Quirky, quaint and quasi-surreal define small-town life on the Eastern Plains for father and son
You don’t have to drive too far east to find a completely different pace of life.
That much is clear in “East of Denver,” a debut novel by Gregory Hill released earlier this year. Hill sketches out a witty and sardonic view of farming life on the Eastern Plains rooted in simplicity, repetition and an age-old tradition of solitude, despite its modern-day setting.
“In the country, your home is the universe. If you do it right, you don’t ever have to see anyone, ever. That’s how my ancestors did it. They dug a well with shovels. Made a house out of dirt. Grew crops, milked cows, shot jackrabbits.” It’s a lifestyle that’s bleak and charming by turns.
But the daily existence in Dorsey, a fictional flyspeck of a town on Colorado’s Eastern Plains, isn’t the main focus in Hill’s biting narrative, although it serves as a major character. The rural atmosphere is the stage for a moving, saddening and heartfelt story of a father and a son who have switched roles in the wake of mental illness. Shakespeare Williams (a name descended from hard-scrabble German forebears from the 1870s) leaves Denver and returns to his family homestead outside of Dorsey to take care of his father, Emmet.
Emmet’s been struck by a mean mix of Alzheimer’s and dementia. He’s only in his early 60s but his memory lapses have gotten intense. Once the epitome of a well-rounded plainsmen, a farmer-handyman-pilot who could fix any engine, repair any leak and land a Cessna airplane on a rural country road, Emmet has been reduced to a state of childlike uselessness. He can’t remember conversations five minutes after they take place. Following the death of his wife years before, he’s alone on the Williams family farm, an outpost in the eastern wilderness, passed down for generations.
Shakespeare (Shakes for short) takes on a role as his father’s live-in caretaker and slowly falls into the routines of small-town life. He reconnects with the town’s colorful and twisted cast of characters. There’s Clarissa, a bank teller who simultaneously suffers from anorexia nervosa and emetophobia (a fear of throwing up) that precludes her from being bulimic. Vaughn, a paraplegic who lives in his mother’s basement, is one of Shakespeare’s only friends, as is D.J., an obnoxious peer from high school who has to come to the Williams’ rescue after a skunk attack (both father and son have no sense of smell).
The pace of life is slow and predictable. Shakes plays the caretaker to his father as their world starts to crumble. He discovers his father’s no longer eligible for the government payments that had been his main source of income. He finds out a local greedy banker had cheated his father out of his airplane for a scandalous cost of $20. After Emmet has a brief stay in the local hospital, the situation becomes dire. The father and son owe thousands of dollars for medical bills. The banker who bilked Emmet out of the plane threatens to foreclose. Shakes and his friends come up with a half-brained plot to rob the local bank.
The relationship between Emmet and Shakes is the centerpiece. Through the simple talk of the plains, Hill paints a relationship with humor and grace.
The slow, predictable pace of life in Dorsey fades in comparison to the pair’s puttering around on the farm. They rebuild a motorcycle together. They take a pickup truck into the far stretches of the plains and find a herd of wild buffalo. It’s hard to miss the subtle commentaries about the disappearing agrarian lifestyle in Colorado. The Williamses play out the last acts of a lifestyle coming to a close, and their final chores in rural routine that’s spanned centuries hint at a deeper loss. n
“East of Denver” by Gregory Hill. 261 pages, $25.95 ISBN: 978-0525952794, Dutton Adult