Authors: Barbara Kingsolver
The Lacuna (37 page)
“But who would want to read that?”
The light outside had gone dusky, and now the wind raised a low keen against the window. Clumps of snow fell out of the trees, shattering across the yard. “You won’t want to miss your five-fifteen bus,” I said.
She donned a formidable knitted hat and stood to leave, reaching to shake my hand. “I will see you on Monday week. Happy Christmas, Mr. Shepherd.”
“Happy Christmas, Mrs. Brown. I thank you for the gift.”
She closed the door and stepped out toward Haywood, leaving behind a house as silent as an underworld. Chisme slipped into the room, pulled by the same sidelong gravity across the bottom of the wall into the inglenook. Chispa immediately left it then, according to the inscrutable laws of attraction and indifference. The hall clock divided the scene into measured increments:
Tick, tick
.
Who would want to read all this?
Kingsport News,
March 2, 1947
Book Review
by United Press
Picture the lady walking by, a real looker, gold bangles on her arm and a tattoo on her ankle. She’s headed out for some shopping, with a basket strapped on her back. For today’s menu she may choose iguana roasted on the spit, or perhaps armadillo. For cash, her gal pals trade cocoa beans, or a handy gadget that’s the rage with their better halves here in ancient Mexico: a double-edged throwing spear called the atel-atel.
That’s the opening scene of
Pilgrims of Chapultepec
, a novel by Harrison Shepherd that reads like a joyride. This tribe of ancients will settle down in village life for only so long before it loses its charm to pox, invasion, or bandits—you can count on it. Then they hit the trail again, goaded on by a wild-eyed chief who claims he’ll lead them to a promised land. How will they know they’ve found it? He claims the gods told him to look for an eagle on a cactus, snacking on snake.
Apart from its forehead-wrinkle of a title, this book aims to please: hair-rising battles, narrow escapes, and a heaping portion of adventure, in a tale of hardnosed leaders and men who suffer them.
The Evening Post,
March 8, 1947
“Books for Thought,” by Sam Hall Mitchell
The Quick and the Dead
Author Harrison Shepherd, the diffident but talented prodigy who last year brought us
Vassals of Majesty
, has another winning turn based on historical fact in ancient Mexico. In
Pilgrims of Chapultepec
, the Aztec people are driven from their ancestral home in a journey with more twists than a Chinaman’s queue. By its end, the author has tackled some surprising themes, including the atom-bomb question.
These pilgrims hike for decades, pushed by a mad king who always promises happiness is just around the bend. The author’s “Studs Lonigan” is an Indian youth named Poatlicue, watched by the jealous king as he hones his skill in battle. Golden boy Poatlicue was singled out by the gods at thirteen to hurl the first
atl-atl—a
razor-sharp flying weapon put in the hero’s hand as he was about to die in his first battle. In a New World
Deus ex machina
, the weapon was carried to the hero by an eagle.
The ruthless king fears an upstart’s power to unseat him, and offers a bargain: if Poatlicue maintains his loyalty without a hitch, he’ll someday help rule the nation. But “someday” never comes, and Poatlicue grows a cynical stripe, doubting the value of following an unwise leader. On dark nights he wonders if the gods chose him for a reason: to behead the sniveling king, and rule in his place?
Poatlicue even questions the seductive power of his
atl-atl
. His tribesmen revere it as a god, rushing to make replicas of the weapon, worshipping it on an altar, believing it will grant them absolute rule. But Poatlicue notes a worrisome trend: as his tribesmen reproduce the blade’s design, so do their enemies. Having perfected it, they fashion harsher weapons. With each battle the death numbers grow higher, the killing tools more precise.
Just as we’ve lately been warned by Bernard Baruch’s somber report to Congress, these pilgrims must choose between
the quick and the dead, when fate gives them a dread power without means to stop its baleful use. Baruch argues for disposal of all atom bombs, while author Shepherd only calls the reader to wonder until the final page: has the sacred weapon saved those who wield it, or doomed them?
The Asheville Trumpet,
April 8, 1947
Asheville Writer a Mystery
by Carl Nicholas
Here where Mountain Air is clearest and Heaven is the Nearest, our most prominent writer gives a taste of faraway places in
Pilgrims of Chaltipica
, a new book flying off the shelves this month of every bookstore in the nation. Mrs. Jack Cates, owner of Cates Bookshop, tells us Harrison Shepherd knows the ropes of his trade and this book will not disappoint. “We had a hubbub the week it came in,” she said. “Nobody wants to read anything but. And I’m going to warn you, it’s got more bare skin in it than a hot day at Beaver Lake.”
The author bases his books on his own experience growing up in Mexico, but has resided in the Montford Hills neighborhood since 1941. Calls from the
Trumpet
have not been returned. Mrs. Cates speculates he may regard his privacy, as “the most eligible bachelor in town, if not North Carolina.”
At the Asheville Skating Club next door to the bookstore, 21 comely lasses partook of our survey on the subject, with fifteen saying they are “Hep to Shepherd,” but definitely. Six maintained otherwise, “Spooky” and “cold cut” among the reasons given. Nine young ladies say they hold it against him for not serving in the armed forces due to a 4-F status, but the others say it was not his fault due to a perforated eardrum, the condition shared with crooner Frank Sinatra. All wondered how a well-heeled single fellow spends his time, as the author has sold nearly one million copies. As the old Asheville saying goes, Our moonshine is the meanest, our Stories are the
keenest, our Sportmen are the gamest and—so it seems—our Bachelors are the Tamest!
The Echo,
April 26, 1947
Pilgrims of Chapultepec
,
BY
H
ARRISON
W. S
HEPHERD
$2.69, Stratford and Sons, New York
Don’t look now, but a new chump named Harrison W. Shepherd is more popular than Wendell Wilkie. His
Pilgrims of Chaplutepec
is storming the nation this month and sure to be translated abroad. Don’t be surprised one day if you hear they’re reading Harrison Shepherd in China.
This one will be snapped up by the movies, so read it now before you see the picture. The glittering backdrop of Mexico spreads across every page, and the young hero is a heart-throb, with good looks and a secret weapon to boot. Ladies, this one will break your heart. Will this author ever give us a happy ending?
Shepherd slathers emotion on the page, yet in real life he is a shy fellow who guards against any showing of his feelings. A friend who’s known him since college days revealed this mental reserve goes back to Shepherd’s short-pants days, when even at his mother’s funeral he remained cool as ice.
However, our source revealed, old friend Harry has one curious quirk: “He cannot look at a beautiful woman without whistling.”
April 30
It was the perforated eardrum that put the pepper on Mrs. Brown. And the whistling at girls. “This friend from college days. Is that a person?”
“I don’t think so. Given that I didn’t go to college. The people of my past are dead and gone, Mrs. Brown, that’s a fact.”
Billy
Boorzai’s huge hands, both of us suffocating with laughter, trying to keep still. An officer’s footsteps outside in the hall. Pounding hearts, scarlet shame
.
“Who would reckon. The papers make things up out of the blue sky.”
“Or, they find a little rain cloud and help it along.”
She hesitated in the doorway, backlit from the upstairs hall in her square-shouldered, putty-colored suit. Platform shoes with ankle straps, oh my, and hair let out of its net today, pinned at the sides and curled at the shoulders, longer than I remembered. She looks like a tiny, earnest Jane Russell. Lately it’s crossed my mind to wonder if there is some fellow. She takes a midday break for errands and a bite in one of the luncheonettes on Charlotte. She could be meeting a sailor, for all I know.
“When you see a thing like this in print, Mr. Shepherd, people think it’s true. I almost think it myself, and that’s me, knowing better. How can they do it?”
“Somehow they manage, every day of the year. Why be surprised, just because this time the victim is me?”
She stayed in the doorway. She doesn’t like to come in the study, for fear of disturbing. “Mr. Shepherd, why are ye
not
? A shocking thing ought to shock.”
A shocking thing. “The man I worked for in Mexico, I don’t even know how to tell you what the newsmen did to him. One night some gunmen broke into the house and attacked him with machine guns, attacked all of us, the staff and his family. His grandson got hurt. We were terrified they’d come back. But the press said Lev had organized this attack himself to get sympathy for his cause. They reported that as fact.”
“My stars.”
“It didn’t help us get police protection, I can tell you. And that’s just one thing, a case that comes to mind. The other man I worked for reportedly ate human flesh.”
“Well. That’s Mexican newspapers. We want to think ours are better here. But I suppose they say the same about us.”
“It was all over everywhere, about Trotsky staging the shooting attack. Europe, New York. It starts in one paper, and that’s the source. The others pick it up and pass it along. Lev used to say there are two kinds of papers, the ones that lie every day, and the ones that save it for special campaigns, for greater impact.”
“But a perforated eardrum. My stars. It’s like you said. It starts with one and then it goes. We’ve not heard the end of that one.”
“Like howler monkeys.”
“The
Trumpet’s
your own hometown. They could have asked.”
“If they had called, what would you have said?”
She looked like a model standing for a portrait of misery: shoulders squared, high eyebrows knit, hands tightly folded. “I would do as you ask. Mr. Shepherd has no comment to make on that.”
“Thank you.”
“But.”
“But?”
“When they have nothing, they fill in. If you don’t stop them, they fill in more. It’s like you’ve agreed to it. To their way of thinking, saying nothing is the same as agreeing.”
“Are you saying it’s my responsibility to stop another man from lying?”
“Well. No. It’s his to stop himself.”
“Dios habla por el que calle.”
“Meaning what, Mr. Shepherd?”
“God speaks for the man who keeps quiet.”
“If you say so.”
‘ “No comment’ means ‘no comment.’ It does not mean, ‘I hate to admit this, but yes, he has a punctured eardrum.’”
“Well, people think that. And taking the Fifth means you’re guilty.”
“Whatever they may think, it does not. A blank space on a form,
the missing page, a void, a hole in your knowledge of someone—it’s still some real
thing
. It exists. You don’t get to fill it in with whatever you want. I’m staking myself on a principle, Mrs. Brown. This country promises us the presumption of innocence.”
“
Presumptions
we have got, Mr. Shepherd. Coming out our ears.”
“What would you have me say? Mr. Shepherd does not have a punctured eardrum, he does not have a friend from college days, he
does
look at pretty girls without whistling—oh, that’s a trap. Where does it stop?”
She had no answer.
“If the
atl-atl
was meant as a symbol for the atom bomb, can’t we let the reader have a chance to decide?”
“Well, I know what you’re saying. The reporters would have you put in the grinder and feed you to Baby with a spoon.”
“I don’t think the reporters really want to know the first thing about me. They fancy themselves artists. They’d rather draw freehand.”
“They do have questions.”
“I know. The one fellow wanted to ask me about Truman and the Soviet containment policy, remember?
Collier’s
, I think.”
“
New York Times. Collier’s
said they wouldn’t even run a review unless you spoke to them.”
“And did they?”
“A little one. It wasn’t very good.”
“If I talked, I would only end up giving them more blanks to fill in. ‘How do you feel about Truman’s new anti-Soviet position, Mr. Shepherd?’ No comment. ‘That Bette Davis is quite a looker, isn’t she, Mr. Shepherd?’ No comment.”
“So, the punctured eardrum. No comment.”
“Correct.”
“Next they’ll be reporting you died.”
“Imagine the peace and quiet.”
The telephone rang, and she ran to get it. Her stockings had seams
down the backs. I tried out a wolf-whistle—a feeble one, but I heard her pause on the stairs.
A sample of the mail received May 15, 1947, seventy-five letters in all. After publication of
Pilgrims of Chapultepec
, Stratford and Sons posted the mail forward in boxes once or twice weekly.—
VB
Dear Mr. Shepherd
,
At the youthful age of seventy here is one codger who tips my hat to you. For years I have re-read the favorites because the new authors are not up to snuff. But some weeks ago I ran short and went to my corner bookstore for a suggestion. The fellow handed me two by Harrison W. Shepherd, a name unknown to me. I read both without a pause. Of course I blush at scenes of copulation and revelry. But you show that modern times are no different from the old, and people the same everywhere. I was stationed overseas in the first war and never learned to like it, but it did teach me a thing or two. Thank you for adding spunk to my life. I look forward to your other books
.
Sincerely
,
COLLIN THOMAS
Dear Mr. Shepherd
,
Although we have never met I consider you a friend. You touch and inspire me. I read
Vassals of Majesty
twice and now the new one. Thank you for putting my own heart into words. I have wanted to show courage the way your characters do. You show that men at the top don’t always have any more smarts than the rest of us. I have been thinking of telling my boss to jump in the lake and look for better. (Secretary.) Now I just might achieve my goal
.
With admiration
,
LYNNE HILL
Dear Mr. Shepherd,
I had to read your book in history at Lancaster Valley High. I don’t read too many books but yours is okay. It gave me a lot to ponder about Poatlicue wanting to be a good citizen, and then ending up wanting to kill the King. Our teacher said to ask you three questions about ancient times of Mexico, for our report. My questions:
- 1. Is it true the Eagle gave the people their first weapon.
- 2. What kind of government did they have, Democracy or Dictator?
- 3. Did you ever really shoot a dear?
Thank you. My report is due May 12
.
Yours truly
,
WENDELL DIXON
One of 19 letters enclosed in a single packet from Lancaster Valley High School, California.—VB
Dear Mr. Harrison Shepherd
My heart is full of happiness, just knowing you are holding this letter in your hand. Thank you for being an author. You have gotten me through a lot of sad times, when my mother died especially. Sometimes I do everything I can just to get through the day, so I can curl up at night with my favorite book. When life is humdrum or just plain old sad I know you will take me away to the place where troubles are forgotten. When I get a letter back from you my life will be complete. Thank you, thank you
.
Yours
,
ROXANNE WILLS