Troutdale Kingdom 1 – A Serialized Novel in Progress

 

Rawlings was shouting and no one cared.
Jumping up and down in the truck bed. Gesticulating and frothing. Another election year nut. Shoppers clutched their bags and-or children and hurried on. Rawlings snapped. Another tipless break was almost over.“You’re the Versailles of parking lots, Troutdale! Baroque robots in thrall to secret societies! Any one of you could be one of them!”
Even the magic word couldn’t slow their dogged push through the early evening shoppers’ slog. Rawlings checked his watch and considered a different tack. ‘Make it personal,’ he thought.
“But you’d have to be alive to be one of them! Pay them that respect at least! You’re half-dead, Troutdale! You might not even exist!”
He thought he saw a middle-schooler two rows down glance his way so he pressed an imagined advantage with the cow-faced boy.
“Are you alive?! Ask your mother! Aren’t you both a sham?! Or a figment! A figment of the King’s imagination?! Hell, you’re probably not even registered!”
The boy turned away and scowled into an obscure middle distance of his own. Only the tin rattle of shopping carts answered. Wrinkling bags and squeaking brakes. A muted murmur into the neck of a coat. The distant tinkling of jangled keys. Poor shivered souls with chunks of commute left deserve better than the provocations of another electioneering nut. He didn’t want to overdo the cover. Not to say he didn’t half-believe what he shouted.
“Troutdale! Oh, Dear Troutdale! Do you have election fever?! Are you in a swoon?! Or is this the general aspect of an election-numbed serf?! We should have taken your votes away with the annex, you slobs!”
Four cars down, a woman in a thin, wind-whipped coat shoved bags in the back seat. Rawlings leapt at her with his voice.
“You madame! Question. Why should you vote if you aren’t even alive?!”
“Leave me alone. I’m voting Smith. I don’t care what you say. Leave me alone.”

She lunged into her car, ripped out of her spot, and ran each of the six stops on the way out of lot. She tailgated a sixteen wheeler down the hill of 238th, her brake lights checkered by the second growth thicket lining the sidewalks leading to I-84. Rawlings sucked deep off Troutdale’s snow-ready air and closed his eyes. He saw the fallow gorgeland acreage surrounding the shopping center charge up to the long common wall shared by Double Cavalry Church and Convention Center, Style Nail Salon, Exhibit Hairdressers, Sunset Nail Salon, Troutdale Library, and Tapatio and slam mats of moldering leaves and dead mud patches against the stucco. Wind doubled up on the slop and frosted swampy adobe tight to the center’s northeast boundary until it turned into a nitre-caked fortress wall. Fog rolled down from the slopes of the black mountain to the east and crawled down the gorge. ‘Hemmed in,’ Rawlings. ‘You’re hemmed in here. No one’s for you and everyone’s against you.’ His inner-eyes floated higher, above the valley floor. In the sprawling black to the east, little pinheads of glow crept down rutted farm roads and disappeared. Electioneers hustling for the last kingmaking vote? Or those he was failing miserably to infiltrate? Or at least ferret out. A sub-cell to a sub-cell of the ephemeral but no less destructive them. Even in this moment where he was supposed to be collecting himself before returning to his the cover of this cover he is haunted by the graspless vastness of an enemy who could be hiding in an old-growth stump, a tarpaulin-lined pit, the cellar of another head-shaking Troutdalian farmer, housewife, or fallen 99er. They might bore into any nook in these low-density flatlands shot through by the frigid but still potable Sandy River and spiked about with little buttes and ledgelands of promontory and backing forest full of perfectly good soil to grow in year-round. Or they could squat deep inside one of the warehouses of the abandoned jack-ports strung along the Oregon side of the Columbia from here to The Dalles. They could have dug a hole into the rubbly ruins of The Big Ole Dam itself; the lawless regions even the staties don’t bother spelunking around in anymore. (“A waste of hugely diminished resources,” said Mayor Roy. “There’s only enough minutes to go around.”) Do they begin their day as he does with a Good Hot Joe in hand looking out over their own little quarter of dew-gathered greens and think “This is all mine. This is all good. Nothing can touch me here.” As the downtown sparkle of high-rise dawn turns office glass grey, pink, and purple, winks its confirmation, does his distant enemy twenty miles to the east on the Columbia hear the peeping ascent of the small creatures he shares the Western Willamette Valley with? Does he have the confidence of flora and fauna while Rawlings only feels sure of himself in the rectilinear cells of Downtown? Is it a question of being out of his element? Is that why this cover has been such a relentless failure?
Playing the electioneer or some other affiliated or free-lance nut from the bed of his truck could be the stupidest or best cover possible. He had no idea. Weeks wasted on subtlety and provocation alike. Not a single decent tip as The City’s enemies, the nebulous and effectively disorganized Them – the bombardier squads, the radical deconstructivists, the all-round anarchic douchebags – continued raising Hell within the city limits and – according to tips – set up shop in this unlikeliest of semi-planned ex-urbs; a commuter oasis recently re-branded as The Unincorporated Kingdom of Troutdale. Firmly in the City tax grid but autonomous on all in-border decisions. Self-determined and self-policed. Fashioned to be a lax-lawed and business-friendly fiefdom by King Knight. In other words: A haven for those looking to get lost or hide out. And in an election year no less.
‘And so this dud of all undercovers while all the action’s going on the other side of the border. My hometown blowing straight to Hell up.’

He opened his eyes and the shopping center coalesced around him. The center’s unlikely light show flashed and sparkled underneath the massive valley night. Fat, undulating serpents of exhaust rose into the air. Shopping sounds collectivized into the cooperative hum of commerce. A horn blew, a gravel-voice snarled. He felt a bit of the old warm charge behind his forehead and in his hands. The romance of the city exists even here. It’s why the cover and the cover of the cover were still barely tolerable. Though he hadn’t gotten a damn thing out of these people, taken together, they constituted a force. Their sheer number, bustle, and noise was an urban music; the thing that made Rawlings’ blood beat. He respected them for at least tallying to a crowd of motivation and will; as complex and unfathomable as any other city scene that occurs in the good plain light of shared public space. It was the night valley floor beyond these walls sprinkled with private stars, logging roads, and state parks that scared the holy Hell out of him. The Center was a relative oasis.
“Down with King Knight! Hail the Lord of Portland!”

He started back for the library.
Ice-pricked wind raced down the western face of the mountain. Malevolent. ‘Far from impersonal,’ he thought. Stealing through the gnarled and stunted orchards of East Kingdom, pushing the creak and wheeze out of gap-toothed, skeletal barns, it marshaled itself in the stump fields of a clear-cut to shoot the forking Blue-Line tunnels then the paralleling venerable rusts of the Burlington Northern Santa Fe to rejoin in the fields behind Reynolds Senior High to shoot the gap between The Double Calvary Church and Convention Center and the neon-red battlements of the Safeway. Antennae whipped and swayed every which way. One last swift kick from the nowherelands beyond.

“Christ damnit they’re all in on it together aren’t they.”
He looked into sky where the mountain lay hidden. Stomped his feet and gritted a smile. Remembered opponents who, however unjust, were at least admirable in their blatancy; their cold steel knife points brandished not with tendency but prejudicial and overt purpose; a less gray world for fellow city jerks, city investigators, and all their in-boundary brethren to take the proverbial slug to the bad guys in with commensurately non-rhetorical hooks, jabs, and haymakers; a subculture of no-goodnik with balls sufficient to at least have a little of the good ole criminal style for crissakes. Instead, he flailed at signals – phantom and otherwise – pinging from pathetic little phones to the cells towers on Black Mountain and up into the ether to ding off an aluminum satellite to frizzle back to another goddamned disposable phone. He was prey to buzzing, staticcy flies. He shadow-boxed the air around the staff entrance and huffed cold air.
“All in the name of city, Rawlings. C’mon. Giv’em Hell in there.”

He pushed inside straight to a cart of books. The volunteer coordinator followed him for a few strides and began to speak but thought better. Rawlings pushed the cart onto the floor.

While working the truck bed on dinner break a woman stops to listen to Rawlings.
He’s on about Them again. Something about they could be anyone. Neighbor. Friend. Priest. One of the paranoia jags hoping to prod someone’s self-righteous bone. This woman seems game. She folds her arms skeptically. Rawlings changes tack. He will try to recruit her so she can demonstrate disgust. He accesses his inner junk poet, the just-beneath-the-conscience idea sludge he barely believes but cannot disavow since its taken root within. It’s a combination of his street-corner preacher cover and his shelled-out doomsday sayer. He once described it to Tiger on stakeouts as his one “purely honest state of being.” He bends to speak to the woman in a confidential whisper.
“Remember something, Madame. We all have our consolations. We whiskey our damn night-sleeps with it. Our addiction to preferences.” He lunges for her bag and she is too startled to react. He hoists up a can of fava beans as though displaying the severed gorgon head. “Party, help-mate, country, kingdom. We’re all drunk on affiliation.” The woman then gasps when the head of a goofy-eyed and salivating brindle mutt pops over the side the truck and slathers licks all over hand and can.
“Tiger, you’re ruining the show here, buddy.”
Catching Rawlings looking away the woman bashes and scratches at his hand.
“Christ lady!”
Tiger begins barking and scrabbling his claws all over the truck bed and almost falls on his side.
“Lunatic! I’m voting Smith. J.J. Smith! And nothing you say can change my mind.”
Rawlings tackles Tiger before he can go over the side after the jogging woman. The dog takes this for a game and growlingly shakes and rips at Rawlings sleeve. Another shopper wheeling by sees a man and dog on all fours in the bed of a truck growling at one another in a standoff. Rawlings notices then shouts at her retreat.
“Kibble in every pot, Ma’am. Justice for the non-English speakers! Liberate the Troutdale Animal Shelter 12!”
Tiger releases the sleeve and barks at the woman. Rawlings leans over the side and joins in. Sleet begins to fall.

Roaming the lot, ostensibly walking Tiger, he pulls from a flask.
Tipsy enough to be transfixed by the professional voyeurism of looking into other’s vehicles. Hugging vehicles to stare into the still, suspended compartments. The pocket flashlight that can double as a shiv testing the areas under seats. But the little assemblages are painfully mundane. Almost suspiciously uninteresting. He tries to manufacture a feeling of portent, limn some hidden purpose from combinations of in-auto bric-a-brac. Licorice cough drops-ice-scraper-plaid dog blanket; sunglasses-cord of firewood-geometry textbook-Star Magazine; deflated basketball-coffee-ringed mug-an action figure with shield but no sword straddling the rearview mirror. They begin to blur together with swigs and morph into an army. Leave-behinds are silent armies defending the abandoned vehicle. Seats are mined with paper products bombs in origami. Sentry bobble-heads (hula girls, lil devils, over-innocent, upstaring angels, plastic soldiers, dinosaurs, even a vintage Rookie Mayor Roy, his retired Number 7 melted into a 4 or 1) are watching him watch. They’ve got him covered.
“The boozy paranoias,” he lies because the paranoia is professional and the booze is recreational. He wants to let his guard down to the point of irresponsibility and allow his enemies the opportunity to become complacent. It’s the sort of trick a bored and ineffective C.I. can at least feel magnanimously tipsy about.
He indulges in some retrospect. Captain Swafford had flopped that truly portentous ass of his on the corner of his desk in that jovial way of his, had really dangled some hang-time under it so the impact would make Rawlings’ coffee slosh onto his paper work.
“Been talking to the major and he says to me ‘I think Rawlings is getting stale on the Brady beat.’”
Swafford’s addressing the ceiling panels, the little chorus of dots constituting his fawning studio audience.
“‘He’s having more of those fashionable of lunches of his. The Oat Cuisine.’”
Rawlings is blotting the coffee of a report, not looking up.
“‘Oh Hell no,’ says me. ‘Not Ole Rawls. He is a professional. Con-summit. Through and through.’”
Swafford is absolutely beaming at this point. Rawlings knows it and even if he won’t look up Swafford knows he knows.
So he masters himself a bit to become over-serious.
“‘On the other hands,’ says I. ‘Maybe he’s being under- utilized downtown. Maybe he’s, you know, a little shell-shocked just like the rest of us.”
Swafford screws his face into a pained mask of abject sorrow.
“I mean he’s human after all isn’t he? Even our heroic C.I. Rawls.’”
“Just give me the punchline, Maje. Your sweating on my C-9’s.”
“‘What he needs is a good rest. I know. Let’s send him to the country. Good clean air. Shopping housewives. Teenage charmers. Greasy cuisine but honest cuisine, Rawls. Good ole fashioned honest lard-based, mono-gladiate or whatever the fuck quizzin’.’”
“Don’t do it, Maje.”
“‘Let’s send him,’ said I. ‘Let’s send him to the sticks.’”
“Oh no.”
“The Kingdom. Where the action is. A kinda pastural retreat for Ole Rawls. He deserves it.”
“Aw Christ.”
“See if he can stir up some Hell out there. Nab a few terrorists. Maybe even find love.”
Swafford decided not to contain himself anymore.
“Buh-ha- Buh-ha Buh-HAAA-hahahahahaha-haaaaaaa! Woo-eee! Rawls is going down home! Yeeeeee-HAAAAWWW!”

Now was it the boozy retrospectives that made him think even this performance by Swafford lacked its usual…venom. Had it been as it now seemed that there was something self-conscious about his performance? Hadn’t it been an unusually pat? As though he were working himself up through the stages of his needling just to check them off without savoring the schadenfreudic joy that usually bubbled up in the damned jelly gut of his and spurted out his ass for emphasis? (“Oh-oh-oh, excuse me there, Rawls, do.”) Hadn’t this been the third case in four months he’d been pulled off? He wasn’t getting anywhere, sure. But no one was these days. The enemy was too diffuse. Why break up the continuity of his case-building? It was not only bad policy but explicitly against Mayor Roy austerity measures. (“Make every possession count. Keep your turnovers down. Execute. Execute. Execute.”) Swafford filled out the same Economy Reports every manager did. Three case yanks was just plain un-patriotic, on top of stupid for someone to keep up their professional and avocational vindictiveness.
So maybe there were deeper motives. Maybe he should be doing a cover on The Maje. Or whoever gave The Maje his orders. Wasn’t it likely that people knew a lot more than they were saying? Wasn’t it just plain stupid to waste the best C.I. they had so far out of his element? Or were this boozy self-righteousness? Or boozy bitch-pettiness. Maybe the department sent him here for good reasons he wasn’t aware of yet.