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Penzler Pick, December 1999: As the editor of an annual series for Houghton Mifflin titled Best American Mystery Stories, I read scores, if not hundreds, of little magazines in search of the best crime fiction published that year. One story that came to light from the Texas Review was "Poachers" by Tom Franklin, which I thought was easily the most original and memorable tale of 1998. It went on to win the Edgar Allan Poe Award from the Mystery Writers of America and became the title of Franklin's first book, a short story collection of such distinction that it has already provided a shoo-in for spring 2000s Best American Mystery Stories of the Century.
"Poachers" is no ordinary tale of detection but rather a mood piece that will remind the reader of the best of James Lee Burke. Set in the swamps of the deep South, it is a riveting tale of three brothers who are so violent and amoral that they will kill anyone or anything in their path. One of their victims is a young lawman who was much loved, causing the locals to bring in their own hired gun, a game warden of legendary skill as a hunter of poachers. One by one, he tracks down the crazed brothers in a quest for justice.
The other stories in this beautifully produced little volume are also superb. While there is occasional humor, this is not a collection to read if you're in the mood for P.G. Wodehouse or Dave Barry. The dark woods and hollows and the unforgiving swamps and their inhabitants do not make for a sunshiny reading experience. As the old wooden sign in Poachers announces, "Jesus Is Not Coming." Franklin's first novel will be published in 2000 and I, for one, can't wait. --Otto Penzler
From Publishers Weekly
These 10 honestly crafted and carefully executed tales of cottonmouths and skulking outlaws in the South unflinchingly explore the pitfalls and dangers involved in making one's place in the world. The collection's power arises from Franklin's reluctance to analyze its (often bloody) events. In "Dinosaurs," a waste inspector takes a huge stuffed rhinoceros as a reward for not closing down a gas station with several hazardous leaky pumps. In "Grit," a devious laborer at a minerals processing plant trades positions with his supervisor through blackmail involving gambling debts, only to see the scam backfire. The protagonist of "Triathlon," a man trapped in a decaying marriage, remembers fishing for sharks on the night before his wedding. Fantasy has its place, too, as in "Alaska," in which a rambling male voice describes an imagined trip to the Northwest that never gets farther than the shores of a pond in some unspecified Southern location; although little happens, the story's dreamy meandering is seductive. In "The Ballad of Duane Juarez," a man commits small crimes without guilt because he has given himself a fake name, and thereby a fake identity. The other stories in the book, however, only provide a tantalizing buildup to the chilling title story, in which a legendary and demonic game warden in a small Alabama town stealthily and privately punishes three youths who have murdered his predecessor. Franklin announces the arrival of the avenger with a sentence no more complete than "A match striking," and yet this is enough for a good scare. While he may occasionally wax sentimental about life in the impoverished South, Franklin's style is often as laconic and simply spoken as his characters' dialogue, sometimes close to Hemingway, but more often akin to Denis Johnson or Raymond Carver in its resonant ordinariness. Although some readers may balk at the virtual absence of women from these intensely masculine yarns, those who persist will be persuaded by their gruff grace. (June) Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.
The New York Times Book Review, Bruce Barcott
...with this satisfying collection he establishes himself as one of the region's more interesting emerging voices.
From Kirkus Reviews
Ten rewarding, workhorse stories, all set in the backwoods country of southern Alabama. Newcomer Franklin seems the sort of southerner who might consider Montgomery the Big City and look upon Arkansans as Yankees. City slickers approaching his work may be reminded at first of Tobacco Road, but most of his characters are from small towns rather than small farmsthough theyre about as poor and just as desperate. Glen, the plant manager of Grit, is in charge of a dying factory owned by a couple of northern idiots who dont visit the premises more than once or twice a year. Badly in debt to one of his employees (a bookie), Glen becomes involved in an increasingly desperate extortion racket. The narrator of Shubuta lives in a dying town where lovesick men buy ammunition whenever their girls leave them. The narrators uncle, who suffered a pretty miserable marriage himself, is now slowly dying in the hospital, and the narrator is trying to figure out what to do about his own unfaithful girlfriend. In Triathlon, a group of friends who met at the Chicago Marathon go to a bachelor party even as their own marriages are disintegrating, and in The Ballad of Duane Juarez, a rich real-estate broker asks his divorced and unemployed brother to come to his house while hes on vacation and kill his girlfriends cats. The title story concerns a doomed family of three brotherssons of a father who committed suicidewho make their living hunting illegal game and kill a warden when he confronts them over it. Dark and evocative, its the most atmospheric and best-developed piece here. Refreshingly gritty and unpretentious: stories that manage to open the door on whatfor most readersremains a previously unknown world. -- Copyright ©1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
"[A] startling debut collection...darker than anything delivered since the work of James Dickey."
Book Description
In ten stunning and bleak tales set in the woodlands, swamps and chemical plants along the Alabama River, Tom Franklin stakes his claim as a fresh, original Southern voice. His lyric, deceptively simple prose conjures a world where the default setting is violence, a world of hunting and fishing, gambling and losing, drinking and poaching-a world most of us have never seen. In the chilling title novella (selected for the anthologies New Stories from the South: The Year's Best, 1999 and Best Mystery Stories of the Century), three wild boys confront a mythic game warden as mysterious and deadly as the river they haunt. And, as a weathered, hand-painted sign reads: "Jesus is not coming." This terrain isn't pretty, isn't for the weak of heart, but in these deperate, lost people, Franklin somehow finds the moments of grace that make them what they so abundantly are: human.
About the Author
Tom Franklingrew up in Dickinson, Alabama, a small, one-store town, where his parents formed The First Century, a church where speaking in tongues, faith-healings, and exorcisms were common. After moving to Mobile at eighteen, Tom earned both his B.A. and M.A. in English and Creative Writing from the University of South Alabama, where he currently teaches. In 1997, he earned his M.F.A. from the University of Arkansas. His fiction has appeared in numerous publications, including The Nebraska Review and Alabama Magazine. In 1998, Tom was awarded the Writers at Work Literary Nonfiction prize and an Arkansas Arts Council grant. He lives in Mobile, Alabama, with his wife, poet Beth Ann Fennelly.
Excerpted from Poachers : Stories by Tom Franklin. Copyright © 2000. Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved
GritChugging and clanging among the dark pine trees north of Mobile, Alabama, the Black Beauty Minerals plant was a rickety green hull of storage tanks, chutes and conveyor belts. Glen, the manager, felt like the captain of a ragtag spaceship that had crashlanded, a prison barge full of poachers and thieves, smugglers and assassins.The owners, Ernie and Dwight, lived far away, in Detroit, and when the Black Beauty lost its biggest client--Ingalls Shipbuilding--to government budget cuts, they ordered Glen to lay off his two-man night shift. One of the workers was a long-haired turd Glen enjoyed letting go, a punk who would've likely failed his next drug test. But the other man, Roy Jones, did some bookmaking on the side, and Glen had been in a betting slump lately. So when Roy, who'd had a great year as a bookie, crunched over the gritty black yard to the office, Glen owed him over four thousand dollars.Roy, a fat black man, strode in without knocking and wedged himself into the chair across from Glen's desk, probably expecting more stalling of the debt.Glen cleared his throat. "I've got some bad news, Roy--""Chill, baby," Roy said. He removed his hard hat, which left its imprint in his hair. "I know I'm fixing to get laid off, and I got a counteroffer for you." He slid a cigar from his hat lining and smelled it.Glen was surprised. The Ingalls announcement hadn't come until a few hours ago. Ernie and Dwight had just released him from their third conference call of the afternoon, the kind where they both yelled at him at the same time."How'd you find that out, Roy?" he asked.Roy lit his cigar. "One thing you ain't learned yet is how to get the system doggie-style. Two of my associates work over at Ingalls, and one of 'em been fucking the bigwig's secretary.""Well--""Hang on, Glen. I expect E and D done called you and told you to lay my big fat ass off. But that's cool, baby." He tipped his ashes into his hard hat. " 'Cause I got other irons in the fire."He said he had an "independent buyer" for some Black Beauty sandblasting grit. Said he had, in fact, a few lined up. What he wanted was to run an off-the-books night shift for a few hours a night, three nights a week. He said he had an associate who'd deliver the stuff. The day-shifters could be bought off. Glen could doctor the paperwork so the little production wouldn't be noticed by Ernie and Dwight."But don't answer now," Roy said, replacing his hard hat. "Sleep on it tonight, baby. Mull it over."Glen--a forty-two-year-old ulcer-ridden, insomniac, half-alcoholic chronic gambler--mulled Roy's idea over in his tiny apartment that evening by drinking three six-packs of Bud Light. He picked up the phone and placed a large bet with Roy on the upcoming Braves--Giants game, taking San Francisco because Barry Bonds was on fire. Then he dialed the number of the PizzaHut managed by his most recent ex-wife's new boyfriend, placed an order for five extra-large thick-crust pies with pineapple and double anchovies, and had it delivered to another of his ex-wives' houses for her and her boyfriend. Glen had four ex-wives in all, and he was still in love with each of them. Every night as he got drunk it felt like somebody had shot him in the chest with buckshot and left four big airy holes in his heart, holes that grew with each beer, as if--there was no other way he could think of it--his heart were being sandblasted.The Braves rallied in the eighth and Bonds's sixteen-game hitting streak was snapped, so when Roy came by the next day, Glen owed him another eight hundred dollars and change.Roy sat down. "You made up your mind yet?""Impossible," Glen said. "Even if I wanted to, I couldn't go along. Ernie and Dwight'd pop in out of nowhere and we'd all be up the creek."Today Roy wore tan slacks and a brown silk shirt. Shiny brown shoes and, when he crossed his legs, thin argyle socks. A brown fedora in his lap. The first time Glen had seen him in anything but work clothes.Roy shook a cigar from its box and lit it. "Glen, you the most gullible motherfucker ever wore a hard hat. Don't you reckon I know when them tight-asses is coming down here?""How? Got somebody fucking their wives?"Roy hesitated. "My cousin's daughter work in the Detroit airport.Glen's mind flashed a quick slideshow of Ernie and Dwight's past disastrous visits. "You might've mentioned that four years ago."Baby," Roy said, 'I'll cut you in for ten percent of every load we sell.""There's a recession, Roy. I can't unload this grit to save my life, and if I can't, you sure as hell can't."Roy chuckled. "Got-damn, boy." He pulled out a wad of hundred-dollar bills. "This is what I done presold. I got friends all up and down the coast. They got some rusty-ass shit needs sandblasting. You ain't no salesman, Glen. You couldn't sell a whore on a battleship.""Roy, it's illegal.""Go look out yonder." Roy pointed to the window overlooking the black-grit parking lot.Glen obeyed. A big white guy with a little head was leaning against Roy's cream-colored El Dorado, carving at his fingernails with a long knife."That's my associate, Snakebite," Roy said. "He'll be delivering the stuff. He also collect for me, if you know what I mean.
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