Latigo by Frank O’Rourke

“I want you to see the town,” Addis said. “You’ll feel more at home tomorrow.”

“We can’t see much at night.”

“You can see it all,” Addis said mildly. “You’ve got to smell a strange town, feel it in your bones; hear the dogs bark, count the saloons and the stores, listen to the wind on the street and notice the pickle barrel on the depot platform.”

“I can see it all tomorrow,” he said.

“No,” Addis said. “You’ve got to look at a town like you judge a woman. Appearance is mostly what she wants you to see in her. And towns are like women. You’ve got to look underneath, look for the character when you meet a woman. Not her face or her size. You see what you think is in the woman. If you see just the body, the face, you see nothing. And a town is like a woman.”

I am an unabashed Frank O’Rourke fan. He novel The Last Chance [also reviewed on this blog] is easily in my top ten favorite Western novels.

He offers easy unforced authenticity in his action, but it is his facile offhand remarks and insights into character that mark his breed. Small vignettes like the above that give much of his work a mature flavor that raises it above the mere formulaic shoot ‘em up.

He allows these little homilies to inform who each character is, often allowing us to find the size of them through a single act, remark, thought or gesture.

Upon witnessing a soiled dove falling in the street…

“Jim do you think we should have helped?”

“Her?”

“She was in the mud. Did you see the bruises on her legs?”

“You’ve got a quick eye, Tom.”

“I didn’t mean that,” Ellington said.

“I know it…but she went back for more.”

“But why, Jim?”

Addis bit off the tip of a wrinkled cigar, licked the dry outer leaf, and scratched a match on the rosetted neck of the wooden horse guarding the harness shop door.

“Human nature, Tom. Think she’d be in that dive if she didn’t enjoy the life? She grew up, maybe she sang in a choir like that one over yonder. Whatever happened, she didn’t say no. She had a man, some more men, she went on the town. She was in the mud tonight, she’ll be in the mud again. You can’t change people, Tom. That’s why I never interfere.”

O’Rourke’s observations remind me of John D. MacDonald’s wry commentary found in his late 50’s and early 60’s work. And the MacDonald comparison is apt, as this novel plays more as a noir tale than a strict oater.

While not O’Rourke’s best, still mighty mighty strong.