Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ

My introduction to the fiction of Bill Beverly is his debut novel, Dodgers. Published in 2016, this is a stark, imaginatively rendered, compulsive read. If Don Winslow were more journalist than scenarist, he might write a book like this. It's a road story, not legitimately a Los Angeles one, and I think the novel is far better for it. Sometimes, books set in a specific culture are prisoner to the culture they're trying to portray. They're too confined, waiting to break out or breathe. In setting four young men--two of them children, really--cross country to commit a murder, Beverly gives the novel momentum. And nothing tells us about the nature of a person like a long road trip.

In the first of several cues that the author delivers with no elaboration, "East" is a fifteen-year-old in an L.A. neighborhood referred to only as "The Boxes." He's co-manager of a "house," seeing goods in, money out, supervising the entry-level runners standing watch, as well as the customers, dope addicts referred to as the "U." East has seen people shot, but never pulled a trigger himself. Two of his runners fail to provide warning and when the house is raided by police, East watches a young girl die in the crossfire. He's spared a severe reprimand by virtue of being nephew to the organization's boss, Fin.

Fin gives East a new job, accompanying three boys on a trip to Wisconsin to kill a judge scheduled to testify against him. Michael Wilson, 20, is a motormouth whose specialty is getting the party out of polite situations. Walter, 19, is an overweight college boy whose specialty is brains. Ty, 13, is a killer, responsible for getting the party out of any impolite situations. He's also East's half-brother and though they share a mother, are not on speaking terms. To keep a low profile, the boys are sent off on the job in a minivan with fake IDs, no contraband and no cell phones, just a number to call for guns when they reach Iowa. For uniforms, they're bought L.A. Dodgers gear. Because white people love baseball. East has never been out of Los Angeles before.

In the center seat, he had an overview--he could watch the streets, watch these boys. Michael Wilson's head bobbed as he drove, talking, talking. Talking all the time, to everyone, even himself, a flow: he made music of it, he breathed through it. His sunglasses rode up top, and his head swung side to side, his white eyes dancing this way and that. So busy, East thought, working so hard. Walter, his head was lower down, bushier. He bugled off the seat into the middle and against the door. East had known some fat kids before, smart ones, worth something. But you couldn't work them in the yard. Not outside, a standing-up job.

But Walter was getting tight with Michael Wilson. Giggling at him. "Never thought you'd be driving a fuckin' florist's vam," he proposed.

Michael Wilson lifted his hands from the wheel. "It don't smell like flowers."

East didn't mind the van. He liked the seat, the middle view, the drab shade. The carpet was blue. The seats were blue. The ceiling was a long faded grayish-blue, little pills of lint in the nap. Where he sat, the smoky windows were an arm's length away. They wouldn't roll down; they only popped out on a buckle hinge. That would do. Everything was an arm's length away.

The less said about what happens once the boys leave L.A., the better. Dodgers reminded me of Stephen King's The Body (filmed as Stand By Me) if instead of a journey to see a dead body, four boys were going to make a dead body. It's not as poignant and it's not at all nostalgic, but it's not the typical caper either. Beverly seems more inspired by life than TV. This is an extremely polished, well-edited novel. There's nothing cluttering it up, not even the treats I enjoy but that writers can so easily overdo. I can't recall one pop culture reference. I can't recall one call-out to another author.

Things happen for a reason. Dialogue is exchanged for a reason. Characters have clearly defined personalities that carry them through to the end. Each speaks differently, moves differently. Character is further revealed by their reaction to the obstacles on the job. We experience new things in the moment East experiences new things. Beverly trusts the reader. We understand what a "U" is without the author stopping to give an urban etymology lesson. He sprinkles the book with John Steinbeck-like flourishes of wisdom, impressions on how the world works and how to get along in it.

-- He was no fun, and they respected him, for though he was young, he had none in him of what they hated most in themselves: their childishness. He had never been a child. Not that they had seen.

-- All the land--people talked about America, someday you should see it, you should drive across it all. They didn't say how it got into your head.

-- The molding a group of boys you'd maybe met yesterday into the people your life depended on. And never to know whether you'd succeeded. Only to await the moments of test. Like this one.

-- You could be wrong about anything.

-- Perry trusted him. But maybe trust was a trick. Maybe trust was the act that not trusting put on when there was no better alternative.

Beverly teaches American literature and writing at Trinity Washington University in Washington DC.