Bound: What Becomes of the Broken Heartland
Exploring the Hollers and Knobs of Donald Ray Pollock
“Some people were born just so that they could be buried,” thinks lawman Lee Bodecker in Donald Ray Pollock’s The Devil All the Time (Doubleday $26.95). The thought is sparked by the ”sad, worn-out-looking fucker” standing before him, but it also brings to mind his mother. Had he the capacity, the shady future sheriff should have added that other people were born just so they could be bad. After all, those are the two kinds of folks he knows most intimately. In fact, those are just about the only kinds of folks he knows period.
The trick was being bad without getting yourself buried for it. As the law, Bodecker believes he’s got that licked. Like everybody else in the broken heartland he calls home, however, Bodecker’s beliefs tend to get the best of him. And that’s not saying much.
Belief though is just about all anybody’s got in Ross County, Ohio, a sparsely-populated rectangle in the dead center south of the state. Since it’s within spitting distance of the Appalachians, you could say the county is part of something bigger than itself. One look around its weedy hollers and knobs, might make you reconsider. As folks there know, saying ain’t being.
While Ross County may be too low to rank among the Highlands, there’s no doubting its pedigree as part of the region known as Appalachia. Nobody there mentions this, naturally. They don’t need to. It’s evident in every sliver of its composition. Besides, with all the boozing and burying, being bad and believing, there’s little time to consider one’s place in any cosmos, cultural or otherwise. Even if there were, it wouldn’t hide the fact that this no man’s land is utterly remote from everything and everyone — even from God.
Just ask Willard Russell, who comes out to his prayer log mornings and evenings to talk to The Man on High. Russell brings along his son Arvin too, though Arvin’s not much for talking or praying. When Mamma Russell falls deathly ill, Willard picks up the pace of the prayers and forces Arvin to do likewise. When that doesn’t seem to be working, he adds animal sacrifice to the equation. By the time Willard’s truly finished, he’s amassed an armada of crucified critters large enough to sink Noah’s Ark. We’re still wonderin’ whether the bloodspill put him any closer to God.
For other Godly matters, you could also turn to Brothers Roy and Theodore. Roy’s a preachy sort, and his peculiar firebrand act includes eating fistfuls of spiders; Theodore is his crippled sidekick. The Mutt and Jeff team are not really brothers, mind you; they’re cousins, though “sometimes [Theodore] wished they weren’t so closely related.” See “he’d had feelings for along time that he couldn’t pray away… and he couldn’t accept that the Lord thought such a thing a sin.”
The Lord frowns upon a few other things too, which is probably why Roy ends up with a flamingo and Theodore with a clown. But even on their most sinful days the cousins couldn’t hold a re-used candle to Carl and Sandy Henderson, who troll for hitchhikers with a serial zeal. Carl’s a shutterbug; Sandy’s a whore. And if you peeped even one of the images the couple comes up with on their diabolical journeys, you’ll agree both are way beyond bent.
Preacher Teagarden’s pretty bent too, albeit in a more normally abnormal manner, and, despite his initial misgivings, the mouthy sadist makes quick use of the congregation he finds in West Virginia’s Coal Creek Church of the Holy Ghost Sanctified. The rest of the folks at foul play on this barren field of dreamlessness are more sad than bad, by which I mean absolutely tragic. Though for some strange reason the complete hopelessness doesn’t make them any less compelling.
Maybe if the bad weren’t around those destined simply for burial would stand a chance. Then again, maybe not. Not here anyway. For here is a place where even chance lies down in surrender. You’ll recall the brutally gifted Donald Ray Pollock first gave us a glimpse of all this in ‘08 with a cold, hard book of shorts entitled Knockemstiff. In The Devil, he’s given us its dire due.
If you dig your fiction filthy and your characters even filthier, you’ll dig Donald Ray. If you’re partial to the kinda people who make Justified so much fun to peep in on, you’ll dig him even more. And if you’ve ever wondered what becomes of a broken heartland, one get with The Devil and you’ll wonder no more.
