The mayor of pocatello

I just heard Barry was looking for tales about hitch hiking. Here's mine (and like most of my tales, it's a true stiry)

:redcar:
The Mayor Of Pocatello
by Stephen D. Gross

CHAPTER I

On very hot days the tarbaby two lane grabs your sneakers, Los Angeles feels post-apocalyptic, and California's roadways hiss and spit like angry Mambas.
I was glad Harry was along for the ride. He's bright, intense, and has been living on a fine edge since his mind was abducted somewhere in the west Bronx. An escapee from a Kafka novel, he's been living in Martin Scorcese's boiler room since Mickey Mantle hung up his hamstrings. His shaggy hair, laser eyes, and painful forthrightness leave the thin-skinned uncomfortable, often defensive, but that's Harry.
Dusk was well behind us when we stepped out into the glowing streets of Santa Cruz, and we swiftly learned no one wanted two semitic-looking hippies along on their northern journey. 'Round about 2 AM a pair of cops in a cruiser pointed the way to the bus station and let us know they would be less than happy if we didn't head over there. God forbid we should be responsible for more unhappy cops.
Redolent with eau de juicy fruit and stale urine, the cheerless Greyhound waiting room was not where we wanted to spend the next five hours of our lives. We figured walking the seventy-five miles to the City would be far more pleasant.
Quiet residential streets stippled with moon shadows and smelling like a wet April witnessed our silent passing. We were too self-conscious to speak in anything but a whisper. A car turned the far corner, slowed as it passed us, and then made a suspicious U-turn and pulled up abreast of us. "Looking for a ride? Where you headed?" whispered a soft voice from the dark of the car's interior. "San Francisco", we replied. "Well I'll be heading up to the East Bay in the morning. I have to check out a boat I'm thinking of buying. If you two would like to crash at my house, I have plenty of room and I live only a few blocks from here." Too good to be true, I mused, much too good! Sounded suspiciously like the beginning of a Tobe Hooper or Stephen King screenplay to me. But highway burnout tempered my naturally-suspicious nature and we plunged into chapter two.

CHAPTER II
Snowy-white hair rolled into a pompadour, a slow, easy manner and a disarming smile gave him an air of self-assurance. His clothes were expensive but tasteless, but his beachside cottage was a delight to the eyes and spirit. "My name is Terry Cross," he confided as he ushered us into his luxurious living room and waved his hand in the general direction of a segmented, overstuffed sofa that went on for a half-mile. The indirect lighting was soft but sufficient, especially in concert with the beautifully lighted aquaria built into the walls. Three or four tanks buzzing and flashing with dazzling sub aquatic enchantment caught everything in the room up in an illusion of undulant motion. Persian and Afghani rugs hugged the polished parquet and the fragrance of night-blooming jasmine wafted in through the breezeway leading back to the garden.
"I was a successful physician down in Orange county until they took my license away." He pulled a couple of neatly folded blankets from a walnut armoire and dropped them on the floor in front of one of the glowing tanks. Harry looked ragged and exhausted. He slumped against a near wall like a contented rag doll but his eyes were afire with curiosity and laser-like focus. Harry is a patient listener and almost painfully compassionate. A true eccentric, Harry questions everything, including his own existence, to the point of distraction. He strives to understand what motivates people, why the universe behaves the way it does, all the laws of Nature, and other topics that interest him. A brilliant mathematician, he played with molecules at Lawrence Livermore until he realized, while one day fooling with the U-Joint under his Honda, that a little wiggle along the faultline could result in his being flattened like a latke. He relocated about 1,500 miles to the right of the San Andreas with his wife and three kids to a home built on the solid bedrock of San Antonio. Lucky for Harry, they had a record number of tornadoes in South Texas that summer, so he didn't have time to get used to living there. Again Harry's tribe packed up, moving far from the danger of faultlines, and far from tempestuous winds, to a land called Israel. I got a form letter from him about three years ago, one of those all-purpose, generic informationals that piss off everyone you know.

CHAPTER III
Our host casually tossed out the bait. Of course we wanted to know why they took his goddam license away! Need we ask? Harry's head bobbed in a series of quick, tiny nods. He looked inquisitive but very much at peace sitting there on the thick rug with his back against the wall."I had a thriving practice in Santa Monica", Terry Cross tells us, "I was doing well and making good money and then this friend of mine, a married securities broker with three teenage daughters calls me with desperation in his voice. The shmuck got his secretary pregnant but it 'wasn't a good time in her life to have a baby'. She was the first, but she had friends and that first year I did about a hundred abortions. Never lost a patient-no complications. Most of my clients were quite affluent and what I was doing was very risky so I charged what I thought was a fair amount of money". He walked over to a lovely armoire and pulled a couple of pillows off a shelf, and then stood there, holding the pillows reflectively while he stared at a corner of the redwood burl coffee table. I became aware of a soft pock-a pock-a pock-a sound made by the little aquarium bubbles as they rose to the tops of the plexiglas tanks and made good their escape. "Had a yacht - used to run over to Catalina with about fifty friends for the weekend - cost a fortune to run it but I didn't care". Harry was rapt, dark eyes focused like twin lasers boring through Terry's head. I thought I heard a noise coming from a room upstairs, but thinking that our host might have another guest, I kept quiet. Besides, it might have just been the warm Santa Cruz wind blowing through the eaves. I saw Harry flinch in the direction of the noise, confirming that my senses were operational. Terry tossed us each a pillow. "I must of ticked off one of the women or maybe someone's irate husband found out and wanted to take his frustrations out on me. Whatever the reason, someone dropped a dime on me and my operation got busted. "They took my license away and I spent almost two years in jail before I managed some kind of appeal."
I heard the sound from upstairs again - this time it was a muffled, almost human sound like a moan. Harry's eyes flashed over to me and met mine. Our curiosity was roused. What was the sound upstairs? Terry noticed the brief interruption in the attention we'd been giving him, and knew what had caused it. "After they let me out I couldn't get a job so I pleaded with the court to at least allow me to make a living. They finally agreed to reinstate me conditionally as a Registered Nurse."

CHAPTER IV
Harry yawned and rubbed an eye. A rising wind blew a rattling can down the sleeping street. A lone dog barked somewhere in the night. Another sound came from (perhaps a room) upstairs igniting a spark of memory which flamed into an image; a convalescent home where papery-skinned people slump in wheelchairs facing the wall, heads lolling to the side. There's the smell of ammonia and the rustle of dry leaves rattled by a soft breeze; the sound made by the shadowy Old Ones trying to get an attendant's attention.
As Terry speaks, the ghostly image dissipates. "I had a rough time getting anyone to hire me -- you can imagine, the stigma and all....I managed to get a job in a clinic in East L.A. but people were naturally suspicious...not that they were aware of my past, that's just the way they were." "After my car got broken into for the sixth fucking time, I decided it wasn't worth the aggravation anymore. I had a few bucks stashed away so I quit the clinic and started drinking, just therapeutically mind you, to dull the hurt and frustration." Like ferrets, Harry's eyes dart over to the dark walnut armoire-cum-liquor cabinet and then flash back to Terry. "Drove to Vegas a couple times and got into gambling a little. mostly dice, and betting on baseball and football at the hotel's sports book. Something for the mind to lock onto, to focus on. I was still in control, just barely, so I never lost really big," (the ferret eyes flash keenly at me in search of some reaction) "but enough to cause problems."
"One day I'm down at Caliente, drinking Cuervo and losing a bundle on these ponies that I swear the Mexicans turn into Horseburgers that they sell with chili and onions the next day, when I fall into a conversation with a guy while on line at the lunch counter. We're talking about various trips we've taken and places we've been when he bemoans the fact that he and his wife haven't been able to go anywhere lately because they've been too tied down."

CHAPTER V
It turns out his wife's sister and brother-in-law were killed in an auto accident somewhere in Idaho, which, he says, was a mixed blessing. They never got along well, he explains, so it wasn't like he was all broken up over it. He gets invited to the dead sistøer's lawyer's office one day and learns that she was impressively well-off and is leaving him a sizable chunk of cash...but with a condition. It turns out the brother-in-law's father, a 93-year-old turnip, who at one time was the mayor of Pocatello, Idaho, was living with them when they moved to the Great Beyond. The sister didn't believe in nursing homes so she hired a team of full time nurses to change the old man's diaper, feed him through a tube, wipe the drool off his chin, and generally see to his needs. His mind had gone on permanent vacation a long time ago, so it wasn't like they had to entertain him or relate to him--it was just a matter of keeping him alive. Harry stretched out his legs and, never a shy kind-of-guy, released one of his famous farts. He's been a vegetarian for years, old Harry, and will eat only raw foods. His digestive system is the envy of all the omnivores on his block, but it manufactures an assortment of gases which, I'm sure are new to this planet. Harry's policy is, if you don't hold it in, it won't fester and stress you out. This goes for ideology and philosophy as well as farts.

CHAPTER VI
Terry turns toward one of his Plexiglas tanks and makes a point of watching a diminutive school of neon tetra race through their watery jungle. I expect him to open a window--Harry and I have been friends for a long time-- but he leisurely turns back to us and continues his story. So the sister's lawyer tells this guy that the condition of his inheritance is, he must take the ex-mayor of Pocatello into his home and he must take care of him for the rest of his life. Of course the guy's life style does not permit him to become a full-time nurse and orderly, but the small fortune being offered is not to be ignored. Harry and I thought we were ready to crash out as soon as we waltzed through Terry's front door but, now we sat bubbling with curiosity. A muffled, barely-audible moaning drifts down the stairwell sounding like zombie actors rehearsing for Night of the Living Dead. Beginning now to look quite uncomfortable, Harry loosed another one. For the first time since our arrival, Terry shoots a quick, knowing glance up the stairs. Well, the bay gelding I bet on in the fifth, a heavy thinker named Mucilage, stops to contemplate the wisdom of his recent testectomy instead of finishing the race, so there is another half-pound of pesos I will never see again. I start thinking about the ex-mayor of Pocatello and this guy's trust fund and suddenly I get an idea. Caliente is not so big that you can't find someone you might be looking for, so I keep my eyes open and as I'm waiting on line to bet the seventh, I see the guy with the money and the problem from Idaho. I decide Parkyakarkas doesn't have a chance anyway, so I leave the line and walk over to my new friend.

CHAPTER VII
I think I may be able to help you, I tell him. In fact, I say, we can probably help each other. Another whispery, plaintive sound, floats down from above. Not even aware he's doing it, Harry bobs his shaggy head affirmatively. Like myself, he's already finished piecing the puzzle together. I fill the guy in on what part of my past history I feel he must know, and suggest that maybe I could help to relieve him of his burdensome responsibility. I'm not just licensed to practice as a nurse, I point out, I'm also a trained and experienced G.P. He asks where I live and I tell him, and he gets my phone number and tells me he'll have to talk to his wife and the sister's lawyer about it, but he thinks it's a great idea. In fact, he looked so relieved by the time we finished our conversation, I would have given five-to-one that I would hear from him again. Looking relieved himself, Terry walks over to the well-stocked armoire and pulls out a bottle of Johnnie Walker Red Label. He offers Harry and myself whatever, so we both opt for Santa Cruz-grown apple juice.

CHAPTER VIII
When I was a small lad, I remember watching the 'old folks' savoring their Johnny Walkers, Jim Beams, and Jack Daniels', so I asked my dad for a taste one day. He happily complied, pouring me a fat tumbler of caustic amber stuff which I unhesitatingly downed, like I had seen the big folks do. They oftimes say it's good for what ails you, and there's no question that it cured me -- of ever wanting another drink again.
Downing his Red Label and immediately pouring himself another, Terry cleared his throat and continued. "About two months past and I had completely forgotten about this guy when I get a phone call one morning from an attorney in Boise. I'm trying to figure out who the hell wants to sue me now when I hear him say something about Pocatello, which triggers a tiny alarm. Sure enough, it's the dead sister's lawyer. It seems the racetrack guy actually called him and talked to him about me and my proposition, telling him how I'm a licensed R.N. and live in a comfortable, private home in a lovely beachside neighborhood. The lawyer tells me he had me checked out and my qualifications meet the conditions in the will, but he still needs to send someone over to inspect the house and interview me personally." On the floor above, something heavy and metallic crashed to the ground. Terry looked nonplused. Harry and I exchanged quick glances and decided it must not be too serious. Still, I see lines of concern furrowing Harry's brow. Although he's as shaggy as a randy goat, Harry always keeps his hair swept back from his forehead. I think it's because when he worries, he wants to make sure people know about it.
"A week later", Terry continues, "a couple come by and ask me a lot of questions and I show them around the house. They apparently liked what they heard and saw bacause I got a call from the lawyer three days later. The race track guy was at his office so we had a three-way conversation and worked out all the details." By this time Terry knew we knew the moans and sighs and crashing sounds we'd been hearing were being produced by the ex-mayor of Pocatello.

CHAPTER IX
The helpless, inoffensive gentleman, now 94, had been living in Terry's house for the past six months, during which time Terry had dutifully, even respectfully, looked after him. He told us that despite the mayor's advanced age, he was still ambulatory and sometimes got up and walked, spirit-like, around the house at night. his Alzheimer's was, Terry told us, an advanced case and although the man looked at you and sometimes mouthed words as if he was saying something, it was just unintelligible gibberish, and not to be taken seriously. Harry's furrows deepened as if the words spoken by Terry were the tines of a plow digging ever deeper into his skin. He looked as though there was some doubt gnawing at him. His scientific nature and natural skepticism left him harder to convince than most mortal folk. We were halfway to morning, when Terry finished his second Red Label. Well guys, he counseled us, have a restful night's sleep and don't worry about anything. There's an outside chance the mayor might get up in the middle of the night and start talking at you but remember, he's totally harmless. His mind is pretty much running on empty and there's no point in trying to make sense of anything he tries to say.

CHAPTER X
We thanked Terry for offering us his house as sanctuary and for all his unselfish hospitality, and leaving the aquaria illuminated in rose and turquoise, he turned off all the house lights and went upstairs to bed. Harry and I were exhausted from our long, eventful day. Terry's house was cozy-warm and the tanks gurgled soothingly. Like two balloons losing their air in a rush, our psyches and bodies deflated and almost immediately, we fell asleep.

CHAPTER XI (MY AMAZING DREAM!)
I woke up on a windy dune cresting a bluff above the ocean. There was sparse scrub brush buffeted by the stiff marine breeze, no trees, but lots and lots of shifting, blowing sand. I began to feel lost, irretrievably so. I felt the certainty of it deep in my belly. I was never going to see my home again. There weren't any boats, or planes or people to help me. Not a single sign of civilization. Even if I had the means to leave there I wouldn't know which way to go...and home felt so far away. Peripherally, my eye caught movement. Swift, rhythmic sure-footed movement. Some kind of big animal. There was another one...and another. They were Centaurs! Very large Centaurs. I walked up to one, a female, and asked her if she'd give me a ride home. She said she would for five dollars. I looked in my pocket and pulled out twenty-one bucks and figured if I gave her five I'd still have sixteen left. And I was so damn far, it would probably cost me much more to get home some other way...if there was another way. It felt like a good deal so I paid her and started to climb on and the next thing I knew, I was astride her back and she was walking slowly down the aisle of the Loew's Paradise on the Grand Concourse in the Bronx..— A picture was flickering on the screen, a Western, and a few of the people seated within nonchalantly glanced over at us and then back to the screen, as if it were no big deal at all to see someone riding a Centaur down the aisle of a theater. (The ceiling of the Paradise is illuminated like the night sky and it's always changing because the stars and planets slowly move forward toward the screen. When the action in the film you're watching dulls, you can tilt your head back and sky travel through the stars). The Centaur climbed straight up onto the stage and right into the screen at which point I found myself in a record store in Oaxaca, about one block from the main Zocalo. I had heard they had a couple of hard-to-find John Coltrane albums I was looking for, and I was there with my friend Vinny Genovese who I went to high school with in Brooklyn. His being there didn't seem at all strange even though we hadn't had any contact in twenty-five years, but what dÀid seem odd was that tough Vinny 'Gee' was dressed in drag and had garish candy apple red lipstick smeared on his mouth and lots of blue eye shadow. But eye-shadow or not, he still acted the same as he ever did. The shop was crowded with customers but nobody seemed to notice this crossdressed Gringo with the spray-painted face. Outside on the sidewalk the blind musician with the club foot leaned against the cool blue tile as he strummed his five-string guitar and sang, as he had for years, his lugubrious laments. The tourists stood around with their portable cassette players and blessed him with microphones he never saw. I wanted my Coltrane records but nobody was paying any attention. I began to feel frustrated....the leading edge of hopelessness, when I heard a voice. There was a girl, I could see her eyes from across the shop. They were grey-green and her green gaze broke over all they saw like gentle waves. But the record store had become grotesquely el—ongated and she was about a hundred yards away. Still I could see her hair, dark oxblood with chestnut highlights and flashes of liquid silver, and her high, hollow cheek bones and her soft plutonium smile that irradiated everything over which it washed, setting it all aglow. Her mouth moved, dark cabernet, sparrow-blood lips. She was speaking to me. At first I couldn't hear her above the din in the busy store. And she was so far away. But then she seemed to float toward me, first over the stacks of records and then above the crowd of people. I tried hard to make out her words, any word at all. She repeated what she was saying over and over but still I couldn't hear. Straining, I managed to catch a word. And then two more. Finally I heard the words plainly. I could understand what the voice was saying. "In the nest where the young owls were captured he found several Norway rats with their skulls split opened and the brains removed."

CHAPTER XII

I understood what it was saying because I had come awake in a rush, yanked from my dream by a psychic bungee, and the first thing I saw was Harry's eyes, saucer-sized shiny black moons. Following his gaze I saw the twin moons were locked on a shadowy, hunched figure standing at the top of the stairs. The Mayor of Pocatello , wearing fluffy pink bunny slippers and a terry robe with the logos of all the teams in the National Football League all over it. Long, Nosferatu-type fingers locked around the top of the banister as this gossamer shade loomed over us. "The trees favored were those to which leaves had clung during the winter", said the mayor. Rubbing the inside corner of his right eye, Harry soaked up the vision as he assessed the situation. I could tell his ethics and upbringing dictated that he show the elderly gentleman the proper respect...I just wasn't sure whether he would make an attempt at real communication.

CHAPTER XIII
"Good evening, my name is Harry, I hope we're not disturbing you". Harry spo›ke softly, and took a small step toward the mayor. "We hear the rabbits squealing as a shadow sweeps from the darkness of the hemlocks", the robed figure replied. "You're probably wondering what we're doing here in this house", said Harry, carefully enunciating and spacing each word so the old man could understand. This is ludicrous, I thought. The poor man's mind is obviously parked on a siding somewhere while his voice is out here running down the track. Harry knows this. What is with this strange conversation? "We're friends of Terry's, and we're staying the night. He invited us", Harry added hopefully. He was staring hard at the Mayor's wizened face, trying to draw out a glimmer of logic, a flash of reality, a sign of brief contact with the here and now. He considered himself a guest in a house that was as much the old man's as it was Terry's and he felt bound by his own code to explain, to make the mayor understand that it was cool, that he was there by invitation and he‹ shouldn't be put off by our being there. Maybe he expected a window of lucidity; the Mayor's cloud would suddenly part and his eyes would clear and he would shoot us a grin and wink, "sure kid, I don't mind. 'Course it's alright if you stay, just kick back and take a deep breath and I'll see ya' in the morning. But instead, the mayor of Pocatello nodded solemnly and said, "The kill had just been made for the cat's body was still warm and quivering". It would have been funny but the deterioration of a good mind is not pleasant to see. It looked like the mayor was beginning to agree with me. But it wasn't Harry's nature to dismiss another human being as hopeless and beyond reach. He would have to carry through with his own , earnest, personal attempt at communication before he would accept the man's condition for what it was. Waving his arms like a hairy spider, Harry closed the distance between himself and the mayor, all the while pointing and gesturing and explaining iπn a patient, even tone, why we were there.
"As the Peregrine passed the pilot's left wing tip, he noted that his speedometer reading was 180 knots," the mayor whispered, lifting a bony forefinger as exclamation point.
Harry increases his efforts at getting through.
He's quietly desperate.
He's becoming obsessed with breaking through the calcified outer shell; with making a connection.
Plink, plink, the words are like pebbles bouncing off a drainpipe.
I'm growing weary of the spectacle, on the edge of other-consciousness.

CHAPTER XIV
From his perch, the mayor stares laconically at Harry, savoring his misery, inhaling of it deeply.
He turns his gaze to me, gives me a roguish wink, and still looking at me says to Harry, "Relax, schmuck, you're working much too hard!"
Harry looks like one of those dolls with springs for necks who look out the back window of cars.
"Sit down, kid, before you fall down!", admonishes the Mayor.
I'm jolted sharply awake by what I just dreamt or heard, I'm not sure which.
"What did that putz tell you, that my mind went out for cigars one night and never came back? Is that what that schnorrer told you?"
Harry's mouth is moving up and down. Soon a sound will come out.
"My grandson, Shelly, he means well. He's just having trouble working it out and I have a lot of heartache over it."
Harry wants to look at me, to see if I'm hearing all this and as blown away as he is, but he can't tear his eyes away from the old man. He's afraid he might miss something.
"Now he rides around day and night, talking to strangers, bringing them into my house, concocting stories..."
"Your house?", asks Harry.

CHAPTER XV
"Did he tell you I'm an ex-senator or Governor of Montana, maybe? That's one of his favorites. He brought home these three girls once, college girls they were, very cute, from Santa Cruz. He told them that I had been the mayor of Cincinnati, and he was taking care of me. Taking care of me, mind you! That putz, I guess he doesn't know any better."
Of course Harry and I are stunned. None of this is happening. The fish tanks bubble quietly, a breeze rattles the needles of a Monterey pine in the front yard. All signs that we are probably awake.
The Mayor looks perky now, there's a steely glint in his eye, I notice his ears stick out and I find myself thinking of George Burns.
"He used to be a good boy, a little high-strung but he kept his shit together, until the accident."
We couldn't wait.
"He and his wife Becky used to love to go out on their boat, a little Boston Whaler, it was. They didn't go to fish or water-ski, they just motored out to the Bay, and looked at otters and sea lions and each other. They had nothing to prove, no one to impress, they'd just go out to be alone with the sea. One day Shelly brought the boat in and there was no Becky aboard. No matter how anyone tried, and believe me they triïed, no one could get a word out of him. I don't mean an explanation, I mean not one word. He had this far-away look in his eyes like you only read about. Like he'd seen something he never should have seen, and it burned away part of his brain. Something too painful, too unreal for him to accept, so he buried it, and nobody no way was ever going to bring it to the surface."
"There was a routine investigation and Shelly spent three weeks under the care of shrinks at a private clinic, but no sign of foul play ever turned up. Neither did Rebecca."

CHAPTER XVI
He was so articulate, this old man, so convincing. He looked straight at us, lucid and sharp and obviously in command of the situation. If he wanted to, with those hard, gray eyes, he could have been frighteningly intimidating. But he had a kind heart, we could sense, and the rosy warmth of our sanctuary, along with his quiet compassion, put us at ease.
"I was living in a retirement complex in Portland and because I'm Shelly's only living relative, the doctors called me. I'm no spring chicken but family is family, so I schlepped down here to see what I could do. The retirement home was nice, but this is nicer, and the kid needs someone to look after him, after all."
"After two years of Shelly not saying a word to anyone, I decided to give up my little apartment and move down here, and about a week after I moved in, he started talking again. Boy, did he start talking!"
We're thinking, Harry and I, this is some story to tell two strangers you find in your house in the middle of the night. I get the feeling the Mayor has been keeping a lot locked inside and needs someone to unload on, to share with. We may look like road gypsies tonight, but he could have done worse.
"He started making stories up about people and places that didn't exist, jobs he never had. It's like the tales he invented were insulation, a buffer against reality, a cushion against his pain. Who's to argue? "I figured, as long as he doesn't hurt himself, what the hell...let him talk, let him make with the stories."
Exhausted, drained, Harry and I nodded in solemn understanding. We couldn't believe we were hearing all this.
"So kids, that's what is, and I'd like to tell you more but I'm too old to stand here and talk all night. Don't worry, Shelly's creative but harmless. He's good hearted, but don't believe a word he says. And now I'm going to sleep."
And with that he turned and floated down the hall leaving Harry and I to stare at the spot where he had been standing.

CHAPTER XVII
I don't remember actually falling asleep but it seemed like seconds later that I awoke to the sound of sizzling, and the smell of fresh coffee. Harry peeled back his thick morning lids and leveled a look at me, and we both found the bathroom and I tried to wash away the fog between my ears. "Terry" beamed at us over a pot of coffee like long-lost friends and asked us if we'd rested well. He fed us, although neither of us was hungry, and asked us if we were ready to head up to San Francisco. The silence was palpable as we sat in his car cruising up past Half Moon Bay's pumpkin fields, past Daly City's ticky-tacky houses, and by Candlestick Park. Harry spent much of the ride thumbing through a book he found sitting on the back seat, a scholarly tome about bird behavior called, "Life Histories of North American Birds of Prey" by Arthur Cleveland Bent. Terry reeled off a few anecdotes, nothing memorable, and I shot a few cautious glances at him and then at Harry, and we were polite, but neither of us had much to say. We were too busy thinking about the Mayor of Pocatello.