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Executive Times |
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2008 Book Reviews |
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Fine Just
the Way It Is: Wyoming Stories 3 by Annie Proulx |
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Rating: |
*** |
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(Recommended) |
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Click
on title or picture to buy from amazon.com |
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Devilish The
nine short stories in Annie Proulx’ latest collection, Fine Just
the Way It Is: Wyoming Stories 3, are packed with characters and
descriptions and solid prose that will delight most readers. Even the devil
makes an appearance. These stories, like the title of one, are fine just the
way they are. Here’s an excerpt, from the story titled, “Them Old Cowboy
Songs,” pp. 49-50: A parade of saddle bums drifted
through the Peck bunkhouse and from an early age Archie listened to the songs
they sang. He was a quick study for a tune, had a memory for rhymes, verses
and intonations. When Mrs. Peck went to the land of no breakfast forever,
caught in a grass conflagration she started while singeing slaughtered
chickens, Archie was fourteen and Bunk in his early twenties. Without Mrs.
Peck as buffer, the relationship became one of hired hand and boss. There had
never been any sense of kinship, fictive or otherwise, between them.
Especially did Bunk Peck burn over the hundred dollars his mother left Archie
in her will. Everyone
in the sparsely settled country was noted for some salty dog quirk or talent.
Chay Sump had a way with the Utes, and it was to him people went when they
needed fine tanned hides. Lightning Willy, after incessant practice, shot
both pistol and carbine accurately from the waist, seemingly without aiming.
Bible Bob possessed a nose for gold on the strength of his discovery of
promising color high on the slope of Singlebit Peak. And Archie McLaverty had
a singing voice that once heard was never forgotten. It was a straight, hard
voice, the words falling out halfway between a shout and a song. Sad and flat
and without ornamentation, it expressed things felt but unsayable. He sang
plain and square-cut, "Brandy's brandy, any way you mix it, a Texian's a
Texian any way you fix it," and the listeners laughed at the droll way
he rolled out "fix it," the words surely meaning castration. And
when he moved into "The Old North Trail," laconic and a little
hoarse, people got set for half an hour of the true history they all knew as
he made his way through countless verses. He could sing every song "Go
Long Blue Dog," and "When the Green Grass Comes," "Don't
Pull off My Boots," and "Two Quarts of Whiskey," and at all-male
roundup nights he had endless verses of "The Stinkin
Cow," "The Buckskin Shirt" and "Cousin Harry." He
courted Rose singing "never marry no goodfor-nothin boy," the boy
understood to be himself, the "good-fornothin" a disclaimer.
Later, with winks and innuendo, he sang, "Little girl, for safety you
better get branded . . ." Archie, advised by an
ex-homesteader working for Bunk Peck, used his inheritance from Mrs. Peck to
buy eighty acres of private land. It would have cost nothing if they had
filed for a homestead twice that size on public land, or eight times larger
on desert land, but Archie feared the government would discover he was a
minor, nor did he want a five-year burden of obligatory cultivation and
irrigation. Since he had never expected anything from Mrs. Peck, buying the
land with the surprise legacy seemed like getting it for free. And it was
immediately theirs with no strings attached. Archie, thrilled to be a
landowner, told Rose he had to sing the metes and bounds. He started on the
southwest corner and headed east. It was something he reckoned had to be
done. Rose walked along with him at the beginning and even tried to sing with
him but got out of breath from walking so fast and singing at the same time.
Nor did she know the words to many of his songs. Archie kept going. It took
him hours. Late in the afternoon he was on the west line, drawing near and
still singing though his voice was raspy, "an we'll go downtown, an
we'll buy some shirts . . .," and slouching down the slope the last
hundred feet in the evening dusk so worn of voice she could hardly hear him
breathily half-chant "never had a nickel and I don't give a shit." Life
is hard and Proulx captures life at its best in her stories. Enjoy Fine Just
the Way It Is. Steve
Hopkins, October 20, 2008 |
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Go to Executive Times Archives |
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The recommendation rating for
this book appeared in the November 2008 issue of Executive Times URL for this review: http://www.hopkinsandcompany.com/Books/Fine Just the Way It Is.htm For Reprint Permission,
Contact: Hopkins & Company, LLC • E-mail: books@hopkinsandcompany.com |
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