And then there was this 500-year-old oak tree, a widow and a Vietnam veteran

 

Editor’s note:  Anita Paddock’s review of books we should read are scheduled to appear on the second and fourth Friday of each month. Enjoy.

review by Anita Paddock

Sonny Brewer is a terrific story teller. He lives in Fairhope, Ala., a gorgeous little town on Mobile Bay that is home to other story tellers — writers, singers, artists who have gravitated to the place because of its huge live oak trees scarved with softy swaying moss, fat magnolia trees with their sweet perfumed white flowers and shiny green leaves, and the camellias and azaleas that grow higher than a boy’s head.

This novel, Brewer’s fourth that takes place in Fairhope, embodies the lushness of this area as a main character in his cast that includes a widow, a veteran, a game warden and his deputy, a crow, and a black panther.

The widow raises goats on ancestral land on which a gigantic 500 year-old live oak tree stands. This Ghosthead Oak is the king of all live oaks. Its branches droop close to the ground in 100 to 200 foot reaches. But lately, trespassers have used the tree as a place to picnic or buy drugs or get liquored up. The widow hates these trespassers. Her father is buried under the tree. It is sacred to her.

Not far from the widow lives a veteran of Vietnam, who as a young boy used the tree as a safe haven from his tyrannical father. Retired now in an Airstream trailer on the banks of backwater marshes off Weeks Bay, a quarter mile from the widow’s cottage, he lives in self-imposed exile with his fishing nets and hooks and lines and rods and reels.

They meet at the tree one night when the veteran hears her dog barking and goes to investigate. The widow tells him that she’s seen a black panther, but her dog chased him away. A tempered friendship develops between the two, and they eventually form a plot to keep the tree from becoming a tourist attraction in a state park.

There’s a bit of suspended belief, or magical realism, in this novel. The black panther comes out of the wilds to encroach on the widow’s land in much the same way the game warden does with his dreams of a state park. The black crow hides in the tree, watching everything, and flies away with an acorn that will eventually become another Ghosthead Oak.

I loved the scenes with the panther. Scary stuff!  It reminded me of a movie about a black panther, “Track of the Cat,” I saw as a child. The widow and her dog actually do combat with the panther under the tree. At midnight, when the widow has gone on a drunken walk.

Sonny Brewer has visited the Fort Smith Public Library three times for autograph parties. When he comes again, you’ll want to come and hear him. He’s as good in person as he is on the page.

•••

Since this book is about a widow who raised goats and loved her land and the great tree that grew upon it, I thought I’d talk to another widow who once raised goats.

Clara Jane Rubarth moved to Fort Smith in 1994 as the director of the liberal arts program for the University of Arkansas at Little Rock when Westark was establishing a center for upper level classes before it became University of Arkansas at Fort Smith.

A true woman of the earth and sky and all things holy, Clara Jane is now retired and living in a little cottage in the historical district of Fort Smith. She has spent the last 12 New Year’s Eves at Subiaco Abbey, participating in an evening of  recollection, which she finds very positive and up-lifting.

When asked about her goat raising days, she says, “When my children and I lived in Texas, we raised goats and lived off the land. My last year, thank God, of raising goats was in 1982. Our cash money came from my teaching job at a local college.”

As a lover of travel and adventure, she went to India this past September and rode an elephant to the top of a mountain fort in the city of Jaipur.

Active in many organizations such as The Little Theatre, The Fort Smith Heritage Association, and the 9th and D community garden project, Clara Jane is the quintessential beautiful older woman. In addition to being the smartest woman I know, she’s among the best-read as well.

It’s no surprise she is now reading a wide range of subjects. She’s reading “The View from the Ninth Decade” by Malcolm Cowley and a book on the history of origami that she needs in preparation for a class she is teaching in February.

She’s also reading a book she bought in India titled, “A Princess Remembers: The Memoir of the Maharani of Jaipur.” Clara Jane says, “I read a little bit each night.  It reminds me of my trip and the glorious things I saw.”

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