Just Like The Best of The Blues, This Novel Is Frenetic, Yearning, and Pulsing With Hope https://ift.tt/IXnbYvN
Callie Collins comes out thrumming with her debut novel, Walk Softly on This Heart of Mine. Aptly titled after Bill Monroe’s bluegrass hit “Walk Softly on This Heart of Mine,” Collins’s novel transports us to Rush Creek Saloon, situated on the outskirts of 1970’s Austin, Texas. We are taken off the beaten path of the city and down the dusty roads, into a universe that is ripe with palpable yearning, keening loneliness, and, above all, the transcendence and richness of music.
Walk Softly is told through the lens of its three main characters: Doug Moser, Deanna Teague, and Steven Frances. We first meet Doug as a man on the hunt for the chance to make something of himself. He’s found by Wendall, co-owner of Rush Creek Saloon, who asks Doug and his friends to be the in-house band for the summer. Doug, his partner, Gwen, and their son, Julian, move out to the boondocks to live steps away from the bar.
Doug’s section of the book is frenetic, intense, pulsing with that yearning for a chance to be something, but not knowing how to get there. Some chapters even begin with Doug in mid-thought: “Yeah, and after the night at the Armadillo, the fucking kid was suddenly around the whole time.” Or, “You know, to be honest, most of what I remember about that weekend was the crowd.” And while Doug is surrounded by people who love him, he doesn’t know how to show up for them in a real way. The only place he feels truly comfortable is up on the stage, belting out soulful tunes, playing his music.
“I felt useless in the house alone; I could never really get myself comfortable in private unless I was playing, and I didn’t want to play. I needed the noises and the smells and the sounds to feel like I was worth anything without a guitar in my hands.”
In the next section of the novel, we hear from Deanna’s first-person point of view. She is the other co-owner of Rush Creek and also happens to be married to Wendall. Deanna’s narration is less fevered than Doug’s, but the yearning is present. Her longing comes not in the form of fame, but in that of a woman who just wants more. More of what? That’s not as clear, but the desire is unmistakable. A budding relationship between Deanna and Doug begins to shed light on the life Deanna had once made peace with. One she once left behind in search of something else in the great wide open – but then returned to and decided that’s as good as it gets. Now, with this new world swirling around and between her and Doug, the reader can hear, see, and feel that complacency is cracking open. Maybe she does need more than the bar and a lukewarm love.
The last section is told from the third-person perspective of Steven Frances, a young nobody who is just looking for his place in the world. Steven latches onto Doug, and they share an intimacy of sorts that one might only find through the shared passion of music.
“When it felt real good up there, I could look out and see Steven, and it was like my notes were coming into him and out of him, like there was no boundary between the sound and his body. It was weird and I couldn’t look too long or I’d get all red and tight, but it felt special too, to make somebody move like that.”
As a young, effeminate man in the South in the 70s, Steven knows his fair share of misery. His section mentions his “Hick God,” who not only mocks him, but also comforts him.
“And Steven talks to Hick God, doesn’t he? He’s out here talking, even though the talking hurts. He asked Hick God to stay, even. He says the goddamn prayers. He can’t sleep if he doesn’t pray first – trust him, he’s tired. He might not want to believe in You, Hick God, fine. But he does anyway, and You well know it. Steven feels You, all the time. He believes. He suffers through all the extra, useless pain that comes with believing. Lord Almighty, just help him up.”
This section is more scattered, haphazard. His drunken, drugged, newly beaten body stumbles through the smallest selection of the novel, his Hick God in tow, lamenting and suffering into a less than delicate ending. Through it all, we are sure of one thing: Steven and the others are drawn together by misery and music.
While these characters couldn’t differ more on the surface – a married musician with a child, a childless middle-aged woman stuck in a life she’s uncertain of, and a gay teenage boy who longs to be a hero or even just a friend – these characters are all conjoined by one thing: the music. “…nervous or lonely or excited or ashamed, or a combination of all of them. What do you call the combination of all those feelings? The blues, man, don’t you? I call it the blues anyway.”
They find compatibility in the sticky, smoke-filled bar, along the dusty country road, amongst the detritus of life and its curve balls. Collins is able to provide us with an intimacy so tangible that we feel like we are right there beside them at this honky tonk. We can hear the twangy reverberations of each beat within our bodies. We can feel the ache for friendship and the desire for something more with every purposeful word she places on the page.
Just like the best blues songs, Walk Softly on This Heart of Mine drips with melancholy. It’s all about the belonging, about the need to find something that grounds us and provides us with the community we all long for. It’s also about understanding that there is sadness, to be sure, but also hope. And that sometimes the journey is as important as the destination.
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