*** Joe L. Hensley: Outcasts, Doubleday-Crime Club, $9.95. The novels about midwestern lawyer Donald Robak seem to be getting better and better. Hensley’s writing is marked by an ability to capture character with precision and economy. The murderer here is interesting and surprising but takes some believing.
** Tom Murphy: Auction, Signet, $2.95. This is a good honest job in the “bestseller” genre, featuring a well rendered background of a New York auction house, mini-series dialogue, stock characters presented in detail if not depth, and the usual blockbuster padding. The fairly predictable latter stages would benefit from more mystery. The novel is fun to read but ultimately delivers less than its 400-page length warrants.
John Dunning’s Looking for Ginger North (Fawcett-Gold Medal, $1.95), missed by this department on its appearance over a year ago, may be tough to find now, but it’s worth the effort. Besides an intriguing plot, it offers the best and most believable depiction of a racetrack backstretch and its people I’ve found in any mystery novel.
Mr. Smith and Myrtle
by Nedra Tyre
Copyright © 1947 by Nedra Tyre; renewed.
We are indebted to Edith Wyatt of Decatur, Georgia, for calling to our attention a remarkable book — Nedra Tyre’s RED WINE FIRST, published in 1947, and long out of print. The title of the book comes from Sean O’Casey’s THE SILVER TASSIE: “Red wine first, Jessie, to the passion and the power and the pain of life.”
“The people in [Nedra Tyre’s] book all talk to someone called a case worker... These, then, are conversations of persons who happened to be clients of social agencies sometime during the years 1940-45. They lived and died in three of the Southern states.”
The first of these stories — “sketches, conversations, whatever one wants to call them” — fully illustrates the quotation from Sean O’Casey...
I reckon what I done was years coming. Yet it looked like it was just all of a sudden. I keep telling myself it happened suddenlike and I was outa my mind, then I remember all the little things all my life long and I know they was just being packed one on top of the other and being shoved and pushed inside like a trunk or a suitcase that can’t hold no more.
They was just the two of us, me and Myrtle. Look like the Lord tried Hisself to make her pretty and me ugly. I was tall and gawky and you can’t see around my nose. I ain’t got much chin. Ain’t nothing right about me. And Myrtle, well, she was just about perfect. Black hair and a round smiling face. She had as pretty a figger as you could find and, Lord, from the time she was two every man she passed on the street was flirting with her. She didn’t care nothing for them, just grinned at them, said oh go on about your business, and they loved her even more. By the time she was eleven, she’d as soon tell a man to go to hell as to look at him straight.
I was three years older. I remember her fifteenth birthday, was the last time I ever tried to stay around the house when she was there with boys. They hovered over her and laughed with her and I just set there.
After that, as I say, I didn’t stay around her none, but I done a mighty funny thing. I’d stay in the kitchen and I’d hear all the fun going on and look like I couldn’t stand to be left out. What I done was to bore me a hole in the door and watch them. I reckon it wasn’t nice to spy on them like that but looked like I didn’t have no choice.
Mama and papa was always proud of Myrtle and the way she looked. Myrtle’d cry for things I had and mama’d say, give it to the baby, you’re a big girl now and ought not to want nothing like that to play with. You ain’t going to let your little sister cry, are you, just because you’re too stingy to give her that doll?
Papa got without work and it was up to me to earn what I could. Stopped school when I was in the sixth grade and went right to work in a department store in the stockroom. Well, I was there six years when it happened. Now understand, Mr. Smith wasn’t the handsomest man that ever lived and breathed and I wouldn’t try to make you believe it. Face was kinda like a rat’s, but he was just plain nice. Talked to me like he thought a awful lot of me. Every night I’d get down on my knees and thank God for letting Mr. Smith speak to me like I was a woman. I wanted to reach out my hand to Mr. Smith, to give him presents, to do everything to show him what it meant to me that he treated me like a woman. It was wonderful the first time he taken me to a movie — was wonderful of course every time after that — and helt my hand. For so long it had seemed to me that every girl alive had moren me and then there it was, everything handed to me on a silver platter.
Well, it went on like that for some time. He never said a word to me about love or nothing. I wanted him so much. It was all shining on my face, the way I loved him. I’d try to bring his name in the conversation, no matter where I was. I’d say, now Mr. Smith, the floorwalker up on the first floor, thinks it’s going to be a good year for the Republicans. Anything to keep his name before me, anything to hold onto my love.
Then one morning mama said to me, I know you love him. Lord, anybody could tell I loved him.
So one night I got my courage up and I invited him home to supper. Mama really done her best. She was a mighty good cook. It was real nice. Papa put on a tie and for oncet we got him to wear his falst teeth and we set around laughing and talking. Myrtle was out on a date. We had a mighty comfirtible evening. Papa setting there picking his falst teeth and mama settled in her rocking chair with her hands on her stomach, smiling.
In a little while papa started yawning and saying well come on maw let’s leave it to the young folks and we left the dining room and went on in the sitting room.
Mr. Smith and me set down on the sofa. Mr. Smith and me was all alone, first time I’d ever been alone with him, before we always went to the show together or to some place to eat with lots of people around. I felt as if I was looking at him for the first time. The floor lamp was lit way on the other side of the room and it was all just as nice as anybody’d ever want. I was trying not to be too bold and brazen.
Mr. Smith finely reached over to me same as if it was the most natural thing in the world and taken my hand. Then he just sorta drawed me over to him and kissed me.
I reckon they’s just some folks the Lord don’t want to have no pleasure. Here this wonderful thing come into my life. I shoulda known wasn’t meant for me.
After a while Mr. Smith said, well it’s getting late and you’ve got to get your beauty sleep. He got up and walked over to the console table and taken his hat off it. He just sorta waved and said thanks for a very nice evening and tell your mother that was just about the nicest apple pie I ever put in my mouth.
I heard him close the door and then I heard Myrtle come in the hall. I reckon she musta said something to him but I couldn’t hear their voices. Then she walked into the living room and said, well you’ve got a feller. I looked hard at her and I knowed she was adding in her mind though not coming out and saying it, well who’d a thought you coulda done it. She smiled a very funny smile. I never thought much about it. Not then.
After that, looked like Mr. Smith ignored me. Then about two weeks later there was Mr. Smith waiting in the living room when I come home and I said in a very surprised and funny way, well I declare, Mr. Smith, I wasn’t expecting to see you here. I was trying to be offhand. I said, it’s mighty nice of you to come by and there’s a good show on at the Capitol and I was wondering if you had in mind going to see it.