HEAVY MACHINERY
by David BachmannDavid Bachmann
In this novel, a shiftless young man in Ohio sets out to find his legendarily irresponsible cousin and make peace with his own directionless life.
Marty “Cuz” Haff is infamous for his foolhardiness, “crudeness and poor judgment,” and grotesque lack of discipline. He’s a strange man who seems casually comfortable with long bouts of homelessness and claims to have a bobcat’s heart, a declaration he refuses to explain. One summer, just before his senior year of high school, Terry Haff lands a job working with his cousin Cuz at a landscape supply business and develops a genuine affection for him. Terry even comes to admire an uncompromising integrity that somehow seems to form the core of Cuz’s commitment to dissipation. Terry is a timid and unambitious teen, frantically drawn to but equally terrified of the opposite sex, and Cuz becomes a kind of loving mentor. Terry’s parents, Ed and Gladys, view Cuz through a permanent lens of suspicion yet tolerate him nonetheless, if only barely. But an accident changes everything—while at work with Cuz, Terry’s arm is brutally damaged by a soil screener, a mishap that results in “an above elbow disarticulation,” essentially a partial amputation. Ed wants Cuz held criminally responsible, but Gladys settles for his permanent banishment from the state of Ohio—he accepts his exile and moves to Arizona. Terry doesn’t hold Cuz responsible and mourns his loss, an attachment endearingly (and comically) captured by Bachmann. When Cuz disappears—he apparently sets his Airstream aflame and goes off to die quietly in the Grand Canyon—Terry becomes obsessed with rescuing him while his family remains utterly indifferent.
The author displays a talent for the dual depiction of comedy and tragedy—consider this account of Terry’s partial amputation, one that doesn’t even earn him the glow of heroism: “His wound is bereft of honor. It was a mistake born of imbalance, an ill-advised and uncoordinated heel slip in inclement weather.” Readers will be uncertain whether they should laugh or cry at Terry’s predicament, something that could be said of the entire novel, as silly as it is affecting. Bachmann eventually paints a fuller picture of Cuz, who is much more than a hapless clown. He grew up under the despotism of a brutal father, a “long-dead brute” notorious for his “cartoonish cruelty,” an upbringing that clearly left its mark. Cuz can be astonishingly thoughtful, and his peripatetic life seems philosophically principled. As he relates to Terry, “Heraclitus says everything is on fire. It took me about forty years to learn what that meant. Everything is in flux. Everything flows, nothing stands still. It’s all deteriorating right in front of your eyes, even all of us. Especially us. Our cells are deteriorating as we speak. We are all on fire.” There is no obvious lesson to be drawn from this free-wheeling story—Bachmann is far too subtle to bore readers with a condescendingly didactic sermon. Rather, he simply tells a riveting and humorous story, one that prompts reflection without imposing an imperious stamp on it.An unpretentiously moving tale, both funny and slyly intelligent.