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Big City Girl
Her husband in jail, a desperate young woman takes refuge among sharecroppers
Once, Cass Neely’s farm stretched across the entire valley, but decades of bad decisions and rotten luck have forced him to sell off nearly every inch. He and his son farm the meager remains of a once-great property, living in a grim downward spiral—until Cass’s daughter-in-law, Joy, moves in. She’s by far the most beautiful thing this county has ever seen, but she’s flat broke since her husband, Sewell, was put away for armed robbery. She’s also prickly, lazy, and vain—traits that don’t sit well with hardscrabble living—and it isn’t long before she starts to get a violent case of cabin fever. As the rains bear down and the river starts to threaten the cotton, Sewell escapes from police custody and heads for home. Come hell or high water, the Neely family will stick together, even if it means disaster.
Once, Cass Neely’s farm stretched across the entire valley, but decades of bad decisions and rotten luck have forced him to sell off nearly every inch. He and his son farm the meager remains of a once-great property, living in a grim downward spiral—until Cass’s daughter-in-law, Joy, moves in. She’s by far the most beautiful thing this county has ever seen, but she’s flat broke since her husband, Sewell, was put away for armed robbery. She’s also prickly, lazy, and vain—traits that don’t sit well with hardscrabble living—and it isn’t long before she starts to get a violent case of cabin fever. As the rains bear down and the river starts to threaten the cotton, Sewell escapes from police custody and heads for home. Come hell or high water, the Neely family will stick together, even if it means disaster.
199 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 1951
9 people are currently reading
91 people want to read
About the author
Charles Williams
33 books100 followersLibrarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.
Please see: Charles Williams
Charles Williams was one of the preeminent authors of American crime fiction. Born in Texas, he dropped out of high school to enlist in the US Merchant Marine, serving for ten years (1929-1939) before leaving to work in the electronics industry. He was a radio inspector during the war years at the Puget Sound Navy Yard in Washington state. At the end of World War II, Williams began writing fiction while living in San Francisco. The success of his backwoods noir Hill Girl (1951) allowed him to quit his job and write fulltime.
Williams’s clean and somewhat casual narrative style distinguishes his novels—which range from hard-boiled, small-town noir to suspense thrillers set at sea and in the Deep South. Although originally published by pulp fiction houses, his work won great critical acclaim, with Hell Hath No Fury (1953) becoming the first paperback original to be reviewed by legendary New York Times critic Anthony Boucher. Many of his novels were adapted for the screen, such as Dead Calm (published in 1963) and Don’t Just Stand There! (published in 1966), for which Williams wrote the screenplay.
After the death of his wife Lasca (m. 1939) from cancer in 1972, Williams purchased property on the California-Oregon border where he lived alone for a time in a trailer. After relocating to Los Angeles, Williams committed suicide in his apartment in the Van Nuys neighborhood in early April 1975. Williams had been depressed since the death of his wife, and his emotional state worsened as sales of his books declined when stand alone thrillers began to lose popularity in the early 70s. He was survived by a daughter, Alison.
Please see: Charles Williams
Charles Williams was one of the preeminent authors of American crime fiction. Born in Texas, he dropped out of high school to enlist in the US Merchant Marine, serving for ten years (1929-1939) before leaving to work in the electronics industry. He was a radio inspector during the war years at the Puget Sound Navy Yard in Washington state. At the end of World War II, Williams began writing fiction while living in San Francisco. The success of his backwoods noir Hill Girl (1951) allowed him to quit his job and write fulltime.
Williams’s clean and somewhat casual narrative style distinguishes his novels—which range from hard-boiled, small-town noir to suspense thrillers set at sea and in the Deep South. Although originally published by pulp fiction houses, his work won great critical acclaim, with Hell Hath No Fury (1953) becoming the first paperback original to be reviewed by legendary New York Times critic Anthony Boucher. Many of his novels were adapted for the screen, such as Dead Calm (published in 1963) and Don’t Just Stand There! (published in 1966), for which Williams wrote the screenplay.
After the death of his wife Lasca (m. 1939) from cancer in 1972, Williams purchased property on the California-Oregon border where he lived alone for a time in a trailer. After relocating to Los Angeles, Williams committed suicide in his apartment in the Van Nuys neighborhood in early April 1975. Williams had been depressed since the death of his wife, and his emotional state worsened as sales of his books declined when stand alone thrillers began to lose popularity in the early 70s. He was survived by a daughter, Alison.
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December 28, 2024
I’ve never been much tempted by the Kindle Unlimited service, mainly because they don’t seem to offer many books that I would be interested in. However recently Amazon offered me a 3-month trial for £0.99. At that price I thought I may as well give it a go. This novel was offered as part of the subscription, and I was mildly curious about it since I’d seen reviews from GR Friends.
This is an early 1950s novel, and I don’t know whether you would call it Southern noir or Southern pulp. If the latter it’s a lot better written than other books of its type. There are 3 main characters, brothers Sewell and Mitch Neely, and Sewell’s wife Joy. She is the “big city girl” of the title. When Sewell, who is one mean hombre, is sent to prison, an almost penniless Joy travels from Houston to stay with her in laws, who are dirt poor Louisiana sharecroppers. A younger Neely sibling, a teenage girl called Jessie, also plays a significant role.
Modern women might find it hard to relate to Joy, as her self-esteem is closely linked to the interest men show in her, due to her looks. Inwardly she rails against this tendency, but ultimately she can’t help it. Joy’s personality seemed a bit overdone, but if you want a plot, then this one fairly races along. Sewell escapes from custody and despite his crimes the author gets us to identify with him during the “chase” scenes. I found myself willing him to escape – nice work by the author! There’s a good background feel to this one as well.
The ending was maybe a bit implausible, but you can’t really complain given the genre. It's a really good “page-turner”. I might read one or two of the author’s other novels before my trial subscription expires.
This is an early 1950s novel, and I don’t know whether you would call it Southern noir or Southern pulp. If the latter it’s a lot better written than other books of its type. There are 3 main characters, brothers Sewell and Mitch Neely, and Sewell’s wife Joy. She is the “big city girl” of the title. When Sewell, who is one mean hombre, is sent to prison, an almost penniless Joy travels from Houston to stay with her in laws, who are dirt poor Louisiana sharecroppers. A younger Neely sibling, a teenage girl called Jessie, also plays a significant role.
Modern women might find it hard to relate to Joy, as her self-esteem is closely linked to the interest men show in her, due to her looks. Inwardly she rails against this tendency, but ultimately she can’t help it. Joy’s personality seemed a bit overdone, but if you want a plot, then this one fairly races along. Sewell escapes from custody and despite his crimes the author gets us to identify with him during the “chase” scenes. I found myself willing him to escape – nice work by the author! There’s a good background feel to this one as well.
The ending was maybe a bit implausible, but you can’t really complain given the genre. It's a really good “page-turner”. I might read one or two of the author’s other novels before my trial subscription expires.
December 6, 2024
Ever since I watched Rob Zombie's The Devil's Rejects, I have been curious about books and movies that center around the lives of poor white folk from the American South, often classified as rednecks and hillibillies. Of course, there are the novels of John Steinbeck, William Faulkner, Erskine Caldwell and Harry Crews. But I am on the lookout for books that are a lot more obscure, over the top and lurid. The novels of Charles Williams were just what I was looking for. Big City Girl is my twelfth novel by this great writer whose novels are now out of print.
The Neelys are a poor cotton growing rural family, whose lives are turned upside down following the arrival of Joy, the blonde wife of Sewell Neely (convicted of armed robbery and murder), the elder son. Joy, an ex-beauty queen, dealing with demons of her own stemming from her fading beauty, turns Mitch Neely,the younger son against his gullible sister Jessie. The father Cass Neely is in a world of his own, collecting old automobiles and selling the family dog for a radio to keep track of his son Sewell's sentencing. A parallel plot involves Sewell escaping from two cruel policemen who are taking him to penitentiary. This part of the novel is superior to the goings on at the Neely barn. Williams understands what drives these men, who are forces of nature, unable to control their base instincts.
Williams tackles many themes including the vagaries of cotton farming, nature playing games with the Neelys and the advent of mass media and its impact upon these poor folk who live purely on instinct. Big City Girl works as a great "man on the run" novel. The parts with Sewell Nealy on the run were fantastic. As a portrait of the inner life of Mitch Nealy, who is trying to save the cotton crop from grass and floods while trying to stave off the temptations lined up by the scantily clad Joy, it works to a lesser extent, maybe because there are great writers like Steinbeck who have already been there.
The Neelys are a poor cotton growing rural family, whose lives are turned upside down following the arrival of Joy, the blonde wife of Sewell Neely (convicted of armed robbery and murder), the elder son. Joy, an ex-beauty queen, dealing with demons of her own stemming from her fading beauty, turns Mitch Neely,the younger son against his gullible sister Jessie. The father Cass Neely is in a world of his own, collecting old automobiles and selling the family dog for a radio to keep track of his son Sewell's sentencing. A parallel plot involves Sewell escaping from two cruel policemen who are taking him to penitentiary. This part of the novel is superior to the goings on at the Neely barn. Williams understands what drives these men, who are forces of nature, unable to control their base instincts.
Williams tackles many themes including the vagaries of cotton farming, nature playing games with the Neelys and the advent of mass media and its impact upon these poor folk who live purely on instinct. Big City Girl works as a great "man on the run" novel. The parts with Sewell Nealy on the run were fantastic. As a portrait of the inner life of Mitch Nealy, who is trying to save the cotton crop from grass and floods while trying to stave off the temptations lined up by the scantily clad Joy, it works to a lesser extent, maybe because there are great writers like Steinbeck who have already been there.
November 7, 2022
"Big City Girl" was Williams' second published novel in 1951. He did publish three novels that same year, including his first one which was a major hit. "Big City Girl" is at once country pulp (or country blues as one commentator has put it) like Harry Whittington would write and crime thriller.
It is the story of a convicted robber, Sewell, on his way to the state penitentiary for what could be potentially the rest of his life, his bold escape, and his life on the run with every deputy and public minded citizen on the lookout for him. It is also the story of his wife, Joy, the Big City Girl, of the title, who, penniless, leaves the city to live for a time with Sewell's father and siblings on what remains of the farm out in the country. Sewell's father is an old, cantankerous broken down man. His brother is determined to save the farm, despite the fact that it may be only a hope and a prayer that anything will grow there and that the river won't rise and flood the fields. Everything they own has been sold piece by piece. They live in a one bedroom house without much. They are country poor and there isn't much left to sell except maybe the dog.
Joy is the character of the title and she is an aging beauty contest winner who frets that at the ripe old age of twenty-eight she may be too old and used up to attract attention, to attract a man. She is forever talking about her beauty contest days and her modeling days and wearing outfits too skimpy to avoid attracting the wrong kind of attention. Her first husband gambled away everything they owned. Her second husband is on the run from the law. She has only her figure left and she is morose and bitter.
Williams writes wonderfully and takes the reader into this bitter, desolate world with these incredible characters that just come to life on the page. This is a book that is easy to read and just absolutely engrossing. It is not as pulpy as some of his later novels. It is, however, just damn good writing. Highly recommended.
It is the story of a convicted robber, Sewell, on his way to the state penitentiary for what could be potentially the rest of his life, his bold escape, and his life on the run with every deputy and public minded citizen on the lookout for him. It is also the story of his wife, Joy, the Big City Girl, of the title, who, penniless, leaves the city to live for a time with Sewell's father and siblings on what remains of the farm out in the country. Sewell's father is an old, cantankerous broken down man. His brother is determined to save the farm, despite the fact that it may be only a hope and a prayer that anything will grow there and that the river won't rise and flood the fields. Everything they own has been sold piece by piece. They live in a one bedroom house without much. They are country poor and there isn't much left to sell except maybe the dog.
Joy is the character of the title and she is an aging beauty contest winner who frets that at the ripe old age of twenty-eight she may be too old and used up to attract attention, to attract a man. She is forever talking about her beauty contest days and her modeling days and wearing outfits too skimpy to avoid attracting the wrong kind of attention. Her first husband gambled away everything they owned. Her second husband is on the run from the law. She has only her figure left and she is morose and bitter.
Williams writes wonderfully and takes the reader into this bitter, desolate world with these incredible characters that just come to life on the page. This is a book that is easy to read and just absolutely engrossing. It is not as pulpy as some of his later novels. It is, however, just damn good writing. Highly recommended.
April 1, 2008
Big City Girl is not a particularly accurate title for this book, and the cover illustration and tag ("Joy didn't belong in the hill country . . . but there she was") are rather misleading, too. Yes, Joy used to live in Houston and now she lives in the Texas sticks, but she does not spend the novel sexually tormenting the yokels, as the book's cover would have you believe. No doubt all of this was an effort to capitalize on the million-selling success of Charles Williams' debut novel, Hill Girl. In any case, Big City Girl, his second novel, is a clear step forward artistically from its predecessor. Though both novels mine the literary landscape of Erskine Caldwell, Hill Girl is concerned primarily with Caldwellian sexual titillation while Big City Girl moves closer to the world of criminal noir. Well executed and well worth seeking out.
December 4, 2024
amazing. great noir. fine writer.
February 14, 2013
This review is for the 2013 ebook release of Big City Girl. Open Road Integrated Media and Mysterious Press are rereleasing some great, older titles. Books written by Charles Williams are among them.
Thank you NetGalley and Open Road Media for the review copy of this book.
(side note - I love the original cover. Much better than the 2013 ebook version)
This story is titled "Big City Girl" but is told mostly from the perspective of two Neely brothers whose lives are changed because of her.
I am torn. On the one hand I loved going back in time and reading a clear, descriptive tale from days gone by. The story takes place before popular use of television. People still use horse and buggies alongside cars. Communication can take days and information is only shared through the newspaper or radio - if you are lucky enough to own one.
This trip into the past was fun and seemed fresh and exciting. I enjoyed the "new" surroundings and viewpoint. Williams writes wonderful action and scenery. He blends mood into the setting and it practically speaks as another character. That was amazing.
The part I didn't care for was Williams' overdone portrayal of Joy, the big city girl. She is drawn as a scheming, brainless, money hungry, self-absorbed, dumb blonde. She stares in the mirror and frets for hours about losing her looks - she's twenty eight. Williams was too heavy handed with her and it took away from the story. I realize this title was published in 1951 when women were viewed differently, I still think he went way too far.
I also had issue with the timeline. I believe the author made a mistake. In one plotline, weeks pass. In another, only a few days. Then the two stories come together as if on the same schedule. Perhaps Williams or the publishers of the original story didn't think readers would notice.
These rereleases are fun and I'm glad Mysterious Press is offering them. After using my ereader it is difficult to switch back to a paperback, but now we have options of great, older books in electronic format.
Thank you NetGalley and Open Road Media for the review copy of this book.
(side note - I love the original cover. Much better than the 2013 ebook version)
This story is titled "Big City Girl" but is told mostly from the perspective of two Neely brothers whose lives are changed because of her.
I am torn. On the one hand I loved going back in time and reading a clear, descriptive tale from days gone by. The story takes place before popular use of television. People still use horse and buggies alongside cars. Communication can take days and information is only shared through the newspaper or radio - if you are lucky enough to own one.
This trip into the past was fun and seemed fresh and exciting. I enjoyed the "new" surroundings and viewpoint. Williams writes wonderful action and scenery. He blends mood into the setting and it practically speaks as another character. That was amazing.
The part I didn't care for was Williams' overdone portrayal of Joy, the big city girl. She is drawn as a scheming, brainless, money hungry, self-absorbed, dumb blonde. She stares in the mirror and frets for hours about losing her looks - she's twenty eight. Williams was too heavy handed with her and it took away from the story. I realize this title was published in 1951 when women were viewed differently, I still think he went way too far.
I also had issue with the timeline. I believe the author made a mistake. In one plotline, weeks pass. In another, only a few days. Then the two stories come together as if on the same schedule. Perhaps Williams or the publishers of the original story didn't think readers would notice.
These rereleases are fun and I'm glad Mysterious Press is offering them. After using my ereader it is difficult to switch back to a paperback, but now we have options of great, older books in electronic format.
January 10, 2013
This is a darkly comic, tragic thriller of poor whites: a brother and husband turned killer escaped from deputy sheriffs; his brother, trying to keep what is left of his dad’s farm afloat; their 15 year old sister unsure of her brothers and her own future; their dad who has lost his mind, and the killer’s wife, an aging one time beauty queen, broke and living in this couple room shack.
Will the killer escape his police hunters? Will his brother be able to save their tiny cotton crop from a flooding river? Will the killer’s wife be able to escape this dead end life?
This thriller rushes you along until these questions reach their cataclysmic finale. This is a rich period piece reminiscent of Erskine Caldwell’s tales of poor white southerners.
Will the killer escape his police hunters? Will his brother be able to save their tiny cotton crop from a flooding river? Will the killer’s wife be able to escape this dead end life?
This thriller rushes you along until these questions reach their cataclysmic finale. This is a rich period piece reminiscent of Erskine Caldwell’s tales of poor white southerners.
November 18, 2009
At the time this awful mess was published everybody and their sister wrote a bad hillbilly novel to cash in on the millions that Erskine Caldwell made with "God's Little Acre". This is another one for the trash heap. Someone once wrote that the best thing about "Big City Girl" was the cover, and I concur.
July 8, 2016
Charles Williams is one of my many guilty pleasures. Here's my to-read list of his early stuff.
Hill Girl
River Girl (aka The Catfish Tangle)
Hell Hath No Fury (aka The Hot Spot)
Nothing in Her Way
Go Home, Stranger
A Touch of Death (aka Mix Yourself a Redhead)
Hill Girl
River Girl (aka The Catfish Tangle)
Hell Hath No Fury (aka The Hot Spot)
Nothing in Her Way
Go Home, Stranger
A Touch of Death (aka Mix Yourself a Redhead)
April 9, 2022
under-rated. wouldn't have known about him except read an old interview the Master - John D Macdonald and it was his favorite - little known author. HIs books were all made available digitally they have not re-printed. Id love to own a few originals. The Movie Dead Calm ( sailboat movie with a young Nicole Kidman) was based on one of his books. Poor guy committed suicide. I loved all his books so far. if you like John D. do yourself a favor.
February 14, 2026
This is the “worst” Charles Williams I’ve read. It’s even annoying at times, with its simply drawn characters and their foibles beaten into you repeatedly. Still, that keeps you turning the pages, to see what foolish destiny these characters will rush toward next.
And there is archetypal power in this story and its mixtape of Biblical characters, and that’s precisely the point. There’s a snake and a tree and a bespoiled garden and Cain and Abel and a flood and Eve and ruminations on temptation, sin and forgiveness and sacrifice.
Even pretty bad Charles Williams is pretty good.
***spoilers below***
He's thinking about the radio again; Mitch thought. He's got that damned radio in his mind and nothing'll get it out. Next spring he'll be wanting to know if maybe Mr. Sam won't let us get one on credit at the store. Keeps on raining like this and the crap grass choking you to death, and there ain't going to be enough credit at the store to buy a can of Prince Albert, but maybe Mr. Sam'll let us buy a radio. Maybe Sam'll buy us all some blue serge pants and yellow shoes so we can go parading up the road while the crap grass gets so rank you could hunt bears in it.
"Yessir," the boy said. "It's wet, ain't it?"
"You hear that, Harve?", George asked, turning around to the back seat. "He says it's wet."
Harve wore the white hat that is the badge of the southern law officer. He had a long-jawed, bony face with eyes the color of brown swamp water and two gold teeth that showed only when he grinned. He looked at the boy, who was trying to put on an air of worldliness.
"You know, maybe we better agree with him, George," he said. "He looks like a tough bastard."
"What would happen if we didn't think it was wet?" George asked. "We're strangers around here and don't want to get in trouble."
"Well, heck," the boy said, still trying to look offhand and smart. "It's just something you say, like it's a fine morning.
"You see, George," Harve said. "I told you he was tough. He's trying to make suckers out of us. He's got us to say it's a wet night and now he tells us it's a fine morning."
If I'm going to wish for a smoke, though, he thought, I might as well go whole hog and wish I had a gun. I wonder if these two-for-a-nickel clowns really think they can get a rise out of me. They must think I'm some kid who's never been worked on before. Next thing, they l! be offering me a Coke and then taking it away when I reach for it. They'd probably think something like that was new and pat theirselves on the back for thinking it up. They'd go pretty good shoving that pimple-faced kid around, but they should have got me when I was younger if they wanted to have any fun.
You can see they're used to handling chicken thieves and guys they pick up in crap games, way they got me in here, with one arm handcuffed to this horse-faced pimple-head and the other one loose. It's a good thing that old sheriff wasn't around when we loaded up to start. He's a smart old stud and he knows his business and he'd have chewed their tails out.
Maybe, though, if you look at it another way, it ain't such a good thing for 'em, at that. If he'd been there to tell 'em how to transport a prisoner, maybe this time tomorrow night they'd be back there shaking down the hustlers around the beer joints and picking their teeth in front of the courthouse, and I'd be starting a life sentence in a place I couldn't get out of. You both better take a good look at her, boys, because there's three of us that likely ain't ever going to see none of it again.
It would be the same face, there would be no mistaking that, with the little brown beauty mark of a mole just beyond the corner of the slightly pouting red-lipped mouth, but there would be now the revealing evidences that flesh has weight and can fall, and the skin would be coarser and all the pathetic camouflage of make-up would not be able to hide entirely the pitiless erosion of the years.
Then would begin the panicky urge to fly from the bed and turn on the light to look in the mirror and drive it away. She would lie perfectly still and try not to think about the mirror, the way a man with bladder trouble would try not to think of the bathroom so far away down the hall. It's not true, she would tell herself. There's no sign of it. And then she would start to hear again the brutal laughter of Sewell there in the jail.
"Do you think he did it, Mitch?"
"Did what?" he asked.
"All those horrible things they said he did. Do you think it's true? You knew him better than anybody else. Do you think he held up people and shot at the police and beat up people for gamblers? What do gamblers want people beat up for? And if they had to, why didn't they do it themselves and not get Sewell mixed up in it? Do you think he did those things?"
"Yes," he said. She'd know it if I tried to lie to her, he thought.
"But why? Why, Mitch?"
"Jessie, I don't know."
"He used to make wagons for me. At Christmas. With wheels sawed off the end of a round sweet-gum log.
I reckon an argument like that wouldn't hold up in court, he thought, but it would take a long time to explain to her why it wouldn't.
“Now you've insulted him like that, he won't come back no more."
"I can stand it," Mitch said.
He walked over to where Cass was knotting the line about Mexico's neck.
"You going somewhere with Mexico?" he asked, choking on the fury inside him but keeping his voice quiet because he didn't want Jessie to hear it in the kitchen and because he knew he was fighting water that would flow around him until he drowned in it without ever finding a solid place/to hit.
"I ain't one to put a dawg ahead of my family," Cass said with martyred politeness.
"I didn't say nothing about that. I said, where you going with Mexico?"
"Ain't air one around here that's got more regard for Mexico than I have, but my family comes first with me." You could talk all day and never get an answer, Mitch thought. "Where you going with Mexico?" he insisted.
"Maybe it's my fault that I ain't hardhearted enough to just set here and do nothing while they chase my boy around the state with guns like he was a wild animal and not do nothing about it and not even know where he is, change."
but that's the way I am, and I'm getting too old to
"You figure that's going to be a big help to Sewell, setting in front of a radio and hearing 'em talk about him?"
"No. It won't help Sewell none, unless there's some way the Almighty can let him know that there was at least one of us cared enough about him to try to find out where he was."
I could stop him, Mitch thought. It ain't that I ain't big enough to stop him, but it's what would happen afterward. Any man can raise his hand against his daddy if he wants to, when he's big enough, but he can't never live with him any more. Sewell did it when he sold his guitar, he hit him and called him a name nobody can call his own daddy and ever forget about it afterward, but he left when he had done it.
"You ought to have more compassion for others. Jessie's your sister, same as Sewell's your brother, and you don't think about neither one of 'em. All you got time for is tearing into the crop like a man killing snakes. She ought to come and listen to the radio some. It'd get her in a better frame of mind."
"I wouldn't wait till she did," Mitch said.
"You think maybe she's still upset about the dawg?"
"No," Mitch said coldly. "The dawg's only been around here for about nine years, since she was six years old.
And he's been gone for two days now. She's all over that." Cass was silent for a few minutes, then he asked, "You think maybe Sewell will get away from 'em?"
"No," Mitch said. "He won't get away."
"Well, they ain't found no sign of him yet."
"They will."
"How can you say that?" Cass complained. "Don't nobody know. He might."
"Ain't nobody can get away from 'em when they want him bad enough."
Cass sighed. "Well, it's easy enough to say if you just don't care, I reckon."
Mitch pushed back his chair and got up.
"Sure wish I could get around," Cass said plaintively.*
"It's saddening to a man not to be able to do his part when there's so much to be done."
Mitch did not answer. He went on out into the back yard.
The next day was hot and clear, and then the next, while he fought his way down the hillside and started out across the bottom, driving the mules and the cultivator ahead of him like a lank and bitter-faced avenging angel in pursuit of devils. Cass sat by the radio through the long hours drawn by the secret and magic ecstasy of hearing his name broadcast over the air, but they had not found Sewell. Neely has disappeared, the radio said, carrying his name into millions of homes along with Truman's and Stalin's.
Neely has disappeared into air.
JESSIE stroked her head soothingly. "Joy! That's no way to talk. You know it's not so. You've got us. And I don't know anybody as pretty as you are."
"You don't have to say that, honey," Joy said miserably.
"It's sweet of you to try to cheer me up, but you don't have to say things like that."
"But I mean it, Joy."
Maybe she does, at that, Joy thought. She's a funny kid.
She wouldn't lie to a bear that was going to eat her.
I know what's the matter with that Mitch. He's just afraid of me, that's all. Trying to pretend like I'm an old bag that nobody'd want, and he's just afraid of me. I could twist him around my finger any time I wanted to.
And I'll do it, too.
"My, but you look pretty," Jessie was saying. "Don't you feel better now?"
Joy smiled. "Honey, I feel like a new woman."
The thought of Sewell was hard enough to bear without hearing the whole brutal mess turned into a circus for the hundreds of thousands who had nothing better to do than listen like ghouls for the sordid and shameful end of a man who could have been something different. And the thought of Cass in there in the dark keeping his macabre vigil before the idiot mouthings of the detested box and waiting along with all the others for the inevitable destruction of his son was a thing to be avoided, and he kept away from it.
His arms hurt and his hands were heavy as he moved them. They shook as he put them on her waist, and he could feel the smoothness of her there just beyond the flimsy cloth. He brought them on up with a rush, placed them against her shoulders, and shoved. She shot backward, tripped over a high heel in the sand, and fell sprawling with a pale flash of bare arms and legs in the starlight.
Dry air burned in his throat and his mouth tasted coppery as he stood breathing heavily and looking down at her.
"Can't you even wait till they kill him?" he asked savagely. Then he turned and walked down the black trail beyond the barn, not knowing or caring which way he went.
She lay crumpled on her side like a long-stemmed and wilted flower with her hair and the side of her face in the dirt. Her dress had flown up about her waist when she fell and she could feel the gritty abrasiveness of sand under her sprawled bare legs, and when she clenched her mouth tightly shut to keep from screaming she could taste the sand and hear the gritty sound of it between her teeth. She rolled her head from side to side in a sickening agony of rage and shame and humiliation, and she put her hand up against her mouth and bit it until she tasted blood while she gave birth to the second great passion of her life. The first had always been love of herself, and the second was hatred of Mitch Neely.
There had been no rain for nearly a week and it should
have been dropping toward midsummer level, but instead it was higher than it had been during the rain and had risen another inch since noon. He stood watching it slip past, silt-laden and flecked with foam, critically assaying the amount and size of drift it was carrying. It was still rising, all right.
He had seen it do that twice in his life, keep coming up when there had been no rain, raised by heavy downpours somewhere far upriver, and the last time had been seven
years ago when it had almost flooded the bottom fields, the year Sewell had gone away.
He turned and went back out toward the field and looked up at the sky when he got out of the timber.
There was something disquieting and strangely uneasy about the whole day. It was too still, for one thing, and sultry, with an oppressive deadness about the air that worried him. It reminded him of the tense and foreboding hush that falls over a group of men when there is about to be a fight. But there were no clouds. The sky was clear and it was perfectly normal weather for late June except for the oppressive stillness.
"Still ain't no news about Sewell," Cass said, after he had hobbled painfully in from the front room.
"Poor Sewell," Joy said sadly. "It's so tragic."
She picked a hell of a time to find out how tragic it is about poor Sewell, Mitch thought. Where's she been the past three years?
I think the reason they always catch you in the end is that they wear you out. They get you tired. They work in shifts and you work all the time, and when you get a chance to go to sleep your nerves are still working. Well, if you want to take a vacation you can always go and give yourself up. They always got the welcome sign out for cop-killers. Take a long rest in the back room with the light in your eyes.
It fooled ‘em, he thought, and started to swing his head slowly around to look out at the opposite bank for the other two when he heard an ominous and terrible buzzing just back of his ear like an egg beater whirring in a pile of dead leaves and felt all his nerve ends turn to ice in one of the few moments of absolute terror he had ever known.
Cold fury looked at him six inches in front of his face, and the deadly triangular head drew back to strike. The big rattler had been stretched along a limb as high as it could get out of the water it hated, and his movement or the pull of the current had disturbed the balance of the tree and rolled the limb downward toward the water.
There was no time to pull his head back or submerge.
One more slightest move and it would strike him full in the face. He brought a hand up and took the deadly, loathsome impact of it on his wrist and felt the puncture of the fangs. His hand closed over the body just back of the head and he pulled it below the surface, squeezing terribly with all his strength, feeling the sinuous, thick-bodied power of its threshing, and then the fangs pierced his hand once more before it stilled. He let it go and vomited into the water in front of his face.
There would be no help, and he expected none. Cass was beyond helping or being helped. It was not so much the physical disability of what had apparently become a permanent affliction of "the miseries" in his legs as it was his almost complete withdrawal from reality. It ain't like he was even here any more, Mitch thought. It's more like he wasn't just sitting in front of that radio now wait. ing for it to come out to him, but was trying to get in there where it was. He don't like this world no more because you get beat up so damn much in it, so he's finding himself another one.
No, not alone, he thought. I got the snake in me. I'm about as much alone as a woman seven months gone. I got nobody to talk to, but I got company just the same.
Cass began walking back and forth again. "Well, come on, Mitch. Gather up your stuff and let's go," he said wildly.
Mitched stared at him. "Go where?" he asked.
Cass stopped pacing and looked at him blankly, like a
bewildered and sodden-hatted kewpie doll left out in the rain. "Where?" he asked. "Where? Well, surely you ain't going to stay down here in the field. Don't you understand what I been saying? Sewell's in the river. He's been shot. You can't just stay down here and not do nothing."
"Just what do you expect me to do?" Mitch asked.
"Do? Why-why-" Cass said incredulously, "why, come up to the house. Listen to the radio. To the news." It was as if the whole course had been perfectly clear in his mind until Mitch had begun asking his stupid questions, and then he had to cast about for the answer himself.
Mitch began to comprehend some of it then. Sewell's been shot on the radio, he thought. He's in this river down here, but it's actually the radio river, or he can't make up his mind which it is, and they're hunting for him on the radio, and there can't none of it really happen anywhere except on the radio. He can't make up his mind whether it's really Sewell they're looking for or whether it's a radio game called Sewell Neely.
There had always been a deep and unspoken understanding between them. So unlike in many ways, the one corrupt, professionally violent, and criminal, and the other with his bitter honesty and a sort of harsh and thorn-protected, inarticulate capacity for love, they had always been able to meet on this common ground of a hard and unflinching realism. Courage was a quality each recognized and respected in the other; perhaps it had been passed on to them by their mother as valor is said to be in the breeding of fighting bulls, or perhaps it had been forced upon them by long association with the pitiful contrast of their father's weakness. At any rate, they understood each other now, and nodded, glad there had to be no further talk.
"Nobody ever believes anything until he hears it on the radio or sees it in the paper," Lambeth said wearily.
"God help the human race."
A look of ineffable surprise and disbelief spread slowly over his face, and a trickle of blood ran down out of the corner of his mouth. Mitch whirled then on Lambeth, but the photographer had been through too many of these sudden melees to be caught napping and had swung aside, out of reach, with the camera protected against his stomach like the hidden football in a tricky backfield play.
It's getting late, Mitch thought, aware of a faint surprise that this day might end, might have twilight and then cease to be, like other days.
"Jessie," he said again, coming into the room. "Jessie!
Listen to me. You ain't going with that-" He put a hand on her arm and she pulled away with that stony-faced yet almost imperceptible withdrawal that can be one of the most devastating things on earth and compared to which all male violence of blow and insult is utterly harmless.
She felt a genuine sorrow as she walked toward him; it was just that she was still practical enough to remember camera angles and the way she would look best in the picture at the same time she was so full of her grief.
It would be best, since Lambeth was on her left, to have most of her hair swing down on the right side of her face as she bent down, with just enough on the left to frame it. And they wouldn't want any legs in this pose of a wife grieving for her husband; she must be very demure about the legs, with just enough showing so it would be possible to see that they were nice. She halted, and started to kneel beside his shoulders.
She was looking down at the picture in her hand with that awful feeling of her mouth going wider and wider without sound. Her eyes shifted and the muzzle of the gun was a black tunnel toward which she was walking in the nightmare, a tunnel that grew larger and then, as she ran into it, suddenly filled with light-a huge, bursting circle of light without end.
Mitch reached her as she wilted and fell forward across Sewell like a gold-petaled flower cut down by the scythe.
Sewell was swinging outward into darkness again toward that dark beach and that brief period of time in which he had been happy with this girl now lying dead across his chest in a terrible and irrevocable wedding of the only two things he had ever loved: this same beautiful, lost, unhappy girl, and violence.
… he's living in another world, but he's got to get his meals in this one. I guess we wouldn't want to, anyhow. This is home, what there's left of it, and all you can do is hang tight and keep on trying.
And there is archetypal power in this story and its mixtape of Biblical characters, and that’s precisely the point. There’s a snake and a tree and a bespoiled garden and Cain and Abel and a flood and Eve and ruminations on temptation, sin and forgiveness and sacrifice.
Even pretty bad Charles Williams is pretty good.
***spoilers below***
He's thinking about the radio again; Mitch thought. He's got that damned radio in his mind and nothing'll get it out. Next spring he'll be wanting to know if maybe Mr. Sam won't let us get one on credit at the store. Keeps on raining like this and the crap grass choking you to death, and there ain't going to be enough credit at the store to buy a can of Prince Albert, but maybe Mr. Sam'll let us buy a radio. Maybe Sam'll buy us all some blue serge pants and yellow shoes so we can go parading up the road while the crap grass gets so rank you could hunt bears in it.
"Yessir," the boy said. "It's wet, ain't it?"
"You hear that, Harve?", George asked, turning around to the back seat. "He says it's wet."
Harve wore the white hat that is the badge of the southern law officer. He had a long-jawed, bony face with eyes the color of brown swamp water and two gold teeth that showed only when he grinned. He looked at the boy, who was trying to put on an air of worldliness.
"You know, maybe we better agree with him, George," he said. "He looks like a tough bastard."
"What would happen if we didn't think it was wet?" George asked. "We're strangers around here and don't want to get in trouble."
"Well, heck," the boy said, still trying to look offhand and smart. "It's just something you say, like it's a fine morning.
"You see, George," Harve said. "I told you he was tough. He's trying to make suckers out of us. He's got us to say it's a wet night and now he tells us it's a fine morning."
If I'm going to wish for a smoke, though, he thought, I might as well go whole hog and wish I had a gun. I wonder if these two-for-a-nickel clowns really think they can get a rise out of me. They must think I'm some kid who's never been worked on before. Next thing, they l! be offering me a Coke and then taking it away when I reach for it. They'd probably think something like that was new and pat theirselves on the back for thinking it up. They'd go pretty good shoving that pimple-faced kid around, but they should have got me when I was younger if they wanted to have any fun.
You can see they're used to handling chicken thieves and guys they pick up in crap games, way they got me in here, with one arm handcuffed to this horse-faced pimple-head and the other one loose. It's a good thing that old sheriff wasn't around when we loaded up to start. He's a smart old stud and he knows his business and he'd have chewed their tails out.
Maybe, though, if you look at it another way, it ain't such a good thing for 'em, at that. If he'd been there to tell 'em how to transport a prisoner, maybe this time tomorrow night they'd be back there shaking down the hustlers around the beer joints and picking their teeth in front of the courthouse, and I'd be starting a life sentence in a place I couldn't get out of. You both better take a good look at her, boys, because there's three of us that likely ain't ever going to see none of it again.
It would be the same face, there would be no mistaking that, with the little brown beauty mark of a mole just beyond the corner of the slightly pouting red-lipped mouth, but there would be now the revealing evidences that flesh has weight and can fall, and the skin would be coarser and all the pathetic camouflage of make-up would not be able to hide entirely the pitiless erosion of the years.
Then would begin the panicky urge to fly from the bed and turn on the light to look in the mirror and drive it away. She would lie perfectly still and try not to think about the mirror, the way a man with bladder trouble would try not to think of the bathroom so far away down the hall. It's not true, she would tell herself. There's no sign of it. And then she would start to hear again the brutal laughter of Sewell there in the jail.
"Do you think he did it, Mitch?"
"Did what?" he asked.
"All those horrible things they said he did. Do you think it's true? You knew him better than anybody else. Do you think he held up people and shot at the police and beat up people for gamblers? What do gamblers want people beat up for? And if they had to, why didn't they do it themselves and not get Sewell mixed up in it? Do you think he did those things?"
"Yes," he said. She'd know it if I tried to lie to her, he thought.
"But why? Why, Mitch?"
"Jessie, I don't know."
"He used to make wagons for me. At Christmas. With wheels sawed off the end of a round sweet-gum log.
I reckon an argument like that wouldn't hold up in court, he thought, but it would take a long time to explain to her why it wouldn't.
“Now you've insulted him like that, he won't come back no more."
"I can stand it," Mitch said.
He walked over to where Cass was knotting the line about Mexico's neck.
"You going somewhere with Mexico?" he asked, choking on the fury inside him but keeping his voice quiet because he didn't want Jessie to hear it in the kitchen and because he knew he was fighting water that would flow around him until he drowned in it without ever finding a solid place/to hit.
"I ain't one to put a dawg ahead of my family," Cass said with martyred politeness.
"I didn't say nothing about that. I said, where you going with Mexico?"
"Ain't air one around here that's got more regard for Mexico than I have, but my family comes first with me." You could talk all day and never get an answer, Mitch thought. "Where you going with Mexico?" he insisted.
"Maybe it's my fault that I ain't hardhearted enough to just set here and do nothing while they chase my boy around the state with guns like he was a wild animal and not do nothing about it and not even know where he is, change."
but that's the way I am, and I'm getting too old to
"You figure that's going to be a big help to Sewell, setting in front of a radio and hearing 'em talk about him?"
"No. It won't help Sewell none, unless there's some way the Almighty can let him know that there was at least one of us cared enough about him to try to find out where he was."
I could stop him, Mitch thought. It ain't that I ain't big enough to stop him, but it's what would happen afterward. Any man can raise his hand against his daddy if he wants to, when he's big enough, but he can't never live with him any more. Sewell did it when he sold his guitar, he hit him and called him a name nobody can call his own daddy and ever forget about it afterward, but he left when he had done it.
"You ought to have more compassion for others. Jessie's your sister, same as Sewell's your brother, and you don't think about neither one of 'em. All you got time for is tearing into the crop like a man killing snakes. She ought to come and listen to the radio some. It'd get her in a better frame of mind."
"I wouldn't wait till she did," Mitch said.
"You think maybe she's still upset about the dawg?"
"No," Mitch said coldly. "The dawg's only been around here for about nine years, since she was six years old.
And he's been gone for two days now. She's all over that." Cass was silent for a few minutes, then he asked, "You think maybe Sewell will get away from 'em?"
"No," Mitch said. "He won't get away."
"Well, they ain't found no sign of him yet."
"They will."
"How can you say that?" Cass complained. "Don't nobody know. He might."
"Ain't nobody can get away from 'em when they want him bad enough."
Cass sighed. "Well, it's easy enough to say if you just don't care, I reckon."
Mitch pushed back his chair and got up.
"Sure wish I could get around," Cass said plaintively.*
"It's saddening to a man not to be able to do his part when there's so much to be done."
Mitch did not answer. He went on out into the back yard.
The next day was hot and clear, and then the next, while he fought his way down the hillside and started out across the bottom, driving the mules and the cultivator ahead of him like a lank and bitter-faced avenging angel in pursuit of devils. Cass sat by the radio through the long hours drawn by the secret and magic ecstasy of hearing his name broadcast over the air, but they had not found Sewell. Neely has disappeared, the radio said, carrying his name into millions of homes along with Truman's and Stalin's.
Neely has disappeared into air.
JESSIE stroked her head soothingly. "Joy! That's no way to talk. You know it's not so. You've got us. And I don't know anybody as pretty as you are."
"You don't have to say that, honey," Joy said miserably.
"It's sweet of you to try to cheer me up, but you don't have to say things like that."
"But I mean it, Joy."
Maybe she does, at that, Joy thought. She's a funny kid.
She wouldn't lie to a bear that was going to eat her.
I know what's the matter with that Mitch. He's just afraid of me, that's all. Trying to pretend like I'm an old bag that nobody'd want, and he's just afraid of me. I could twist him around my finger any time I wanted to.
And I'll do it, too.
"My, but you look pretty," Jessie was saying. "Don't you feel better now?"
Joy smiled. "Honey, I feel like a new woman."
The thought of Sewell was hard enough to bear without hearing the whole brutal mess turned into a circus for the hundreds of thousands who had nothing better to do than listen like ghouls for the sordid and shameful end of a man who could have been something different. And the thought of Cass in there in the dark keeping his macabre vigil before the idiot mouthings of the detested box and waiting along with all the others for the inevitable destruction of his son was a thing to be avoided, and he kept away from it.
His arms hurt and his hands were heavy as he moved them. They shook as he put them on her waist, and he could feel the smoothness of her there just beyond the flimsy cloth. He brought them on up with a rush, placed them against her shoulders, and shoved. She shot backward, tripped over a high heel in the sand, and fell sprawling with a pale flash of bare arms and legs in the starlight.
Dry air burned in his throat and his mouth tasted coppery as he stood breathing heavily and looking down at her.
"Can't you even wait till they kill him?" he asked savagely. Then he turned and walked down the black trail beyond the barn, not knowing or caring which way he went.
She lay crumpled on her side like a long-stemmed and wilted flower with her hair and the side of her face in the dirt. Her dress had flown up about her waist when she fell and she could feel the gritty abrasiveness of sand under her sprawled bare legs, and when she clenched her mouth tightly shut to keep from screaming she could taste the sand and hear the gritty sound of it between her teeth. She rolled her head from side to side in a sickening agony of rage and shame and humiliation, and she put her hand up against her mouth and bit it until she tasted blood while she gave birth to the second great passion of her life. The first had always been love of herself, and the second was hatred of Mitch Neely.
There had been no rain for nearly a week and it should
have been dropping toward midsummer level, but instead it was higher than it had been during the rain and had risen another inch since noon. He stood watching it slip past, silt-laden and flecked with foam, critically assaying the amount and size of drift it was carrying. It was still rising, all right.
He had seen it do that twice in his life, keep coming up when there had been no rain, raised by heavy downpours somewhere far upriver, and the last time had been seven
years ago when it had almost flooded the bottom fields, the year Sewell had gone away.
He turned and went back out toward the field and looked up at the sky when he got out of the timber.
There was something disquieting and strangely uneasy about the whole day. It was too still, for one thing, and sultry, with an oppressive deadness about the air that worried him. It reminded him of the tense and foreboding hush that falls over a group of men when there is about to be a fight. But there were no clouds. The sky was clear and it was perfectly normal weather for late June except for the oppressive stillness.
"Still ain't no news about Sewell," Cass said, after he had hobbled painfully in from the front room.
"Poor Sewell," Joy said sadly. "It's so tragic."
She picked a hell of a time to find out how tragic it is about poor Sewell, Mitch thought. Where's she been the past three years?
I think the reason they always catch you in the end is that they wear you out. They get you tired. They work in shifts and you work all the time, and when you get a chance to go to sleep your nerves are still working. Well, if you want to take a vacation you can always go and give yourself up. They always got the welcome sign out for cop-killers. Take a long rest in the back room with the light in your eyes.
It fooled ‘em, he thought, and started to swing his head slowly around to look out at the opposite bank for the other two when he heard an ominous and terrible buzzing just back of his ear like an egg beater whirring in a pile of dead leaves and felt all his nerve ends turn to ice in one of the few moments of absolute terror he had ever known.
Cold fury looked at him six inches in front of his face, and the deadly triangular head drew back to strike. The big rattler had been stretched along a limb as high as it could get out of the water it hated, and his movement or the pull of the current had disturbed the balance of the tree and rolled the limb downward toward the water.
There was no time to pull his head back or submerge.
One more slightest move and it would strike him full in the face. He brought a hand up and took the deadly, loathsome impact of it on his wrist and felt the puncture of the fangs. His hand closed over the body just back of the head and he pulled it below the surface, squeezing terribly with all his strength, feeling the sinuous, thick-bodied power of its threshing, and then the fangs pierced his hand once more before it stilled. He let it go and vomited into the water in front of his face.
There would be no help, and he expected none. Cass was beyond helping or being helped. It was not so much the physical disability of what had apparently become a permanent affliction of "the miseries" in his legs as it was his almost complete withdrawal from reality. It ain't like he was even here any more, Mitch thought. It's more like he wasn't just sitting in front of that radio now wait. ing for it to come out to him, but was trying to get in there where it was. He don't like this world no more because you get beat up so damn much in it, so he's finding himself another one.
No, not alone, he thought. I got the snake in me. I'm about as much alone as a woman seven months gone. I got nobody to talk to, but I got company just the same.
Cass began walking back and forth again. "Well, come on, Mitch. Gather up your stuff and let's go," he said wildly.
Mitched stared at him. "Go where?" he asked.
Cass stopped pacing and looked at him blankly, like a
bewildered and sodden-hatted kewpie doll left out in the rain. "Where?" he asked. "Where? Well, surely you ain't going to stay down here in the field. Don't you understand what I been saying? Sewell's in the river. He's been shot. You can't just stay down here and not do nothing."
"Just what do you expect me to do?" Mitch asked.
"Do? Why-why-" Cass said incredulously, "why, come up to the house. Listen to the radio. To the news." It was as if the whole course had been perfectly clear in his mind until Mitch had begun asking his stupid questions, and then he had to cast about for the answer himself.
Mitch began to comprehend some of it then. Sewell's been shot on the radio, he thought. He's in this river down here, but it's actually the radio river, or he can't make up his mind which it is, and they're hunting for him on the radio, and there can't none of it really happen anywhere except on the radio. He can't make up his mind whether it's really Sewell they're looking for or whether it's a radio game called Sewell Neely.
There had always been a deep and unspoken understanding between them. So unlike in many ways, the one corrupt, professionally violent, and criminal, and the other with his bitter honesty and a sort of harsh and thorn-protected, inarticulate capacity for love, they had always been able to meet on this common ground of a hard and unflinching realism. Courage was a quality each recognized and respected in the other; perhaps it had been passed on to them by their mother as valor is said to be in the breeding of fighting bulls, or perhaps it had been forced upon them by long association with the pitiful contrast of their father's weakness. At any rate, they understood each other now, and nodded, glad there had to be no further talk.
"Nobody ever believes anything until he hears it on the radio or sees it in the paper," Lambeth said wearily.
"God help the human race."
A look of ineffable surprise and disbelief spread slowly over his face, and a trickle of blood ran down out of the corner of his mouth. Mitch whirled then on Lambeth, but the photographer had been through too many of these sudden melees to be caught napping and had swung aside, out of reach, with the camera protected against his stomach like the hidden football in a tricky backfield play.
It's getting late, Mitch thought, aware of a faint surprise that this day might end, might have twilight and then cease to be, like other days.
"Jessie," he said again, coming into the room. "Jessie!
Listen to me. You ain't going with that-" He put a hand on her arm and she pulled away with that stony-faced yet almost imperceptible withdrawal that can be one of the most devastating things on earth and compared to which all male violence of blow and insult is utterly harmless.
She felt a genuine sorrow as she walked toward him; it was just that she was still practical enough to remember camera angles and the way she would look best in the picture at the same time she was so full of her grief.
It would be best, since Lambeth was on her left, to have most of her hair swing down on the right side of her face as she bent down, with just enough on the left to frame it. And they wouldn't want any legs in this pose of a wife grieving for her husband; she must be very demure about the legs, with just enough showing so it would be possible to see that they were nice. She halted, and started to kneel beside his shoulders.
She was looking down at the picture in her hand with that awful feeling of her mouth going wider and wider without sound. Her eyes shifted and the muzzle of the gun was a black tunnel toward which she was walking in the nightmare, a tunnel that grew larger and then, as she ran into it, suddenly filled with light-a huge, bursting circle of light without end.
Mitch reached her as she wilted and fell forward across Sewell like a gold-petaled flower cut down by the scythe.
Sewell was swinging outward into darkness again toward that dark beach and that brief period of time in which he had been happy with this girl now lying dead across his chest in a terrible and irrevocable wedding of the only two things he had ever loved: this same beautiful, lost, unhappy girl, and violence.
… he's living in another world, but he's got to get his meals in this one. I guess we wouldn't want to, anyhow. This is home, what there's left of it, and all you can do is hang tight and keep on trying.
May 15, 2025
Bad decisions have meant Cass Nealy had to sell off almost all of his farm. Things are going downwards when his daughter-in law, Joy, moves in after her husband is incarcerated for armed robbery. The story starts about there. I’m not sure what I felt about this novel. It didn’t really feel like noir, it didn’t really grab me, and I felt Joy was a little overdrawn.
June 20, 2020
Southern noir, written decades before the genre came to be recognized. Charles Williams was a superb writer.
Want to read
July 19, 2020elibrary
December 21, 2024
I quit at 40% as I was unable to read anymore about grass. A very sleep inducing novel. Maybe a bad novel to start reading this author. I will try his highest rated and most popular novel next.
Read
November 16, 2009dears,
it is a good book and i love it.regards, yours, khan.
it is a good book and i love it.regards, yours, khan.
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