Day 2,360, Quasi-Quarantine: Vietnam Vet Navigates Assimilation In The Wyoming Wilds In "Walk Me To The Distance"

 

“He was a murderer, and the major well of guilt in this was that he felt no remorse. He laughed softly to himself and shook his head. The most frightening element of it all was that, even with the grotesque image of the retarded man bound and dangling, the action was somehow beautiful.”

This Western-coded novel follows a Vietnam War veteran who tries to assimilate back to everyday life, settling in Wyoming after feeling ostracized in his home state of Georgia. The action is seen through Kevin's occasionally unreliable perspective, and some of the bizarre behavior and decision-making we witness passively could potentially be related to PTSD (we didn't have a name for this when the novel was written more than 40 years ago, which also somewhat explains much of the problematic language).

“He wondered if a man actively seeking to surrender could be captured.”

Kevin ends up living on a ranch with Sixbury, an elderly widow who cares for a son with intellectual disabilities named Patrick. As Kevin tries to navigate interpersonal dynamics, an abandoned child enters the equation, leading to a series of heart-breaking and traumatic events, some of which really sneak up on the reader.

“The doors were open, and there under the moonlight, David saw him. Patrick was fucking a sheep.”

With something of a fever-dream quality, sparse prose, and concepts of frontier justice, "Walk Me to the Distance" evokes Cormac McCarthy. While the work is indicative of a young novelist finding his footing (it's Percival Everett's second novel and a precursor to classics like "James" and "The Trees"), this short blazer of a book asks compelling questions about the meaning of family, sexuality, the assimilation of grief, and the the difference between society and individuality.

“As he drove home, he found himself oddly relaxed. It was an empty feeling, but not at all uncomfortable. He didn’t feel lost, though he couldn’t say just where he was. He didn’t feel stranded and he didn’t feel helpless. He didn’t feel anything and that was all right.”