I’m not quite ready to write a finale on this novel. Perhaps there is a touch of disappointment after having first read McCarthy’s finer pieces.
When finishing Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s 100 Years of Solitude, I was struck by how cleverly all the threads he had strung throughout the book were neatly tied up at the end. In The Orchard Keeper, McCarthy seems to do this, but it is, to me, a bit bordering on authorly telling as well as a neat, justified resolution. Marion Sylder goes to jail for running whiskey, and Uncle Ather goes to jail–subsequently ending up in a mental institution–for shooting up government property. John Wesley Rattner stays free of the law, and we’re not sure what he’s learned from his relationship with either of the two men. His father’s skeleton is found, and its identity surmised, though there is a question of whether it’s truly him because he may have lied to his wife about a plate in his head.
There is McCarthy’s dark humor here, as a greedy officer, Legwater, sifts through the ashes where the remains were burnt to find the valuable metal plate. Stirring up the old to cover the new with its dustly touch?
More, as Uncle Ather’s old hound dog, Scout, appears almost ghostly through the woods where he spent the whole novel walking beside his master. Shot by Legwater and killed; when we didn’t think he’d make it on his own very long and wonder how he survived when Ather was taken into custody. I still cringe when I see him standing forlorn on the road, padding behind the car that takes Ather away.
I don’t need to agree with why McCarthy’s characters do what they do; this is who they are. I’ve never found myself arguing with him over a lack of realism in their strange comings and goings. But there’s a touch of unfulfillment with The Orchard Keeper. Even to the point of wondering why, with a peach tree here, and a green apple or two dropping there, we’ve climbed mostly through mountains or onto a stool at the bar back in town.
More later.
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