I can hear the whining now. It’s the early 1960s. 12yo Alek is being
sent to spend some quality summer time with his grandmother Alma in the
bustling metropolis of West Table, MO, in an unsympathetic town deep in the
Ozarks. Just one boring day after another boring day, each of which began with Alma
combing out her hair that reached the ground.
In brief conversations, she reveals much about her life and the town’s
turning point that stir memories that made her cry at night. Lonely and proud,
that was Alma.
Alma was born poor and lived poor. Had a free-spirited
younger sister Ruby. Alma worked mostly as a maid, picking up after people who
had so much more than her, Mr. and Mrs. Glencross mostly. She married young to Buster,
who was largely an absent drunk, except on those days when he impregnated Alma.
Three sons – James (who died in the WWII Pacific theater), Sidney (died from
some childhood blood disease), and John Paul who would become Alek’s father. After
cleaning up the dinner plates, Alma would stuff her pockets with the table
scraps and take them for her boys.
Mrs. Glencross wasn’t an overly attentive wife, failing in
her wifely duties. Mr. Glencross and Ruby hook up and their lustful attraction turns
much deeper, but Ruby wants more out of life and tries to break up, sending Glencross into a tearful funk. His wife tells him tears are one thing, just
don’t cry in front of their children.
It’s 1929 and there is a big dance planned for the Arbor
Dance Hall, which is the 2nd floor of a building that houses a mechanic’s
auto shop. The youth come from everywhere to dance and mingle and look and long
. . . right up until a massive explosion rips the building right off its foundation.
42 died that night. The bodies were so scattered and dang near impossible to identify that the
coffins no doubt contained mixed remains. In Alma’s sorrows over Ruby, she
stopped, prayed, and kissed every coffin at the mass funeral just to make
sure she said good bye to Ruby.
The investigation and the two special councils years later
had to conclude that it was a horrible accident. But when you are basically
invisible at town gatherings, Alma picks up bits and pieces about that night,
never quite able to put it all together and mulls it all over for the rest of
her life.
Until Alek comes to stay. He learns of the geeky boy in town
who hardly ever talked to a girl until an equally awkward girl, just down from
Wisconsin, enrolls in high school. They were constantly together, right up to
that night in 1929. The only girl in town who could play the piano was
cajoled into playing with the band that night and gave her last performance.
The mechanic who used to be muscle for a gang in St. Louis, now living under a
new identity. The preacher who condemned the heathenistic behavior of those who
frequented the dance hall. The gypsies who camped just outside of town. Death, lies, cheating, hidden scandal, Alek heard it all from Alma.
Alek listened and learned, finally taking his dad’s advice
to, “Go on and tell it.” Tell the maid’s version of what happened that awful night.
It’s been years since Woodrell’s last book, the spectacular 2006
Winter’s Bone, was published and went on to be one of the great movies of
recent years (if you haven’t read the book or seen the movie, I think I’ll be asking
for recommendations elsewhere). The haunting prose and marginally formal
language of this isolated town will be hard for some to read, but please bear with it,
if you be of that type that doesn’t want to work at your reading.
It’s because Woodrell can flat out write. Good Lord, can
this guy write. He jumps effortlessly between the depression years and the 60s,
from the Ozarks to St. Louis, good times and lean times, from son to son to drunk
father to banker to mechanic to musician to . . . you get the idea. I am sure
he worked at every page, paragraph, sentence, and word so you better be
prepared to do the same. And if you do, you will have been treated to one of
the very best American novelists currently rewarding us with his considerable
skills. And what is probably most impressive of all is that Woodrell paints this
intense, dreadful, and intricately woven panorama in a compact 164 pages.
How in the hell can one say so much about hardscrabble life
and survival, death and terror and loss in so few words? Gotta have Woodrell’s
touch. Think I’ll join MRB friend Charlie Stella and drink the Woodrell
kool-aid. I won’t even belittle this with one of our usual ‘power rotation’ comments.
Let’s just say that for me, The Maid’s Version, Ordinary Grace, and Boy’s Life
stand as the best novels I’ve read in this, or most any, year.
ECD
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