Tamara
Linse
Genre:
literary fiction
Publisher: Willow Words
Date of Publication: July 14, 2014
Number of pages: 330
Word Count: 75,000 words
Cover Artist: Tamara Linse
Book Description:
Deep Down Things, Tamara Linse’s debut
novel, is the emotionally riveting story of three siblings torn apart by a
charismatic bullrider-turned-writer and the love that triumphs despite tragedy.
From the death of her parents at sixteen,
Maggie Jordan yearns for lost family, while sister CJ drowns in alcohol and
brother Tibs withdraws. When Maggie and an idealistic young writer named
Jackdaw fall in love, she is certain that she’s found what she’s looking for.
As she helps him write a novel, she gets pregnant, and they marry. But after
Maggie gives birth to a darling boy, Jes, she struggles to cope with Jes’s
severe birth defect, while Jackdaw struggles to overcome writer’s block brought
on by memories of his abusive father.
Ambitious, but never seeming so, Deep
Down Things may remind you of Kent Haruf’s Plainsong and Jodi Picoult’s My
Sister’s Keeper.
Chapter 1
Maggie
Jackdaw isn’t going to
make it. I can tell by the way the first jump unseats him. The big white bull
lands and then tucks and gathers underneath. Jackdaw curls forward and whips
the air with his left hand, but his butt slides off-center. Thirty yards away
on the metal bleachers, I involuntarily scoot sideways—as if it would do any
good. The bull springs out from under Jackdaw and then arches its back,
flipping its hind end.
Jackdaw is tossed wide
off the bull’s back. In the air he is all red-satin arms and shaggy-chapped
legs but then somehow he grabs his black felt hat. He lands squarely on both
feet, knees bent to catch his weight. Then he straightens with a grand sweep of
his hat. Even from here you can see his smile burst out. There’s something
about the way he opens his body to the crowd, like a dog rolling over to show
its belly, that makes me feel sorry for him but drawn to him too. With him
standing there, holding himself halfway between a relaxed slouch and head-high
pride, I can see why my brother Tibs admires him.
I haven’t actually met
Jackdaw before, but he and Tibs hang out together a lot, and they have some
English classes together. I haven’t run across him on campus.
The crowd on the
bleachers goes wild. It doesn’t matter that Jackdaw didn’t stay on the full
eight seconds. They holler and wolf-whistle and shake their programs. Their
metallic stomping vibrates my body and brings up dust and the smell of old
manure.
With Jackdaw off its
back, the bull leaps into the air. It gyrates its hips and flips its head, a
long ribbon of snot curling off its nostril and arcing over its back. Then it
stops and turns and looks at Jackdaw. It hangs its head low. It shifts its
weight onto its front hooves, butt in the air, and pauses. The clown with the
black face paint and the big white circles around his eyes runs in front of the
bull to distract it, but it shakes its head like it’s saying no to dessert.
The crowd hushes.
Then, I can’t believe
it, Jackdaw takes a step toward the bull. The crowd yells, but not like a
crowd, like a bunch of kids on a playground. Some holler encouragement. Others
laugh. Some try to warn him. Some egg him on. My heart beats wild in my chest
like when my sister CJ and I watch those slasher movies and Freddy’s coming
after the guy and you know because he’s the best friend that he’s going to get
killed and you want to warn him. “Bastard deserved it,” CJ always says, “for
being stupid.”
It’s like Jackdaw
doesn’t know the bull’s right there. He starts walking, not directly to the
fence but at a slant toward the loudest of the cheers, which takes him right
past the bull.
I turn to Tibs. “What’s
he doing?”
“He knows his stuff,”
Tibs says, his voice lower than normal. The look on his face makes me want to
give him a hug, but we’re not a hugging family, so I nod, even though Tibs
isn’t looking at me.
Tibs is leaning forward,
his eyes focused on Jackdaw, his elbows on his knees, and his shoulders
hunched. Tibs is tall and thin, and he always looks a little fragile, a couple
of sticks propped together. His face is our dad’s, big eyes and not much of a
chin, sort of like an alien or an overgrown boy. He has the habit of playing
with his fingers, which he’s doing now. It’s like he wants to reach out and
grab something but he can’t quite bring himself to. It’s the same when he
talks—he’ll cover his mouth with his hand like he’s holding back his words.
Tibs is the tallest of
us three kids—CJ, he, and I. CJ’s the oldest. I’m the youngest and the
shortest. Grandma Rose, Dad’s mom, always said I got left with the leftovers.
Growing up, it seemed like CJ and Tibs got things and were told things that I
was too young to have or to know. It was good though, too, because when Dad and
Mom got killed when I was sixteen, I didn’t know enough to worry much about
money or things. They had saved up some so we could get by. But poor CJ. She in
particular had to be the parent, but she was used to babysitting us and she was
older anyway—twenty-two, I think.
Like that time when we
were kids when CJ was babysitting and I got so sick. Turned out to be
pneumonia. I don’t know where our parents were. Most likely, they were away on
business, but it could have been something else. Grandma Rose had cracked her
hip—I remember that—so she couldn’t take care of us, but it was only for a
couple of days and CJ was thirteen at the time. In general, CJ had started
ignoring us, claiming she was a teenager now and didn’t want to play with
babies any more, like kids do, which really got Tibs, though he didn’t do much
besides sulk about it. But that day she was playing with us like she was a
little kid too.
We had been playing in
an irrigation ditch making a dam. I pretended to be a beaver, and Tibs
pretended to be an engineer on the Hoover Dam. I don’t remember CJ pretending
to be anything, just helping us arrange sticks and slop mud and then flopping
in the water to cool down. I started feeling pretty bad. Over the course of the
day, I had a cough that got worse and then I got really hot and then really
cold and my body ached. My lungs started wheezing when I breathed. I remember
thinking someone had punched a hole in me, like a balloon, and all my air was
leaking out. CJ felt my head and then felt it again and then grabbed my arm and
dragged me to the house, Tibs trailing behind. All I wanted to do was lie down,
but she bundled me in a blanket and put me in a wagon, and between them she and
Tibs pulled me down the driveway and out onto the highway. We lived twelve
miles from town, in the house where I live now. I don’t know why CJ didn’t just
call 911. But here we were, rattling down the middle of the highway. A woman in
a truck stopped and gave us a ride to the hospital here in Loveland. Can you
imagine it? A skinny muddy thirteen-year-old girl in her brown bikini and her
skinny nine-year-old brother, taller than her but no bigger around than a stick
and wearing red, white, and blue swim trunks, hauling their six-year-old sister
through the sliding doors of the emergency room in a little red wagon. What
those nurses must’ve thought.
On the bleachers, I
glance from Tibs back out to Jackdaw. The bull doesn’t know what’s going on either.
It shakes its lowered head and snorts, blowing up dust from the ground. Jackdaw
bows his head and slips on his hat. Then the bull decides and launches itself
at Jackdaw. Just as the bull charges down on Jackdaw, the white-eyed clown runs
between him and the bull and slaps the bull’s nose. Jackdaw turns toward them
just as the bull plants its front feet, turns, and charges after the running
clown.
Pure foolishness and
bravery. My hands are shaking. I want to go down and take Jackdaw’s hand and
lead him out of the arena. A thought like a little alarm bell—who’d want to
care about somebody who’d walk a nose-length from an angry bull? But something
about the awkward hang of his arms and the flip of his chaps and the way his
hat sets cockeyed on his head makes me want to be with him.
The clown runs toward a
padded barrel in the center of the arena, his white-stockinged calves flipping
the split legs of his suspendered oversized jeans. He jumps into the barrel
feet-first and ducks his head below the rim. The crowd gasps and murmurs as the
charging bull hooks the barrel over onto its side and bats it this way and that
for twenty yards. The bull stops and turns and faces the crowd, head high, tail
cocked and twitching. He tips his snout up once, twice, and snorts.
While the bull chases
the clown, Jackdaw walks to the fence and climbs the boards.
The clown pops his head
out of the sideways barrel where he can see the bull from the rear. He pushes
himself out and then scrambles crabwise around behind. He turns to face the
bull, his hands braced on the barrel. The bull’s anger still bubbling, it turns
back toward the clown and charges. As the bull hooks at the barrel and butts it
forward, the clown scoots backwards, keeping the barrel between him and the
bull, something I’m sure he’s done many times. He keeps scooting as the bull
bats at the barrel. But then something happens—the clown trips and falls over
backwards. The barrel rolls half over him as he turns sideways and tries to
push himself up. The bull stops for a split second, as if to gloat, and then
stomps on the clown’s franticly scrambling body and hooks the horns on its
tilted head into the clown’s side, flipping the clown over onto his back.
Why do rodeo clowns do
it? Put their lives on the line for other people? I don’t understand it.
The pickup men on the
horses are there, but a second too late. They charge the bull, their horses
shouldering into it. They yell and whip with quirts and kick with stirrupped
boots. Tail still cocked, the reluctant bull is hazed away and into the
gathering pen at the end of the arena. The metal gate clangs shut behind it.
Head thrown back and
arms splayed, the clown isn’t moving. Men jump off the rails and run toward
him, and the huge doors at the end of the arena open and an ambulance comes in.
It stops beside the clown. The EMTs jump out, pull out a gurney, and then
huddle around the prone body. One goes back to the vehicle and brings some
equipment. There’s frantic activity, and with the help of the other men, they
place him on the gurney and slide him into the ambulance. It pulls out the
doors and disappears, and the siren wails and recedes.
Tibs stands up, looks at
me, and jerks his head, saying come on, let’s go. I stand and follow him.
About the
Author:
Like the characters in Deep Down Things,
the author Tamara Linse and her husband have lost babies. They had five
miscarriages before their twins were born through the help of a wonderful woman
who acted as a gestational carrier. Tamara is also the author of the short
story collection How to Be a Man and earned her master’s in English from the
University of Wyoming, where she taught writing. Her work appears in the
Georgetown Review, South Dakota Review, and Talking River, among others, and
she was a finalist for Arts & Letters and Glimmer Train contests, as well
as the Black Lawrence Press Hudson Prize for a book of short stories. She works
as an editor for a foundation and a freelancer. Find her online at
tamaralinse.com and on her blog Writer, Cogitator, Recovering Ranch Girl at www.tamara-linse.blogspot.com
Website http://www.tamaralinse.com
Facebook https://www.facebook.com/tlinse
Twitter https://twitter.com/TamaraLinse
Mailing List: http://www.tamaralinse.com/contact_mail_list.html
My review:
Well, I just got finished reading this and I wish it had a different ending. When I read the back of the book I thought that it was going to be something that was totally opposite. The blurb of the book is very misleading. The book is not the kind of book that someone should read if they have experienced the loss of a child, in my opinion. If anyone wants to read a story about, heartache, loss and cruelty then this is their kind of story. I give this book a 3/5. I was given this book for the purpose of a review and all opinions are my own.
Giveaway:
$100 Gift Card!!!!
a Rafflecopter giveaway
I cannot imagine the heartache of losing a child. :(
ReplyDeleteCherei M.
It must be terrible to lose a child, sounds like a great book.
ReplyDeleteSounds like a compelling read.
ReplyDeleteThe book sounds really intriguing.
ReplyDelete