Books: Teeftallow

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The Story* jolts off down the clay ruts of Lane County, Tennessee — stretches of crowded, stumbling action; bursts of mulish power. Abner Teeftallow, a brawny illiterate of 18, leaves the poor-farm where his mother died insane, to labor as a teamster on a traction project of Lanesburg's genius and potentate, Railroad Jones. From his fellow teamsters he learns the technique of hillbilly manhood— gulping moonshine, shooting craps Saturday nights in a wood, toting an automatic pistol for protection on "rambling" (courting) nights and for display at prayer-meetings. He reveres the four local gods— public opinion, money, wit and a glowering celestial Patriarch who, seeing all, likes little.

Over in Irontown ("Arntown") where the teamsters are working, the villagers have their annual religious debauch — a revival. Following local custom, Abner and his mates engage female partners for the whole series of meetings. One night, during a lull in the hysteria, one Tug Beavers temporizes about going to the mourners' bench. That same night he gets a backful of buckshot from Peck Bradley, a murderer out on bail. Religion picks up. Bloodhounds bay for three days and nights in the back hills and Bradley is brought in to jail, crusted with mud but full of bravado. Sharing his contempt for the law and seething with Old Testament, the community grows ominously quiet. Abner suggests a plan; feet tramp, a rope is knotted and what was Peck Bradley twists slowly in the air near his ambush.

The chief local henchmen of the Lord are Perry Northcutt, thin-lipped banker, and Roxie Biggers, merciless chariteer. Northcutt has it in for young Teeftallow, having failed to mulct him of some intricately inherited timberlands. So Abner learns more about humanity when he and Nessie Sutton come up for public judgment. Nessie is the milliner's assistant— tall, honey-haired, pious, nourished on novels. She and Abner live in the same lodging house, where laws of proximity and physiology grope through a natural course. Roxie Biggers sees their farewell embrace when Abner's work-gang moves away, and the blasting of Nessie's fame is simply a matter of a few street conversations and telephone calls. Brother Northcutt turns out his masked inquisitors, and Nessie not being found, the bastinadoes of righteousness descend upon Abner when he returns to marry the girl. Nessie, seeking refuge under an express train, is rescued and married by the village infidel, Belshue the jeweler, a mournful, middle-aged creature, who was the chief object of her missionary work before her downfall.