Visible Spirits - Hardcover

Yarbrough, Steve

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0375411593 ISBN 13: 9780375411595

Publisher: Knopf, 2001

Synopsis

A heart-stopping story—by an award-winning novelist—located at the dead center of Southern mythology and our most intransigent national trauma.

The Mississippi Delta, fabled “South of the South,” is replete with plantations carved from the wilderness, rich soil and King Cotton, with field chants and blues laments, violence and tragedy. In this austerely beautiful landscape,
by 1902, Reconstruction is being encroached upon by Jim Crow. And in the town of Loring, the tenure of a black postmistress is compromised when the prodigal son of a once mighty planting family returns home. A gambler run
out of luck and a great many venues, he finds his diminished prospects as unappealing as the political moderation of his brother, now both mayor and editor of the newspaper. Their fraternal tension quickly spreads through the countryside—some citizens striving for the better world ostensibly promised, others for the vestigial antebellum order. Caught squarely in the center of this tortured dynamic is the postmistress herself, her fate further complicated when President Roosevelt, on federal grounds, intervenes personally.

And so this local, even familial dispute inevitably erupts, fueled by all the dark, brutal memories of slavery, civil war and emancipation. In this crucible of race relations and mythology, people black and white alike are tested relentlessly by history and human nature, by passions at once ambivalent and fierce. And with this masterful novel, Steve Yarbrough confronts character with morality, love with hatred, reason with blood—and with great authority and compassion he extends a rich tradition of our national literature.

About this title

About the Author

Steve Yarbrough is the author of three collections of stories and a novel, The Oxygen Man, which received the Mississippi Authors’ Award, the California Book Award and a third from the Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters. A native of the Delta town of Indianola, he now lives in Fresno, California.

From the Back Cover

"Independent booksellers are really rooting for this lyrical novel, about a small Mississippi town during Reconstruction. They are hoping to win over the same readers who helped make the small novel Plainsong a big hit a few years ago."
–Editor's Picks, Wall Street Journal

"Absorbing and instructive . . . Visible Spirits brilliantly brings to life the beginnings of the bleak turn in Southern history that C. Vann Woodward once identified as "the strange career of Jim Crow."
–Christopher Tilghman, Washington Post Book World

"A compelling look at moral courage, full of passion . . . The place, people, events and emotions are so authentic in Steve Yarbrough's second novel, it's hard to believe the story is fiction."
–J. Ford Huffman, USA Today

"Invites comparison with Faulkner's greatest novels, Absalom, Absalom! and The Sound and the Fury, Robert Penn Warren's Band of Angels, even To Kill a Mockingbird . . .Yarbrough's novel holds up fine against its elder cousins."
–Diane Roberts, Atlanta Journal-Constitution

“Visible Spirits is a strong, moving novel that captures the texture of daily life in the Old South, and the virulence and complexity of racial prejudice . . . Yarbrough writes with insight, compassion and humor, so a realistic tale becomes refreshing and vibrant.”
—Ha Jin

“Steve Yarbrough is a confident and elegant prose stylist and a storyteller who knows how empty spaces can resonate with power and meaning. It is the unspoken, the invisible and the unacknowledged that give this novel its dramatic complexity, its profound force and depth of feeling. It is the interstices between the lines that evoke not only historical grief but the grief of our own time.”
—David Guterson

“In clean elastic prose, Steve Yarbrough has fashioned a rich dark fable out of his Mississippi material—a fable whose moral applies as much today as it would have in the yesterday it’s written about.”
—Kent Haruf

“Steve Yarbrough’s Visible Spirits is fiercely remembered in the blood of every Deltacrat. A powerful novel that lays the guilt down freshly in a story that’s irresistible and, finally, howling to be told. True Art.” —Barry Hannah

Reviews

HThe South depicted in Steve Yarbrough's haunting new novel irresistibly calls to mind Yeats's famous lines, "the best lack all conviction, while the worst/ are full of passionate intensity." The best and worst, in this case, are brothers who, despite their common upbringing, are diametrically opposed on issues of race. Tandy Payne, who returns to Loring, Miss., in the early 20th century after squandering his inheritance on gambling, whores and liquor, has absorbed all the hypocrisy and racism of the old South. Loring's mayor, Tandy's brother, Leighton, stands 6'5", harbors liberal opinions and is handicapped by a perpetual awkwardness. He runs Loring's newspaper and uses it as a platform for moderation. Yarbrough divides his story between the Payne siblings and Seaborn and Loda Jackson, who are black. Loda is the town's postmistress, the only African-American in the state with a government appointment. Tandy covets her job, and he decides to steal it by starting a race-baiting campaign, claiming Loda encouraged a black laborer to behave insolently. To prevent conflict, Loda resigns, but Theodore Roosevelt's administration decides to make a civil rights stand by not accepting her resignation. In the escalating dispute, Leighton becomes a pariah for siding with Loda. Connecting Loda, Tandy and Leighton is their common father, Sam, a plantation owner who massacred a group of black men and women who tried to escape the Delta in the 1880s. Based on a real 1902 incident, Yarborough's sad, elegantly wrought story proceeds like a mesmerizing lesson in the skewed logic of violence, and it builds to a powerful ending, a tragic testament to the dark heritage haunting the South. Yarbrough, who earned critical kudos with The Oxygen Man, has again written a novel that resonates with understanding and compassion. (May 7)Forecast: While his subject matter is somber, Yarbrough's restrained narrative pulls the reader into its time and place with beautifully calibrated suspense. Critical recognition that he's a writer to watch should bring attention to this novel.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

Reading these loosely connected short narratives is like reading the metaphysical poets in fictional form. Alvarez renders complex emotions in the oddest concrete objects and incidents, finding unambiguous desire, for instance, in the smell of scrambled eggs and gun oil. Set mostly in gay experience, these fresh, artfully crafted tales touch on recognizable themesallure, anxiety, redemption, prejudice, and lossthat shiver to life under the author's masterly touch. Alvarez gives body to the flutters of human essence in spare prose, strung mainly around the characters of Mark and Dean. His monsters often succumb to angels in disguise, as when musician Mark's audiotape of his soul rouses his mother's beleaguered spirit, cutting into her reluctance to listen to what he needs to tell her about his life. Highly recommended for public and academic libraries, and gay literature collections.Roger Durbin, Univ. of Akron, OH
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.

A family's complex relations and dark history are the central forces binding together plot and theme in this latest novel by the author of The Oxygen Man (1999). The year is 1902, the dawn of the modern era in American race relations and state's rights. Drifter and ne'er-do-well Tandy Payne has returned to Loring, Mississippi, and it appears his only purpose is to stir up trouble. His older brother, Leighton, is the mayor of Loring as well as the editor-in-chief of the town's newspaper. When Tandy hatches a scheme to remove the town's African American postmistress, Loda (who is his half-sister), and secure the job himself, Leighton opposes him, with federal assistance. However, the diabolical Tandy has allies of his own--particularly the area's wealthy white planters--and soon Loring is a divided town. The plot avoids both sentimentality and a tidy ending, and it is strong on characterization. Although Tandy's weaknesses as a character are readily apparent, the well-roundedness of the other characters more than make up for it. Frank Caso
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

The mud on Main Street was half a foot deep and mixed with enough horse shit to make him wish he had something to clamp over his nose. But he?d lost his handkerchief on the train coming up, and anyway, it was stained with blood: in New Orleans a fellow had punched him in the mouth. He couldn?t remember who it was, though he did recall how much it hurt.

A supply wagon loaded with hundred-pound sacks of feed grain and hog shorts waited in front of Rosenthal?s General Merchandise, and a couple horses were tied up in front of the hardware. But he knew, because he knew his brother, that Leighton would already be in?he?d probably been at the office since five or five-thirty. He went to bed every night at nine o?clock and rose at four so he could get an hour?s worth of reading done before setting to work. He?d always done that and always would, especially now that he had two jobs instead of one.


The legend on the window said loring weekly times. The building had once been a saloon, but that closed down back in ?96
when the drys won the local option election. Leighton had played a role in their favor, editorializing at length, arguing that the whole community should be outraged at the sight of drunks staggering along the sidewalk, bumping into women.

Through the window this morning, Tandy could see him sitting at his rolltop desk, back where the poker tables used to be, reading a big leather-bound volume. He wore a gray suit, and Tandy knew the suit was clean and fresh-smelling, that the collar of his white shirt had been pressed this very morning. He knew who had pressed it, too.

The door was unlocked; he opened it and stepped inside. Blank sheets of newspaper were stacked on the floor near an old copper-plated handpress, and on the counter were metal baskets with copy in them. A Western Newspaper Union calendar hung on one wall. Instead of smelling like cigarettes and whiskey, as it used to, the place stank now of ink and dust.

Leighton didn?t even look up. ?I was wondering when I?d hear from you,? he said.

Tandy stomped each boot on the floor, and clots of mud flew off.

Leighton laid the book down. He stared at Tandy?s boots. ?Most folks would?ve stomped the mud off outside.?
?Course, I?m not most folks. I?m family.?

Leighton stood. As always, when Tandy had been away for a while, the size of his brother took him by surprise. Tandy was not a small man himself, but Leighton stood six foot five, an inch taller than their father, and even though he lacked their father?s weight, he could still fill a room by himself. When Leighton was present, Tandy felt he had less of everything?less space to move around in, less air to breathe.

A big lightbulb hung from the ceiling. Pointing, Tandy said, ?I heard y?all had got electric power.?

The civic booster in his brother asserted itself: you could almost see his chest swell. ?Got it last fall. Right now, it?s only on from six till midnight, but that?s a big help to us on Wednesday evening, when we?re actually printing the paper.? He smiled and crossed his arms. ?You hear what happened over at the livery stables??

?No.?

?Uncle Billy Heath decided he needed him some electric power. Said he wanted to be able to check on his horses without worrying about toting a coal-oil lamp in there and having one of ?em kick it over and set the whole place afire. So he had Loring Light, Ice and Coal string a cable in and suspend a big old bulb from the rafters. When they turned on the power, all the horses went crazy. They kicked open the stall doors and took off down Main Street. One of ?em ran right over Uncle Billy. Broke his arm in two places.?

Tandy laughed. Eight or ten years ago, in a poker game in this very building, Uncle Billy Heath had beaten him out of a good-looking saddlebred mare. Tandy had owned the mare for only three or four hours before losing her, and it pleased him now to think maybe she was the one who?d broken Uncle Billy?s arm.

?When a person leaves town,? he said, ?all sorts of things start happening. You don?t hardly know the place when you get back.?

?Yeah, there?s a few things that have changed, I guess.? Leighton stuck his hands in his pockets. ?I imagine you know A. L. Gunnels passed on.?

?No, I hadn?t heard that. Who?s the new mayor??

?The truth is, you?re looking at him.?

This was the moment Tandy had dreaded, the worst thing about coming back. At two o?clock this morning, as he sat on a hard bench at the depot, batting away mosquitoes and doing his best to stay awake, he had imagined what it was going to feel like when he stood face-to-face with his brother and acknowledged another of Leighton?s successes, and it had almost been enough to make him jump on the next train leaving town. The problem was, he didn?t have the money to buy a ticket on the next train. He?d traveled just as far as he could.

?Well now, damn if we don?t have a politician in the family,? he said. ?Congratulations.?

He offered Leighton his hand. When his brother took it, Tandy felt how puny his own fingers were. The handshake almost crushed them.

?All I plan to do?s serve out the rest of A.L.?s term. Some folks got together and asked me to do it, and I felt like I couldn?t say no. I don?t know if congratulations are in order, though. Maybe condolences would be more appropriate.?

?How come??

?We?ve got some troublesome issues to confront. For instance, there?s a group of folks who want to pass an ordinance making it illegal to construct any more frame buildings, because they?re scared a fire?ll sweep through and burn the whole town down. But brick?s expensive, so some folks are claiming this ordinance?ll discourage new businesses and retard progress?retard progress is a phrase you hear in the board meetings every two or three minutes. People get all heated up over stuff like that, and by virtue of being both mayor and editor of the local paper, I?m smack-dab in the middle.?

If being smack-dab in the middle displeased him, Tandy couldn?t tell it. Leighton seemed, as always, quite happy with himself.

He did not, however, look particularly happy with Tandy. He let his eyes travel down his brother?s torso to his pants, which a year ago had been white but were now a dingy cream color, with spots of mud and dried blood on the knees. The boots had last been shined five or six months back and were in need of repair.

?What happened?? he said. ?Somebody catch you dealing from the bottom of the deck??

?Nobody does that anymore.?

?Well, it looks like somebody caught you doing something.?

Nobody had caught him doing anything. A little more than a week ago, he?d been in a game where the pot had reached six thousand dollars, and a fellow he?d never seen before, a wiry little man with a funny accent and a gold watch chain that had a miniature jockey?s cap and a saddle hanging from it, had convinced him and the other three players to follow him over to the bank, where he?d request a loan based on his hand. Tandy had bought the key to the deck, he held a strong hand, and it never crossed his mind, not for one minute, that one of the other players might have bought the key, too. He believed he?d found the perfect sucker. He believed it right up until the man with the watch chain?having received his loan from a banker who Tandy figured must not know the first thing about poker?played a king and four aces.

The money hadn?t been Tandy?s to lose. People wanted that money, believing it was theirs, and if you looked at things in a certain way, they were right. He?d heard that if he didn?t leave town, somebody might kill him.

?You?re broke, aren?t you?? Leighton said.

?Temporarily insolvent?s how I?d put it.?

?Temporary?s got its limits. After a while, temporary becomes permanent.?

?There was a three-day period six months ago when I could have bought you and everything you call yours.?

?No,? Leighton said, ?you couldn?t have.?

For a moment, while Leighton stood there facing him, letting his words sink in, Tandy hated his brother. It wasn?t the first time, nor would it be the last. But he knew that if he could just keep a grip on himself for a few more seconds, the moment of hating would pass and he?d be left with the same old bunch of feelings, which were far too complicated to bear a single name.

Leighton turned, walked back over to his desk. He flipped open a ledger that lay near his typewriter. He made a show of staring at it, running his finger down the page as if he were checking figures. ?Where are you staying??

?Thought I?d take a room at Miss Rosa?s.?

?Room and board at Miss Rosa?s is about four dollars a week. I imagine you?re a few dollars short??

Tandy was tired: he hadn?t slept for two days or had a drink for three, and all he really wanted was to get into a nice soft bed with a bottle of whiskey and drink till he passed out cold. But one thing you could always do when you couldn?t do anything better was bluff. If nothing else, it kept you in the game. So he did his best to sound rakish, untroubled.

?Briefly.?

Leighton opened a desk drawer and took out a metal box. He raised the lid, pulled a few bills out, counted and laid them on the desk, then put the box back in the drawer. The entire operation probably took only a minute or so, but to Tandy it felt like ten years.

Leighton picked up the stack of bills and walked over and handed them to him.

?Thanks,? Tandy said.

?Sarah and Will?ll want to see you. Why don?t you come over tonight and eat supper??

?All right.? He crammed the bills into his pocket. ?Leighton . . . that board you mentioned? Has it got the power to give out jobs??

?Jobs?? Leighton said, sounding as if he couldn?t believe he?d heard right.

?You know. City jobs.?

?Yeah,? Leighton said. ?It?s got the power to hire folks to sweep up the marshal?s office and cart garbage over to the town dump. You want to cart garbage,...

Edition details

• Publisher: Knopf
• Publication date: 2001
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0375411593
• ISBN 13: 9780375411595
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 288