Be prepared for soapy twists in ‘The Hearts of Men’
Full disclosure: As a 10-yearold, after I endured Cub Scout crafting, papier mâché-ing and knot-tying, my big brother told me the next Scouting step was called “We-Blows.” Actually, it’s Webelos (pronounced “WEE-buh-los”), but that’s when I quit Scouting and never looked back. Until now …
Nickolas Butler’s second novel vividly reveals what I might have missed — and certainly feared. Not that The Hearts of Men (Ecco, 400 pp., of four) is a Stephen-King-does-Scouting tale, though the gag-inducing latrine scene qualifies. But then, Scouting is more complicated than most of us ever imagine. And, as Butler aptly shows in this compelling coming-of-age tale, learning to be a good man — or a good woman — is no less so.
A multilayered, multigenerational mini-epic, the story starts in the summer of 1962, deep in Wisconsin’s Northwoods at Camp Chippewa, where Boy Scouts gather annually to camp out, earn merit badges, and experience nature — among other measures of growing up “right.”
The novel’s main character is Nelson Doughty. At age 13, bespectacled, bullied, Nelson is the camp’s youngest Scout, a nerdy, overachieving social leper who knows how to start campfires and tie knots better than the older counselors. After dark, when other Scouts are up to no good, crybaby Nelson is in his tent studying Handbook for Boys; or, in one plot-point incident, snitching on them to Wilbur, the camp’s kindly, old World War I-vet Scoutmaster.
Derisively called “Bugler” because he blows reveille on time every morning, Nelson has no friends other than his mother, Dorothy. Nobody likes him, not even his abusive, soon-to-skiptown father, Clete. Not even readers. Not at first. But there is Jonathan Quick, whose tenuous compassion for Nelson inexplicably counters his standing as an older, popular, athletic kid.
Fast-forward 34 years: Jona- than is the story’s Rabbit Angstrom — wealthy, unhappy, alcoholic, his marriage doomed and his relationship with son Trevor shaky.
Now he’s driving sincere Boy Scout Trevor to Camp Chippewa, where traumatized but admirable Vietnam War hero Nelson is the kindly old Scoutmaster following Wilbur’s death.
Jonathan badgers Trevor about being too soft, which cul- minates in an unhinged restaurant scene rivaling the confrontational anguish of Who’s
Afraid of Virginia Woolf ? At the Stardust Supper Club the night before camp, Jonathan is drunk, Nelson is drunk, underage Trevor is drunk, and also drunk is Deanna, the woman Jonathan has been secretly carrying on with while their sons were learning wilderness skills. Jonathan announces he’s going to divorce Trevor’s mother, Sarah, and marry Deanna. Dessert anyone?
Something of a Boy Scout soap opera, Butler’s novel reinforces the relevance of the Scout motto “Be Prepared,” certainly for readers, as it evolves into next generations. In the end, the sad but inspirational chapters about Trevor’s widow, Rachel, and their son, Thomas, make all the agonies of Camp Chippewa and the Boy Scout motto meaningful.
Butler delves into a dark, Midwestern, middle-class suburban mentality in the same neighborhood as John Cheever’s Shady Hill and Richard Yates’ Revolutionary Hill Estates.
Readers will wonder, “Are all men so damaged?” Yet, as Jonathan sums up, the novel’s sentimental undercurrent is what any good father can hope for: “Raising a better man than yourself ...”