Tim McLaurin
Cured By Fire
Putnam
by Martha Keller
Religion was easier to accept that way--a dreamy collection of stories that he remembered from vacation Bible school, about giants and floods and miracles that you had to believe in with your heart. It was simple. Hearts always looked at the good side of life and trusted in love and honesty and peace. Brains didn't work that way. Brains were connected to the eyes and had to look at the real world.
If you ever wondered how, so did Lewis and Elbridge. A self-employed, upwardly mobile college graduate, Lewis is not above drinking with his friends after work or developing a physical attraction for the new employee at his construction firm. As a child, he worked in the fields for extra cash and struggled to fit into a world he could not afford. When his father wasn't nursing a bottle of whiskey, he showed Lewis how to hunt, but more importantly how to be in complete control: "on this bright dawn, in the cold boughs of this tree, the decision to shoot was totally up to him. A life in his own hands. Lewis lowered the rifle. `Bang,' he shouted. `You're dead.'"
As he developed, Lewis grew into a college linebacker, married his high-school sweetheart and built his own business. He raised himself up from an abysmal, poverty-ridden past and into a promising future. And although he may have the occasional persistent difficulty in reconciling God and religion, ultimately Lewis knows that he loves his life and his family.
Like Lewis, Elbridge knows he loves his family. As a migrant worker controlled by good weather and fertile soil, Elbridge's reality is much harsher than Lewis's. Abandoned by his mother at birth and unaware of his father's identity, Elbridge is raised by a compassionate grandfather who shows him how to live, find peace and hunt: "Don't think, just react. You got to let yourself become part of something that's bigger than you...It can kill you like a snake if you let it. Don't ever forget that. But it can feed you too. And it can free you from the world. Maybe for just an hour or so, but it can free you."
Unlike Lewis's vision of middle-class utopia, Elbridge buys his wife Rita for 50 dollars after defending her in a fight against her alcoholic uncle. After a brief period of happiness, a fire destroys Elbridge's potential in the crop industry, and Rita becomes more affectionate towards a bottle of wine and a pack of cigarettes than her husband or her children. Yet despite such hardships, Elbridge develops a strong faith in God and is determined to persevere.
Then, as in most novels which address the human condition, something happens. Lewis and Elbridge find themselves in unimaginable circumstances and begin a journey inward to redefine who they are:
"I've floated out again. I'm like the ocean, surging forward and being sucked back, in and out of myself. I hear this hum in the air, like someone plucked a giant guitar string and the noise is almost gone. Just a low hum, a nice sound, kind of like the wind and running water mixed together. I keep thinking I see shapes in the sky. I can't make them out, but there are forms that move and blend with the blackness beyond the stars."
Like the stars, Lewis and Elbridge cannot be reached. "The hunt" has become a self-search to realize peace and the meaning of power.
At times McLaurin's style can appear too regional and heavy-handed. Although he may not reach the height of Pirsig's Zen, Cured by Fire is, nevertheless, a respectable inquiry into the workings of the human spirit.
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