When We Were Wolves (review)

In spite of some aesthetic shortcomings , though, Those Bones Are Not My Child, has enormous social and political value. Bambara constantly reminds us that history is only as true as its tellers. She offers compelling evidence that Wayne Williams' arrest and conviction was not the tidy resolution of the case that Atlanta so fervently wanted it to be. Looking back, it is easy to believe that Wayne Williams was a scapegoat rather than a beastly serial killer of children. The evidence that convicted him of killing two adult males and linked him to several child murders does seem flimsy and contrived. If no novel can eradicate our impulse to blame scapegoats , at least this novel makes us look at that impulse more closely. Who knows? Wayne Williams may deservedly reap some benefits from its publication. (NS) When We Were Wolves by Jon Billman Random House, 1999, 239 pp., $21.95 Jon Billman's first book, When We Were Wolves, is a collection of often satirical Western stories whose unlikely characters and small Northwestern towns return to the mind in a kick of dust. Billman's characters live in the short term. They get a notion to do a thing—like build a bobsled or catch fish out of a trout hatchery or scrawl graffiti on a water tower— and they just go and do it. They find ways to earn livings from their diversions : brewing honey meade, for example, or claiming bogus uranium mines, or rainmaking. In general, they act in ways that "sounded good at the time." The protagonists of these stories are mavericks who, as often as not, are forced to suffer the consequences of their eccentric behavior. In "Custer Complex" (a story drawn from Billman 's personal experience as a wildland firefighter), Kurt Strain quickly gains a reputation for being insubordinate by going fishing as flames engulf a forest he should have been protecting. Several demotions later, he is called to a ghost fire: due to some computer glitch at Forest Service management, he must report to a fire he fought two years ago. "Indians" is a baseball story, the context of which makes it palatable to even those who are weary of fiction about baseball. In this lively tale, the Mud-Butte Indians, a team comprising eight American Indians and one white Presbyterian, take up barnstorming for cash in the Dakotas after the Dust Bowl of the Depression turns their farms into a desert. Then there is "Atomic Bar," the story of the founding of Moses Dogbane 's Poison Spider Uranium Company . An ambitious wheeler-dealer, Dogbane stakes claims to random sections of Wyoming desert in the 1940s, sprinkles them with a worthless radioactive substance called euxenite and attempts to find some deep-pocketed investors to subsidize his retirement. Most of the thirteen stories in When We Were Wolves took me away to places I had never before imagined . Billman's characters inhabit a living world, with a deep history. It is all convincing, yet in the end I found myself wondering to what, if anything, this author is committed. Character after character (the majority of which are male) either has no 180 · The Missouri Review commitments or treats them so lightly that they may as well not exist. No idea or institution is sacred. Billman's satire targets, among other things, public schools, the Church of Latter Day Saints, local law enforcement, the Forest Service, and especially marriage . Billman seems to depend on the flaws of these institutions to make the irresponsible and often immoral behavior of his characters appear less harmful, even redemptive. It works up to a point; but has he gone beyond that point? In part, ifs a matter of taste. If you like satire, you'll probably enjoy these stories. Full of high energy, quirky characters and plenty of local color, this is fiction that sticks with you from a promising new writer. (JL) Mr. Spaceman by Robert Olen Butler Atlantic Monthly Press, 2000, 224 pp., $24 Robert Olen Butler's newest novel, Mr. Spaceman, is a little book that tackles big mysteries—among them the nature of human language and the significance of dreams. This delightful mythical tale explores humanity...