‘Spillway’ tales focus on tough females
Whatdid you do on Sunday? Watched “The Jinx,” of course.
HBO unleashed its second six-episode installment of the Emmy-winning true-crime docuseries (Sundays, 10 EDT/PDT and streaming on Max), focused on real estate heir Robert Durst.
The first season examined the unsolved 1982 disappearance of Durst’s first wife, Kathleen McCormack; the killing of his best friend, Susan Berman, who was shot in her Los Angeles home in 2000; and the death in 2001 of his Texas neighbor Morris Black, found dismembered in Galveston Bay. In the finale, Durst admitted he had “killed them all, of course” in a hot-mic confession captured during an off-camera trip to the bathroom.
“The Jinx – Part Two” begins with Durst’s arrest in 2015 at a New Orleans hotel for Berman’s murder. Though Durst had agreed to be interviewed for the first season, he declined to meet with “The Jinx” director Andrew Jarecki after his arrest, Jarecki says. Durst appears in “Part Two” via footage of visits and phone calls that occurred while he was in custody.
“I’m all right. I mean, I’ve been here before,” Durst tells his lawyer, Steven Rabinowitz. A jury acquitted Durst of Black’s death in 2003, and it appeared he thought he’d elude prison once more. “I don’t think I’ll be here much longer, but this is the worst,” Durst says during another recorded call with a friend. Durst was sentenced to life in prison in 2021 for Berman’s killing, and he was indicted that same year in the slaying of McCormack. But he died of natural causes in early 2022 before standing trial in that case. He was 78.
Durst’s accomplices ‘would have taken care of anything’ need
“When we were making the first season we used to say, ‘How do you kill
‘Spillway: Stories’ by Kim Bradley (Stephen F. Austin State University Press)
“Spillway,” nine short stories, is Kim Bradley’s debut collection.
On first impression, these stories are in the tradition of the tough, neogothic, grit lit of Larry Brown, Harry Crews, Tom Franklin and some Barry Hannah.
Most are set in Florida, north of Pensacola, and north of Bradley’s home town of Monroeville in fictional Wallace County.
Life in these stories is hard. The characters are often broke, hungry, lonely, violent and in conflict with an environment full of cottonmouth snakes and alligators, merciless heat and, occasionally, hurricanes.
The stories are hyper-realistic, except when they are not.
In the longest and most extended story, “Visitation,” the protagonist, Meredith, decides she MUST go to her dead ex-boyfriend’s visitation. She is not really welcome there. The young man, Tommy, died from falling drunk out of a deer stand in a tree at the family’s hunting camp.
“He died alone, a silver-plated whiskey flask by his side.” No one came upon the body for two days. (We learn that a whiskey flask, 6 ounces, monogrammed, was given to “all Wallace County High seniors ... at graduation.”)
Tommy’s mother, Julia, is especially furious because Meredith broke off with Tommy, who moped and languished, for years.
It is beyond awkward. Meredith and her friend Gayle literally slip and fall down into “swaths of slick red mud” at the graveside.
Later, Tommy’s ghost shows up in her bedroom, “grinning.”
“‘Is it really you?’ ” she asks. He answers. “‘Sure. I mean I’m dead and all, but it’s me.’ His laugh was deep and infectious, unleashed from three people over 30 years and get away with it?’–” Jarecki says. People view Durst “as this lone wolf who was out there doing bad stuff, but the truth is he was a guy with incredible resources, a wide range of acquaintances, influence over a lot of people, and he managed to bring a whole bunch of people along with him who helped him in various ways.”
In Sunday’s second-season premiere, a friend tells Durst after his arrest, “Whatever I could do for you, Bobby, it’d be my pleasure, OK?” Another informs the suspect, “I wanted you to know I would have taken care of anything you needed taking care of.” The episode also reveals how Chris Lovell, a juror in Durst’s 2003 murder trial in Galveston, helped him clear out his Houston apartment after “The Jinx” began airing and Durst fled to New Orleans with more than $40,000 in cash, a latex mask, a revolver and a map of Cuba.
Durst became ‘very nervous’ after Episode 5 of ‘The Jinx’
Under questioning by Los Angeles County Deputy District Attorney John Lewin, Durst acknowledges contemplating leaving the country but ultimately decided against it because “I just far, far away.”
They chat.
The reader is astonished at Meredith’s lack of astonishment but the next day when she tells Tommy’s mom about this, her reaction is even more amazing.
Julia is furious at having been left out.
“‘He came to you? To you?’ she shouted. ‘After all I did for that boy. I fed him, clothed him, let him stay here for years. And, he came to you?’ ”
Some readers will remember William Faulkner’s use of the ghost visitation in the story “Pantaloon in Black,” in “Go Down, Moses.” There the heroic Black man, Ryder, is visited by the ghost of his beloved wife, Mannie. He cannot live without her and there is only one way to be reunited with her.
But this is not a Delta story or a New Orleans Creole story with witchee women and hoodoo. This is a pocket of left-behind white folks deep in the Alabama woods.
There is also a ghost in the story “Alligator.” Set in St. Augustine right after a hurricane, there is destruction and wreckage everywhere. Dean, the protagonist, is camping in his ruined house to prevent looting, and his dead wife, Sabra, appears in the yard.
The newly reunited couple take long walks among the debris, chatting and picking up what bits of furniture might be useful. There is an alligator and he, too, has supernatural powers.
These stories are strong, memorable and mostly on the dark side.
The central characters are mostly female and active. Darcy, of “Like She Stole It,” is as wild as they come. She is just out of prison and seeking revenge.
When the narrator is male, he is usually forlorn, jobless and drunk, telling of the woman who hurt him and left.
I welcome more from Alabama writer Kim Bradley.
Don Noble’s newest book is Alabama Noir, a collection of original stories by Winston Groom, Ace Atkins, Carolyn Haines, Brad Watson, and eleven other Alabama authors. didn’t really, really, really think that I was going to end up arrested.”
New York Times reporter Charles Bagli says in Sunday’s premiere that he and Durst chatted after Season 1 episodes aired. After watching Episode 5 −