The Books: “Close Range: Wyoming Stories” – ‘A Lonely Coast’ (Annie Proulx)

51SF97BJN3L.jpgDaily Book Excerpt: Adult fiction

Close Range : Wyoming Stories, by Annie Proulx – excerpt from the story ‘A Lonely Coast’.

A depressing story all-around. With a couple of rarities in terms of Proulx’s other work: It’s a first-person narrative, and it’s also mainly about women. The narrator is a woman, and the subject matter of the story is straight-up single-girl romance, albeit with a couple of black eyes, and kids in detention halls, and loneliness that hollows you out. The narrator is the observer of events – she is not the center of the story. Josanna Skiles is a single woman in her mid to late 30s, living in the wilds of Wyoming, trying to get by. She’s a cook at a bar (the same bar where the narrator bartends). She goes out with her girlfriends for “girls nights out” – but they mainly involve getting wasted, whipping off their shirts as they dance on bars, and then humping some dude in his truck in the parking lot. You know. It’s bleak. Especially because there is a yearning for something more. You’re not going to find your mate like that … but in the particular world that Annie Proulx describes, that’s the only option really. Josanna meets a guy through a personal ad – his name is Elk Nelson, and the narrator can tell he’s bad news from the second she lays eyes on him. He exudes hatred of women – not in a passive-aggressive “Mommy was mean to me” way … but open active hostility, which makes him chuckle. The fact that Josanna is into him is proof that women are pieces of shit. It’s that kind of thing. He’s malevolent. Proulx just nails that kind of guy. I’ve met guys like that. The best thing to do is to just get the hell out of his way. Do not let that toxic energy anywhere near you. But Josanna is lonely. She’s hot for him, too. She sees what she wants to see. The narrator writes:

When you are bone tired of being alone, when all you want is someone to pull you close and say it’s all right, all right now, and you get one like Elk Nelson you’ve got to see you’ve licked the bottom out of the dish.

Unexpected choice of words. Indelible. Mean, blunt. I just love Proulx’s stuff.

The world of romance Proulx describes in ‘A Lonely Coast’ is hopeless, awful, there’s no way out. Especially if you’re pushing 40 and a woman and alone. You get glimpses of the desolation – but Josanna is running so fast, and living so wild – that she never sits still for a moment, and realize what a bad situation she is in. Not that there’s any solution. There is no solution.

Loneliness hollows you out. And if you have enough loneliness, it can damage you forever. Your judgment, your choices, how you look at the world … Don’t ever let anyone try to convince you that damage like that is irreversible. It’s a damn lie.

So the collision of Josanna and Elk has a sense of the inevitable about it. A necessary meeting of two unfit people … Josanna’s energy at this point will only attract a horrible person like Elk, but she can’t see that.

Here’s an excerpt.


EXCERPT FROM Close Range : Wyoming Stories, by Annie Proulx – excerpt from the story ‘A Lonely Coast’.

I tended bar on the weekends at the Gold Buckle and watched the fire take hold of her. She would smile at what he said, listen and lean, light his damn cigarette, examine his hands for cuts – he had a couple of weeks’ work fencing at the 5 Bar. She’d touch his face, smooth a wrinkle in his shirt and he’d say, quit off pawin me. They sat for hours at the Buckle seesawing over whether or not he’d made a pass at some woman, until he got fed up enough to walk out. He seemed to be goading her, seeing how far he could shove before she hit the wall. I wondered when she’d get the message that she wasn’t worth shit to him.

August was hot and drouthy, a hell of grasshoppers and dried-up creeks. They said this part of the state was a disaster area. I heard that said before any grasshoppers came. The Saturday night was close, air as thick as in a closet with the winter coats. It was rodeo night and that brings them in. The bar filled up early, starting with ranch hands around three in the afternoon still in their sweaty shirts, red faces mottled with heat and dirt, crowding out most of the wrinkle-hour boys, the old-timers who started their drinking in the morning. Palma was there a little after five, alone, fresh and high-colored, wearing a cinnamon red satin blouse that shined with every move she made. Her arms were loaded with silver bracelets, one metal ring on another clinking and shifting. By five-thirty the bar was packed and hot, bodies touching, some fools trying to dance – country girls playing their only card, grinding against the boys – people squeezed eight to a booth meant for four, six deep at the bar, men hat to hat. There were three of us working, me and Zeeks and Justin, and as fast as we went we couldn’t keep up. They were pouring the drinks down. Everybody was shouting. Outside the sky was green-black and trucks driving down the street had their headlights on, dimmed by constant lightning flashes. The electricity went off for about fifteen seconds, the bar black as a cave, the jukebox dying worrr, and a huge, amorous, drunken and delighted moan coming up from the crowd that changed to cussing when the light flickered back on.

Elk Nelson came in, black shirt and silver belly hat. He leaned over the bar, hooked his finger in the waistband of my jeans and yanked me to him.

“Josanna in yet?”

I pulled back, shook my head.

“Good. Let’s get in the corner then and hump.”

I got him a beer.

Ash Weeter stood next to Elk. Weeter was a local rancher who wouldn’t let his wife set foot in a bar, I don’t know why. The jokers said he was probably worried she’d get killed in a poolroom fight. He was talking about a horse sale coming up in Thermopolis. Well, he didn’t own a ranch, he managed one for some rich people in Pennsylvania, and I heard it that half the cows he ran on their grass was his. What they didn’t know didn’t hurt them.

“Have another beer, Ash,” Elk said in a good-buddy voice.

“Nah, I’m goin home, take a shit and go to bed.” No expression on that big shiny face. He didn’t like Elk.

Palma’s voice cut through a lull, Elk looked up, saw her at the end of the bar, beckoning.

“See you,” said Ash Weeter to no one, pulling his hat down and ducking out.

Elk held his cigarette high above his head as he got through the crowd. I cracked a fresh Coors, brought it down to him, heard him say something about Casper.

That was the thing, they’d start out at the Buckle then drive down to Casper, five or six of them, a hundred and thirty miles, sit in some other bar probably not much different than the Buckle, drink until they were wrecked, then hit a motel. Elk told it on Josanna that she got so warped out one time she pissed the motel bed and he’d had to drag her into the shower and turn it on cold, throw the sheets in on top of her. Living life to its fullest. He’d tell that like it was the best story in the world and every time he did it she’d put her head down, wait it out with a tight little smile. I thought of my last night back on the ranch with Riley, the silence oppressive and smothering, the clock ticking like blows of an axe, the maddening trickle of water into the stained bathtub from the leaky faucet. He wouldn’t fix it, just wouldn’t. Couldn’t fix the other thing and made no effort in that direction. I suppose he thought I’d just hang and rattle.

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