Annie Proulx: Bedrock

When a widower remarries, his life hits rock bottom.

In Annie Proulx’s Heart Songs and Other Stories, I chose “Bedrock” to feature, although it could just as well have been any story in the collection. Close your eyes and point. You won't go wrong. 

As the story unfolds, Perley, a middle-aged widower, remarries, only to realize his new wife, turned ornery from the "I do," and her uncouth brother are slowly taking over his farm and his life. He feels unable to resist when his bride tries to bully him into growing blue Brute potatoes instead of his beloved Green Mountain yellow variety. That's just the beginning of her running his life. Further upsetting the marital balance, his new brother-in-law, Bobhot Mackey (Proulx is a master of character names), insinuates himself into their home, mauling the land with Perley’s farm equipment, sloppily painting the house an obnoxious yellow, doing everything half-ass. When Perley comes to understand why the brother and sister treat him with such disregard, it may be too late to save his farm, to save himself.

Proulx's stories can be savored by anyone who appreciates fully developed characters, landscapes that come alive, and the peculiarities of the human heart. “Bedrock” came at the suggestion of my preteen grandson, who enjoyed the grittiness of the thirteen-page story, the cowboy language and the overblown characters. There is a richness to Proulx’s writing that constantly delights. I savor her stories slowly, not wanting to hurry for fear I might miss something as simple as the perfect word in the perfect place. Case in point, her description of the land: 

“The farm was a thin mantle of soil that lay over granite bedrock scarred by glaciers and meteorites. The wineglass elms, the beech, the pad of stubbled grass, the interknotted roots, could all wash away again. Another deluge, he thought, would strip the rock bare, uncover the hard pit of the earth’s core.”

“Bedrock” strips life bare. I won’t soon forget it’s pull on my heart.

Annie Proulx won the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction for her first novel, Postcards, making her the first woman to receive the prize. Her second novel, The Shipping News, won both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award. She has written four collections of stories, including Heart Songs and Other Stories, first published by Scribner in 1988.