Heading Out to Wonderful, by Robert Goolrick, is a tale of forbidden love
and its consequences. Set in rural Virginia circa 1948, it recounts the
story of Charlie Beale, a mysterious stranger who walks into town with
two suitcases: one filled with cash and the other containing a fine set
of butcher knives. He secures a job in the butcher shop and soon meets a cast of
local characters, including the richest, meanest man in the town and
his teenage bride. He falls passionately in love with her movie star
image. As time passes, Charlie befriends the shopkeeper's family,
including their son, Sam. Sam is only 4 years old when the story
begins. We learn from the opening line that it is Sam, now in his 60s,
who is our sympathetic narrator.
The thing is, all
memory is fiction...Of course, there are things that actually,
certifiably happened, things where you can pinpoint the day, the hour,
and the minute. When you think about it, though, these things seem to
happen to other people. (p. 1)
Many themes of the book reflect the life of the author. This is graphically depicted in his memoir,
The End of the World As We Know It
(2007). As Janet Maslin of the
New York Times writes: "It follows the
senior Goolricks from high times to low ones, when 'my mother and father
went on until they didn’t care enough to read or dress or cut their own
toenails or defend themselves against alcoholism and cancer and
filthiness and disrepair and rats in the house.'” (
New York Times, March
26, 2007) But what damaged him for a
lifetime occurred when he was 4 years old. Maslin writes that it is
described by Goolrick in pornographic detail. The child abuse, coupled with his general home life, led to a troubled youth and adulthood. As a child, he set his
grandmother's curtains on fire. As a teenager, he roamed the streets
inebriated and high on cocaine. He began a life-long struggle with
self-mutilation. He had affairs with men and women.
If
events in
Heading Out to Wonderful appear melodramatic, they pale next
to those of his real life. Charlie Beale is sympathetic and
tormented--a lonely soul who befriends a child and ultimately betrays
his innocence. Throughout the book, Charlie seeks salavation for a past
not disclosed. He visits many churches but, in the end, worships at the feet of a woman.
Goolrick,
perhaps through the voice of the book's narrator, Sam, tries to
understand how he ended up living alone with nothing but
ghosts from the past. Along the way, he exposes the bigotry of small
town life before civil rights and captures the degradation of being black
in the rural South. Indeed, the most decent characters in his novel
are the African Americans Goolrick depicts.
Heading Out to
Wonderful is a thought-provoking period piece that highlights the
fragility of childhood and the difficulties of existence. It is a
cautionary ballad well worth reading.
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