Introduction

Narrated in part by a ghost, when the dust finally settles is a novel focused on land, loyalty and racial politics in the 1968 South. Mawatuck County (also the setting for Meads’s The Invented Life of Kitty Duncan) is a place where the present continually collides with the past, a fact underscored by one unseasonably hot, dry week in May. Mabel Stallings is determined to make her grandchild love the family farm. Clarence Carter is determined to escape paying taxes by “playing” crazy. Harrison Doxey, a black student in a white majority high school, is determined to dance and drink at The Lido, a whites-only dance hall at the beach. “When anyone asks if Southern Literature has a future in our internet, iPhone, jet-lagged, speed-of-light world, I point them to Kat Meads. Simply put, you must read Kat Meads.”—Jason Sanford, Founding Editor, storySouth

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Excerpt

Clarence Carter

You think the dead don't hear and see—backwards, forwards, all at once, piecemeal, big picture, best and worst?

Surprises coming your way, my friend, that much I guarantee.

You go by the majority, fearing death turns out to be a big chunk of what living is, people more or less sniffing the stench of end before dropping a molar, fretting in advance about the where, when, how soon, how hard, who'll care, who won't. Another example, if you're looking, how Clarence Carter skirted the average, plowed his own row so to speak, disinclined to anguish over either side of the great divide. A gift for the carefree, you might call it, though folks in Mawatuck did and do tag it something different.

No need to be a spook to hear this particular deceased passed judgment on, ridiculed in best Christian fashion. Go ahead. Nose around, groundside. Take one of those house-to-house opinion polls. Won't get a single door slammed in your face, probably get invited in for sugar tea and cake while my former neighbors confide the long and shortcomings of Clarence Carter.

Favorite Mawatuck sport, Clarence Carter gossip.

That'd be my doing, mostly.

"Clarence? Certainly I knew Clarence Carter. Craziest man, white or black, county-wide."

"Big man. Crazy and big. What you asking about Clarence for?"

"Blessed land! The man was lazy. Triflin'. Wouldn't lift a finger. Wouldn't work to save his soul."

"Let his family farm go to ruin. Didn't have far to go, but it was Clarence let it bottom out. Had no interest in farming. Least none that showed."

"What you curious about Clarence for?"

Friendliness cooling a bit. Eyes starting to cut, bottoms starting to fidget. Own slices of sweet starting to languish on the plate.

How come?

Because that Mawatuck rule of treating strangers kindly, even snooping ones, just ran hard up against the suspicion that you, stranger, must be a mite touched yourself to come around begging to confirm the obvious: that Clarence Carter was a man lacked common sense and every other grade besides.

Don't matter. Ole Clarence is privy to all kinds of secrets, confidences and pitiless facts those neighbors of mine don't know and never will.

First off: I wasn't a day in life crazy. Pretended to be afflicted. Convinced every sharp and dull-witted local I was, government boys too. And regardless what my Rosie claims, this ignorant swamp Cracker would have kept on conning them government boys if the Oliver hadn't reared up like a startled crane, flipping itself and me one windless afternoon, temperature hot as midsummer. Here's why: because every day I breathed I got a little better at gauging how much or little set Mawatuck talking and delivering up oddities in just that amount. Tell you another thing: when Clarence Carter was alive, no Mawatuck citizen ever finished a hard day's labor without thanking Jesus for not being him or his nearest blood kin. Performed a valuable community service, I did, giving every man, woman and child chance to knuckle-point and pity, feel superior, no matter how bad off that superior was.

Folks miss that kind of comfort. Sure they do.

Where I went wrong—you paying attention? 'Cause here's another something I kept tight to my chest till it cracked open like a walnut hull—where I made my mistake was thinking I could set gossips talking, then cut off that tattle when I had a mind to. Turns out tattle reseeds itself same as weed, only faster. Turns out starting and stopping a story ain't part of the same feed barrel.

So enjoy those Clarence Carter tales you'll hear, door-to-door visiting. They're plenty entertaining, if I do say so myself. But if you're seeking God's truth and nothing spicier believe only up to the part where the tractor did a cartwheel, punctured my rib bones, gouged my heart. Rest is nonsense, work of imagination darker than mine. Accident finished me off, nothing more peculiar or calculated than that. Didn't want to die, didn't plan on dying that afternoon, but when I understood the end was fast coming, realized where that airborne machine would squarely land, so help me, I did, I giggled—a giggle sane as any shriek because once in this world you're already on the road to leaving it, so why not go out giggling?

If a giggle's what you're after yourself, suggest to the pious folks of Mawatuck crazy Clarence made his exit laughing.

Lord a-mercy, as my Rosie would say.

They'd quicker believe I was the devil's daughter than accept such rank sacrilege. No trouble calling me a sinful disgrace, of no count to bush or beast, but met my Maker grinning?

"Naw, naw. I cain't sanction that kind of talk."

"Naw, naw. You won't get me to believe that—not even of Clarence Carter."

Which might set YOU to thinking uh-huh, uh-huh, so why trust a man dead as dirt?

Best give a spook some leeway, see what happens there. Because another nugget of pure truth? Just because you can't trust a man alive don't mean you shouldn't trust that same son of a bitch dead. Lot of misunderstandings get cleared up, lot of puzzles get solved, once you can't do a thing but watch and listen and wish you'd done better by loved ones.

Wishing is what keeps the dead dying.

Best prepare yourself for that too. view abbreviated excerpt only...

Discussion Questions

1) What do Clarence, Mabel and Harrison share in common?
2) Which character do you feel more sympathy for: Lucian Carter or Nell Stallings? Why?
3) How does Mawatuck, the place, affect the actions of Clarence Carter? The actions of Harrison Doxey?
4) Jocelyn McPherson is “with” Harrison even when she isn’t. How does she help or hinder Harrison to become the person he wants to be?
5) Describe Nell and Lucian’s relationship. How is it different from other relationships in the novel?
6) In the standoff in Mrs. Avery’s classroom, what is at stake? Which characters have the most to gain?
7) The older generation of Mawatuck has very specific expectations of the younger generation. Describe those expectations. Are any of those expectations justified?
8) What is Enon Halston’s role in the novel?
9) Do you agree with Mabel’s decision to give Nell her inheritance early? How else might Mabel have protected the family farm?
10) What does Clarence Carter realize as a dead man that he didn’t know alive?
11) The novel takes place during one unseasonably hot, dry week in May. Why else is the novel titled when the dust finally settles?
12) “Surprises coming your way, my friend,” Clarence Carter says at the beginning of the novel. What surprised you about Mawatuck County, its residents or the events that occurred over the course of the novel?

Weblinks

»	Author Kat Meads' web site
»	Publisher's Book Info

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