The Vermilion Parrot by David Rains Wallace (review)

Reviews 173 der between Fort Smith and the Nations, articulating the contrasting surface values of the self-consciously lawful city and the irresolute Indian Territory. We expect relative morality and selective enforcement in the Nations, for it is the raw, mean-spirited land of the disenfranchised. The Removal had created artificial societies, had extinguished tribal cultures. SaysTish: “ ‘So much had to be left behind, and now it’s lost.’ ” Fort Smith, however, provides the hard-edged shadows where civilized and communal men may hide their treacheries. In blackness, they can shed civility and slip across the imaginary line of morality which overlays the border. This is, too, the story of two women who unwittingly challenge the distinc­ tion of demarcation. Temperance Moon was a renegade white woman, “a creature of the Nations,”who nurtured violence and could only perish from it; coming from the civilized side, she propogated lawlessness on both sides. Tish Redstripe is a citizen of the Nations but a creature of her own heritage; she comes from the lawless side but lends dignity to both. Finally, “twelve men good and true” must weigh the veracity of claims and denials from each side, must seek some small moment when the line between societies declares itself or disappears. Asusual, Douglas C.Jones holds firmly to a sixth sense ofpast moments and those who dwelled within those moments; they are rich with the eccentricities of the frontier and their own far-flung histories. And, as usual, his prose is as easily kept to as a smoothly striding saddle horse. The narrative moves quietly and effortlessly toward closure, seeks no resolution, settles for clarity. DAN WILSON University ofFlorida The VermilionParrot. By David Rains Wallace. (San Francisco: Sierra Club Books, 1991. 217 pages, $18.00.) Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles in the wilderness, BLM (“Bureau of Log­ ging and Mining”) functionaries doubling as nefarious government agents, international spies disguised as cultists, endangered California condors taken as “eco-hostages,” and a five-foot-tall, prehistoric, space-travelling, multilingual, botanizing parrot-creature. When the surly, apathetic hero of David Rains Wallace’s first novel, The Turquoise Dragon (1985), stumbles into the bizarre realm of the author’s second “eco-thriller,”he’s temporarily at a loss for words. “ ‘What did you expect?’ ” the parrot asks when George Kilgore and a friend happen upon its (her) hiding place in the coastal forests north of Los Angeles. “ ‘We didn’t expect you,’” the backpackers reply. “ ‘Then what did you ex­ pect?’ ” retorts the parrot. 174 WesternAmerican Literature I imagine the novelist would say something similar if readers expressed surprise at the language and subject matter of TheVermilionParrot, both ofwhich seem “the product of a tabloid-grade imagination,”as Kilgore puts it in describ­ ing the melodramatic fate of another character. “What did you expect from a book advertised as an ‘eco-thriller’?”Wallace might ask. Readers familiar with Wallace’s prize-winning nonfiction, such as The Klamath Knot: Explorations of Myth and Evolution (1983), and expecting similar eloquence and insight are likely to be disappointed when they open this new book. However, readers open-minded enough to enjoy both meditative natural history and light­ hearted, “tabloid-grade”fiction will find this book a pleasant pastime. Those in the former group will probably want to skip the $18 hardback edition of this novel and wait for the paperback—better yet, wait for another work along the lines ofWallace’s 1988 Bulow Hammock: Mind in aForest. Potential readers might wonder whether The Vermilion Parrot lives up to its billing as an “eco-thriller.”Where, for instance, is the “eco”in it? Well, most of the narrative takes place in the woods, deserts, and mountains ofCalifornia and Mexico—and several of the characters, especially Kilgore (the narrator) and Sibsxy Seet Popleopits Zxyva (the parrot), are adept at noticing and identifying flora and fauna. But is the book a “thriller”? Aside from a lively river-running scene, I must say I found the narrative less “thrilling” than quirky, engaging by virtue of its unlikely cast of characters (like a comic book) rather than the appeal of its drama. Wallace clearly had fun transforming stereotypical West Coast outdoor types into perpetrators of...