Kings of the Earth by Jon Clinch
My rating: 4/5 cats
this book is a little bit of this:
and a lot of this:
okay, so it is much more of the latter than the former, but how often do i get to make x-files references in book reports?? not very often. this basically is a novel version of the events covered in the documentary, minus one brother. three brothers, closer than most and of feral intelligence and an array of undiagnosed conditions both mental and physical. they basically live like beasts – crowded into one bed at night, urinating where they please – scraping together an existence primarily of survival, covered in manure – oblivious to the reactions of others to their aroma/behavior. they live a life whittled down to basic concerns like food, avoiding doctors and townsfolk until one of them dies in the night, and the authorities descend to meddle where they are neither wanted nor understood.
the best thing about this book is the contrast. sure, in cormac mccarthyland, there are plenty of these characters, but the difference is, in his books, the characters are all varying degrees of these characters. in this book, we have their sister, who managed to get an education and leave the smothering family home to raise a family and have a career. but she is never ashamed of her brothers – there is a lovely scene of them attending her son’s high school play after riding into town on their tractor, and trying to pay for the tickets with manure-encrusted cash. they are accepted as eccentrics without being patronized or attacked. they are just left alone, the way they want it.
until the death.
i like books like these because there is refreshingly little self-awareness. these characters do not spend any time whining about their petty problems and setbacks. this will never be an indulgent mumblecore independent movie where white people have problems and talk about them forever. these men are like early man grunting but they love their family they handle their shit with their own two hands. and make creepy folk art.
this is one of my favorite passages that i advise dana to skip, but it tells about what happens when the oldest brother, vernon, suffers a farming accident where an old rusty spike from an antiquated piece of farm equipment shoots off and goes through his calf while his younger, possibly autistic, brother watches.
vernon had himself propped up on that harrow with his leg on the crossbar and he had a piece of angle iron in his one hand. he began to beat on that spike in his leg and audie was howling and he wouldn’t let up. he beat on it and i hollered at him not to but he kept on, with audie on his knees and shaking and howling all the while. six or seven good blows and he drove that spike clear out the other side and it just fell down in the dirt and bounced once and laid there. audie kept shaking and howling and he wouldn’t stop even though the spike was out and vernon was limping toward the stall. the leg of his pants was red and there was blood on his boot and blood on the floor soaking into the dirt and into the straw wherever he stepped. i told him he had to let a doctor see it but he said no. vernon’d never do anything you told him he had to do. that’d been his way since he was a boy. he shook out a feed bag and tore a strip off it and got him some baling twine and he rolled up that pant leg and wrapped the rag around where the spike had gone through and tied it off. a black hole on both sides, pumping. that’s going to bleed, i told him, that’s going to keep bleeding and you won’t stop it like that. you ought to at least put it up in the air, i said, but there were chores to be done and he shut his ears to me.
my dad’s side of the family is very DIY. hmm, this house doesn’t have a deck? i will build one. you want a gazebo?? here you go! my dad has a million stories about his grandfather making magic out of nothing but some spare lumber. this trait did not pass itself down to me, but i have a certain amount of appreciation for people like this – who can just whip up something out of nothing – i am a huge fan of capable self-sufficiency. and i understand the need to do the chores that need to be done before tending to any personal physical discomfort. i nearly paralyzed myself when i decided that a back injury was not serious and allowed it to make me walk bent-over and unable to sit down for six months because i couldn’t miss work. because i’m a heart surgeon, right?? because my job is sooooo important in the grand scheme of things. no one has ever taken a retail job more seriously than me, to my detriment. but i’m right there with you, vernon – you are my hero.
even though the things they make are more functional than aesthetic – these are people with no need for a gazebo – and everything is described as being a shamble-mess, i still admire native ingenuity.
this story is very fast paced, because it is told in alternating voices, skipping around in time with some chapters being only half a page long. there is much left implicit; the stories do not lock up perfectly like a jigsaw puzzle, but it doesn’t really matter, the story is stronger for the omissions.
big thumbs up for this one.
