Joe by Larry Brown

Let's clear up any misconceptions right now. Wade Jones is a no-account, low-life, wife-beating, scum sucking piece of white trash. No job, picks up tin cans for a little change, drags his wife, 2 daughters, and son around the southeast doing menial jobs, and squats his family in whatever abandoned structure he can find. And drinks, drinks, drinks.

Joe, the title character works in northern Mississippi doing some contract work for Weyerhauser. See they own a ton of prime timberland that is mostly covered by junk trees. Joe and his crew of daily employees go out to poison the trees so that good quality pine can be planted for future harvesting. But Joe is no saint. He drinks, whores, and gambles. Has spent 2 years in prison for assaulting a policeman and knows he'll go back for life probably if he doesn't toe the line, has a sometime girl no older than his out of wedlock and pregnant daughter, a dog that'll rip most anyone to shreds, and an ex-wife who gave up on Joe and his drinking ways.

Wade shacks up his family in a long abandoned 1 room log cabin. His son is 15, he thinks, and just wants to work so he can save up enough to buy a truck. That'd be their answer. He hooks up with Joe one day while both were wandering the back roads. And here, Joe gets the son he never had and the boy gains a father figure to replace the drunk back at the cabin.

Through a number of flashbacks, we learn that the Jones family actually had 5 kids. One daughter just ran off and a son fell out of a truck bed and was crushed by a trailing semi. The youngest daughter and mother have tried to retreat into themselves as best they can to escape. In one particularly despicable act, Wade tries to get some money for alcohol by selling his 12yo daughter's innocence to 2 back woods low life tramps who have a bit of an ongoing feud with Joe. While driving the boy back to the cabin, Joe comes across the exchange, sends the boy on home, takes out his gun, and realizing what he will be sacrificing for this little girl, settles some old and new scores.

This book follows up on my streak of the underbelly of the US. Larry Brown was mentioned as a possible inspiration for Donald Ray Pollack one cover blurb. This tale of desperation, failure, and final redemption at a huge cost was utterly vicious in its portrayal of a class of people none of us would want to cross. The dialogue is presented in a raw, coarse manner that most of us would need an interpreter for if it was spoken. As Stella is to dialogue of the NY street and Pelecanos is to the DC alleyways, Brown is to the Mississippi back country. Both an eloquent

and demeaning voice of a hidden society. A shame Brown died young, in his mid 50s. He could have shown us so much.

East Coast Don

Father and Son by Larry Brown

The liner notes for the 2 Donald Ray Pollack books compared his work with the late Larry Brown so I thought that was reason enough to check out Brown.

A cast of characters should help:

The Davis men: Virgil (semi disabled WWII POW) Randolph (aka Puppy), Glen (just paroled after serving 3 yrs of an 8 yr sentence for I guess was vehicular manslaughter), Theron (deceased)

The Blanchards: Mary (single mom, teacher), Bobby (her son, the county sheriff).

Jewel (single mom), David (her 4yo son)

Puppy has just picked up Glen after his parole was granted. Glens meanness dates back to probably elementary school or before. Mean from birth? Probably. Upon getting back to their hometown (unnamed) in northern rural Mississippi (circa 1968), Glen appears to have changed little and seems bent on settling some old scores. Outside of being just downright angry at everything and everybody (except, strangely, a fallen preacher), Glen does little other than smoke, drink, and create trouble everywhere.

And Glen has an eventful week. Jewel was his girl who bore him a son whom he refuses to acknowledge. In his first 48 hours, he beds Jewel and then just leaves, commits a double homicide over a simmering insult, rapes a local girl after getting her drunk, steals money from his father, and assaults Mary.

The question that Brown addresses is whether evil is embedded at birth or due to circumstances. And there are circumstances all over the place:

1. Glen's mom dies while he is in prison and he wasn't allowed to attend the funeral.

2. Virgil, his dad, was a drunk who sought the company of Mary years ago that has continued.

3. Jewel relishes the relationship that David has with his grandfather, but Glen seethes about it.

4. Bobby, the sheriff who is as upright and honorable as Glen is evil, and Jewel have circled each other and grown close, but Jewel said she'd wait for Glen to get out and she did, but regrets that decision.

4. Theron, the deceased brother/son was killed in an accidental shooting at home.

5. Bobby, out on patrol, comes across a white trash couple so far down the evolutionary scale that even the low life folks who are the subject of this story look uptown. The children tell him a tale that shocks even the most hardened of cops.

6. And Glen's mom? Was her death due to cancer, as Glen was told, or by her own hand?

The events circle each other until the expected end occurs by an entirely unexpected manner. The story just sort of fades out like a movie when Bobby, Mary, and Jewel drive up to Virgil's shack where he and David are quietly rocking watching a sunset.

The story revolves around multiple Father/Son relationships: Virgil/Glen, Glen/David, the evolving Bobby/David, and (I'll reveal this cuz I doubt many will run right out to read this exceedingly dark, somewhat depressing, but entirely intelligent and literate book), Virgil/Bobby. Some are contentious, some ignored, some kept secret, but always riveting and will make any father look at his own relationship with his son. One review I read said this book will stick with you for a long time. Can't say that about many of the books I've reviewed here at MRB, but I can say unequivocally that, for me at least, this one will. After but a single work by Brown, were I teaching a course in Modern American Literature, Brown would be on my "Required Reading" list. He's that good.

East Coast Don