Walk Me to the Distance: A Novel (Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group) - Softcover

Everett, Percival

Softcover

ISBN 13: 9798217008483

Verlag: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, 2025

Inhaltsangabe

Now with a brilliant new package, a re-issue of the sophomore novel  by Percival Everett, New York Times bestselling author of National Book Award winner James.

Haunting, provocative and bleakly funny, Walk Me to the Distance is Percival Everett’s brilliant reexamination of the Western, and a laconic tragicomedy about what it takes to survive in the last days of a bygone big-sky country.

In self-imposed exile after returning home from the war in Vietnam, David Larson meanders into the barren town of Slut’s Hole, Wyoming, where a local widow takes him under her wing. After making a sort of home among the town’s hardscrabble locals, David grudgingly adopts a young Vietnamese girl abandoned along the highway. This sets in motion a number of tragic turns as Western mythos and frontier justice clash against the tides of a changing world.

First published in 1985 by Clarion Books, Walk Me to the Distance was the sophomore novel of an iconic American voice. Over the course of his five decade career, Everett has written over twenty five books and been shortlisted for the Pulitzer Prize (for 2020’s Telephone), twice longlisted for the Booker Prize, and the recipient of the 2024 National Book Award for the “genius” (The Atlantic) James, a brilliantly imagined retelling of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn told from the enslaved Jim’s point of view. James was a #1 New York Times bestseller and is being developed into film by Stephen Spielberg.

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Percival Everett

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

Chapter 1


It wasn’t that David Larson returned home from Vietnam to find that his girl had taken up with another man; he didn’t have a girl when he left. He’d spent his time in the army telling people that he was from Georgia, then trying to explain to them and, with time, to himself, why he didn’t have a southern accent; finally coming to “I guess I never had one.” He did have parents when he boarded that transport plane in San Francisco, but in his absence, their car had plunged from a bridge into the Savannah River and they had died. He did have a sister. But while he was gone, she had married a man who claimed to be the eighth and unrecognized (rightly so, thought David) member of the Chicago Seven. Of course, Jill and her new husband wanted nothing to do with a “soldier.” David hadn’t had the good sense, the keen foresight to get wounded and lose a limb, and though certainly affected by his tour, he did not come home emotionally or mentally scarred, suffering from flashbacks or a fear of thin people on bicycles. He returned as unremarkable as he had been when he left, in the last wave of States-­bound personnel, having been asked to sit, stupidly, around Saigon for three months before leaving. Just a soldier, a man without the courage, conviction, or cowardice to have run north to Montreal or Toronto.


“I don’t think it’s a good idea that you come by,” Jill had said on the phone.


David didn’t understand. He looked out the window of his motel room at Interstate 95 and then, for a lack of anything else to say, “I’m your brother.”


“I’ve changed.”


“What do you mean, you’ve changed? We have things to discuss.”


“We have nothing to discuss. Mom and Dad left us very little. Give me your address.”


“I don’t have an address.”


“Well, when you get settled, write me and I’ll send you what’s coming to you.”


“I’d like to see you.”


“It’s the times, David.”


David threw one of the motel glasses, still wrapped in paper, against the wall, breaking it. “What the hell is that supposed to mean? It’s the times. What kind of shit are you giving me? I’ve been in the jungle protecting you and your hippie husband.”


Click.



David bought a used Dodge Dart and left Savannah and Georgia. West was the direction he chose. The car performed well in the summer heat. He drove across Iowa, then Nebraska, stopping in the town of Chadron to look up a buddy. He didn’t find his friend, so he drove west across the prairie, his .45 in his lap. The game he played went one bullet per jackrabbit as he spotted them along the roadside. He’d hit only one, knicked its ear, hardly disturbed its stride. Then one of the tall, slender hares leaped across the highway in front of the car. He fired over the hood of the Dart, missed the rabbit, but got his engine. The bullet passed through the radiator. He studied the wound, the afternoon sun hitting the back of his neck. Slowly, a short distance at a time, allowing the engine to cool, he made his way to a gas station.


The station attendant, a lanky man with a salt-­and-­pepper beard, stepped toward the car, wiping his hands with an oily rag. He looked at the radiator, then at David. “Get him?” he asked. “You were shootin’ jackbunnies, weren’t you?”


David just looked at the man. “Can you fix my car?” he asked finally.


The man spat and slipped his oily rag into his hip pocket. “You need a new radiator.” He slammed the hood. “Two weeks.”


“Two weeks?”


“Maybe one. Depends on when I can get to Casper.” He scratched his head. “Might be able to find one in Ross.”


David was not ready for this. He looked out over the rolling grass and down the road at a little store and some other buildings.


“Yep, at least a week.” The mechanic walked over and lifted the lid of the pop machine, pulled out two Cokes. “Here you go. On me.”


David took the bottle. The soda was good and cold and burned pleasantly as it went down. “Where am I?”


“This here is Slut’s Hole, Wyoming.”


“Slut’s Hole.”


“Cowboys named it and the name ain’t never been changed.”


“Why Slut’s Hole?”


“Because everybody comes here and then they leave. That’s the story anyway.”


“You’re still here.”


The man smiled. “Born here.” He took a gulp from his bottle. “Name’s Mitch.”


“David Larson.” They shook hands. “I don’t suppose there’s a motel around here.”


Mitch shook his head. “There’s one in Ross. I know where you can rent a room, though. I’ll take you there.” Mitch rubbed the cold bottle across his forehead. “Just driving cross-­country?”


“Yeah. Just looking around.”


“Service?”


“Army.”


“Were you over there?”


David nodded.


“I wanted to go, but they said I was too light. I’ve filled out a little since then.” He noticed David looking at his graying hair. “Too old, to boot.”


“Yeah, well, you didn’t miss much. Where is this room?”


“I’ll take you. Let’s go.” Mitch dropped his bottle into the rack and started toward the old pickup parked alongside the station. “Grab your gear.”


“You don’t have to leave the station,” David said. “Just point me in the right direction.”


“Don’t worry about the gas. Folks’ll just leave the money by the pumps. Get in.”



Mitch drove David down and up a dusty, winding road, then off onto a bumpy drive to a two-story house. “The old woman’s name is Sixbury, Chloë Sixbury. Now, let me explain something; she’s got a wooden leg. She hates for people to look at it.” He pulled to a halt beside the house, beneath a cottonwood.


The old woman was down by the barn. There was a young man with her, carrying bags of feed from a pickup truck into the barn.


“That’s Patrick,” Mitch said, as they walked toward the barn, “Sixbury’s son. He’s an idiot. Don’t say nothing.”


Sixbury saw the two men approaching and walked over to meet them. “Hey there, Mitch.”


“Sixbury. Got a fella here who needs a room. David, Sixbury.”


“Ten dollars,” she said.


“Ten?” David shook his head. “I don’t know.”


Mitch put a hand on David’s shoulder. “She means a week.”


“Oh. Okay.”


“I cook the meals,” she said. She turned and looked at her son. “My son is retarded. He won’t say anything, but he’s a good boy. Harmless.”


Mitch left and Sixbury showed David to his room. It was downstairs, just off the kitchen, with a window that overlooked the barn lot. Sixbury lived on the small spread with only her son, raised about thirty sheep and a few chickens. She had two horses, an Appaloosa mare and a fourteen-hand, calf-­kneed quarter horse. She managed the ranch by herself,...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2025
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 13: 9798217008483
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Auflage: 1
• Anzahl der Seiten: 225
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: preigu GmbH & Co. KG; mail@preigu.de; ; Lengericher Landstr. 19; Osnabrück; Niedersachsen; 49078; Deutschland