Elmer Kelton (1926-2009)
I haven’t read all of Elmer Kelton’s forty books, but I’ve read about thirty of them and I like some more than others, but I have never read a bad one.
Among my favorites are the novels comprising the Hewey Caloway trilogy: The Good Old Boys (1978); The Smiling Country (1998); and Six Bits a Day (2005).
That's the order that they were published, but it isn't the chronological years in which they are set. The Smiling Country is a sequel and Six Bits a Day is a prequel.
THE GOOD OLD BOYS
Hewey Calloway is one of the good old boys whose only ambition is to be a cowboy forever, and, in the year 1906, that makes him a living anachronism, for the life he desires to live forever has had its place in the sun, but that sun has set.
As Elmer Kelton writes in the introduction to my copy of the book:
"[Hewey] tries to remain a horseback man while the world relentlessly moves into a machine age…. He lives in an impossible dream, trying to remain changeless in a world where the only constant is change."
The story opens with Hewey riding toward the homestead that his younger brother is farming in west Texas, but he approaches with trepidation. He expects a warm welcome from his brother and his nephews, but he knows that his appearance will not be welcomed by Eve, his sister-in-law, who seemed to always like him more when he was going than when he was coming.
Before Walter married Eve he was footloose, but only out of necessity, being of a more pratical bent than Hewey, he wished to live a more settled existence. At an eary age, however, they had ridden many a trail together.
After their marriage Eve insisted that Walter take a job as a ranch foreman rather than jumping from one job to another as he once did, and as Hewey still did.
She grew dissatisfied with their situation on the ranch and she talked Walter into filing a homestead claim so that they could raise their two sons on land that they owned. Walter, cowboy, became Walter, farmer.
Eve fears the effect that Hewey might have on Walter and their two sons. She is afraid that Walter may be influenced by Hewey and long for the days in which he too had the freedom to roam at will. She knows that Hewey loves her sons and they love him in return, but she is fearful that they might grow up to emulate their uncle.
Eve was always lecturing him about settling down, about responsibility, respectability, always trying to change him. The way Hewey saw it, the Lord had purposely made every person different. He could not understand why so many people were determined to thwart the Lord’s work by making everyone the same.
Fourteen-year old Tommy has grown a good deal in the two years since Hewey last saw him, but he is young enough that he still worships his Uncle Hewey. Cotton, age sixteen, is a different story. He has not only grown, he has changed, and he has grown distant from both Hewey and his parents.
Cotton talked of the future as a time of automobiles and great machines and fantastic inventions waiting to burst forth upon the world. Hewey shuddered. He tried, but could picture no place in such a world for him. The wonders that made the future look golden to Cotton made it bleak and terrifying to Hewey.
Hewey is thirty-seven, never married, and possesses no desire to change that situation, at least not until he meets the boys’ teacher, Miss Spring Renfro. This causes him to examine and re-examine the life he has chosen to pursue.
Kelton writes in the introduction:
"To fulfill a wish we often give up something of equal or nearly equal value. Hewey feels drawn to the life his brother Walter has found: a home, a family, a piece of land that is his own. But to have it he knows he must give up his freedom to go where he pleases, when he pleases, to travel his own road without considering the needs of someone else…."
He cannot have it all; nobody can.
Which road will he choose? Will it be the open road or a settled life with Miss Renfro?
******
I give you Hewey Calloway, philosopher:
If a bath always felt this good, I would take one every week or two.
Looks like to me if they want people to pay attention to the rules, the rules ought to make sense.
He had never seen harm in an occasional small liberty with the facts, provided the motive was honorable. The motive in this case would be to keep Eve from raising hell and later regretting her lapse from grace. It had always ben his policy to protect her from herself.
I was ducked for a Baptist. But the water didn't soak very deep. I taken up my old and willful ways again pretty soon.
I always liked God better when I found Him outdoors. He always seemed too big to fit into a little-bitty cramped-up church.
Lots of folks talk about what the Lord wants. Wonder how many has ever asked Him.
If it cost a hundred dollars to go to heaven I maybe make it to Fort Worth.
And Hewey Calloway, citizen:
I'm a free born American. I even went to war. I'd be a taxpayer, and proud to say it, if I owned anything to pay taxes on.
and finally:
Folks have got to take me like I am or leave me alone.
But does that apply to Miss Renfro?
******
“Some
things we just can’t have, because if we try to hold them they die. There’s no way I can have you without
changing you. So go ahead, Hewey, go
with Snort. I know it’s what you really
want to do, deep in your heart. Go on then
… go on to Mexico.”
And he does.
“Hewey turned once, reined up and waved his
hat. Then he rode on.
The sun broke over the prairie in a sudden red
blaze. The family all pulled together,
arms around each other, Spring standing to one side, still alone. They watched as Hewey seemed to ride into the
fire, sitting straight-shouldered and proud on Biscuit’s back. And finally he was gone, melted into the
relentless glow of a new day.”
And so ends The Good Old Boys.
******
The story ended in such a way that it might have
been written to allow for a sequel. If
so, Kelton waited a long time to write one, since The Good Old Boys was
published in 1978 and its sequel was published twenty years later.
More than likely, Kelton was looking for a story
idea and decided to resurrect Hewey Calloway, one of his – and his fans’ –
favorite characters. The happy result
was The
Smiling Country, which was also set in west Texas, but in the year
1910, four years after The Good Old Boys.
Many of the same characters from The
Good Old Boys will be re-introduced, including:
Walter
and Eve Calloway – Hewey’s brother and sister-in-law
Tommy
Calloway – Walter and Eve’s youngest son (their oldest son Cotton does
not make an appearance; he has gone to town to work in an automobile garage)
C.C.
Tarpley – wealthy rancher
Frank “Fat”
Gervin – C.C.’s son-in-law and Hewey’s nemesis
Alvin and
Cora Lawdermilk – Eve and Walter’s neighbors
Snort
Yarnell – Hewey’s sometimes saddle pal and mischief maker
And –
Miss
Spring Renfro – school teacher and Hewey’s ex-fiancée
******
THE
SMILING COUNTRY
The story begins:
“Hewey
Calloway did not know how old he was without stopping to figure, and that
distracted his attention from matters of real importance. In his opinion anyone who wasted time
worrying about his age had more leisure than was good for him. He had not acknowledged a birthday since he
had turned thirty a dozen years ago – or was it fifteen?”
“…. In
horse years, Biscuit was older than his rider, but the brown gelding was
equally indifferent to the passage of time …. He could outguess a cow nine out
of ten confrontations and outrun her the other time.”
“…
Anybody who couldn’t get where he was going on horseback or in a wagon was in
too much of a hurry.”
Hewey, true to his fiddle-footed, happy-go-lucky
personality, was opposed to owning property for he viewed it as a handicap
rather than an asset. He never wanted
more property than he could tie to his saddle and carry with him to his next
job.
“I’m
satisfied with myself the way I am.
Ain’t much I’d want to change.”
He hated giving orders, found responsibility
smothering, and preferred to work as a top cowhand at thirty dollars a
month. Unfortunately, responsibility
came knocking in the person of his young nephew, Tommy, who was now eighteen
and who wanted to be a cowboy, just like his Uncle Hewey.
Hewey loved Tommy but he knew that his
sister-in-law’s greatest dread had
become a reality.
EVE TO
TOMMY: “Don’t do everything your uncle Hewey does. Use your head and don’t let him get you hurt.”
HEWEY:
“Tommy’s levelheaded. Like as not he’ll
be lookin’ after me more than I’ll be lookin’ after him.”
EVE:
“That is exactly what I’m afraid of.”
Hewey did
look after Tommy and the responsibility put him in the hospital. with a broken
arm, ribs, knee, and internal injuries.
It happened when Hewey refused to allow Tommy to ride a mean, unbroken,
outlaw bronc and instead did it himself.
Hewey rode the horse but he was badly injured.
He
realized that his days as a cowboy and bronc buster were behind him and he was
forced to “ponder the imponderable price of freedom.”
After
leaving the hospital he went to his brother Walter and sister-in-law Eve’s farm,
even arriving in an automobile.
Spring
Renfro was the only woman he had ever loved. In the four years he had been gone she was
never far from his thoughts. He wondered
if he should ask her to marry him – a second time. Unfortunately, he discovered that she and
Farley Neal, a good man, with both boots planted firmly on the ground, was also
in love with her.
Who would
she choose?
******
REVIEWS
“Elmer Kelton does not write Westerns. He writes fine novels set in the West – Dee Brown, author of Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee
“Elmer Kelton is to Texas what Mark Twain was
to the Mississippi River …. Each page of this novel resonates with the
authenticity that only Kelton can bring to this stirring adventure tale ….
Kelton’s clean, crisp writing makes this a most enjoyable addition to the body
of this author’s always memorable work. – Jory Sherman, author of Grass
Kingdom
Old timey dialogue, newly minted, rhetorical
stretchers and whopping good humor right out of Twain. -- Kirkus
******
SIX BITS A DAY
In Six Bits a Day we learn the
back stories of the Calloway brothers: Hewey, age twenty-two, and Walter, who
is a year younger. In the year 1889, they have put the farming life in east
Texas behind them, at least Hewey has, and have traveled to west Texas to
become cowboys, at least Hewey wants to.
The brothers have different outlooks on life and do not share the same goals. Hewey is carefree, fun-loving, can't remember how old he is, and can't shoot straight.
But as a Kirkus reviewer wrote: "One has to appreciate a Western whose hero is so bad with a revolver that he couldn't hit water if he was standing knee deep in a lake."
Walter, on the other hand, has a more practical nature and is more grounded. He's already tired of the wandering life and wants to settle down, especially after he meets Eve, a pretty girl working at a boarding house, whom he falls for like a ton of bricks, and tells Hewey that he is going to marry.
Hewey feels that it is his obligation as the older brother (he's not sure about how much older) to rescue Walter from a fate worse than death.
If you have read The Good Old Boys you know if he succeeded or not .
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| the author |
Meanwhile, they are hired on by a tough, big rancher, and total skinflint named C.C. Tarpley and because the brothers are rank amateurs when it comes to cowboying they are paid six bits a day (75 cents) rather than the going rate of a dollar a day.
The reader also learns C.C.'s back
story, a character whose name is familiar to readers of The Good Old
Boys and The Smiling Country, and they will get the back
stories of practically every character that appears in the other two books,
including Snort Yarnell and Fat Gervin.
Hewey, as one would expect, gets himself into some scrapes of his own making and that of others, but through his wit and dumb luck, mostly dumb luck, he escapes, tattered at the edges, but more or less unscathed.
Like the other books in the trilogy, this is not a shoot-em up Western. There is little gunplay, and that's a good thing for Hewey because he would not have survived. It is also a little shy on plot, but that's not a bad thing, since Kelton provides color and humor and memorable characterizations, along with the good writing that is the hallmark of his work.
It is my least favorite of the three books, but it's still a 5-star read for me -- and that ain't bad atall.
THE END (for now)
