Back Roads by Tawni O'Dell

405 pp. 
Signet Books, January 2001

When I lived in Florida, I used to daydream about moving to a small town up north. I envisioned a quiet place with no traffic, a town people lived in their entire lives, so unlike south Florida. I pictured this imaginary place in the autumn, with an iron-gray sky and leaves on the ground, and the sort of Halloween I knew as a child.

Last year I found myself living out that fantasy – well, nearly -- when my career brought us to southwestern Pennsylvania. Now I never want to leave.

There’s so much about this area that I love. The natural beauty of the hills and farms would appeal to anyone. So would the view looking east, with the graceful curve of Route 30 down towards Latrobe and the heavily-wooded Allegheny Mountains in the distance. But I’m also fascinated by the old buildings in the blighted downtowns of Latrobe and Greensburg, and the mining patch communities you come across unexpectedly. The evidence of coal mining is all around, for those who know what to look for.

That’s what led me to Back Roads by Tawni O'Dell. It’s set in the rural western Pennsylvania area around Black Lick, which is a real town in Indiana County less than an hour from my home. I thought that reading it would be a good way to soak up some of the atmosphere of the region. But I got much more than I bargained for.

In Back Roads, 20-year-old Harley Altmyer’s mother is serving a life sentence in prison for shooting their father. That leaves Harley responsible for taking care of himself and his three sisters. There’s poverty and tension in the household. Harley himself lacks a mother, and he needs a girlfriend. That's why O'Dell gives him his first sexual encounter with a woman that meets both needs. She's an older woman and the mother of three. Just to underscore that point, she wears a nightgown that says “World’s Greatest Mom” in the big sex scene.

I thought the book would tell the story of their affair. Later, as I got further into it, I thought the plot would be built around revealing the truth about the shooting. O’Dell does all that. But she also takes it much further. This is a book about the deep and lasting effects of domestic violence and parental failure. As Harley puts it: “The problem with trying to forget about shit is that you can’t forget it. Time does not heal all wounds.”

Back Roads can be read and enjoyed just for its plot. But O’Dell also layers in deeper meaning and symbolism with some very skillful writing. Harley and his sisters suffer through a childhood filled with fear and physical abuse. Harley wears his father’s coat and hat, symbols of the legacy of violence that he inherited from his father and carries with him still. His teenage sister’s compulsive need for comfort and safety leads her to casual sex with the wrong men. Harley has to abandon his dog. He fears that the dog will spend the rest of his life thinking he’s a bad dog, unable to understand why the one person who was supposed to love him unconditionally turned his back on him.

Black Lick is a town named for salt licks that attract deer. But the salt is contaminated by coal deposits. The salt seeping up from underground may be killing them, like the secrets that Harley and his sisters have buried. In the end he has to confront his own self-deception.

I couldn’t understand why the book jacket blurbs described this book as humorous and hilarious. It’s about as bleak and tragic a story as I’ve read since Janet Fitch’s White Oleander, and the bleak, run-down mining community is a perfect setting. Back Roads actually affected me so strongly that I had to stop reading it at night. It got me so keyed up that I couldn’t sleep. Readers – especially men – shouldn’t be put off by the fact that this was an Oprah Book Club selection. It’s much more than a book aimed at pleasing women.

O’Dell’s second novel, Coal Run, was published in paperback earlier this year.

Links:

Review in The New York Times
Television interview
Author's website

The Trooper

My daughter brought her boyfriend home to visit for a couple of days. Mike is quiet and very respectful. He calls me Mr. K------. He just graduated from law school.

When Mike left, he gave me a gift: an Iron Maiden t-shirt! It’s the one with The Trooper image.



This could be the plot of a particularly twisted sitcom: girlfriend’s dad is a middle-aged metal fan. Boyfriend is a conservative young guy. Boyfriend's new job as a prosecutor with the Florida State Attorney's office entitles him to carry a badge and gun when he visits crime scenes. We see the handsome young man wandering befuddled through the CD Extreme music store, searching... searching everywhere for an Iron Maiden t-shirt. When presented with the gift t-shirt, Dad is delighted. He promises to wear it to Ozzfest, with the right sleeve rolled up to display his tattoo.

All of this is true.

Deserted Cities of the Heart

This week’s Cream concert and the song Deserted Cities of the Heart has reopened old wounds.

Well, here’s how it was. As freshmen in college, my roommate and I were both in the same predicament: freshman girls didn’t seem to be interested in us. They were after the older guys. We’d sit around our dorm room, listening to the live version of Deserted Cities of the Heart and telling lies about how we had all sorts of girls interested in us in high school.

Being an English major, one night I explained the linkage between our situation and this lyric:

"On this street, where time has died
The golden treat you never tried
In times of old, in days gone by,
If I could catch your dancing eye

It was on the way
On the road to dreams
Now my heart’s drowned in no love streams."

We, ourselves, were the golden treat that all those college girls never tried.

Tattoo

“Me and my brother were talking to each other
About what makes a man a man…”
-- From “Tattoo” by The Who
This is the story of something I never thought I’d do.

There was a time when getting a tattoo held a strange fascination for me. Two Vietnam veterans in my bagpipe band had old, faded designs on their forearms: hearts impaled on daggers, leering skulls, screaming eagles and the like. I wondered about the stories behind them, and what it felt like to carry something on your body forever.

The idea lost its weird appeal when tattoos became trendy. Now it seems that half the population under the age of 30 has a tribal armband or, for the ladies, a floral design on the lower back. I had no need to make such a display to the world as an attention-getting device. So I discarded my tattoo fantasy.

But the idea returned with a vengeance in the fall of 2004. My mother was dying a slow death from Alzheimers Syndrome. She lost most of her memory long before her body died. Eventually she was unable to remember my name. On many occasions, I wasn’t sure she knew who I was. I watched the progression of her disease, and the complete disappearance of the personality I knew as my mother. It seemed that a part of my life was fading away as well.

Now the desire to get a tattoo seized me. I wanted to do something to honor her -- something that would be permanent, unlike her life which was slipping away.

My design decision was easy. For reasons I won’t go into here, my mother used to ask me when I was a young boy: “Will you put red roses on my grave?” Eager to please, like a good son I promised her that I would. Now, with her death approaching, I knew I probably wouldn’t be able to meet that commitment. So I decided to put a red rose on my body instead.

Spanky, the tattoo artist, came highly recommended by one of my wife’s patients. Spanky did several custom sketches for me. It took him several weeks to deliver the sketches, so I had plenty of time to be sure I really wanted to do this.

Now I have my tattoo. I showed it to my mother before she died. It’s a red rose with a thorny stalk and my nickname “Sonny.” Spanky drilled it onto my right shoulder one afternoon, with the music of his favorite heavy metal bands pounding away in the background.

I’ve never told anybody about my tattoo, except for a few close family members (and now you, my readers). It’s high up on my arm, where nobody will see it unless I’m shirtless or in a tank top. And with Ozzfest approaching, I think I’m ready to buy that tank top.

The song Tattoo originally appeared on The Who Sell Out, but I prefer the live version on the CD edition of The Who Live at Leeds. The lyrics include:
"Our old man didn't like our appearance
He said that only women wear long hair...."

Beaten Blue with Bowstrings

In this passage from Howard Pyle's The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood, Robin Hood invites the tall stranger to join his "band of merry men," to which the stranger replies:

"...if there be any man here that can shoot a better shaft than I, then will I bethink me of joining with you."

"Now by my faith," said Robin, "thou art a right saucy varlet, sirrah; yet I will stoop to thee as I never stooped to man before. Good Stutely, cut thou a fair white piece of bark four fingers in breadth, and set it fourscore yards distant on yonder oak. Now, stranger, hit that fairly with a gray goose shaft and call thyself an archer."

"Ay, marry, that will I," answered he (the tall stranger). "Give me a good stout bow and fair broad arrow, and if I hit it not strip me and beat me blue with bowstrings."

The tall stranger is John Little, later known as Little John. In Pyle's versions of these stories, characters are fond of swearing mighty oaths, such as the one above. Another of my favorites occurs when The Tinker, Wat O' the Crabstaff, threatens Robin Hood, and swears "If I do not score his knave's pate, cut my staff into faggots and call me woman."

The King Must Die By Mary Renault

The King Must Die
By Mary Renault
338 pp. Vintage Books

I’ve just finished this novel, and it’s superb. Beautifully written with a gripping plot, The King Must Die is a realistic treatment of the first part of the Theseus myth, complete with Minotaur, labyrinth, the witch Medea -- and of course Ariadne.

Renault depicts Ariadne as both princess and priestess of an old earth mother religion in Crete. Theseus, a follower of the newer Sky Gods, grew up believing he was a son of Poseidon. Renault makes the conflict between the two religions a key theme, and uses it to move the plot in a direction that's consistent with the myth.

I recall seeing this book in my father's library when I was very young. He had all the Renault novels, including a title that fascinated me: Fire From Heaven.

At about age ten, I paged through Fire From Heaven. There I found scenes related to sex, marriage and jealousy which I never forgot. Though not explicit (these books were written in the 1950s), they disturbed me, leaving the impression that I was getting into deep water with these adult topics.

What made me decide to read this book after all these years? I recently came across an interview with fantasy/sci fi author Tanith Lee. She cited The King Must Die as her favorite book from childhood. Clearly it was a major influence on her style.

The power of Renault's descriptive writing is something to behold. Here's how she describes Theseus' reaction on first seeing the city of Athens:

"Suddenly, at the turn of the road between the low green hills, I saw standing huge before me a great flat rock, like a platform raised by Titans to assail the gods from. Upon its top, glowering bright in the western sunlight, stood a royal palace, the columns russet red, the pink-washed walls picked out with white and blue squares. So high it stood against the sky, the guards on the ramparts looked as small as goldsmith's work, and their spears as fine as wire. I caught my breath. I had guessed at nothing like this..."

A sequel, The Bull From the Sea, describes Theseus' later life.