Where Trouble Sleeps ~ A Capsule Book Review by Allen Kopp

Clyde Edgerton’s Where Trouble Sleeps is an unserious novel about small-town Southern life, set in Listre, North Carolina, in the innocent year of 1950. The town of Listre is so small it has one blinker light at its main intersection. The houses, church and small businesses of the town are arranged in the four corners around the blinker light.

There’s an interesting story about how the blinker light came into being. I’m glad you asked that question. You see, there was this runaway mule that didn’t want to do any more plowing and, as it was running to try to get away, it collided head-on with a truck. Sadly, the mule was killed but the good part of the mule-truck head-on collision was that the blinker light came into being.

For such a small town, there are plenty of colorful characters to go around. There are the three Blaine sisters—Bea, Mae and Dorothea—who own a tiny store (they live in the basement underneath the store). They are three dedicated spinsters, but when Dorothea was 58 years old (she’s 70 when the action of the story takes place), she decided to marry a man named Claude T. Clark. The two remaining sisters think the marriage is a mistake and they don’t think much of Claude T. Clark because he wears a big diamond ring and buys a new Cadillac every year. Dorothea is secretary at the Baptist church and, since she has a sprained ankle, she decides to live in her office at the church, an arrangement that causes a certain amount of consternation among church members.

Train’s garage/filling station is a place for men of Listre to gather, swap stories, and stand around drinking Blatz beer. Train is paralyzed and confined to a wheelchair, having been injured in World War II. Train owns a 16-year-old bulldog named Trouble who lives at the station and sleeps a lot. He infallibly predicts the weather by his choice of sleeping spots: if he sleeps inside, it will rain; if outside it won’t rain.

Alease Toomey is a respectable, Christian woman with a six-year-old son named Stephen and a no-account, alcoholic brother named Raleigh who causes her plenty of trouble. She doesn’t have a very happy marriage because her husband, Big Steve, works all the time and doesn’t pay enough attention to her. Alease is not above being attracted to the handsome stranger in town and flirting a little bit and maybe going even farther than flirting.

Cheryl Daniels is a pretty, nineteen-year-old waitress who lives with her parents and her younger brother named Terry. Whenever men see Cheryl, they want to stick around Listre. The Baptist minister, Preacher Crenshaw (fat wife and five children), has developed a very strong attraction for Cheryl and convinces himself he is in love with her. He must struggle with temptation the same way Christ did in the desert. When he writes a love letter to Cheryl (which he doesn’t mail), it’s seen by the church secretary, Dorothea Clark, setting Preacher Crenshaw up for some possible big trouble.

Into this morass of innocence and small-town respectability comes Jack Umstead (calling himself Delbert Jones), driving a stolen Buick Eight. Jack Umstead/Delbert Jones has trouble in mind and he’s definitely looking to score in Listre, one way or another. Might he accomplish this with blackmail or with out-and-out, old-fashioned robbery? He ingratiates himself to the people of Listre, even going so far as to join the Baptist church, but, of course, everything he tells them about himself is falsehood. He begins romancing Cheryl Daniels and establishes an ongoing flirtation with Alease Toomey. When he decides to rob the Blaine sisters’ store during a thunderstorm, he has probably taken on more than he can handle, or, as my mother would say, he bit off more than he could chew.

Southern writer Clyde Edgerton can count me among his fandom. He’s written about ten books, I’ve read all of them, and I wish he would write more. His last book, The Night Train, came out in 2011, so possibly he is finished writing novels. At age seventy-four, maybe he has decided to take a rest.

Copyright © 2018 by Allen Kopp