Taps
By Willie Morris
Houghton Mifflin, 338 pp., $26
Willie Morris died in 1999, which makes his novel Taps posthumous but not unfinished. His widow, JoAnne Prichard Morris, who oversaw every aspect of the manuscriptยs preparation, who honored every change Morris indicated, has seen to that.
Taps took the author decades to write. Morris began toying with the idea of a fictional work based on his own experiences growing up in Yazoo City, Mississippi, as far back as the late 1960s, the same period (1967-71) he served as editor of Harperยs. When he returned to Mississippi in 1980 he returned in earnest to Taps, a labor of love obviously, a work to join My Dog Skip in popularity possibly.
The story is a year in the life of Swayze Barksdale (age 16), the season opener is early summer 1951 (with the Korean War at its height), the place is Fiskยs Landing (Yazoo City stand-in, pop. 10,184, staple of conversation: hearsay), and life there goes this way: divided — between hill country and flatland; between planters and plain folk; between blacks and whites; between the living and the dead; and between what these citizens, good or bad, show of themselves and what they donยt or canยt, which, in the bookยs violent climax, makes for a matter of life and death. Heavy-duty? Sometimes yes, more times no. Heavy-handed? In spots.
ยI began to see that everyone in the town seemed troubled,ย young Swayze observes after perhaps observing more than most 16-year-olds in a town he goes on to describe as ยa warehouse of tormented souls.ย His object by the time he reaches college at Sewanee? To ยremember with surging clarity how passionately I was trying to give a little sense and design to the things I had felt and learned and experienced.ย Itยs a tall order, but consider:
1) A fatherless boy on the brink of adulthood who ยworries about everything,ย who is ยmiserable in the very tributaries of [his] soul,ย which prompts in or on him ยa sturdy trace of paranoia — warts and rash and angst … dread of the open grave and the mother … perverse predilection for the Ricks Funeral Home … and along with all this a proclivity for the desolate, the insufferable, the troubling.ย
2) A widowed, indomitable mother, a teacher of tap dance but with ยaristocraticย forebears, who is ยfraught with an inordinate propensity for intrusion,ย a woman ยobscurely troubledย and driven to search and research her sonยs every move.
3) A girlfriend, Georgia: ยspoiled, irreverent, unpredictable,ย ยstubbornly self-reliant and free,ย source of Swayzeยs joy, then sorrow.
4) The half father, half big brother to Swayze, Luke Cartwright: a man of ยtruncated queries and unembarrassed silences,ย ยhalf redneck and half coat-and-tie,ย ยiconoclastic,ย ยironic,ย a man who sensed ยthe essential malevolence of things and aberrant behavior and other peopleยs limitations.ย
5) Rich boy Durley Godbold, whose limitation is being born the monster son of a ยfeudal grandeeย of a father, his limit crossed when he learns of Cartwrightยs affair with Godboldยs wife Amanda, ยdaughter of a failed yeoman turned small time entrepreneurย yet blessed with ยan essence of honorย to go with her iron sense of self.
And 6) Potter Ricks, owner of the local funeral home, ยa central figure in those days, the talisman and necromancer and conjurer of the tale, the sad, the gruesome, the funny,ย ยcustodian of our past.ย It is Ricks, along with Cartwright, who enlists trumpeters Swayze and his misanthropic friend Arch to play ยTapsย for the townยs multiple war dead over the course of these 12 months.
If the prospect from Fiskยs Landing looks gloomy, Morrisย story, for the most part, is not. And yet, early on we learn this from Swayze: ยThe ornately polite and elaborate society of that old small town rewarded the child for keen observation and encouraged him to listen — a society of extremes with secrets not easily honoredย and with some secrets apparently more honored than others.
Swayzeยs mother Ella, for one, is a case of barely contained hysterics. Swayze observes her but cannot justify, much less comprehend, her bizarre actions. And Swayzeยs father, ยa tall man … of gentle countenanceย who died when the boy was 10, figures even less prominently in Swayzeยs recollections. Unless by the tap of Ellaยs feet weยre to hear of a husband and father (the authorยs own?) being secretly, repeatedly mourned.
JoAnne Prichard Morris will be reading from and signing copies of Taps at Burkeยs Book Store tonight, Thursday, April 19th, from 5 to 7 p.m. For more info, call Burkeยs at 278-7484.
