Tomato Red

by Daniel Woodrell

  And, after that down-the-rabbit-hole first sentence, Sammy reminds us again that we are part of this, and we are just like him: “Can’t none of this be new to you,” he says. And so you are his. And you are Woodrell’s.

  Tomato Red is a story of outliers, and, as none of this is new to us, we are thus outliers too. So we decide to go with Sammy, who stumbles haphazardly into the world of Venus Hollow and the Merridew clan, mother Beverly, a slightly worn prostitute, and her two teenage children, the beautiful James (“If your ex had his lips,” Sammy tells the reader, “you’d still be married”) and his enterprising sister, Jamalee. Jamalee, of the eponymous tomato-red hair. Jamalee, whose ragged, raging heart beats wildly at the center of the book. She’s the dreamer, whose dreams are big and gold-gilt enough to entice her brother and Sammy alike.

  Before meeting Jamalee, Sammy never saw such possibility in life, and the yearning is painful for both of them. “God damn,” she says, “you know, that big rotten gap between who I am, and who I want to be, never does quit hurtin’ to stare across.” Jamalee’s dreams, however, are Hollywood-made, a place where “squatly shiny fellas in tuxedos [are] making music just out of sight behind the palm trees”. The imagined futures she paints dazzle Sammy, whose world heretofore was only as big as that night’s passed bottle and fun, but he sees the dark edge. “The girl put bubbles in my spirit with her dedication and hope,” he says, before adding, “The world she aimed us at seemed like a child’s wish of a world . . .”

  Sammy and the Merridews are not rebels. They’re aching to belong, and to find a place they can belong. For Jamalee, it’s a place of tinsel-edged beauty, a world Sammy can only see glimpses of. Her capacity to imagine that world staggers him and he realizes swiftly that he is “weak to her”. In this swift, unstoppable way, a die is cast. This sense that such yearning is both beautiful and a trap connects Woodrell to such 1930s noir masters as Horace McCoy, Nathanael West and James M. Cain. Life is the rawest of raw deals, and there’s no steeper price to pay than the one you pay for false illusions. “They don’t expect anything but trouble from the square world,” Woodrell said about Tomato Red’s characters in an interview with John Williams for The Independent, “Every time they interact with that world they’re given a ticket, sent to jail, drafted. It’s never good. So they live by a separate value system.”

  Indeed, Sammy feels very much in the 1930s tradition of great noir confessors—Frank Chambers in Cain’s The Postman Always Rings Twice (1934) and Robert Syverten in McCoy’s They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? (1935)—who whisper sweet confidences and swelling sorrow into your ear. Like Sammy, Frank Chambers’ life is small until he meets Cora, who dreams of bigger things, sealing both their fates. Likewise, Robert in McCoy’s bleak dance marathon tale finds himself transformed, in this case, by failed starlet Gloria’s relentless death drive. What is even more explicit in Woodrell’s rendering, however, is that the woman in this scenario is no femme fatale. The noir trap is set not by the woman hungry for more but instead by a world that never gives these couples a chance—that only seeks to throw them away. These beautiful losers are disposable.

  It’s a heartbreaking vision, and one that’s clear from the very first, seemingly jaunty pages of the book, when Sammy finds himself, through petty criminal means, in a posh rich man’s house. “You see the insides of a classier world like that,” he tells us, “and it sets your own to spinning off-balance … I ain’t shit! I ain’t shit! shouts your brain, and this place proves the point.”

  But this class rage, this outsider yearning suggests a book torn apart by misery. There is so much joy in its pages too, in the pleasures of the alternative family and alternative world Sammy and the Merridews create together: Sammy dancing in his carseat to the King, Jason cutting Sammy’s hair in the kitchen, giving him a rockabilly do, the way Jamalee hops up on the counter and gazes over a road atlas, planning adventures, mapping a future with glimmers and hope.

  The rough magic of Tomato Red is not easily shaken off. It’s a spell you think you don’t ever want to wake from, until the pain becomes so great in its heartrending last pages that you can scarcely bear it. It’s a novel of great humor and woeful disappointments, of woolly hijinks and sweeping moments of blue. But nothing prepares you for the final pages, even as, by the time you get to them, you also realize there could be no other way.

  Megan Abbott is the Edgar Award-winning author of Queenpin, Die a Little, The Song Is You, and Bury Me Deep.

  Anybody possessing analytical knowledge recognizes the fact that the world is full of actions performed by people exclusively to their detriment and without perceptible advantage, although their eyes were open.

  —THEODOR REIK

  It’s not all peaches and cream. But I haven’t learned that yet.

  —OIL CAN BOYD

  1

  Theme Park of Fancy

  YOU’RE NO ANGEL, you know how this stuff comes to happen: Friday is payday and it’s been a gray day sogged by a slow ugly rain and you seek company in your gloom, and since you’re fresh to West Table, Mo., and a new hand at the dog-food factory, your choices for company are narrow but you find some finally in a trailer court on East Main, and the coed circle of bums gathered there spot you a beer, then a jug of tequila starts to rotate and the rain keeps comin’ down with a miserable bluesy beat and there’s two girls millin’ about that probably can be had but they seem to like certain things and crank is one of those certain things, and a fistful of party straws tumble from a woven handbag somebody brung, the crank gets cut into lines, and the next time you notice the time it’s three or four Sunday mornin’ and you ain’t slept since Thursday night and one of the girl voices, the one you want most and ain’t had yet though her teeth are the size of shoe-peg corn and look like maybe they’d taste sort of sour, suggests something to do, ’cause with crank you want something, anything, to do, and this cajoling voice suggests we all rob this certain house on this certain street in that rich area where folks can afford to wallow in their vices and likely have a bunch of recreational dope stashed around the mansion and goin’ to waste since an article in The Scroll said the rich people whisked off to France or some such on a noteworthy vacation.

  That’s how it happens.

  Can’t none of this be new to you.

  The gal with her mouth full of shoe-peg corn and the bright idea in the first place drives over and lets me off at the curb, and there’s another burglar passed out in the backseat who won’t be of any help. She doses a kiss out to me, a dry peck on the lips, and claims she’ll keep her eyes peeled and I should give the high sign once I’ve burgled my way inside.

  The rain has made the ground skittish, it just quakes and slides away from my footsteps, and this fantastic mist has risen up and thickened so that eyesight is temporarily marked way down in value.

  I stumbled into a couple of different hedgerows, one about head high and one around the waist, before I fell onto the walkway. The walkway was, I suppose, made of laid brick, but the bricks were that type that’s bigger than house bricks, more the shape of bread loaves, which I think classes them as cobblestones or something. So I wobbled along this big brick walkway, on up the slope and past a lamppost in the yard that made a hepatitis-yellow glow, straight to the backside of the mansion.

  Rich folk apparently love their spectacular views, pay dear for them, I’m sure, so there was all this glass. The door was glass and the entire rear wall practically was glass. By sunlight I’d reckon you could see the total spread of the town and long, long pony rides’ worth of countryside from any corner in there. All that window gave me brief goofy thoughts of diamond-point glasscutters and suction cups and the whole rigamarole of jewel-thief piss elegance but, actually, with my head out to lunch as it was I just grabbed a few logs from the firewood stack on the patio there and flung them at that glass door.

  I suppose I had a sad need to fit in socially with those trailer-park bums, since I imagined they were the only crowd that would have me, be
cause when that first chunk of wood merely bounced from the glass door and skidded across the patio I became bulldog-determined to get the job done for my new friends, and damn the effort or obvious risk.

  The logs hit with a bang. Two, three, four times I chucked firewood at that glass and never heard anything close to the sound of a shatter. I sidled up in the mist and skimmed my fingers over the door and felt, I think, the start of some tiny hairline fractures, but there were no big, hopeful splits.

  The glass of that door surely had some special qualities that must’ve been expensive to come by, but worth it, I’d have to say, judging from the wimpy way those logs merely bounced and failed to bust me in there. But I kept pitchin’, and bangs kept bangin’ out across that neighborhood of mist, until my pitches became tired and wild and I whipped a firewood chunk three or four yards off-line and into a small square window to the flank of the door, and that glass thankfully was of a typical lower order and flew all to pieces.

  The glass shatter seemed like a sincere burst of applause, a sincere burst of applause that would come across as alarming and requiring a look-see to any ears open out there in the mist. I went motionless, tried to be a shadow. Pretty quick I heard a derisive shout from shoe-peg mouth, something that might’ve hurt my feelings to hear clear, then tires squealed and carried my social circle away, leaving me to do the mansion solo.

  I stayed a still shadow for a bit, but my mind, such as it was at the moment, was made up and determined: I needed friends, and friendship is this slow awkward process you’ve got to angle through, and I could yet maybe find what we looked for, return to the trailer park on foot as both a hero and the sudden life of the party.

  When no alarm was raised, I came out of my shadow imitation and went to the broken window. The mist felt like a tongue I kept walking into, and my skin and clothes seemed slobbered on. The world aped a harmless watchdog, puttin’ big licks all over my face.

  The window was set too high to spring through, and the glass was not perfectly broken out. There were jaggedy places with long points. I got up on tiptoes and reached my arm through, extra careful, but couldn’t reach a latch or doorknob or anything worthwhile.

  The batch of flung logs had scattered about and lay underfoot, and the third or fourth time I stumbled on one this thought jumped me. The thought called for a ladder of firewood chunks, and I went to work building this theory that had jumped me from below. That mist made any effort seem sweaty and sweat made me feel employed and that made me start expectin’ a foreman to come along and, because of the part in my hair or the attitude of my slouch, fire my ass on a whim, as per usual. But the ladder got built and came to reach the height it needed to.

  I think I thought this ladder invention meant I was thinkin’ straight.

  Atop the ladder I wrapped my T-shirt around my fist and punched the jagged parts loose until there was a clean frame that could be wriggled through without gettin’ carved along the flanks.

  I slithered inside, uncut, and tumbled among the riches.

  My distance perception had gone tilt in my head and that floor reared up and swatted me awful quick. The floor felt like a clean street, a street of that marble stuff, I reckon, maybe Mexican tile, only it was in the kitchen area and mighty stern to land on, especially with that tilt factor in my head, as I barely raised my arms to brace before skidding across it. I’d judged I had further to fall, but huh-uh, and the pain jangle spanned from my elbows and knees to my shoulders and toes. I squealed and rolled and chop-blocked a highback chair in the dark there and sent it tumbling.

  You might think I should’ve quit on the burglary right then, but I just love people, I guess, and didn’t.

  I became a shadow again, splayed on that imported floor, listening to the mansion. It was supposed to be empty, but newspapers get so many things wrong. Best not to trust them overmuch. The mansion had a slight glow going on inside there, and I got it that they had left a couple of lamps burning in a distant room. The lamps were likely set on a timer and meant to warn away such as I so such as this wouldn’t happen.

  These burglar lights helped my eyes to focus.

  Standing again, finally I slid my shirt on and rubbed my sore spots, then let my feet aim me toward the glowing room. The crank comedown was settin’ in, I think, from the way my feet got heavy and weaved and stomped. This mansion smelled of big achievements and handbags from Rome and unknown treats, which were better scents than I was used to. The walls even seemed special, kind of, as my fingertips skipped along them feeling how fine and costly they felt. My mind, I’d say, stumbled along two or three steps behind my body. More like a waiter than a chef.

  When I wobbled inside that lit-up room the wind jumped from my chest. I gasped, groaned, mewed. My legs folded beneath me and I fell face first to a soft carpet that smelled sweeter than my ex-wife’s hair and brought to mind sheep in a flowery meadow high in the Alps or Japan or Vermont or some similar postcard spot from out there in the world where the dear goods I’ll never own are made.

  The sight and smell of all this shook me.

  I know I trembled and breathed shallow.

  The mansion was the way I’d always feared a mansion would be, only more so. In my fear I’d never managed to conjure the spectacular astounding details. A quick inventory of only this one room made me hate myself. Made me hate myself and all my type that came before me. This mansion was sixteen levels higher than any place I’d ever been among.

  As I stared about—gawked, probably—I likely blushed pink to go along with those trembles.

  I’d say what such things as I saw in that room were, if I knew the proper names of such things, though I’d bet heavy I’ve never heard those names spoken. I’m sure such things have personal names—those special moody lampshades made of beadwork, and a chair and footstool put together with, like, weaved leather hung on frames of curled iron or polished rare bones, maybe, and end tables that had designs stabbed into them and stuffed with gold leaf or something precious, a small and swank desk over by the far wall, and a bookshelf so old our Revolution must’ve happened off to the sides of it, carved up with fine points and nicely shined, with a display of tiny statues and dolls arranged just so all across it.

  Pretty soon I crawled away from the light, back to the dark parts of the mansion. That sinking feeling set in. Truly, I felt scared, embarrassed for the poorly decorated life I was born to.

  This mansion is not but about a rifle shot distant from the trailer park, but it seemed like I’d undergone interplanetary travel. I’d never collided with this world before.

  I collected myself in the kitchen. Shuffled my parts back together. My breaths deepened to normal. That splendor had stunned me and then sickened me with a mess of recognitions.

  You see the insides of a classier world like that and it sets your own to spinning off-balance, and a tireless gnawing discontent gets to snacking on your guts and spirit. This caliber of a place makes you want to discriminate against yourself, basically, as it reveals you as such a loser. A tiny mote of nothin’ much just here to muss up the planet these worthies lived so grandly on and wished they could keep clean of you and yours.

  I ain’t shit! I ain’t shit! shouts your brain, and this place proves the point.

  Oh, hell yes, this mansion was a regular theme park of fancy fuckin’ stuff I never had, never will, hadn’t ever truly even seen in person.

  Naturally there’s some urge to just start smashing amuck in the mansion, whacking all those glamorous baubles and doodads as if these objects had personally tossed you a key ring and told you to fetch their car. That urge is there, to see things shatter, dent, sag with ruin. That urge is always there, usually in shadow though never far away.

  But I don’t need to want that anymore, or at least lately, so instead I decided to eat.

  That mist had gotten bunchy and milled up against the kitchen windows like a rubbernecking crowd peeking in on a private moment. A few wisps shoved in through the busted window and gave me the
sense of long fingers slowly pointing.

  There was a button on the wall beside the stove, and I punched it and got light. The light pushed the crowd back, slapped away those pointing fingers. This kitchen came near to the size of a decent trailer home. There were, close as I could figure, two stoves or three, or just one giant with a dozen burners. Cabinets ran to the ceiling, made of some blond wood from Oriental lands, I’d guess, and the ceiling was yea tall, so there was a cute li’l stepladder on a runner that slid from cabinet to cabinet so you could see into the upper shelves. A pretty dapper rendition of woodwork, in my opinion. The fridge resembled a bank vault, a big dull metal thing with heavy doors.

  The funny thing about these swell folks is they don’t leave much food to scrounge. I did a run-through of the fridge and found that all the familiar items were frozen. It disappointed me that there were no exotic leftovers. In the freezer part I turned up a booze bottle that belonged on the pricey shelf at the Liquor Barn. The label on the bottle resembled an eye-test chart, Russian or one of those names, but after a few chugs I could testify it was vodka, for certain, and a quality version of it too.

  I began to thrash through the cabinets hunting for peanut butter because I’d seen mayonnaise in the fridge, and peanut butter and mayonnaise meant I could sleep. I could let the crank go bye-bye and sleep. I can’t sleep without food nearby. I can’t sleep anywhere until I know I’ll get to eat again if I need to. I don’t have to eat, yet I can’t rest without bein’ positive sure there’s food at hand, but these folks apparently didn’t stoop to peanut butter ’cause there wasn’t any. Peanut butter is the prescribed hunger medicine for poor folks, and there’s always a scraping or so left in the bottom of the jar, somewhere way back in the cupboard. I’ve been to bed hungry plenty and my tummy whimpered and whimpered and those whimpers are forever on tape in my head.