Beasts of the earth, p.1
Beasts of the Earth, page 1
praise for
Beasts of the Earth
“Pitch-perfect . . . A soul-deep exploration of a wounded man in crisis, James Wade’s Beasts of the Earth . . . secures his position as an author of extraordinary merit.”
New York Journal of Books
“Reminiscent of early McCarthy, Larry Brown, or the great Tom Franklin . . . James Wade has all the tools, imagination, and more than enough passion to be at the vanguard of the best Grit-Lit writers of his generation, and I’ll be reading whatever he puts out.”
Matt Bondurant
bestselling author of Oleander City and Lawless
“James Wade writes a terrific story, but that isn’t what makes him so good. Wade is a craftsman. His books should be read slowly, to luxuriate in his word choices, his sentence structure, his character revelation. That is why he is a joy to read.”
James L. Haley
Spur Award–winning author of the Bliven Putnam Naval Adventures
“Dark and compelling . . . Here we have a novel that blends realism with existentialist philosophy to redefine contemporary Southern fiction. Don’t miss this tour de force of modern literature.”
David Heska Wanbli Weiden
Spur and Anthony Award–winning author of Winter Counts
“Like Flannery O’Connor, James Wade explores what it means to be human . . . with gloriously complex characters and gorgeous prose. Beasts of the Earth is a beautiful gut-punch of a novel.”
Stacey Swann
author of Olympus, Texas
“James Wade is a writer of exceptional talent and this novel is his latest entry toward his path to greatness.”
Scott Semegran
award-winning author of The Benevolent Lords of Sometimes Island and host of Austin Liti Limits
books by james wade
All Things Left Wild
River, Sing Out
Beasts of the Earth
Copyright © 2022 by James Wade
E-book published in 2022 by Blackstone Publishing
Cover design by Kathryn Galloway English
All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
The characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.
Trade e-book ISBN 978-1-6650-2406-8
Library e-book ISBN 978-1-6650-2405-1
Fiction / Literary
CIP data for this book is available from the Library of Congress
Blackstone Publishing
31 Mistletoe Rd.
Ashland, OR 97520
www.BlackstonePublishing.com
To Mark Gottlieb and Rick Bleiweiss,
for giving me a chance
I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the Lord do all these things.
—Isaiah 45:7
If God meant to interfere in the degeneracy of mankind would he not have done so by now?
—Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian
PROLOGUE
The watchmaker is crooked over his station, in an office elevated above the factory floor. He is not much taller than a child, and his back is bowed so that he is closer still to the desk, and he works within the small sphere of light given off from a single candle that burns with the fragrance of frankincense and myrrh. His gloved hands move deliberate among his various tools—his stack of brass pin vises, his screwdrivers, tweezers, oilers, and swabs. Over each watch he labors. Over each watch he looms.
His face is hidden by a great mask of the blackest material. Atop the mask he wears an aluminum jeweler’s loupe that covers his right eye. The loupe is affixed to a headspring. His left eye has been taken.
He holds in his hands the mechanisms of time and they make a silver and sinuous spiral in the palm of his black gloves. He places them beneath the case press and pulls tight the lever.
Outside is a space littered with sound—deafening expansions and course-altering collisions. But here, at his station, the watchmaker is in a vacuum of silence. There are no vibrations—no dialed frequencies with which he might be disturbed. The elucidation of existence is impossible, but the creation is effortless. The elucidation of existence is impossible. But the creation is effortless. He places the gears and sees them turn.
Within each small machine, an evaluation of the present, a determination of the future. From the crown wheel to the barrel bridge, the hairspring and winding click, each piece is strictly ordered—delicately balanced. Despite every similarity, no two can be the same, for the seconds are always passing.
And the watchmaker is ever at his winding. Ever creating. Always and only.
He does not see them, gathering en masse, laying waste to the factory. They pound on the windows of his workroom and press against the glass their own pieces of time and cry out for answers. They search for absolution and for the door, but there is none. There is no door and no way in and their thoughts cannot reach him and their hands are pressed white.
The horde is swelling. They clamber and climb atop one another, pushing down and reaching up. They long for a respite from the pain of the ticking clock, and they long for salvation, and they long to be acknowledged—but the watchmaker will not look.
He slides the crown pin into place. He polishes the golden rim.
The assemblage will neither cease nor desist. Some are weeping. Some are shouting. They sacrifice one another in waves of barbarity, and the blood is smeared upon the windows and upon themselves. They are starving and they can consume only of themselves. And they do. There are lines of cookfires that extend forever like stars. They are multitude. Still, the watchmaker will not walk among them. He is ever at his labor.
Soon the whole of the factory is afire. Timepieces of silver and gold are melted down to those selfsame elements and elements only. The blaze is growing and consuming and the watchmaker does not hear them screaming.
He stands alone amid the flame.
The fire grows all about him. The factory is collapsing.
“Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani?” They beg. “Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani?”
But the watchmaker will not stop. Not to save his creations. Not to save himself.
He is ever at his winding. Ever creating. Always and only.
I
1
comal county, texas – 1987
He’d dreamt that night of a place not unlike the place of his birth. Of waves upon waves and the sun rising red, and a second sun reflected out over the water, each pulling away from the other in mirrored motion. In this place there was an old dock where came to land a pelican whose brown, rusted feathers winged out and back. Its deep-maroon neck craning to either side. The dreamer watched the great seabird and the shimmering bay and the sunrise beyond. And here was a world content—pacified by the soft smile of its creator. And all things were purposed, and all things were just.
When he did wake, it was in darkness. There was only a mattress and LeBlanc sat on the mattress edge with a rounded back and his hands in his lap. A creatured silhouette. Skinny, but not tall. Aching bones.
The dream lingered beyond sleep. He could feel its loitering. Hear the water swilling against old wood, and the world turned green and orange and pales of blue. But in his waking, the dream world was unwelcome. Even the best visions, he knew, would leave him with one foot in some far-off realm. He leaned over and pulled the chain on a small lamp he kept on the floor. The light was called forth into the bare room with nothing to uncover save for LeBlanc’s own shadow against the wall.
He brought his hands from his lap and held them out and turned them from one side to the other and back. He studied the freckled skin and the tracing of veins, and he looked deeper still at the lines on his fingers—the lines within lines—intersecting and curving and given to him alone.
He studied his hands by lamplight and thought of what they’d done and what they might yet do. Strange thoughts trapped between night and day. Sleep and wake. And every line created—all created.
He stood and walked to the window and drew back the burlap curtain and looked out at the morning dark.
The sun is real, I’ll watch it rise, not in my head, but with my eyes.
The sun is real, I’ll watch it rise, not in my head, but with my eyes.
LeBlanc waited until the blackness began to peel, exposing to the east a carmine sky. He nodded.
The faucet dripping in a staggered pattern like a misaligned clock. He brushed his teeth and brushed his hair. His eyes were blazing copper, deep-set and wide, but short, so that it was difficult for LeBlanc to look surprised. He dressed, leaving his shirt unbuttoned, and then brushed his hair again, dark but no longer thick. There was less of it than he remembered from years before, from moments ago.
He carried his boots from the bedroom closet and set them by the front door. In the kitchen the answering machine blinked red, on and off. LeBlanc pressed the button.
Mr. LeBlanc, this is Doctor Nash. Just confirming our appointment next Friday. Let me know if you need anything—a refill or anything else—between now and then. Okay, thanks.
He microwaved three pieces of bacon and put them in between slices of toasted white bread and ate and drank coffee. He unscrewed the cap on the small pharmacy bottle and counted the pills and counted the number of days until next Friday and then took two of the pills and swallowed them with his coffee. The faucet dripped.
He wiped his hands on a kitchen rag and buttoned his shirt and tucked it into his pants and pulled his pants high around his waist. He opened the under-sink cabinet and pulled out a plastic icebox and opened the lid. He took from the freezer a tray of ice and twisted it at the ends and the ice cracked and the tray released the cubes what went clattering into the small cooler.
LeBlanc closed the lid and picked up the cooler and set it by his boots. On the other side of the door, he could hear his new neighbor, Frank Hartman, mumbling through the day’s paper on their shared porch.
LeBlanc had first rented the A-side of the low-ceilinged duplex more than twenty years ago. The ownership had changed twice, but his record as a tenant was exemplary and no one had asked him to leave. Rent had risen every few years, but with the oil glut the price of everything had plummeted, and it was more affordable now than what he’d paid in the late ’60s.
A great deal of the Carter Hills community had been laid off. Frank had been a foreman. Now, he was out of work and sharing a wall with LeBlanc. And beating on the door.
LeBlanc put on a red ball cap with CHHS across the front in blue lettering. He picked up his cooler in one hand and his boots in the other and opened the door.
Frank stood smoking in his robe. The newspaper rolled up in his non-cigarette hand like a makeshift billy club.
“Good morning, Frank.”
“You got sugar?” the man asked.
“Sugar?”
“Yeah, sugar,” Frank said. “Little white crystals to put in coffee so it doesn’t taste like my ex-wife’s asshole.”
“I drink it black,” LeBlanc told him.
“Of course you do,” Frank said. He balanced the Marlboro between his lips and lightly tapped at his palm with the paper.
He looked off with a sort of inevitable resignation. As if the day, or perhaps the world, had hinged on sugar, and now all was lost.
He tucked the paper under his arm and clapped his hands together, then pulled the cigarette from his mouth and blew smoke into his neighbor’s face.
LeBlanc closed his eyes and turned his head. He reached back to shut the door to his house.
“You’re not moving, are you?” Frank asked.
“What?”
Frank used the cigarette like a guide stick and pointed toward the door LeBlanc had just closed.
“There’s nothing in your goddamn house. No rugs, no couch, no pictures on the wall.”
“Oh,” LeBlanc looked down at his hands. He could hear the waves from his dream. “I have a lamp. In the bedroom.”
Frank stared at him.
“A lamp? No shit? Well. Guess you’re in it for the long haul,” he boomed, then laughed at his own wit. “Why you all dressed up anyhow?”
LeBlanc smoothed down his shirt.
“I like to wear something nice on the first day of school,” he said.
Frank scoffed.
“You cut the grass, Harlen,” Frank said. “You think anybody gives a shit what you’re wearing?”
LeBlanc closed his eyes and spoke softly.
“It’s for the children,” he said. “I like to set . . . set an example. First days are important.”
Frank laughed and his laughter caught on the phlegm in his throat and he hacked it up, spit, shook his head, and continued laughing.
“It don’t make no difference to them kids what you wear. Don’t you remember high school? It’s nothing but football and fucking.”
“Have a nice day, Frank.”
“You too, Professor,” Frank said, and LeBlanc left him, ignoring the sound of his throttling laughter as it faded into the morning.
LeBlanc enjoyed his morning walks. The campus at Carter Hills High School had been renovated and rebuilt over the years, but its location remained the same—which meant LeBlanc had never altered his route.
He walked north, up Canaan Street and along the rows of duplexes with sagging roofs and overgrown yards. Rusted trucks and the occasional car lined either side of the street and the porches were dotted at all times with leathered men, out-of-work roughnecks smoking cigarettes, their tired wives in rollers, and screaming children who were born during the oil boom and would grow up during the bust.
The dayspring aurora, cantilevered in the east, sent penciled light across the rooftops of the town. LeBlanc turned west on Main and followed the cracked sidewalk. He passed the post office, the Hidden Pearl Café, an old bar called Coconut Willie’s, a used bookstore, Carter Grocery, and the volunteer fire department. The rest of the downtown buildings were either abandoned or on their way out. Bailey’s Boutique was offering half off for women whose husbands had been laid off, and Sunrise Donuts was handing out free coffee and paper bags full of doughnut holes to a long line of men with their hands in their pockets, staring at the ground beneath them—the ground that had betrayed them all.
The men reached for the small sacks stained with sugar and grease without lifting their eyes or their long faces and they collected the charity without speaking. Friends and brothers and in-laws—and none of them offering so much as a single lie of “good morning.” They trudged forward in solemn procession with bowed heads and humility laid bare before God and fried doughnut both.
LeBlanc watched the winding line move slowly on like some old funeral train. One of the men, Roland Harper, broke formation and raised his head up and there saw LeBlanc watching. The big man crossed his arms over his barreled chest and scowled at LeBlanc’s witnessing such a shameful reality. LeBlanc averted his gaze downward.
The sidewalk before him was overrun with a series of meandering cracks like fault lines, and from these fractures rose small-clustered stalks of gallium, thin white flowers pushing forth as if they were harbingers of a great return, as if beneath the earth there were a world in waiting, a contrariwise world where nature held dominion over man.
Spires of smoke from the piping above the diner drifted into the hills and hung like a thin fog against the sunrise. LeBlanc pushed open the door and two men looked up from their table at the clanging of the old iron cowbell.
The Heckler twins, Phil and Bill, had been on the early end of good fortune in the oil fields to the west. They did not flaunt their wealth, still dressing in canvas work shirts and denim overalls, but rumors put their fortune in the eight-figure range—though how much they’d lost during the downturn was also subject to rumor.
“What say, Harlen?” the brothers asked in a drab unison.
LeBlanc nodded.
“Team gonna be worth a ticket this year?” Phil followed up.
LeBlanc nodded again.
“Might be,” he said.
“Well,” Bill said. “There you have it, folks. The in-depth scouting report from Harlen LeBlanc himself. Boy, you sure ain’t one to waste no words.”
“I’ve been told,” LeBlanc said.
“Is it true Gene Thomas is working with you-all at the Grounds Department?” Phil asked.
“Yessir. Gene’s made a good hand over the summer.”
“He ought to be playing football somewhere this fall.”
“Grades,” Bill told his brother. “From what I hear.”
“Is that it, Harlen?” Phil asked. “He didn’t have the grades?”
“That’s Gene’s business. Not mine.”
“You sure ain’t very good at coffee and gossip.”
“I’m alright at the coffee part,” LeBlanc said and smiled polite and moved on to the counter and stood with his hands in his pockets.
“Good to see you, Mr. LeBlanc,” said the young man behind the counter. He had dark skin and darker hair, long and wrapped in a net with what looked to be a shower cap enclosing net and hair both.
“Arthur,” LeBlanc said with a kind realization. “I didn’t know you’d stayed in town.”
The young man shrugged.
