Ahab in Texas
The complexities and chaos of the American South during the Civil War offers rich hunting ground for Elizabeth Crook, writes Paulette Jiles
Benjamin Shreve, the teenage narrator of Elizabeth Crook’s new novel, The Which Way Tree, unspools his tale of Civil War-era Texas in a first-person voice that is utterly convincing, consistent and believable. Crook never slips out of that voice for a moment. This is no small feat given that the tale involves Benjamin’s demented half sister, the in famous massacre of Union sympathising German immigrants by local Confederates, and a giant panther.
Any first-person voice involving a young Southern boy invites comparisons to Huck Finn. But dialects have complexities, and Crook appears to be a master of them. Benjamin’s voice swings between the rhythms of the Southern hills and the lofty, elevated tone encountered in Twain and contemporary westerns (which ultimately comes from an acquaintance with the King James Bible). His speech can switch from hyperbole to understatement in the same sentence – and it is a wonderfully deadpan understatement. When he describes, for instance, his younger, mulatto half sister, left physically and emotionally scarred by the same panther that killed her mother and already having endured the death of their father by fever, Benjamin’s drawl is particularly dry: “She is not a joy to look at nor be with.”
Yet Crook’s marvellous dexterity with language does not help her with narrative. Plots need to coalesce around characters with agency, characters who make things happen. They need to move beyond mere observation. Since Benjamin simply reports on what everybody else is doing, and reacts instead of taking initiative, the plot has no anchor and becomes chaotic. Benjamin is left with the care of his half sister, Samantha (or Sam), who has become obsessed with killing the giant panther – think Ahab in the Texas Hill Country. In the tailwind of her pursuit the girl accumulates people, or perhaps aggregates their stories. She precipitates most of the action but remains one-dimensional – less a character than a mania. (It’s not easy to show the inner life of an obsessive, much less from the perspective of such a young narrator.) Very little is made of the fact that Benjamin’s stepmother was African-american and his sister is of mixed race. That’s not the story. The story is that they end up at the house of a frontier preacher to look at his aged, frail panther-tracking dog: “I said, We will not take your dog. “Sam said, You are speaking for you and not me. I don’t like the dog but what other chance do I have. I ain’t leaving this house without him.
“The preacher said, Well then, little girl, take your seat by the fire and be at home.”
There’s more, of course. They have the panther in their sights repeatedly but nobody can shoot straight. A villain named Hanlin comes and goes. A flash flood, like time, sweeps everybody downstream.
There are too many layers. Benjamin writes out his story to a local judge; then we have a couple of letters from 1925, commenting on the case years after it was closed and on Benjamin as an old man.
The language is arresting, the plot is a mess and, in the interest of full disclosure, I must relate that the villain Hanlin’s name is one of my own family names. My great-greatgrandfather George Hanlin fled Texas in 1863, supposedly because of his Union sentiments, with his wife, a baby girl and a wagon pulled by two pinto ponies. They fled to Missouri, where they thought life was safer. It was not. I know they carried with them multilayered tales like this one, with extremely messy plots. The Which Way Tree is a commendable and very readable addition to the tale-spinning tradition and its beautiful use of language.