THE FIRE EATERS

A large, poor, rambunctious Texas family is haunted by its secrets in Cobb's memoir-like fourth novel (A Walk Through Fire, 1992, etc.), winner of the 1992 Associated Writing Programs award for the novel. The five Bell children of San Gabriel seldom have decent clothes or enough to eat, despite having a determined breadwinner in their mother Clara. Narrator Damon, the youngest, grows up in the 1960's believing the family's hell-raising father died in his sleep; in fact, he killed himself soon after he and Clara divorced. Clara's second husband, Barry, who comes with three kids of his own, is another loser—an abusive alcoholic who vanishes suddenly, leaving his kids behind. With Clara's complicity, the children now run the show, getting along fine until half-sister Agnes lets slip the biggest family secret: Clara's father was a black jazz musician. At school Damon is reviled as a ``white nigger'' and must use a baseball bat on his chief tormentor to get respect. The family's racial identity is the fire that must be swallowed, in the novel's central image, yet questions abound amidst the smoke. How does Clara, tenderhearted but no pushover, manage to live at peace with her unsuspecting third husband, Glen, and his cracks about ``jigaboos''? Does Damon ever acknowledge his past openly? (As a Tulane student he is still faking it, attributing his dark coloring to Italian blood.) And why is Louis more vulnerable than the others? For it is this fiercely protective big brother, a tower of strength, who collapses as an adult, putting a gun in his mouth just like their father. If Cobb's handling of the Bells' secrets is not altogether satisfying, his detail work is superb: the result is a lovingly attentive chronicle of a family that is often bloodied but never defeated.