Squire Babcock

This Side of Parricide

Normally we wouldn’t sympathize with characters who kill their parents, but Calvin Turtle comes along and we find ourselves doing just that. Despite all his flaws and shortcomings, his actions and subsequent denial seem not only understandable but somehow excusable in Squire Babcock’s impressive first novel, King of Gaheena.

We first meet five-year-old Calvin on Christmas Eve, 1957, when he discovers the body of his sister, her electrocution an accidental consequence of their drinking parents’ fight. Calvin inwardly blames his parents for her death and over the years he deals (so to speak) with his loss and anger through the solitaire game, Klondike. He plays this almost unbeatable game with the conviction that if he ever wins, his wish will be granted. When he is ten years old he finally beats Klondike not once, but twice. With childlike faith, Calvin waits for his sister’s return. Jewel, of course, doesn’t appear and we learn that Calvin’s family is not only dysfunctional but physically and sexually abusive. The aftermath of that night extends ten years, when Calvin is blamed in the fiery death of his parents.

The novel is partly set in Louisville, Kentucky during the 1970’s. Calvin is left after his parents’ deaths to manage the family playing card company. With the trial looming, he finds himself in the middle of managing a business struggling with lay-offs, racial tensions, strikes and sabotage. Wanting to prove himself a worthy heir apparent, he is further frustrated when he learns he will not have full control of the company until he turns 21. Until that time he must outmaneuver the board made up of his father’s hunt club buddies to be able to make his own business decisions. The setting shifts between the factories and country clubs of Louisville to his father’s hunting preserve in Gaheena, Arkansas, “a vast, snaky, dead-timber swamp so rich and teeming with life that you could easily mistake it for the Primal Soup.” The standing king of Gaheena, Karl Buntingstrife, is as formidable as the surroundings. Calvin appears to be no match for the snake-wrangling, gun-toting caretaker of the preserve or his sultry mistress, Money.

In the end, Calvin’s naïveté is his saving grace. Had he understood the length that Karl would go to protect the preserve, he might have chosen a less perilous path. Karl is ruthless, but his intention to protect what he loves is honorable compared to the hunt club’s hypocritical intentions, although his means are not. We watch as Calvin frequently overestimates himself and his abilities. His brashness and cockiness rub others the wrong way, but as readers we are allowed to see past his outer facade. In his more introspective moments and when his is with people he knows and trusts, we like him and suspect that if he somehow manages to make it to adulthood, he’ll emerge as a good man, perhaps even a heroic one. He could just as easily succumb to the same societal traps as his parents, doomed to repeat the past. And by the end of the book, we don’t know what the future holds for Calvin. Unlike the son in Guy de Maupassant’s short story, who freely admits he killed his parents, Calvin struggles with his own verdict. Outwardly he declares his innocence, but inwardly he battles through issues of denial, self-righteousness and guilt.

Short chapters, present tense, shifting voice and steady doses of suspense, make this a book you don’t want to put down. Full of humor, richly textured characters and settings, The King of Gaheena, is hopefully the first of many novels we will enjoy from Squire Babcock.… (mehr)