Eastern Kentucky, as part of Appalachia, consists of hilly regions, and in many ways, Sheldon Lee Compton’s 2016’s novel, Bottle Brown, put his characters at the top of one of those unkempt hills and sent them rolling down through addictions, dreams deferred, and violent endings. The prose and plotting of the book kept that sort of tumbling-down-a-hill frenetic pace, with both the characters moving a lot through time and space, and the plot itself moving back and forth between recollections of the past and meditations on the present (and future, as it exists). Fittingly, Donald Ray Pollock, author of the book I loved reading last year, The Heavenly Table, blurbs this one, because Compton’s book captures Pollock’s southern gothic, country noir vibe, with his own take on it.
In Compton’s story, “Brown Bottle” is the derogatory nickname given to Wade Taylor, a Vietnam Veteran known for being an alcoholic and coming from a family with nothing much to say for itself. His sister, Mary, moves to Ohio, leaving behind her drug-addicted son, Nick. Wade sees himself as Nick’s protector, and Nick as essentially his own son, and given that his life ain’t worth much of anything, he figures, then why not help Nick by killing Nick’s dope dealer, Tuck. Of course, Stan, Tuck’s older brother, views himself as Tuck’s protector, much to the chagrin of his wife, Hen (short for Henry; her dad was weird, Compton tells us). As it turns out, Hen is also part of the dope web. For that matter, so is Wade’s best friend, Doug.
What’s interesting, though, is that in Eastern Kentucky, throwing stones at the addicted and troubled is liable to unearth the fissures in your own house: those who call Wade “Brown” or “Brown Bottle” are nursing their own addictions, mostly to pills. And the aforementioned web of people involved in pushing pills is what brings down the violence. Because Nick and his girlfriend, Ashley, who also is the daughter of the county sheriff (and his wife, Ashley’s mother, is also addicted to pills), hire a notorious hitman, Fay, to kill Tuck. But the hitman being the sociopath he is, figures on just killing everyone, Tuck, Nick, Ashley, Ashley’s mom, Wade, Stan, Hen, and so on. Killing seems to be his form of addiction. As if drug addiction and a propensity to violence in service to, or to mitigate, addiction wasn’t enough of an issue for these Appalachian folks, there is a sociopath meandering around with grandiose notions.
Wade is a tragic character, as one might expect with the titular character of a country noir book. Sure, at first, he tries to get sober to be a better adult presence in Nick’s life and steer Nick off of the same addiction pitfalls, but it doesn’t last long. And with addiction-based characters shouldering troubled histories — Wade killed his adolescent girlfriend’s father who was abusing her — there is a sense of inevitability to it all. Again, like they set off tumbling down the hill and well, at that point, you just gotta keep tumbling until the tumbling stops. Yes, Wade makes a choice to go after Tuck, then Fay, and even at the end, to fire upon Ashley’s dad and two other deputies, but in Wade’s brain, that was the inevitable conclusion to his life. He wasn’t much of something, hadn’t ever been much of anything, but this was something he could do. For Nick. That was the logic of it all, which doesn’t quite seem logical from an outsider’s perspective, but to his perspective, it makes as much sense as Stan defending his brother, Hen feeling it was her right to take some of Tuck’s drug profits, and so forth on down the line through these characters.
Like any addict or wayward soul, these characters just want to feel something — anything — more than their lot in life seems to provide. That in so seeking to feel, and thus feeling, they can escape, even if momentarily, the seemingly predetermined Appalachian bubble they were born into. Compton captures that malaise in these characters, their sense of hopelessness coupled with inevitability, and the chaotic essence of how their “choices” cascade into bitter ends, a reality far harder to swallow than the vodka left at the back of a sink cupboard.
Their true addiction is seeking an end to their desperation, and their ain’t no quick, cheap fix for that. The hardest addiction to beat is seeking an abatement of one’s desperation. So it goes.
Like I said, if you dig a Pollock or a Daniel Woodrell, then Compton will be right in your mucky wheelhouse. He sure was within mine, and I look forward to seeking out more of his writing.
Milam's Musings 