Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter von Tom Franklin. Königs Erläuterungen Spezial.

SUMMARY

Tom Franklin is widely considered to be a regional, and specifically Southern writer. All of his published work has been set in Mississippi or Alabama, and the region and his experiences there have shaped his work as a writer.

“To write a story, you have to get the details right. You have to convince a reader you know what you’re talking about.”[3]

(Tom Franklin)

Franklin’s personal background in the region and his familiarity with the life, landscape, history, people and feel of the South means that there are traces of his life and experience in his work. This is also true of Crooked Letter: for example, like Larry, he grew up with a father who ran a car repair workshop in a tiny rural community.

He mentions in interviews how much autobiographical detail has slipped into Crooked Letter: “the character of Silas "32" Jones is very loosely based on the sole police officer of the hamlet of Dickinson, Alabama, where I grew up”[4] and “I used a lot of autobiographical stuff for Larry, the mechanic”[5]. These autobiographical details include Larry’s reading habits – when asked in an interview who his favourite writers were and are, Franklin says, “I loved Stephen King and Edgar Rice Burroughs as a kid”[6].

His roots in the South have shaped him as a writer:

“So, yes, the souths made me the writer I am. It taught me to listen to the cadences and rhythms of speech, and to notice the landscape. It also has this defeated feel, a lingering of old sin, that makes it sweet in a rotting kind of way. Much of it is poor, much is rural, and thats an interesting combination, a deep well for stories.”[7]

In the same interview, Franklin talks briefly about the origins of the novel: “Id been wanting to write about a small town police officer, and Id long had the image of a loner mechanic in my mind. When I put the two together, the story began to form.”

This comment reinforces the impression many readers of Crooked Letter have that this is primarily a character-driven novel, and, despite the plot, only secondarily a crime thriller.

SUMMARY

Two young boys, Larry and Silas, become friends in rural Mississippi in the late 1970s. A girl, Cindy Walker, disappears, feared dead, and suspicion falls on Larry.

Twenty-five years later, Larry is an outcast in the area, and Silas is now a police officer, investigating the disappearance of a local girl, Tina Rutherford. Larry is again a suspect, even after he is found shot and badly wounded in his own home. Silas investigates the crime and is forced to re-examine his own history. After Silas has confessed about the events of 1982, he and Larry can begin to mend their friendship.

What follows in this section is a brief chapter-by-chapter summary of the novel. Some of the chapters are based entirely or largely in the past, as the novel covers two different periods (1979–1982 and two weeks in 2007), and these flashbacks are indicated in the summaries.

one

The novel starts with Larry Ott, a 41-year old man who lives alone in his parents’ house. He wakes up and goes about his morning routine, looking after his chickens, and heads off to work in his father’s car repair workshop, Ottomotive. On the way he gets a call from his mother, who is in a nursing home, saying that she would like to see him. He heads back home. When he walks into his house he is ambushed by an intruder wearing an old zombie mask which Larry has had since he was a boy. The intruder shoots him and then watches him bleeding out on the kitchen floor.

two

Police Constable Silas “32” Jones is patrolling when he sees an unusually large number of buzzards – carrion eater birds – hovering over an area of woodland. He investigates, hoping/fearing that he will find the corpse of a missing girl, Tina Rutherford. Instead he finds the body of Morton ”M&M” Morrisette in a swamp. M&M was a local marijuana dealer with whom Silas had played baseball and been good friends in high school.

Local detective and investigator Roy French arrives, followed by other officials, including Silas’ girlfriend Angie, an EMT (emergency medical technician).

Later, back in the office he shares with Miss Voncille, the city clerk, Silas is visited by French, who says that he had visited Larry Ott regarding the missing Rutherford girl. Silas follows up on a report that a rattlesnake has been found in someones mailbox. The mailbox belongs to a woman named Irina who shares a house with two other divorcees in a run-down area populated by poor whites.

Silas is doing his shift directing traffic later that day when he receives an ominous phone call from Angie, who is now at Ott’s house.

three

This chapter is a flashback, beginning in March 1979. Larry recalls his father driving him to school one freezing cold morning. They see Silas and his mother, Alice, waiting by the road and pick them up. Familiarity between Larrys father and Alice Jones is implied. Larrys mother seems surprised and a little suspicious when he tells her about it later when she picks him up from school. This is repeated for days. Larrys mother quizzes him about the woman and how his father behaves with her. She drives Larry to school one day and it is obvious she and Alice know each other: She gives the Jones’ two second hand winter coats and makes a bitter comment before driving off and leaving them standing in the freezing cold.

Larry goes to find Silas in the woods, where the Jones family lives in a cabin. He seems to want to be friends with the other boy. He finds Silas, teaches him how to shoot, lends him a rifle and then leaves his gloves for the boy as well.

four

Back to the present: On the phone to Silas, Angie describes briefly what she has found at Larry’s place. Silas goes to investigate and is reminded of having been there once before when he and Larry were friends. French arrives and they examine the crime scene together (Larry is in hospital, badly wounded but not dead). After examining Ott’s house, Silas returns home to find that Larry had tried to call him earlier that day, leaving a message on his answer machine.

five

This very significant chapter shows how important Silas was for Larry, how lonely and withdrawn Larry is, and how unpleasant and dangerous both Carl Ott and his friend and neighbour Cecil Walker are. It also shows the reader one of the two events (the fight – the other being the disappearance of Cindy Walker) which permanently changed the course of Larry’s life.

Another chapter set in the past, this one describes events later in the year Silas and Larry first met, 1979, leading up to Carl forcing them to fight over the borrowed rifle. Silas beats Larry, who then calls him “n****r”, changing their relationship for ever.

six

This chapter is divided between the present day and a substantial section containing Silas’ recollections of his childhood and his journey with his mother from Chicago to Chabot.

Silas investigates further in Larry Ott’s life. He goes to Ott’s garage and then back to his house to look for further clues as to what has happened. He finds small pieces of glass and the butt of a joint. Being in Ott’s house triggers memories of his childhood.

Silas remembers his early life in Chicago, and how, after his mother’s boyfriend had been arrested and then gone on the run, he and his mother had left Chicago to head south to Mississippi, where she came from. As a child Silas had deeply resented his mother for her relationships with men and the way she took him out of the world he had known.

seven

Picking up in 1982, this chapter recounts Larry Ott’s connection to the disappearance of Cindy Walker and how those events shaped the rest of his life and the lives of his parents.

Cindy has encouraged Larry to take her out on a date. He believes they are going to the drive-in to see The Amityville Horror[8], but she tells him that he is to drop her off somewhere else so that she can see her secret boyfriend, and that because she is pregnant he must swear to never tell anyone about it. Larry follows her instructions, but she never appears at the arranged meeting place later that night. When he returns to the Walker’s house he is attacked by Cecil Walker. Soon after, the police are summoned.

Initially, Larry tells the sheriff an abbreviated version of what happened, leaving out specific details in order to protect Cindy and himself. But when, over time, witnesses mention having seen him leaving the drive-in, he becomes the focus of greater suspicion.

Eventually, Larry leaves to join the army. The suspicion and pressure put on him and his family have driven his father, who no longer speaks to him, to drink ever more heavily, and his mother has become increasingly withdrawn and depressed. While in the army he becomes a qualified mechanic. Returning to Chabot after his military service, Larry takes over his father’s garage after he dies in a drunk driving accident. His mother has to be moved into a nursing home. Larry is forced to sell large parts of his familys property to the Rutherford lumber business, and he lives solely on the money from those land sales. The garage generates no income.

eight

Silas meets Angie for lunch in the diner where his mother used to work. He confesses to Angie that he and Larry used to be friends and tells her his history, moving to Chabot from Chicago. He recalls an episode from their time at school together when Larry had been invited to a Halloween party because he had a cool zombie mask, but that he had been ignored by the other kids, including Silas and Cindy, and had eventually driven off alone. Silas lies to Angie about the nature of his relationship with Cindy. He later goes to the hospital to see Larry.

Larry has undergone surgery and is still unconscious. The nurse tells him that Larry was clinically dead at two points during the operations. After visiting Larry, Silas knows that he has to also inform Larry’s mother about the shooting. He goes to the nursing home, River Acres. Mrs Ott has Alzheimer’s and doesn’t understand who Silas is.

Silas remembers the day he spent at the Ott house when he and Larry were children. He remembers mowing the lawn, and how when Carl Ott came home that evening he had thanked Larry (whom he thought had done the work), and how angry he, Silas, had been about Larry having a father and him not having one.

He now believes that his father had been a white man who had impregnated his mother when she worked as a maid, and that his mother had left Chabot for Chicago to have her illegitimate baby.

On the return trip to the Ott house, Silas pulls over a young white man called Wallace Stringfellow who has been driving suspiciously. But Silas is too preoccupied with thoughts of the cabin where he used to live with his mother to do more than give the man a warning and send him off.

He goes to the cabin where they used to live. He sees through a window what appears to be a fresh grave dug in the dirt floor beneath one of the beds.

nine

Larry recalls having scared away a boy who used to sneak into his barn and steal things and cause disturbances. He was 31 at the time. He put on the zombie mask he got for the Halloween party years before and ambushed the boy in the barn. Years later, aged 41, Larry is visited by a drunk young man in a TV satellite installation van who introduces himself as Wallace Stringfellow – it’s the boy from ten years earlier.

Wallace is a drunk and a liar, but Larry is so crippled by loneliness that he doesn’t object to the visits from Wallace, and the two men become friends, Wallace visiting regularly and getting drunk and stoned on Larry’s porch. One Christmas, he secretly gives Larry an old pistol as a present.

On one visit, Wallace starts to ask about whether Larry had actually raped and killed Cindy Walker, and becomes increasingly excited and sexually aroused by the idea of kidnapping, abusing and raping a girl. He has found the cabin in the woods where Silas and his mother had lived – he fantasises about this cabin having been the site of the rape and murder. He talks about how his mother’s ‘boyfriends’ used to behave with his mother and his obvious arousal makes Larry increasingly uncomfortable. Larry tells Wallace to go home. Wallace becomes angry and smashes up Larry’s car. He doesn’t return to Larry’s after that evening.

Despite the insights he has had into Wallace’s dangerous and deviant character, Larry misses him and hopes he will come back, even to the point of considering employing him at his garage and training him to be a mechanic. His loneliness appears to hold sway over his judgement.

ten

Silas is working traffic duty one week after discovering the grave and Tina Rutherford’s body in the cabin on Larry’s property where he and his mother used to live. He gets a phone call from the nursing home where Larry’s mother lives, informing him, as he had requested, that she is having a “good day”.

Silas has begun working extra shifts – doing guard duty over the comatose Larry in the hospital and also spending time at the Ott farm, feeding the chickens and guarding the property. He is becoming increasingly exhausted by the extra work.

He goes to see Larry’s mother at the nursing home. She vaguely remembers him and seems worried about Larry. A “stringy-looking” young white man (p. 232.30) has been spotted trying to get near Larry’s room in the hospital.

At dinner, Angie forces Silas to finally tell her about his relationship with Cindy Walker back in school. They had been together secretly, but Silas’ mother had found out and begged him to stop seeing her. Cecil Walker had become increasingly suspicious of Cindy and tried to control her completely. Silas had been the secret boyfriend she had wanted to meet on the night she made Larry take her to the drive-in.

Angie understands immediately what this means: Silas has known all these years that Larry was not guilty, but has said nothing and allowed Larry to take the blame and be ostracized under the suspicion of having something to do with the disappearance of Cindy Walker. Silas guesses that it was actually Cecil who killed her.

The next day, while feeding the chickens at Larry’s farm, he gets a phone call from the hospital. Larry has woken from his coma.

eleven

Larry wakes up in the hospital: He has been dreaming about himself and Silas, and then himself and Wallace. French and Sheriff Lolly begin questioning him but he has a seizure when they tell him what happened to Tina Rutherford. They return another time to continue questioning him.

Both French and Lolly are convinced that Larry killed both Cindy Walker and Tina Rutherford and shot himself in a suicide attempt. They try to persuade Larry that this is what happened, disregarding his inability to remember the events or explain why he would have done these things. Larry – due to blood loss and the trauma of the shooting – can’t remember what happened when he was shot or even if he actually did kill Tina Rutherford.

twelve

Silas rushes to the hospital, knowing that French will be trying to force a confession out of Larry. He defends Larry, saying he had nothing to do with the disappearance of Cindy Walker, and finally, 25 years later, confesses to having been the secret boyfriend she had made Larry take her to see. Larry and French and Lolly are shocked by the revelation. French interviews Silas back in his office, and tells him to stay away from Larry from now on.

Later, Silas is getting drunk in a bar when Irina (the woman with the rattlesnake in her mailbox) comes in and starts drinking with him. She tells him about a friend of hers, Evelyn, who had been seeing a weird young white guy who collected guns and snakes. His name was Wallace Stringfellow. Irina thinks he may have been the person who put snakes in her and Evelyn’s mailbox. Silas vaguely remembers the name and the man. He goes home with Irina, but has second thoughts and leaves before anything can happen between them.

thirteen

Larry is in hospital still, watching TV. He is remembering scenes and moments from his childhood, with Silas and with Cindy, in a confused jumble which stirs his emotions.

He also now remembers how, shortly after Tina Rutherford went missing, Wallace came to his place, waking him at 3:15 in the morning. He was drunk, sitting outside on the porch. He half-confessed to having done “something”, and seemed depressed and full of self-hatred. When Larry offered to teach him how to fix cars, Wallace replied that he wasn’t “worth a shit”.

Larry wants to tell French what he has remembered, and that he is sure it was Wallace who killed Tina and shot him.

fourteen

Silas goes to work the next morning with a bad hangover. He later goes back to Larry’s farm to feed the chickens. There he sees fresh tire tracks from the 4-wheel vehicle he had noticed there before and an empty can of Pabst Blue Ribbon beer. He begins to think about Wallace, and decides to go and talk to him about the snakes that had been put in Irina’s mailbox.

He goes to Wallace’s house and interviews him. He sees John Wayne Gacy, Wallace’s vicious and mistreated pitbull-Chow crossbreed dog, he sees the snakes, and then also spots Larry’s old zombie mask, from the Halloween party 25 years ago. When Silas asks him about it, Wallace makes an excuse to go outside and then releases the dog. The dog immediately attacks Silas, biting and wounding him before he can defend himself or get to his radio. While Silas is fighting off the dog, Wallace begins shooting at him. Silas manages to get his own gun and shoots the dog.

Silas then shoots Wallace in the leg, but Wallace escapes into a nearby wood. Silas is badly injured and collapses in Wallace’s house, smashing one of the snake enclosures and releasing a rattlesnake as he falls. The last thing he sees is Larry’s zombie mask.

fifteen

Larry hears from the deputy guarding his hospital room that Silas has been hurt and figures out that it has to do with Wallace. He tells the deputy that he has to talk to French about Wallace.

Over the deputy’s radio, he describes to French what he remembers of Wallace and his disturbing ideas, the last time he visited him, and that he recognised Wallace’s eyes behind the mask when he was shot. He describes the mask to French.

Wallace placed a diamondback rattlesnake in Irina’s mailbox

© picture alliance/PIXSELL

French later comes to Larry’s room and has him identify the mask. He asks Larry some questions about Wallace and their relationship, and then informs Larry that Wallace is now dead.

Later, after French has left, Larry is thinking about time passing and loneliness and memories when he gets a new roommate: Silas is brought in.

sixteen

Silas wakes up in the hospital room next to Larry – his brother, both of them the sons of Carl Ott – and remembers what happened and how he got here. The TV is on and they watch a news report about the events at Wallace’s house. Silas learns from the report that after he passed out in Wallace’s house, his colleague Voncille notified the sheriff’s department, and there was a gun battle during which Wallace allegedly shot and killed himself. When the officers searched Wallace’s house they found evidence that implicated him in the murder of Tina Rutherford, including her purse.

Silas tells Larry everything he has learned, including that they are half-brothers. Larry says that he thinks he already knew back when they first met, and after the incident with the coats. When Silas finishes talking, Larry summons the nurse and tells her he wants to be moved to another room.

seventeen

Silas has lots of visitors on the next day, his last day in hospital. Angie, Voncille and the mayor all come to see him. Then French comes to inform them both about the progress with the case against Wallace. They now know that he shot Larry and killed Tina. They also believe that he may have been responsible for the murder of M&M, too. He cautions them both to be careful when facing journalists, because the case has attracted nationwide attention and there are TV crews at the hospital from CNN and Fox News, as well as from local stations.

eighteen

Angie drives Silas home from the hospital. He drops in at City Hall where the mayor tells him he will be getting a new car and some assistance in his work, apparently to be financed by Tina Rutherford’s father. Silas tells the mayor to wait until he sees the story coming out in the local paper before he authorises any of this.

He then goes home to convalesce. He visits Larry, who refuses to talk to him. He also goes to visit Mrs Ott in the nursing home, but she doesn’t know who he is, lost in dementia. He goes to look at the derelict Walker house.

nineteen

Four days later: Silas has visited Larry every day, but while he enjoys the visits, Larry doesn’t know how to react or what to say. Silas has been taking care of things for him, feeding the chickens, bringing him his mail and his cheque book so he can pay his bills.

The doctor tells Larry he can start moving around now, but that he must start eating a healthier diet. Larry takes short walks around the hospital, noticing all the reporters outside waiting for him. Late that night he sneaks out of the hospital. He starts to walk home.

Silas gets a phone call from the hospital telling him that Larry has left, and he immediately gets in his car and heads off to find him. He discovers Larry walking home. Silas drives him home, and Larry offers to fix up Silas’ jeep.

Larry is surprised that Silas and Angie have cleaned up his house while he was in hospital. Larry says Silas should come by the next day so they can work on the Jeep. Their friendship appears to be restored.