It
has been a little over five years since I mentioned this book here on the blog. Seems like a
good time to mention it again today as part of FFB this week. Whether you read the book or not, make sure you check out the list
this week at Patti's blog for more reading suggestions.
In an age where if you are a male and
you tell a woman---not your wife/girlfriend/mistress-- that she looks nice you
open yourself up to a charge of sexual harassment, in an age where you are
called sexist or worse if you hold open a door for a lady, etc. comes this
collection MEN IN THE MAKING by Bruce Machart. These stories, almost
all set in Texas, are about men at all walks of life literally doing the best
they can. These are not stories of politically correct men worrying about their
401ks and their place in the family. These are real guys who do the work that many
never notice and take for granted. There is an air of tragedy, dreams
unfulfilled, about these characters as they go about their daily lives. These
are men who would tell Jimmy Stewart exactly what he could do with himself as
this for sure ain’t no wonderful life.
“Where You Begin” opens the collection
in a tale set in Houston. There comes a time when the woman in your life
is tired of your crap and tells you to go. She’s warned you before this
day was coming and you heard it and didn’t really believe it. But, this time it
is for real and there is not point is staying as you have done this dance
before with other women over the years. Before long you are once again in your
best friend’s truck, drinking beer, and cruising the interstate around
Houston. It’s a ritual you both have done many times before but this time
will be much different.
Next up is Arkansas and the life of a
tree mill worker in “The Last One Left in Arkansas.” The debarker is a
mean thing when it goes to work on a tree. What it does to a man is far, far
worse. But, there is a mental debarker at work as well on the mind of the
narrator. Gradually, his life story is slowly unpeeled just like the bark on a
tree.
Back to Texas where the minutes before
Tim Tilden lost his wife in the parking lot of the Wal-Mart will live with him
forever in “Because He Can’t Not Remember.”
Nothing like a ripped water hose to
slow you down in “Something for the Poker Table.” South Texas is broiling, the
plants need their water, and at our age you know how to fix stuff and a few
other things.
It may be spring time in Austin but for
Raymond that means nothing in “The Only Good Thing I’ve Heard.” Raymond
should have listened to Tammy as she knows what she was talking about. At
least at work somebody else can scream.
The other is no escape from your
thoughts in “An Instance of Fidelity.”
Memories exist as “Monuments” in the
mind. When you get closer and closer to 40 and over you start thinking
more and more about the past. Everything changed when he was ten and
nothing was ever the same for him and Patty next door. It is all he can think
about these days.
An East Texas paper mill is the
backdrop in “Among the Living Amidst the Trees.” Garrett and the narrator work
hard all week to take their women out on Friday night for dancing and
drinking. The news crews that have descended on Jasper, Texas are more
trouble than they are worth. Sure, what happened was bad, but there are other
horrible things going on.
If you live in the vicinity of Houston,
Texas and you had something removed thanks to that thing known as cancer,
whatever you lost rode around with Dean Covin in his car. “What You’re Walking
Around Without” is about what happens to that stuff and the life Dean Covin
lives these days. The story also provides a fitting end to the book.
These ten stories are emotional
powerhouses that are not easy reading by any means. These stories are
about the folks who keep things going day to day. Often doing thankless
brutally hard jobs for low pay. These are people who knew in great detail
not only hard work, but personal pain and tragedy. Pain and tragedy that
is part of the fiber of their daily lives and won’t ever be changed because it
is a part of who they are at the core.
The result is an intense and often
emotionally draining work that makes you think long after the book is closed.
These are characters that resonate within and will touch you in many different
ways. Ultimately they are unsung men, heavy with burdens, doing the best
that they can day in day out.
MEN IN THE MAKING
Bruce Machart
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
2011
ISBN# 978-0-15-603444-9
Hardback (also available in audio and
eBook formats)
208 Pages
$24.00
Material supplied by the good folks of
the Plano Texas Public Library System.
Kevin R. Tipple © 2012, 2017
Enjoyed your review, Kevin. Had not heard of Machart. Sounds like someone I need to check out.
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