Desperate Rider by Frank O’Rourke

 

Tony Casper stood at the Colombian bar with his friends, drinking wine, acquiring that tipsy feeling of magnitude. Hat pushed up on jet black hair, accentuating his narrow, handsome face in which his mother's blood dominated, he laughed uproariously at a joke and lifted his glass. This was his element-- the cheap bar, the cheap wine, the friendless friends.

That character description is from the 1959 novel Desperate Rider by Mr. O’Rourke. I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again, the man is practically second to none when it comes to limning a character or even a town in a line.

Where many stick with the physical description, O’Rourke let’s us know his weary opinion of Tony and the Tonys of the world with the single line: This was his element-- the cheap bar, the cheap wine, the friendless friends.

O’Rourke’s characters and towns are seldom all good, or all bad. Seldom are they mere plot pawns, they are human beings or environments that shape the human beings that inhabit it.

The novel plays like a Western version of the classic gangster flick The Desperate Hours. It is a self-contained piece.

While not O’Rourke’s strongest work, there is more than enough intelligence, human observation and fine craft to keep the Western genre appreciator turning the pages.

I’ve said before, Mr. O’Rourke, is one of my favorite genre novelists, even if his work is inconsistent—I still always find something worthy of mulling within.

Moonshine by Alec Wilkinson

 

For more than thirty years Garland Bunting has been engaged in capturing and prosecuting men and women in North Carolina who make and sell liquor illegally. To do this he has driven taxis, delivered sermons, peddled fish, buck danced, worked carnivals as a barker, operated bulldozers, loaded carriages and hauled logs at sawmills, feigned drunkenness, and pretended to be an idiot. In the minds of many people he is the most successful revenue agent in the history of a state that has always been enormously productive of moonshine.

This volume’s full title is Moonshine: A Life in Pursuit of White Liquor. It is a non-fiction work written in 1985.

Wilkinson, our reporter, spends much time with Garland Bunting, a renowned revenuer and raconteur. While not fiction, it reads as smoothy and beautifully as the best of the genre.

Wilkinson has an eye for detail that rings true.

Having grown up in moonshining districts and having known many an extracurricular distributor, hell, I live not four miles from the famed Thunder Road, Wilkinson’s world is A1 authentic.

And I’ve got to mention that he writes like a dream.

It all plays as if Larry McMurtry [or his songwriter son, James] spent time in the milieu of the Deep South drive-in flicks of the 1970s and told you what he saw.

It is deep, sweaty, affectionate and our protagonist drops a line of patter to chew on about every page.

For example:

These folks are suspicious and they'll kill you. They'll shoot the grease right out of the biscuit and never even break the crust.

Along the way you’ll learn more about making and distributing illegal liquor than you ever knew was possible.

It all goes down smooth unlike the product in question.

This one, my friends, is an easy A

It’s called corn liquor, white lightning, sugar whiskey, skull cracker, pop-skull bush whiskey, stump, stumphole, ‘splo,  ruckus juice, radiator whiskey, rotgut, sugarhead, block and tackle, wildcat, panther’s breath, tiger’s sweat, sweet spirits of cata-a-fighting, ally bourbon, city gin, cool water, happy Sally, deep shaft, jump steady, old horsey, stingo, blue John, red eye, pine top, buckeye, bark whiskey, and see seven stars.

In times when the price of sugar has risen high enough to make the use of it unprofitable, bootleggers have substituted molasses. Moonshine made with molasses called monkey rum.

One Ranger Against a Conman Named Trump

 

Pump the brakes, this is not a political post.

It is a review of a single episode of a western television series, but…

Depending on your relationship with facts, it either strikes one as prophetic, or grand coincidence, or, at the very least a mighty odd curiosity.

May 9, 1958, CBS airs an episode of Trackdown titled “The End of the World.”

Trackdown followed the exploits of Texas Ranger Hoby Gilman as he righted wrongs in the West of the 1870s.

Gilman was portrayed with cool conviction by the redoubtable Robert Culp.

The episode in question tells the tale of a conman visiting the town of Talpa where he claims that he [and only He] can save them from threats that only exist in his own prognostications.

The name of this doom slinging conman? Trump. [Nope, I ain’t even kidding—the name is Trump.]

The town seems to swallow his venom hook, line and sinker.

The newly arrived Hoby Gilman takes in Trump’s spiel and shakes his head in mute wonder at such utter preposterousness.

His incredulousness is magnified when he looks around him assuming that all see through the transparent clothes of this “emperor”, but his jaw is left hanging open as he realizes those that surround him are hanging on the words of the conman.

Our conman Trump even utters these lines “I’ll build a wall and protect you.”

Our Texas Ranger’s arguments to “Pay attention, use your minds” falls on mute ears.

We move from this fascinating set-up and second act where Hoby Gilman tries to urge folks with reason—to no avail and we end the episode with some standard “Let’s wrap this episode up neatly 1950s”-style shenanigans.

All in all, a slight episode.

In a world where there was no echoed comparison, I’d say the episode’s premise is so preposterous that it seems more like kiddie fare than something programmed for the usually adult themed Trackdown episodes.

But now, well, now the episode strikes one as remarkably prescient, on-point concerning the herd mentality of human nature.

What in most circumstances is a C episode becomes an A+ fascinating curiosity at the coincidences of life.

Politically this episode and review are neuter.

But…like our Texas Ranger, I stand on the side of reason over obeisant swallowing of the palavering of hucksters.

Fighting Man by Frank Gruber

 

He was twenty-six years old, a towhead with washed out blue eyes. Schoolteacher, gambler, horse thief, camp follower, murderer and cannibal; he had been all of them.

The above is the first sentence in this 1948 novel by Mr. Gruber. That succinct matter-of-factness is peppered throughout the brief page run.

The novel follows an old storyline—the outlaw assuming the guise of a lawman.

The difference here, despite the 1948 pedigree, there is a casual violence that one might encounter in later Spaghetti Westerns or “adult” Westerns of the ‘70s.

The other difference, where often the violence in the two later examples I provided, that “modern” violence is often for grand guignol effect, inserted for the “cool” factor. Here its offhanded matter-of-factness serves us better as it seats the realities of true grimness without the need of wallowing for effect.

The difference between a hunter telling a tale and gamers swapping first-person shooter “accomplishments.”

Overall, it is a formulaic novel but an effective one.

I close with another brief offering of Mr. Gruber’s barebones violence.

A sentry stupid from illicit sleep, raised himself between two tents to see what was causing the noise that sounded like galloping horses. His mouth fell open in amazement—and then he died.

Says it all in two short sentences.

·        In war not all are diligent, nor all brave.

·        Some of us are prone to the realities of being a tired human.

·        Bodies need sleep.

·        This sentry slept when he shouldn’t.

·        He awakes as we all do, slow to process what is around us.

·        For that he is surprised by his end.

·        Surprised in a war zone.

·        We all sleep, we are all surprised.

·        T’is life.

·        T’is death.

Solid fare for a “mere formula Western.”

Gun Hand by Frank O’Rourke

 

“He had no real zest for the job; that was lost in the past and he was beyond the age of eagerness. The old urge for trouble had died in his chest, the once bright game had passed on to younger men.”

That is Mr. O’Rourke describing an aging John McCabe’s view of having lost his taste for plunging into wild ways.

In this blog, I have made it no secret that I consider O’Rourke one of the best in the genre even…even if many of his novels suffer from plots that hew to formula.

I read O’Rourke not for the freshness of the tale [that can occur] but for the riding along for a while inside the skull of a Man who Sees the World.

A Man who Sees the world well.

I won’t offer plot here, that is seldom the way in these pages, rather I will offer another extract.

Here we go from food at a station to ride along on a stagecoach to first viewing of a town.

One paragraph. One.

It tells far more than the words on the page.

“He rose early and ate his breakfast at the counter before the other passengers came down, and took his place beside the driver on the top seat, busied himself with a stick on his muddy boots when she came to the door. He rode all day in moody silence that bothered the driver, and eventually pulled them completely apart. He watched the changing land as they galloped north along the river, made their stop at noon to change teams, and galloped on again. Two hours before sunset they swung into a broader road lined with houses and barns and fields. They clattered over a planked creek bridge and swung into a wide street that boasted the business of this town--- eight solid blocks of stores and saloons and hotels, all slapped together in a rush from green lumber, but there to stay and to be replaced by the brick, for this town was a comer. They pushed into the stage yard and stopped and the lassitude that followed so much movement struck them all as they got down and looked about at the town.”

One paragraph. More setting, character, and story than many an entire chapter.

Winter Count by Barry Lopez

 

What I remember most from the first visit, however, was neither the dryness nor the cactus but the wind. When I was a child in California the Santa Ana wind that came west to us from this side of the mountains seemed to me exotic but aloof. The wind I found in this upper Sonoran country with my father was very different. It was intoxicating. The wind had a quality of wild refinement about it, like horses turning around suddenly in the air by your ear. Whether it blew steadily or in bursts its strength seemed so evenly to diminish as you turned your face to it, it was as though someone had exhaled through silk. I have never since felt so enticed or comforted by the simple movement of air.

This slim volume of short stories [9 total] by the noted naturalist, Barry Lopez highlights his knowledge Plains Indians and the Land---very much the Land.

Those familiar with Lopez, either thru his work with National Geographic or his nonfiction works Arctic Dreams and Of Wolves and Men can expect the writing quality to be high and the observations of natural phenomenon to be gimlet focused.

That is, indeed, what one finds here.

I will say each story, while interesting, is of the elliptical style, where often the point or even the finale of the story is a bit…lost in the horizon, very much like the horizon of the Land Mr. Lopez describes so well.

At a slim page count [my copy runs 112 pages] and written with clear intelligence, I am not sorry I spent time with it.

I will admit, I am philistine enough to long for tighter plotting once I finish such New Yorker fare no matter how Western or skillfully done.

“Trouble Weather” by Lauren Paine

 

Carter stood up. His height seemed to tower over her. “Your family likes Nevada, doesn't it?”

“Yes. We've had it hard here, but we like it…we're going to stay.”

“Then do something for Nevada. Not just for Will, but for Nevada… for yourselves. Pioneers don't come to a wilderness just to take, ma'am… they come to give.”

“I'll do it,” Mister Alvarado.

My first encounter with the mighty prolific Mr. Paine.

I hardly know if this example is typical, but it struck me as on par with mid-to-late L’Amour: brisk, amiable, nothing deep, and given to a bit of preacher-ness.

Note, not preachiness, which is pushing the lesson a little too hard at the expense of story, but rather Preacherness, where the piece and the point of view seem intertwined.

Without looking around, Dago said, “The Indians used to have, Carter let the deed die with the wind. You go on back to town.”

Overall, a fine story, no roof shaker but fine afternoon fare all the same.