Proulx digs up some gems in 'Bad Dirt'

BAD DIRT: WYOMING STORIES 2, by Annie Proulx, Scribner, 240 pages, $25.

Most readers were introduced to Annie Proulx's talent with her Pulitzer Prize-winning novel "The Shipping News." Besides being a crack writer, it was evident Proulx knew how to listen as she captured the language and Canadian nuances of the book's Newfoundland characters.

Her "listen up" skills seemed all the more polished in "Close Range," Proulx's haunting, violent collection of short stories on Wyoming's hard-scrabble hamlets and inhabitants.

Now Proulx revisits the Cowboy State in "Bad Dirt: Wyoming Stories 2."

Again the writer examines gritty people and places not likely seen along the Yellowstone-bound tourist routes. Wyoming's flip-side. Stories weighted with folks who are kin to the local wildlife -- fascinating to watch, but from a distance.

I'm still catching my breath from the concluding tale in "Close Range," "Brokeback Mountain," a tale of the lifelong affair between two tough cowboys. So the opener in "Bad Dirt" -- a goofy yarn about a Wyoming game warden who enlists the area's thermodynamic features to rid the land of poachers -- came almost as a relief.

Proulx finds her serious legs pages later with the sobering entry "What Kind of Furniture Would Jesus Pick?" The story's protagonist, Gilbert Wolfscale, is a second-or-third-generation rancher/ entrepreneur hoping to realize his American dream in Wyoming's sage- heavy soil. He follows all the rules. Works hard. Doesn't yield an inch. Dreams big. Constantly fails.

A son of Wyoming, Gilbert stands proxy for the Proulx characters foolish enough to expect much sentiment from their native land.

"Man Crawling Out of Trees," meanwhile, imagines a troubled New England couple drawn to Wyoming by adventure and low taxes. One finds refuge in the stark solitude. The other can't wait to get out.

Proulx's anchor story introduces Buddy Millar, a transient laborer enduring life in "almost gone towns." Buddy takes a chance on Wamsutter, a "desperate place, a hairline away from I-80." Broke, he finds lodging in filthy single-wide -- $40 a month -- and is soon being pestered by the neighbor's trash-hungry dogs.

Buddy will learn his new neighbors aren't strangers. The lady of the house is a mangy former schoolmate who still has eyes for the wandering bachelor. Her husband -- a drunk who had once handed Buddy a vicious beating. Resolution for this hapless trio comes in the form of an acne-scarred mountain man.

Perhaps "Bad Dirt" falls just short of Proulx's first round of Wyoming stories. One or two tales placed for comic relief don't always work. But at her best, Proulx's prose is something like Wyoming. Sparse and resourceful.

E-mail: jswensen@desnews.com

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