2003: In the Dark Corner with a Drifter Named Loftus
2. The Other Tracks (1951, Gold Medal)
Drawing on hobo lore and the wandering tramp literary tradition, Loftus’s sophomore effort is an uneven book, part Naturalistic road tale, part seedy murder yarn. While it’s a bit of a hash, the standout sections deal with Bolt, the sadistic rail bull and scourge of the ‘bos. The torture and murder scenes are harrowing, especially a prolonged chapter in which Bolt taunts and teases a helpless rummy (in front of an amused audience composed of his one-time loyal traveling companions) before executing the vagabond. Unfortunately, Bolt himself is killed off too soon and the novel’s remaining chapters are essentially anticlimactic.
3. Damn the Circus (1951, Lion)
A sordid and sweaty tale of a traveling carnival and, especially, of a clique of murderous freaks. The book feels more like a horror story than a crime novel. It makes for some squeamish reading, particularly Loftus’s almost loving recitation of the various physical deformities found among the troupe. The plot involves an escalating battle of wills between the carny’s owner and the (Bolt-like) sadistic Sheriff Campbell, demagogue of the southern town in which the troupe has found itself stranded. There is a subplot that pivots on a love triangle between Inez, the fat woman, Scoot, the dog-faced boy and, yes, Ramona, the hermaphrodite. A fast and greasy read, the book was banned upon publication in some counties of Georgia and Alabama.
4. Absolute Night (1952, Lion)
Changing his setting from the rural to the decidedly urban, Loftus delivers a short, sharp slap of a book. This novel feels as if its writer is gaining speed, momentum and confidence for what will be a star turn. Absolute Night isn’t exactly a practice run, but its brevity and single-mindedness are, perhaps, too severe. The story of Crane, a former prisoner of war, tortured and partially crippled by the Japanese at Battan, he returns home to find his hell has yet to abate.
His wife has died during his captivity and their infant daughter has vanished into a nightmare of deceit and bureaucracy. For five years, Crane has dragged himself from city to city, sleeping in fleabag hotels and rooting out dead-end leads in search of his child.
The entire book takes place on the last night of that search, as Crane tears apart an unnamed but inhuman city of mazes and shadows to find his last chance of redemption. Dark, ultra-violent, semi-surreal in places and all of one note, the book moves like a shark through bloody waters. Some feel that it is Loftus’s greatest achievement. Others, an obsessive near miss.
5. Refugee (1952, Lion)
Loftus’s breakthrough novel and arguably his masterpiece. Stark and tight, but still thick with an atmosphere of loss and foreboding, Refugee has the feel of a deathbed confession screamed into the world with a final breath. And punctuated with a death rattle. The story of Brewer (in homage to friend, Gil Brewer), a man on the run and seeking revenge, a man beyond history and identity, the novel is likely the most violent book in the writer’s oeuvre. And with Loftus, that’s saying something. Refugee, one might argue, lights the fuse laid by Absolute Night. Brewer is another of Loftus’s haunted veterans. Though his background is only hinted at, it seems that he took an undeserved fall in a kangaroo war crimes trial and did some time in a military prison on charges stemming from a horrific village massacre.
The book finds Brewer on the day of his discharge, as he receives a letter informing him that his long-lost father is dying and that an inheritance of some sort awaits him. The letter, however, contains no information as to where Brewer might find the patriarch. His only clue is a key to a roadside motel room in another state. He proceeds at once to steal a car, possibly murdering its ownerwe are never entirely sure what is real and what is a product of a shell-shocked brain. At the first motel, Brewer waits for some contact through a Godot-like night, during which he shoots up a hallucinatory drug and experiences flashes of the massacre carnage.
In desperation, he roots in a bureau for a Gideon bible and retrieves instead a moldy, goatskin diary, secured with a clasp. He breaks the seal, finds a key to yet another roadside motel room. And reads unknown details of his own lost childhood. And so, it’s off to the races, as Brewer traverses an America that becomes more and more phantasmagoric. He moves from motel to motel (they’re all the cookie cutter products of an increasingly sleazy chain), collecting additional diaries that reveal additional (and sometimes conflicting) information about his past.
Between motel stops he steals cars, holds up liquor stores, visits a Gothic brothel, exhumes a grave, and evades a growing cadre of police and the angry ghosts of the massacred villagers. It would be a sin and a crime to give the ending away. Suffice it to say that the conclusion of this radical, shocking, perhaps mad, perhaps brilliant little pulp novel beautifully fulfils all of the overwhelming insanity that precedes it. A book waiting to be rediscovered and sanctioned as a deeply American classic.
