Innocence losing it all to hard realities
Tulip Chowdhury is touched by a tale of a little boy
A Painted House
John Grisham
Arrow
Inspired by his boyhood in rural Arkansas, John Grisham has come up with this unique novel. Set in the early summer and late fall of 1952, it is a heart rending account of a little boy's journey from innocence to experience. It is the writer's first major work outside the legal thriller genre in which he has established himself. Narrated through the eyes of the seven year-old Luke Chandelier, the story comes with pictorial descriptions of the cotton harvesting season. Arkansas, called the Natural State, is depicted with picture perfect sceneries throughout the moving tale.
Luke Chandelier lives in Black Oak, Arkansas, with his parents and grandparents. They are cotton farmers and inhabit a house that is never painted. During the picking season Mexicans and people from Ozark are hired to help. The picking season usually lasts till the winter settles in. They have to battle through heat, rain and fatigue. Luke, though small, is a part of the group of cotton pickers. Every morning with the call of the rooster he is up with Pappy, his grandfather. The whole family gradually joins in for breakfast and then they are off to the cotton field with the Mexicans and the hill people, the Spruills. Picking cotton under the relentless heat is no easy task. Luke dreams of taking a nap while everyone is out of sight working in other rows. He is rewarded with an income from his cotton picking and at the end of the day he is allowed to join the family to share tea and listen to the radio. The reader gets a very vibrant description of American family life. Love, care and family values are upheld with lights that give a picture of a very ideal family. Luke grows up through all these and knows where his lines are drawn. He is very fond of the Cardinals and is saving his money to buy a baseball glove and a jacket from Sears.
The cotton picking season begins in the usual way. But the year 1952 comes with packs and bundles of surprises for Luke. He witnesses a brawl between the Siscos, a family with a history of lawbreaking, and Hank Spruill. One of the Siscos dies. Luke is taken in as a witness. Hank Spruill escapes punishment as Luke testifies that he was on self defense. However, Luke is on the alert as the Siscos might hold a grudge against him. The little boy has nightmares and wakes up in the middle of the night. Meanwhile, he develops a fascination for Tally, the seventeen year-old girl from the Spruill family. He likes her a lot and is proud when she reveals some secrets about the adult world to him. Luke's grandfather is ten years older than his grandmother. Luke takes the ten years like a magic number and judges the difference between his age and Tally's. He dreams away that maybe there will be something between him and Tally one day. He craves to touch her long, silky dark hair, wants to kiss her rosy cheeks. Then one day he discovers her in the cotton field with another farm hand, Cowboy, and his dreams are shattered.
As the picking season goes on so does the busy social life. Every Sunday is the day to go to church. Saturdays are days in which the trips to the town are made. While the adults do their groceries and other stuff, Luke and Dewayne, his friend, are allowed the treat of a movie and candies from Pop's store. Then one week the carnival comes to the town and Luke does not miss any of its rides. One night when everyone is asleep, Luke hears the Spruills having a fight. He follows Hank Spruill as he is ordered to leave Black Oak. In the darkness of the night Luke sees someone following Hank. His curiosity gets the better of him and he ends up witnessing the murder of Hank. Just when he is about to reach his house, the murderer himself hisses into his ears, "If you breathe one word about this night, I will kill your mother."
Luke does not know how to pass the days and nights. He does not leave his mother out of sight. He cannot reveal the secret either. He spends sleepless nights and days, is constantly sweating and stops eating. He longs to put a stop to the cotton picking and all and go back to school. His thoughts run, "I missed school. Classes would resume in the end of October, and I began thinking of how nice it would be to sit at a desk all day, surrounded by friends instead of cotton stalks and with no Spruill to worry about. Now that baseball was over I had to dream about something. My return to school would be glorious because I would be wearing my shiny new Cardinals baseball jacket."
Luke has too much on his plate for his tender age. His uncle becomes the father of a Latcher and the cotton season goes on. Hank Spruill is murdered and the murderer is on his trail! In the midst of all these Trot Spruill, a handicapped boy, starts painting their house secretly. The house ultimately does get painted with donations from family members, but Luke and his parents finally leave the cotton farming and start on a journey toward the unknown. But all that happens not before Luke has more adventures with the bundles of surprises that the cotton season had come with.
Narrated in the first person, the book simply holds the reader in the spell of its flamboyant descriptions of rural Arkansas and the family saga. The reader feels in tune with Luke as he goes through stages of his growing up. One cannot but admire his patience and virtue no matter how indomitable his problems are. One feels like helping the little boy to understand the ways of the big world. And indeed the story ends through making the reader wish that it had gone on for a little longer.
Tulip Chowdhury writes fiction and teaches.
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