"Talkin about Lester": community, culpability, and narrative suppression in Child of God.

Franks, Travis

THE DISCOVERY OF HOMER BARRON'S CORPSE IN THE CLIMACTIC ENDING OF William Faulkner's "A Rose for Emily" creates one of the story's most indelible images, one that stays with readers long after the jarring final lines. One manifestation of this scene's influence can be seen in excised material from Cormac McCarthy's novel Child of God, which, in an unfinished typescript included in the Cormac McCarthy Papers housed in the Wittliff Collection at Texas State University, contains a scene of discovery remarkably similar to Barron's, so much so that it involves a character who does not exist at all in the final version of the novel--Lester Ballard's wife. Indeed, McCarthy's indebtedness to Faulkner seems to have stymied Child of God's progress, creating an imperative for the successor to the Faulknerian tradition to define himself against his forebear rather than merely mimic him. Accordingly, McCarthy produced a novel subtly but only partly in conversation with Faulkner's story, one that calls into question more directly how communities translate traumatic events into stories by scapegoating their own members.

Many readers will no doubt be familiar with the story arc of "A Rose for Emily," wherein the jilted Emily Grierson is revealed to have, by the story's end, murdered her suitor Homer Barron and kept his body locked away in her home for decades. My reading suggests that the narration incriminates the community in which Emily lived by making them partly responsible for her descent into madness. Emily's tale is exclusively narrated by an unnamed member of the community in which the protagonist spends her entire life. Further, the narrator, whom Cleanth Brooks called "a born storyteller" (8), serves as a voice of the community, as evinced by his or her many uses of the first-person pronouns "we" and "our" in describing the community's perspective. This unnamed narrator has an artist's attention to detail and a masterful manipulation of time. Much of the story is predicated upon its propulsion to the moment of shock at the end, and though the story should be read for more than the thrilling, horrific discovery in its final line--"a long strand of iron-gray hair" (Faulkner 130)--there is in that fever-pitched moment a sense of catharsis for the narrator. Prompted by the ending, there is a sense that narrator and reader are to revel together in the conclusion of Emily's spectacle much more than reel from it in disgust. While Emily's actions are her own, the arc of her life is constructed through a narrative framework meant to shock and delight. The narrator makes this abundantly clear early on in the story: "When Miss Emily Grierson died, our whole town went to her funeral: the men through a sort of respectful affection for a fallen monument, the women mostly out of curiosity to see the inside of her house" (119). She is described as having "been a tradition, a duty, and a care; a sort of hereditary obligation upon the town" (119). And, in watching the unraveling of her life with vulture-like curiosity, the townspeople eventually abet her crime, making them, at least to some degree, culpable for it.

Child of God is perhaps most distinguished by what many contend is a sympathetic rendering of a murderous, necrophiliac protagonist, and the existence of concomitant narrative voices in the novel substantiates this reading. Lester Ballard's tale is told across three parts, designated I, II, and III. In Part I, McCarthy weaves together first- and third-person narration, the only section of the novel to use this structure. Readers become acquainted with Ballard through a series of loosely connected, biographical sketches rendered by the choric narrators. Through the intermingled chapters of third-person narration, readers also learn of his displacement from his family farm and subsequent harassment by Sheriff Fate Turner which lead him to become further isolated and estranged from his community by seeking refuge in the mountains of Sevier County, Tennessee. Part II begins with Ballard's discovery of the corpses of two asphyxiated lovers, and, from there, his descent into deviance escalates dramatically. He engages in necrophilia with the female corpse, and, upon losing her, begins claiming new victims by murdering them and eventually storing their bodies in the caves in which he now resides. In Part III, Turner's pursuit of Ballard escalates, culminating in Ballard's capture after his attack on the man who purchased his farm. A sense of justice gained from apprehending the criminal is quickly undercut, however, as Ballard first escapes a vigilante mob and then evades conviction, instead being sentenced to a mental institution. There he quietly dies, and only after his death are the bodies of his victims discovered. While they are removed from their cavernous tomb, Ballard's dissected remains have already been buried in a cemetery outside of the city proper. This disquieting ending denies readers a full sense of closure and situates Ballard in an oddly sympathetic role of victimizer and victimized.

While obviously indebted to his literary precursor, McCarthy makes a significant departure from Faulkner in Child of God, using narrative suppression rather than narrative withholding when giving voice to the community members who relate the tales of their scapegoats. In marked contrast to Faulkner's narrator, McCarthy's communal narrators are not withholding the most horrifying details in order to deliver a shocking, satisfying conclusion. Rather, they suppress what is most unsavory and potentially detrimental to the community as a whole. In "A Rose for Emily," withholding draws readers into the story and asks them to join with the narrator in relishing in Emily's freakishness. In Child of God, suppression is a purposeful distancing technique that keeps readers at bay and prevents scrutiny of the community's involvement in Ballard's having been ostracized and thereby made monstrous. Recognizing this difference allows for a more suggestive reading of the communal narratives and a deeper appreciation for their importance to the novel.

My analysis of Child of God privileges the chapters exclusively related in first-person more than does the analysis of previous scholars in order to comprehend further the theme of communal scapegoating running through the novel. Because these chapters cumulatively represent a communal voice narrated by mostly unnamed actors, much like the chorus of a Greek play, I refer to them as "choric." While eighteen of the twenty-five chapters of Part I are narrated by an omniscient third-person narrator, seven choric chapters of first-person narration are delivered by mostly unnamed members of the community to which the protagonist, Ballard, tenuously belongs. Six of these chapters are remarkable in that they exhibit carefully crafted social deixis aimed at Ballard by the community at large, a distancing technique not present in the third-person narration or, for that matter, the narration of "A Rose for Emily." And while the final choric chapter, drafted late in McCarthy's writing process, evinces the clearest signs of narrative suppression at work in the novel, it also potentially resolved McCarthy's problematic mimicry of Faulkner's "A Rose for Emily." The result is a much more complex narrative structure that requires reading the choric chapters against the remainder of the novel rather than as a narrow replication of a scene from one of his influences.

Examining the choric chapters inter- and intratextually exposes the ways in which narrative suppression insulates communities against outer scrutiny. Indeed, an intertextual rereading of Child of God against "A Rose for Emily" reveals McCarthy's drawing upon and differentiating himself from one of his most influential literary predecessors by complicating groups' perceived rights to judgment. Too, rereading the choric chapters supports previous understandings of the role of the community in the novel while revealing more nuanced intratextual machinations in the scapegoating of Lester Ballard. To that end, this article calls for a necessary rereading of Part I across the entire novel, despite the resounding attempt at closure in the final choric chapter, to contend that Child of God challenges readers to weigh others' culpability--including their own--in the creation of societal scapegoats.

Reading Child of God against "A Rose for Emily"

Tracing the evolution of Child of God presents a rich opportunity to perform an intertextual reading of the novel, which is clearly indebted to "A Rose for Emily." But while McCarthy may have been drawing from Faulkner's well, he was careful to differentiate his work from that of his literary forebear, particularly as it concerns his decision not to incorporate certain material from an unfinished typescript into the final version of the novel. Perhaps the most intriguing aspect of the unfinished Middle Dran, (1) which is the earliest draft available in the archive, is a separately numbered (1-9) Middle Dran Compendium (2) that appears to constitute a potential ending for the novel, set four years later in the plot. Eight pages are dedicated to the recovery of Ballard's victims, including the shocking revelation that Ballard was, at one time, married and that his wife was his first victim (Middle Dran Compendium 1-3). Because much of this material was not incorporated into the final novel, Child of God does not merely rehash familiar elements of an influential text but, rather, witnesses the creation of a text to be read in conversation with a predecessor.

That McCarthy chose not to continue with Ballard having murdered his wife, or having had a wife at any point in the novel, can be read as a purposeful distinction between Child of God and "A Rose for Emily." Such a story arc might have forged too close of a connection between the two works, as Emily's tale notably ends with the discovery of her former lover's corpse in her beleaguered home. This is also the case in the nine-page Middle Draft Compendium, as Turner and his deputies enter one of the caves that have served as Ballard's home following his eviction (1-3). The moments of discovery are eerily similar. After the townspeople break down the door in the conclusion to "A Rose for Emily," they discover a scene resembling a honeymooner's bedroom, including the groom in repose:

The man himself lay in the bed.

For a long while we just stood there, looking down at the profound and fleshless grin. The body had apparently once lain in the attitude of an embrace, but now the long sleep that outlasts love, that conquers even the grimace of love, had cuckolded him. What was left of him, rotted beneath what was left of the nightshirt, had become inextricable from the bed in which he lay; and upon him and upon the pillow beside him lay that even coating of the patient and biding dust. (Faulkner 130)

Marriage and death comingle in the moment of discovery in McCarthy's Middle Draft Compendium, as well:

   The High Sheriff of Sevier County went himself into the bottom of
   Whiteoak Sink and there he found Mrs Ballard lying in a state of
   repose on a limestone ledge. Her head was resting on a silk pillow
   that had embroidered hearts and trees and the inscription I Pine
   For You and Balsam. She was covered over all with adipocere, a pale
   gray cheesy mold common to corpses in damp places, and scallops of
   pale green fungus grew along. (3) She was dressed in a houseshift
   and had shoes on and her face had been caved in with a blunt
   instrument. (3)

Here, Faulkner's influence runs as deep as McCarthy's choice of phrasing. Where Homer Barron had "once lain in the attitude of an embrace," Mrs. Ballard is found "lying in a state of repose." In Faulkner's vision, death is depicted as a "long sleep that outlasts love," whereas in McCarthy's the head of Mrs. Ballard's slumbering corpse rests on a pillow still, ironically, expressing Lester's love. While Faulkner primarily reduces the state of Barron's decomposition to "fleshless" and "rotted," and McCarthy uses more specific detail, both passages create a gruesome image in the reader's mind. Finally, both corpses are distinguished by their shared materiality, as the descriptions include the corpses' state of dress and the pillows upon which their heads rest.

Three more typescripts follow the Middle Draft, each labeled as a "late draft," but none include the fully realized version of the final choric chapter. It is not until what is referred to as the Green Setting Copy (4) that the chapter appears in a typescript, making it fair to say that the novel's narrative construction was, indeed, finalized very late in the drafting process. At this point, McCarthy takes only a small bit of the narration from the working nine-page ending of the Middle Draft Compendium. The rest, including any mention of Ballard's wife, has been excised. Without the Compendium, Child of God gains a more tightly orchestrated structure that distinguishes the novel from Faulkner's story. Instead of this tenuous chapter, McCarthy chose to develop a final choric chapter that closes Part I and signifies an unwillingness by the community to engage with Ballard's worst crimes.

Despite these distinctions, surface level connections to "A Rose for Emily" permeate Child of God, further suggesting that McCarthy had the story in mind as he crafted his novel. Both are rooted in significantly Southern regions, histories, and genre. Both deal with protagonists who become increasingly mentally unstable, who come from notorious family lines, and whose mental collapses are precipitated in part by the loss of a father. Both Emily Grierson and Lester Ballard harbor corpses in their homes; both engage in necrophilia to some extent (in the broadest, implied sense in Emily's case, in the most explicit in Ballard's); and both are typified by their homes being under siege by townspeople comprising their respective communities. Interestingly, both protagonists' lives are narrated, either wholly or partially, by those same townspeople. Read intertextually, these narrative styles suggest the possibility that McCarthy, despite the many similarities between his novel and "A Rose for Emily," was continuing Faulkner's work in the Southern Gothic tradition while also distancing his writing from Faulkner's influence. The choric chapters invert Child of God's claim to that tradition by suppressing the elements of Ballard's life and crimes that would allow for it to be depicted as such. The customary elements of the Southern Gothic, identified by Louis Palmer as "a setting in an ancestral house, real or perceived occult events, and a woman at risk" (123), are all noticeably absent in the community-sanctioned biography of Lester Ballard, though they are unflinchingly addressed by the narrator of Parts II and III. While Southern Gothic elements serve as a foundation for the plot of "A Rose for Emily," McCarthy works them into his novel subtly, suggesting an acknowledgment of his literary inheritance and a desire to distinguish his own work within traditional modes of storytelling.

While a number of similarities exist between the two works, there are important differences between the statuses of Emily and Ballard within their communities. The narrator of "A Rose for Emily" depicts her as a prized, eccentric vestige of a bygone area, and her value to the community is predicated upon their desire to witness the depth of her deviance from modern social norms. "So when she got to be thirty and was still single," the narrator ruminates, "we were not pleased exactly, but vindicated; even with insanity in the family she wouldn't have turned down all of her chances if they had really materialized" (123). Gossiping members of the community assume Emily will commit suicide after having, in their eyes, been disgraced by her suitor, Homer Barron: "So the next day we all said, 'She will kill herself'; and we said it would be the best thing" (Faulkner 126). Oddly, their desire to witness the spectacle of her death is marked by patience and withholding, a layering of stories that plants the seeds for believing in Emily's insanity before delivering apparently indisputable proof in the story's conclusion. The townspeople appear to believe in the eventuality of her demise so much that they are willing to bide their time and allow the story that will come out of it to deepen and mature, trusting (perhaps knowing) that her strangeness will reach an apex worthy of a great story. This is reflected in the narrator's careful withholding of the shocking information revealed after her funeral, but it appears to be true of all the community members. As time progresses, the narrator notes, Emily "passed from generation to generation--dear, inescapable, impervious, tranquil, and perverse" (128). In this way, her life is reminiscent of the darkest folk ballads that continue to find new audiences not despite but because of their subject matter.

On the other hand, Ballard's song is sung by the community narrators of Child of God minus several key verses. Ballard does have some cachet as a curiosity for these people, which is reflected in the stories that they do divulge. Often, stories about Ballard are connected to other darkly humorous events in local lore: Old Gresham singing the "chickenshit blues" at his wife's funeral (McCarthy, Child 22); the Trantham boy accidentally setting his wagon on fire because of obstinate oxen (36); Sheriff Turner catching promiscuous teenagers parked on a mountain road (46-47); the exposure of a swindling marksmen and his assistant (58); and a boxing "ape or gorilla" that badly beats a drunken carnival goer (58-60). All these side stories, while they may be debauched, are harmless in the minds of the townspeople. That is not the case for Ballard, though, given the fact that he transgresses this culture's affinity for violence to a point that the community must attempt to suppress entire parts of his life, particularly his most offensive crimes. In fact, the choric narrators must distance themselves from Ballard's potential for all kinds of violence, even if the acts themselves are more customary and even if his one-time neighbors are in awe of that potential. Speaking of watching a teenage Ballard punch a younger boy, one choric speaker voices his ambiguity: "I felt, I felt ... I don't know what it was. We just felt real bad. I never liked Lester Ballard from that day. I never liked him much before that. He never done nothin to me" (18). Another chapter praises Ballard's skill with a rifle--the weapon he used to commit his murders--before quickly moving to other, hardly related anecdotes (57-60). This is the only community-narrated chapter that offers any direct praise of Ballard and the longest in terms of page count, yet it deals less with Ballard than any of the six first-person chapters dedicated to him. Less than half a page addresses Ballard's past in the form of three paragraphs, the last of which is two sentences long: "They run him off out at the fair one time. Wouldn't let him shoot no more" (57). Characteristic of the third-person narration's tendency to elucidate the first-person silences, the ensuing chapter dedicates four-and-a-half pages to Ballard's expulsion from the fair, highlighting his inability to connect with members of the community despite his deep desire to do just that (61-65). This is vastly different from the characteristic that endears Emily to her respective community, as the realization of her potential for violence exceeds the community's expectations based on her eccentricity. The choric narrators of Child of God, on the other hand, want, in large part, only to suppress Ballard's potential for extreme violence.

In distinguishing his work from Faulkner's, McCarthy retained a germ of what is so fascinating about "A Rose for Emily"--that the community is in part responsible for the complicated protagonist's downfall. While this understanding is owing to a close reading of the communal narration in both cases, the latter two-thirds of McCarthy's novel takes readers behind the veil of madness in ways that Faulkner's story does not. Readers see only the aftermath of Emily's crime, while no detail is spared concerning Lester's. One of the challenges of reading "A Rose for Emily" is to read between the lines of what is said and unsaid, and that challenge is made in Child of God as well because of the inclusion of the choric chapters. But the novel implicates the reader in ways and to a degree that the story does not. Readers, like the choric narrators, know of Ballard's crimes. In fact, they watch them unfold firsthand, a privilege not even the choric narrators can claim. While readers may read the title of "A Rose for Emily" with a little chagrin for the narrator's romantic memorialization of Emily Grierson and, in so doing, distance themselves from the person who tells that story, they cannot so easily distinguish themselves from Child of God's Lester Ballard, who is human beneath his monstrous exterior, as the third-person narrator reminds all who encounter him--readers and characters alike. As such, McCarthy's novel breaks the pattern of easily scapegoating others for the worst of humanity's characteristics and calls for a less tidy but necessary individual introspection.

Talking about "Talkin about Lester"

Critics have debated the exact role of the choric narrations in Child of God, though most agree that they are the attempts of community members to negotiate Ballard's place in society relative to their own. In one of the earliest critical interpretations of the novel, Vereen Bell provides a useful framework for deeper explorations into the purpose of this distinctive narrative structure:

   Since it is clear that all of the stories told about Lester are
   being told at some point after the events of the novel have taken
   place, it is also clear that Lester has become a part of the
   mythology of his region and has thereby achieved, ironically, a
   place in the community that has otherwise eluded him. Moreover,
   since the narration has been so scrupulously decentralized from the
   beginning, it seems intended to be as much about the place and the
   people in it as about Lester himself. (54)

Gleaning from Bell, the liminal Ballard is intended to operate within the choric narratives as an oppositional other to the speakers and the community that they represent, but his otherness does not elevate him to the level of playing the foil. From the outset, McCarthy's third-person narrator suggests that Ballard is not wholly separate from his compatriots or, more troublingly, anyone who might happen to read this novel. Faced with the reality of Ballard and the complexity of what he represents, characters--and readers, no doubt--are time and again repulsed by him. But there is an aspect of Ballard's character that, no matter his offense or our instinct to shun him because of his poverty, disability, or criminality, asks that we resist enforcing order over his disorder and instead, and more disturbingly, empathize with him by not taking part in the community's attempt to ostracize him. This can be seen in the novel's opening salvo. As walleyed Ballard watches the oncoming cavalcade that will evict him from his home with extreme force, thereby hastening his decline into madness, the third-person narrator delivers the novel's most haunting line--that Ballard is "A child of God much like yourself perhaps" (4). Ballard, as a child of God, is in some ways indistinguishable from all who encounter him. That Ballard is a misfit is never in doubt, but understanding why is complicated and unsettling.

As critical interest in McCarthy's fiction has grown, a few scholars have mined new insights into the role of choric narration in Child of God, showing the processes by which Ballard is banished from the community. Bell made one of the most frequently criticized observations about the choric narrators when he postulated that "Stories about Lester are related to us by unidentified narrators speaking at times to unidentified friends and these stories as often as not lead to other stories that are not related to Lester at all" (53). Jay Ellis has since argued that, instead, the choric chapters "are the voices of a community that has rejected Ballard well before his descent into the darker and deeper moral ... and geographic locations he will inhabit in Parts II and III" (72). Further, Christopher J. Walsh finds that "A central component in the practice of scapegoating is sanctioned rituals in which the community identifies and purifies themselves of their bogeyman, or their surrogate" (152). It is evident, then, that there is a particular endgame behind these stories and this ritualistic practice of storytelling. Partly, it means that the members of the community are allowed to retreat within the boundaries of social normalcy, which are themselves reaffirmed through the act of speech. But it is also evident that social deixis is at work in that it is fundamentally important why they tell the stories that they tell. As their own agents, they have to verbally head off any possible negative representation of the community to which they belong. And Lester Ballard, a known murderer, necrophile, madman, and member of Sevier County, Tennessee, is a direct affront to their sense of righteousness.

Bell's early analysis also did not account for the crucial role restraint plays in the construction of these few brief chapters. Because they serve as the community-sanctioned biography of Lester Ballard, there is, indeed, a reason why Ballard's heinous crimes are suppressed until Part II. In this regard, we can actually see much more implicit organization to Part I than a less nuanced reading might reveal. It is, of course, only in Part I that McCarthy arranges choric chapters vis-a-vis the third-person narrations. This becomes all the more relevant with the realization that the choric narrators do not mention Ballard's serious crimes.

Rereading the Choric Chapters of Child of God

Though Ellis has previously offered an alternative to Bell's reading of these chapters, a few meaningful gaps remain in his explanation of the importance of first-person narration in the novel. Ellis distinguishes his reading of the choric chapters from Bell's by arguing that "there is nothing charming enough about the stories in Part I (and very little detail given concerning who is telling them or to whom) to make them worth anything as mere storytelling" (72). Rereading the choric chapters intratextually across the entire novel, however, suggests new insight into these characters' individual identities and their communal antagonism toward Ballard.

While murder and necrophilia are never mentioned, the choric narrators do anachronistically refer to events that happened during Ballard's string of murders. Specifically, they make allusions to two events that serve as bookends of this period: the burning of Waldrop's house (35) and Ballard's physical condition after having been shot by John Greer (22). This last detail, subtly related early on in the novel, is crucial in understanding the role of these narrators as characters who exist outside of Part I, given that the claim "He didn't look so pretty hisself when Greer got done with him" (22) is predicated upon the speaker having seen Ballard after he was shot by Greer.

Rereading the choric chapters of Part I across the novel also suggests that the choric narrators are deeply aware of Ballard's gruesome exploits. As the man who purchased Ballard's homestead via auction, John Greer increasingly becomes a target of Ballard's voyeurism and vengeance. When Ballard finally attacks Greer in Part III, he is once again expelled from his former home, this time by a shotgun blast that costs Ballard his arm. There is a bit of dark comedy at play here, considering what Ballard looked like at the time of his attack. He is described in that moment as being "in frightwig and skirts" (172), and readers will already know that "He'd long been wearing the underclothes of his female victims but now he took to appearing in their outerwear as well" (140). More gruesome is Greer's discovery of the true nature of Ballard's wig, which is the scalp of one of his victims (173). While it is debatable whether the choric narrator intends his ironic use of "pretty" in describing Ballard's cross dressing, the claim can be read as a subtle acknowledgment of familiarity with Ballard's victimization of young women. This is noteworthy given that the choric narrators remain silent about these issues while carefully constructing their narrative of Ballard's life. Regardless, one cannot overlook the fact that this choric narrator does know what Ballard looks like following his encounter with Greer. How could he make a claim with so much authority without having seen Ballard in this condition?

Further details implicitly related in Part III suggest that the choric narrators played a decided role in attempting to uncover Ballard's crimes, thereby granting them a privileged knowledge of his later physical state. Hospitalized for his wound, Ballard is seized by a mob of Sevier County citizens. These men, who "appeared to be some hunters" (177), aim to retrieve the bodies of Ballard's victims or hang him before he can be punished by the law. But this vigilante justice is predicated on their knowing what Ballard has done to his victims, as seen in a moment of interrogation precipitating a possible hanging:

   Ask him about that, Ernest.

   Yeah Ernest.

   The man turned to Ballard. What did you want with them dead ladies?
   he said. Was you fuckin em?

   Ballard's face gave a funny little jerk in the firelight but he
   said nothing. He looked about at his tormentors. The man with the
   cable had uncoiled a part of it along the ground. There was a ring
   spliced into the end of it and the cable was pulled through in a
   loop like an enormous rabbit snare.

   You know he was, the man said. Just take him on. (182)

Because Ernest is not named in the choric chapters and the two men urging him to question Ballard are unnamed in this scene, it is impossible to say with absolute certainty that these men are among those who serve as the choric narrators in Part I. However, it is at least probable that members of this mob are among the narrators who historicize Ballard's life. This assertion is founded not only on the fact that one of the narrators knows how Ballard looks after losing his arm, but also on the third-person description of the mob that enters Ballard's hospital room to seize him. Of these "hunters," the narrator says, "Some [Ballard] knew, some not," (177) which leaves their status as his eventual biographers open-ended. In the stories that the choric narrators are willing to divulge, it is obvious that, despite their dislike for Ballard and their need to distance themselves from him, they know him and his crimes intimately (whether they mention them or not) because of their lived experiences. Refusing to take part in discussing the most nefarious qualities of Ballard's life is a means of controlling the narrative in order to insulate the community by not admitting that they possess such knowledge. Doing so would force them into a potentially ruinous discourse about the community's complex history of violence.

Associating themselves with Ballard's acts of murder and necrophilia would compel the choric narrators to openly acknowledge their culture's potential for extreme violence, thereby forcing them to share in the culpability of Ballard's transgressions by examining how their ostracizing him enabled his crimes. Tellingly, the first choric chapter picks up immediately after Ballard, armed with a rifle to defend his home from auction, has been hit over the head with an ax bit--a blow that Ellis notes would in many cases be fatal. Of course, as Ellis points out, Ballard does not die from his serious injury but instead bears the physical and mental effects of the blow for the rest of his life, likely exacerbating his later crimes (74). Adding to his new, grotesque appearance and his mental unhinging is Ballard's homelessness, which forces him to squat in an abandoned house before ultimately moving into the cavernous mountains outside of Sevier County, where he will eventually enshrine his victims. Each new characteristic suggests Ballard's shamefulness, belied in the first words spoken by a choric narrator: "Lester Ballard never could hold his head right after that" (9). While a double meaning speaking to Ballard's new disabilities and his place outside of the community' acceptance seems obvious, the narrator focuses only on the physical effects of the ax blow, speculating that it must have damaged his neck while also causing his crossed eyes, a large welt on his head, and bleeding ears. Noticeably, the narrator is quick to mention that he did not witness the actual ax swing, merely its immediate aftermath. Thus he is excused from having taken part in the worst of the event while also obfuscating the fact that he is among those come to take part in rousting Ballard from his home. Pointedly, the narrator also ascribes the cause of the violence not to the man who delivered the blow, but to Lester, mentioning that the episode deterred higher bidding on Ballard's home, "which may of been what Lester set out at, I don't know" (9). This comment begins a trend of the choric narrators not revealing the full details of Ballard's life and placing the blame entirely on Ballard for the misfortunes that befell him. In so doing, the community members frame a way of talking about Lester that allows them to avert talking about themselves and their complicity in his wretchedness.

Another manifestation of the chorics' narrative control can be seen in their use of a framework adopted from their shared Appalachian history and Ballard's apparent historical antecedents, the White Caps. As Mark T. Banker notes, the White Caps, a group of Tennesseans who proclaimed themselves regulators of moral decency, actually perpetuated the violent Appalachian stereotype that continues to plague the region:

   self-styled "White Caps" sought to restore order by threatening
   those who deviated from "traditional community mores." When threats
   proved inadequate, the White Caps engaged in extralegal raids and
   violence. Some locals quickly recognized the group itself violated
   community traditions and served the interests of an embittered,
   paranoid segment of the county elite. Soon, community elements
   bearing longstanding differences with the White Caps organized
   their own vigilante group, "the Blue Bills," to "restore order"....
   Eventually, pressure from Knoxville and the Tennessee government
   subdued the two groups, but exaggerated media coverage of those
   efforts did as much to confirm notions about "violent mountaineers"
   as the violent activities themselves. (143)

According to Banker, the episode created a lasting negative representation of Appalachians in which "Images of gun-toting, revenge-seeking hillbillies are standard fare" (144). The choric narrators are living in a post-White Cap milieu, which shapes their need to construct identities by taking into account how they are viewed outside of their community. Given the nature of his crimes, Ballard would seem the most likely fit for the notorious stereotype of the vengeful hillbilly. In the final choric chapter, the narrators forge a link between Leland Ballard, Lester's grandfather, and the White Caps:

   I'll tell you one thing he was if he wasn't no soldier. He was a by
   god White Cap. O yes. He was that. Had a younger brother was one
   too that run off from here about that time. It's a known fact he
   was hanged in Hattiesburg Mississippi. Goes to show it ain't just
   the place. He'd of been hanged no matter where he lived. (81)

In a sense, identifying one of the Ballards as "that" has a reciprocal effect on the members of the community as something other, and they assert that the Ballards are an anomaly not owing to any particular geographic location. Establishing this dichotomous relationship between Sevier County and the Ballards is meant to prevent an outsider's associating one with the other solely because they originate from the same place--he is one of "them," they are saying, not one of "us." But McCarthy's depiction of the mob that comes for Ballard as a group of hunters would suggest that he is being critical of the larger culture. Though the community may be resistant to being closely affiliated with Ballard, it is unable to avoid the pitfall of validating the presupposition of violent backwardness.

Long after the choric narrators make the claim about Leland Ballard's involvement with the White Caps, the omniscient third-person narration illustrates the fallacy of their connecting the vigilantes to Lester rather than to themselves. Mr. Wade, a longtime resident of Sevier County, renounces the White Caps and Blue Bills as "sorry people all the way around, ever man jack a three hundred and sixty degree son of a bitch" (165). Wade recounts the spectacle surrounding the hanging of two White Caps, cautioning, "Don't ever think hangin is quick and merciful. It ain't" (167). This creates a parallel between an actual historical event, the fictional mob's intent to hang Lester, and the local lore of Ballard's vigilante ancestor, highlighting the negativity underpinning all of them. It is also important to see that, though Wade knows "People don't like to talk about it to this day" (168), he readily does just that. John Cant contends that McCarthy's use of the White Caps is "an aspect of his desire to write into American discourse forgotten, ignored or suppressed aspects of American history" (92). Tellingly, Wade indirectly incriminates the choric narrators and the vengeful mob when he admits that he does not believe people have ceased to be any meaner over time, undermining their scapegoating tactic of portraying Ballard as an anomaly whilst purifying themselves. Most importantly, he manages to transcend the silencing of history in a way that the choric narrators cannot.

Teasing out Cant's idea of suppression, it should be noted that, while both Ellis and Walsh comment on the significance of the choric narrations not continuing into the second and third parts of the novel, there is yet room to probe the underlying importance of Part I's conclusion as an emphatic act of suppression rather than as a desertion of the narrative. Walsh eloquently defines the role of the choric narrators while making a passing nod toward their departure:

   These narrative sections, which significantly do not make an
   appearance after the first part of the novel, provide a glimpse at
   the social and cultural totality underpinning Lester's binary
   function in the community, his marginalization, and his centrality
   as the "wrong blood" and surrogate victim this community needs in
   order to preserve its status and equilibrium. (159)

Likewise, Ellis hints at the significance of the choric narrators' absence beginning in Part II, noting that "From here on, no more community narrators intrude; the narrative for the rest of the novel comes from this one omniscient voice. It is as if the voices of others in the community are too far away" (85). But the distance between the remainder of Lester's story and the community is entirely self-imposed by the community. They have, in effect, reached the boundary of their willingness to discuss Lester because of the possibility that his crimes are in some way owing to their own misguided actions toward him. But Ballard's undoing is well known to the community members who are looking back at his life. It is a thing of the past, the full details of his exclusion and crimes are known, and the choric narrators are merely speaking into existence his community-sanctioned biography. Seen from this perspective, it is not surprising that the choric narrators, interested more in protecting themselves than in relating a complete history of Ballard's life, never once mention his predilection for necrophilia. It is indeed surprising, though, that critics have either not noticed the choric narrators' failure to discuss Ballard's sex crimes or have not felt it worth mentioning. Indeed, these community members will not follow the story into its deeper recesses as they were forced to do in living through the events. Instead, the choric narrators seem to trust that they have already made the case for Ballard's having been an outcast without having to hazard their own inclusion in a story that involves murder and necrophilia. Such an act would, after all, lay bare the issue of how one of their own could have committed such unspeakable acts.

To this point, the narrators have only loosely described Ballard's history, but the last lines of the final choric scene exemplify the immediacy of enforced suppression. In this scene, one speaker appears to chastise the others for verging on discussing Ballard's unspeakable acts:

   I'll say one thing about Lester though. You can trace em back to
   Adam if you want and goddamn if he didn't outstrip em all.

   That's the god's truth.

   Talkin about Lester ...

   You all talk about him. I got supper waitin on me at the house.
   (81)

Several crucial strands are woven together in this scene. Ballard is fully realized not only as the worst person to ever emerge from his family or from Sevier County but in the entirety of mankind's existence, a dispersive gesture that shifts the focus away from the community. The second speaker reifies this narrative and legitimates the first speaker's authority in making it. That he manages to do so while also invoking divine righteousness is telling--this is not just our truth, he is saying, but "god's truth" (emphasis added). The need to disassociate the community from Ballard is even more palpable in the hesitation that follows the next line: "Talkin about Lester...." Because only six of the seven choric chapters deal with Ballard specifically, in actuality they have not done a great deal of talking about Lester at all. In fact, the longest of the choric chapters is not quite three full pages. From these rather taciturn accounts alone, one might wonder: What exactly has Lester Ballard done to deserve being hailed as the worst human being in history? It is what is left unsaid, what is represented in an ellipsis, that speaks loudest about Lester Ballard. But whatever opening that uneasy hesitation might have created is quickly sealed, at least in the conversation taking place among the choric narrators. "You all talk about him" says exactly the opposite of what, on its face, it appears to be saying, as the members of Sevier County, having reached the boundaries placed around Ballard as a subject, are unwilling to take part in any further discussion of him whatsoever. Cleaving Part I in such a way places the burden upon readers to relate the seemingly incongruent first and third-person narrations, a subtle yet masterful stroke of artistry that McCarthy accomplished only as the novel neared completion.

Resolving the Final Choric Chapter

The genesis of the decisive final choric chapter took place relatively late in McCarthy's drafting of Child of God, and its completion appears to have resolved issues with the novel's structure and conclusion, thus rendering an intratextually rich novel. Included in a list of revisions to be made to the as-yet unfinished novel, McCarthy notes, "Discuss: All this talk happens after the fact (burnt his old place down) Why would they be discussing him?" (Unclassified Notes). (5) On his next page of notes, he begins drafting the dialogue that eventually serves as the closing remarks of the final choric chapter:

   Talkin about Lester Ballard, though ...

   You all talk about him. I got supper waitin on me at the house
   [begin strikethrough]Getting back to Lester Ballard ... [end
   strikethrough]

                                           on me
   You get back to him, I got supper waitin at the house.

      63B ([begin strikethrough]this[end strikethrough] is ([begin
   strikethrough]new[end strikethrough]) last commentary on Ballard
   (Unclassified Notes)

McCarthy seems unsure at this point in drafting, however, that this will, in fact, be the final choric chapter. In the margins of this page he made another scrawling note:

   ?
   64 = II
   After 63 have one more commentary? & end with I got to get on too.
   saddle leather?
   see leftover material
   white cap his granddaddy was kept out of here & was finally hanged
      in Hattiesburg
   Mississippi (Unclassified Notes) (6)

While the page numbers 63B and 64 do not persist in the final copy, the material additions that he suggests--the use of saddle leather, the grandfather who was a White Cap vigilante and eventually hanged--remain, although they ultimately appear just before the "Talkin about Lester ..." dialogue.

What is most abundantly clear from these notes is that the choric chapters are in flux at this middle stage in the novel's development. Fortuitously, some of these notes occur on the back of seemingly discarded page 63A from another early, unfinished typescript. McCarthy's careful construction of this powerful scene is seen through his revisions to the typescript:

   I'll say one thing about Lester though. [begin strikethrough]Goddamn
   [end strikethrough] You can trace em back to Adam if you want
   and goddamn if he didnt outstrip em all.
   that's the gods truth [written by hand]

   [begin strikethrough]Well. Believe it is about supper time
   But us workin men need our rest, so-I'll see ye later
   But. I got to get on myself[end strikethrough]

   Well, But a workin man needs his rest[period here by hand] [begin
   strikethrough]and[end strikethrough] I got to get on.too
   (Unclassified Notes)

In the bottom margin of this page, McCarthy handwrote the "Talkin about Lester ..." line, suggesting that he was beginning to formulate more clearly the direction in which he wanted to take the novel and its choric narrators. But his vision for these chapters was not entirely realized here or in the more fully developed--yet still unfinished--typescript labeled Middle Draft. There, perhaps, are the most radical and imperative variances in narrative structure and characterization in the choric chapters.

There is no doubt that Lester Ballard and Sheriff Fate Turner are warring counterparts in the novel, but in the Middle Draft, their animosities take on even greater proportions. In the finalized novel, a man appropriately named Buster delivers the ax blow that devastates Ballard (6). The Middle Draft reads significantly differently: "The high sheriff hit him about as awful a lick as you ever saw a man take" (Middle Draft 6). The third choric chapter of the Middle Draft, like that of the finished novel, sees a narrator discussing Ballard's having witnessed his father's suicide, though the narrative in this instance momentarily strays from its otherwise first-person voice--a deviation McCarthy brackets in pencil, suggesting future removal. (7) In the novel, an unnamed choric speaker goes with another townsman, Cecil Edwards, to cut down the corpse of Ballard's hanged father (21). In the Middle Draft, Turner is clearly identified as that man (1-a). This means that Turner was envisioned in the early stages of composition as one of the choric narrators, which would account for the antagonism between the lawman and the criminal as an influence on the bias they all direct toward Ballard. All mention of Turner as one of these narrators is, of course, silenced by the time the novel is published, rendering a more subtle struggle between Ballard and Turner and a more amorphous first-person narrative.

The most profound alteration of Turner's involvement in the story of Ballard's life, however, occurs in the material that also most notably distances Child of God from "A Rose for Emily." The ninth page of the Middle Draft Compendium serves as a coda, and in this scene Sheriff Turner is surrounded by other townsmen, trying to rationalize Ballard's madness. Evidence in the typescript suggests that this scene is trying to answer McCarthy's earlier question to himself: "Why are they talking about him?": in the second choric chapter of the Middle Draft, McCarthy notes "(these all tie together at the store at end)" (13). Back in the store, Turner laments,

   I can understand a man bein upset over his wife leavin him.... And
   maybe takin to drink. Even that. Or even to the extent of doin like
   he done and letting his farm go back because he was too drunk to
   work it or hire some body [sic] to do it either. And it was all
   right him movin up to the old Speare's ["Speare" was changed later
   "Waldrop"] place and holin up there like some description of
   varmint because that's all the place he had to go to I reckon. And
   a steady diet of hard liquor will make a man pretty varmintish. But
   when his farm goes down on the block at a perfect legal auction and
   the feller that buys it puts down damn near half of the bid price
   down in cash, hard money, that he'd worked for, and that Ballard
   hisself was to benefit from even if maybe he didnt want to give his
   place up. Which I dont blame him, bein his family home and all, ...
   But to hold it against him to the point of shottin [sic] him down
   pointblank with a 30-30 rifle ... I guess I just dont understand
   this world. (Middle Draft Compendium 9)

With its rambling gait and complex sentence structure, this monologue is reminiscent of those delivered by many of Faulkner's characters, but it seems unfit if it was, indeed, intended to serve as an ending for Child of God. Turner's attempt to "understand" Ballard seems unlikely given the nature of their antagonistic relationship in the Middle Draft and the potential for such an understanding to subvert his right to dispense justice. Also, while Turner expresses dismay over Ballard's having attacked Greer, he very noticeably neglects talking about Ballard's other murders and necrophilia. This is not a surprising choice given the role restraint plays in these community-driven narratives, but when juxtaposed against eight rather gruesome pages depicting Turner recovering the corpses, the lack of details in his speech reads like a void in this narrative, less artfully constructed than the narrative suppression in the finished novel. Most important, however, is the admission that Turner does not understand the world in which he lives, as this feeling likely extends to the men for whom Turner serves as spokesperson. This ambiguity undermines the authorial integrity of the choric narrators and stands as an ineffectual answer to McCarthy's question of why the citizens of Sevier County would discuss Ballard at all. Proclaiming what Ballard is in the final choric chapter--the worst of God's creations--allows the choric narrators to orient themselves in an ordered community that, while it may contain anomalies like the Ballards, does, in large part, make sense. Moreover, it allows them to construct a seemingly encapsulated narrative that scapegoats Ballard while safeguarding the community.

While the choric narrators receive the final word in Part I, an intratextual rereading propels these chapters across the remaining two-thirds of the novel, suggesting that these narratives are not so easily partitioned by parts or narrators. Indeed, while the emphatic silencing of the choric voice was a purposeful decision that determined the overall narrative framework, it does not foreclose the choric narrations' contributions to the full text. Instead, as a fully realized and carefully structured text, Child of God challenges readers to reconcile the community-sanctioned biography of Lester Ballard that demonizes without incriminating him with the third-person narration of Parts II and III, which incriminate without demonizing him.

Continuing the Conversation

The Vintage Books edition of McCarthy's Suttree, which followed Child of God in 1979, includes on its cover a blurb from the Washington Postnaming McCarthy as "Perhaps the closest we have to a genuine heir to the Faulknerian tradition." Child of God likely helped a great deal in earning McCarthy such praise, though acclaim of this nature is often balanced by criticism on the same grounds. When New York Times critic Orville Prescott reviewed McCarthy's first novel, The Orchard Keeper (1965), he lamented that "[some novelists], although they are highly gifted too, are sorely handicapped by their humble and excessive admiration for William Faulkner. Cormac McCarthy ... is one of these." How then to see McCarthy working within a sphere of influence as weighty as Faulkner's?

One course of action is to attempt to see in the case of Child of God that, despite the inspirations from Faulkner and "A Rose for Emily," there are, in fact, significant marks of distinction that suggest something other than a handicap. Indeed, McCarthy's novel is an innovative rendering of communal scapegoating, a theme he appropriated from his literary predecessors and breathed new life into. Child of God's choric chapters display narrative suppression instead of withholding and thus undercut the community narrative rather than stoke its fervor and deliver its catharsis. In this way, McCarthy denies the community sole authorship over Ballard's life and challenges readers to engage in intra- and intertextual readings that create a richer portrayal of the novel's protagonist and to examine the ways in which they themselves are entwined in the production of othering narratives.

Thank you to Robert Donahoo, Helena Halmari, Lee Bebout, and the ASU writing workshop members who commented on this article's early drafts. Special thank you to Katie Salzmann, lead archivist at The Wittliff Collections at Texas State.

TRAVIS FRANKS

Arizona State University

Works Cited

Banker, Mark T. Appalachians All: East Tennesseans and the Elusive History of an American Region. Knoxville: U of Tennessee P, 2010.

Bell, Vereen M. The Achievement of Cormac McCarthy. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State UP, 1988.

Brooks, Cleanth. William Faulkner: First Encounters. New Haven: Yale UP, 1983.

Cant, John. Cormac McCarthy and the Myth of American Exceptionalism. New York: Routledge-Taylor & Francis, 2008.

Ciuba, Gary W. Desire, Violence, and Divinity in Modern Southern Fiction: Katherine Anne Porter, Flannery O'Connor, Cormac McCarthy, and Walker Percy. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State UP, 2007.

Ellis, Jay. No Place for Home: Spatial Constraint and Character Flight in the Novels of Cormac McCarthy. New York: Routledge-Taylor & Francis, 2006.

Faulkner, William. "A Rose For Emily." Collected Stories of William Faulkner. New York: Random House, 1950. 119-30.

McCarthy, Cormac. Child of God. 1973. New York: Vintage, 1993.

--. Middle Dran. N.d. TS Cormac McCarthy Papers, Southwestern Writers Collection, The Wittliff Collections, Texas State University--San Marcos.

--. Middle Draft Compendium. N.d. TS. Cormac McCarthy Papers, Southwestern Writers Collection, The Wittliff Collections, Texas State University-San Marcos.

--. Suttree. 1979. New York: Vintage-Random. 1992.

--. Unclassified Notes. N.d. TS. Cormac McCarthy Papers, Southwestern Writers Collection, The Wittliff Collections, Texas State University--San Marcos.

Palmer, Louis. "Bourgeois Blues: Class, Whiteness, and Southern Gothic in Early Faulkner and Caldwell." Faulkner Journal 22.1/2 (2006): 120-39. Academic Search Premier. Web. 9 Jan. 2014.

Prescott, Orville. "Still Another Disciple of William Faulkner." New York Times. New York Times, 12 May 1965. Web. 9 Jan. 2014.

Walsh, Christopher J. In the Wake of the Sun: Navigating the Southern Works of Cormac McCarthy. Knoxville: Newfound P, 2009.

(1) All source material cited as Middle Draft can be found in Wittliff Collection 91 Box 16 Folder 2.

(2) All source material cited as Middle Draft Compendium can be found in Wittliff Collection 91 Box 16 Folder 2.

(3) Because of typescript edits, the intended reading of this line is unclear as it appears on the page. I have structured it based on the way this line appears in the published novel.

(4) This source material can be found in Wittliff Collection 91 Box 16 Folder 6.

(5) Source material cited as Unclassified Notes cm be found in Wittliff Collection 91 Box 16 Folder 1.

(6) In the interest of space, I have not exactly replicated the line breaks of this marginalia but have instead grouped them linearly, as their phrasing seems to dictate.

(7) The redacted line reads, "The high sheriff of Sevier County spat into the coalscuttle and wiped his mouth with his palm."