Book Reviews

Haley, Texas, 1959: Two Novellas of Texas

Cinco Puntos Press, 192 pp., $21.95

Donley Watt hails from the East Texas town of Athens; his two new powerful novellas, both set in the 1950s, are filled with an atmosphere of dread and guilt that stems from the violence, racism, and religiosity prevalent in the region at that time. The title story is particularly gripping, dealing with a young high school boy out for a joy ride in a pickup with some older boys who are high school football players. The ride turns deadly when the older boys decide to go "nigger-knockin," a form of racial violence that ends in the death of an old black man walking along the side of the highway. The protagonist is the son of the liberal minister in town, and the psychological portrait of his attempts at lying to his family (and himself) is rich in character and place.

The second piece, Seven Days Working, reads more like an autobiographical essay than a story. In it, the narrator, a 14-year-old boy, is assigned by his father the impossible task of clearing mesquite off a 70-acre pasture by hand in the middle of the summer. As he works furiously at his solitary task, he daydreams constantly about his hardworking yet not-quite-solvent father, his judgmental and unforgiving Church of Christ mother, and his attachment to the place contrasted with his eagerness to leave. Watt makes common teenage rites of passage such as the issuing of a driver's license feel palpably real, particularly when he fantasizes about just taking off in the car driving west to Dallas and then past Fort Worth to a great unknown. The pastoral tone is quickened at the end, when the boy is given the task of burning off the pile of dead mesquite he has cut and the fire almost burns out of control. The harsh juxtaposition of the search for responsibility and a vulnerability to the judgments of elders make this tale a timeless one.

Watt's strong voice is a relatively new one in Texas writing -- his literary debut was in 1994, when at the age of 54 he published a book of stories, Can You Get Here From There? and a novel, The Journey of Hector Rabinal. His readers can be grateful for his overdue debut as a writer -- a Texas voice this authentic is welcome indeed.