so oddly high-pitched for such a big man. Funny how she never noticed that when he was standing right beside her. “It’s me, Mama, callin from the airport like you said. They let us all make a call.”

  “All of you? There’s more than just you?”

  “There’s a bunch of us, Mama.”

  “At least you have company, then. Did they tell you where you’re goin, Poe?”

  “Yes, Mama. We got to take this airplane to Fort Lewis. They says that’s in the state of Washington. Do you know where that is, Mama?”

  “I’m not exactly sure, but it’s a long ways from here. It might take me a week, but I’ll get on a bus and make it out there. When I get there, I’ll find some way to let you know. Meantime, you be a good boy and do what them soldier fellas tell you, right?”

  “I don’t like you bein so far away, Mama.”

  “It won’t be for long. I’ll be there right quick.”

  That evening, Rose had to milk the goats alone.

  ~

  Poe, soaring over America

  A sweet-smelling flight attendant with curly red hair told Poe he could sit up front. She said the flight to Seattle would take almost six hours and that the bulkhead seat was the only place where a man his size could be comfortab
le. She pulled the armrest up to allow him to spread out over two seats and let his seat belt out as wide as it would go to help him fasten it. He had a panicky moment when the belt closed around his belly and he realized he couldn’t move, but she patted his shoulder and showed him how to release it with one finger and how to snap it closed again.

  The takeoff frightened him a little, the roar of the engines and the giant hand that seemed to press him back into his seat, but then he could see cars like toys on the highway below, and after that came rivers and the Adirondack Mountains and big cottony clouds so close he could reach out and grab one, and he pressed his face to the cold window and kept it there most of the flight. He didn’t realize that he had begun to sing his wild song until the red-haired flight attendant came running up front to ask him what was wrong.

  “Nothin, miss. I’m just fine.”

  “But you were making that strange noise, sir.”

  “Oh, that’s my song, ma’am. When I feels good, I sings.”

  “I don’t believe we can let you sing like that on this flight, hon. You’ll disturb the other passengers. I’m gonna have to ask you to be real quiet the rest of the day, okay?”

  Poe nodded, but every few minutes he forgot himself and started singing again while the other recruits on the plane hooted and hollered from the seats behind him. The flight attendant kept asking him to stop, but Poe kept forgetting himself, and she finally gave up.

  “I guess we should let the poor devil make whatever racket he wants to make,” she said to the crew chief. Her fiancé had been killed in the war. She knew what it was like over there. “He’s going to make an awful big target, where he’s headed. I don’t suppose he’s long for this world. He ain’t doin no harm.”

  It was dark by the time they landed in Seattle. At the airport, they were all loaded onto a school bus for the trip to Tacoma. On the bus, the only place Poe had room to sit was in the middle of the back row, where there was room for his legs. The others were all laughing and joking, so Poe laughed, too, although he didn’t understand what was so funny.

  It was near midnight when they arrived at the fort. Peering out the window of the bus, all he could see was long low buildings and the occasional streetlight. The bus drew up next to one of the buildings and stopped and a sergeant appeared at the front, a big black man whose uniform looked as though it had been ironed onto his body. He talked to them in a low, comforting voice.

  “Good afternoon, ladies. Welcome to the Fort Lewis Holiday Hotel. We’re a full-service hotel with all the trimmings. We hope you enjoy your stay with us, but if you don’t, that’s just too damned bad. Now, you got about eight seconds to get off this bus before I unscrew your head and shit down your throat. On my command, ladies: MOVE! MOVE! MOVE! MOVE!”

  The others scrambled to get off. Poe tried to hurry, banged his head on the roof, and sat down again, confused. The next thing he knew, everyone else was lining up outside and he was still sitting on the bus, alone. The sergeant was standing over him.

  “Who told you to sit, you big idiot? I said MOVE! Get your fat ass off this damned bus!”

  The sergeant led the way. Poe grabbed the bag Rose had packed for him and followed as best he could, banging his head twice more on the way out. Where the others had lined up, there were more sergeants, all of them screaming at once. Poe dropped his bag, and one of them shouted at him. He picked it up, and someone else was shouting. It seemed like they were telling him to do ten different things at once: stand up, sit down, pick up your bag, drop your bag, turn around, get in line, turn that way, turn this way, do fifty push-ups, stand up again.

  He stood on the asphalt, turning in slow confused circles, watching their mouths, trying to understand what it was they were telling him. Tears of frustration rolled down his cheeks.

  “What’d I do?” he asked, over and over. “I didn’t do nothin. Why’re you all so danged mad at me? What’d I do? I didn’t do nothin.”

  ~

  Harvest Moon

  Rose packed a few things in a battered suitcase that had belonged to her father. When she needed a lift to the bus station, she turned to her regular beau, the tinker Joey Ballew. Joey wasn’t much bigger than one of Poe’s legs, but he was a good soul and he was so sweet on Rose that he would tag around after her like a puppy dog if she’d let him. She made it clear to Joey that he wasn’t the only fella in her life, and as long as he understood that much, they’d get along swell.

  After Joey dropped her at the station, she boarded a big Greyhound bus. She was already farther from home than she had ever been in her life. In a little notebook she bought for her trip, she noted the names of the towns that flew past: Glens Falls, Saratoga Springs, Albany (where she changed buses), Schenectady, Amsterdam, Utica, Syracuse, Rochester, Batavia, Buffalo, Cleveland, Elkhart, South Bend, Gary, Chicago and another transfer, then on to Milwaukee, and, finally, Minneapolis. She stayed two days in Minneapolis with Bertha, a cousin she hadn’t seen since Bertha graduated high school and ran off to Minneapolis with a Navy man. Bertha was as tiny as Rose was large. The Navy man was long gone, but she had replaced him with a banjo-playing fella. He was off someplace touring with a bluegrass band. Bertha had a good job as a typist and a little girl who might belong to the banjo player or the Navy man or someone else. Bertha didn’t say and Rose thought it would be rude to ask.

  Rose arrived in Minneapolis on a Friday evening, and by six thirty Monday morning, she was back on the bus again, headed west through Burnsville, Albert Lea, Fairmont, Jackson, and Luverne to Sioux Falls, then on to Mitchell, a rest stop in Oacoma, and across the empty South Dakota prairie, where you could see so far it was like peering into the heart of God.

  To pass the time, Rose hummed tunes she liked. When she met someone who wanted to harmonize, they sang away the miles as the bus bumped along the highway, watching the telephone wires swoop up and down and up again, birds perched on the wires like notes on sheet music. In Sioux Falls, she met a nice-looking older gent named Ned Barkley, who was traveling to Billings to visit his granddaughter. Ned sang baritone in a barbershop quartet back in Saint Cloud and he could harmonize on almost anything. Ned shared her affection for Bob Wills and Texas swing, so they sang “Faded Love” and “Stay a Little Longer,” and “San Antonio Rose” for her, and they did the old barbershop tunes like “Somewhere out in the West” and “Shine on Harvest Moon” for Ned.

  The bus was nearly empty that night. Ned and Rose stretched out on the long seat at the back, with the two other passengers snoozing up front, behind the driver. When it got cold, Ned offered her a tot or two of his bourbon and stretched his parka over the two of them. When he began to rub up against her, she tugged her skirt up and turned her hips to him. They moved gently together, happily rolling across the dark heart of America, making love to the rhythm of the bus.

  When the bus stopped in the middle of nowhere to pick up an Air Force sergeant with a guitar case, it turned out he was a Sioux from Pine Ridge named Walter Has No Horse. He played and sang a little on Air Force radio, where he was known as “Walter the Singing Sioux.” After Rose coaxed him just a little, he took out his guitar and sang “Don’t Let the Stars Get in Your Eyes, Don’t Let the Moon Break Your Heart,” with Rose singing the high harmony and Ned the low harmony, and “Waltz Across Texas,” which struck her as pretty funny because they were actually waltzing across South Dakota.

  Whenever something struck her as interesting or funny, Rose jotted a few words in her little notebook about where she was and the things she saw out the window. She was especially fond of Burma-Shave signs, and she tried to write down every one she saw. If she got bored, she could page through the notebook, and it was like taking her trip all over again:

  This cream. Is like. A parachute. There isn’t. Any substitute. Burma-Shave.

  Best burgers in Burnsville: 25 cents & don’t ruin ’em with relish!

  Ned Barkley from St. Cloud. Sings baratone rea
l nice voice going to see his grand-dotter in Billings she is ten years old and he ain’t never seen her. We sung Faded Love & Harvest Moon. Ned made me feel real good at nite, right here on the bus.

  Reana Pilbro, Egg Harbor, Wisconsin. Says she has a dotter name Rose but the girl is with her father in Dee Moin. That’s a dam shame a child ott to be with her mama.

  Pedro. Walked. Back home, by golly. His bristly chin. Was hot-to-Molly. Burma-Shave.

  Ray’s Rattlesnake Farm! 256 dedly rattlers! Take one home for your mother-in-law, only $4.99!

  Rapid City, they say Mount Rushmore is rite close to here. I’d like to see Mister Linkon big like that but I dont dare get off the bus for fear I’ll get left behind and lost.

  Maggie Jones hales from Valentine down in Nebraska, has a big turkey sandwitch that she cant eat all of it asks do I want some I say yes.

  Doesn’t. Kiss you. Like she useter. Perhaps she’s seen. A smoother rooster!! Burma-Shave!!

  Walter Has No Horse: Looks real nice in a Air Force unaform. Plays a sweet gittar. Don’t let the stars get in your eyes. Ned said Walter was a good-lookin fella who would look even better if he had a horse. Walter laughed and said he never heard that one before but I bet he did.

  It was supper time when they got to Rapid City, and nearly eight o’clock when they pulled onto the road again, so she didn’t get to see Wyoming at all. They transferred in Billings, Montana, where she said goodbye to Ned. When he teared up a little at their parting, she bussed him on the cheek and told him that she had always believed kindred souls would meet up again, even if it was in another life. The sun was up before they changed buses again in Missoula and passed through a glorious bit of Idaho, past Kellogg and Coeur d’Alene at mid-morning before hitting Spokane in time for an early lunch. After a stop in Moses Lake, they made it to Seattle at dusk. She found a grocery store where she bought bread and lunch meat and ate three sandwiches in the hour she had before the next bus to Tacoma.