Also THE COWBOY’S BABY, THE COWBOY’S BABY GOES TO HEAVEN, TALKING TO THE DEAD GUYS, TEA WITH A DEAD GAL, THE GOODALL MANIFEST, THE GOODALL MARAUDERS and BABY SINGS THE BOOS.
…and very, very human. The Watermelon Pump is like the chocolate or lemon pies old ladies used to make; the ones with the buttery, flaky crusts and those little browned tips of high-whipped, handmade meringue, the whole thing covered by wax paper, toothpicks propping up the paper like a circus tent so it won’t crush the meringue, handed to you carefully in some no-frills kitchen by no-nonsense hands. You felt loved holding that pie and touching those hands. It was good.
So is Gretchen Rix’s book. It’s set in small-time, small-town Texas, and the sense of place is richly scented (I mean that literally) but it could be anywhere really; anywhere where people try to figure out how to be good to one another (or, at least, how to not piss one another off) and go to bed and get up and wonder at the end of it all if their lives have meant anything at all. There’s a pet chicken and some Mennonites and some unusual brides and a local newspaper owner whose panties are sometimes blue and sometimes….well. You must read the rest for yourself.
Take your time with The Watermelon Pump. The chapters are short, and the first few of them are just the wax paper wrapping. Unwrap it slowly. Take some time with it. And have some pie. Life is short, you know?
