Blacktop Wasteland a Propulsive Novel

 

BLACKTOP WASTELAND (2020)

By S. A. Crosby

Flatiron Books, 304 pages.

★★★★★

 

Blacktop Wasteland is a propulsive novel on several levels. First, it is about race and social class, two subjects that spark. Second, its protagonist, Beauregard Montage, is addicted to fast cars. And third, because Crosby treats Beau as neither a victim nor a hero. 

 

Beau has three kids, 18-year-old Ariel from a youthful dalliance, and two sons, Darren and Javon with his long-term partner Kia. He has not always been a good man and on that we can blame poor parenting and racism Southern-style, the latter of which sent his 14-year-old self to five years in juvenile detention for a crime he did not commit. Nonetheless, Beau bears responsibility for subsequent forays into thievery and violence. He’s really trying to stay out of trouble because he loves Kia and his kids, but his make-it-in-America plan has a built-in limitation. Beau is really only good at one thing: cars. His Plymouth Duster, the only thing left behind when his petty criminal father fled, supplements the family income via illegal drag racing money. No one drives or fixes cars as well as Beau, who also owns a garage.

 

How, though, does a black man compete and pay his garage rent when some good ole’ boys open a fancier garage nearby with amenities and prices Beau can’t match? Or when his son needs braces and his mother is in a nursing home and about to be kicked out because Medicare has cut off payments because of an asset snafu? What can he do about Ariel, who doesn’t live with him, but is probably hooking and dealing drugs–not that her alcoholic mother cares one way or the other? Beau and Kia live in a trailer, so it’s not like there are piles of cash floating about, nor are there that many opportunities for a black man in a backwater Virginia town. The skinny is that if “Bug,” as his black friends call him, doesn’t come up with a windfall pretty quickly, his crumbling foundations will give way. As it is, one of his sons is drawn into the household financial crisis and not in a good way.

 

Despite Kia’s pleading, Beau is sorely tempted to take part in a heist–an insider job in a jewelry store–being orchestrated by white hood Ronnie Sessions. Beau doesn’t trust Ronnie, his dim-witted brother, or his partner Quan, but it can be done with Beau at the wheel of the getaway car. Rule number one in pulling a job: Don’t place your fate in the hands of people you don’t like and think are inept. Rule number two: If something is sold as dead simple, it’s usually only one of those. Blacktop Wasteland morphs from one man’s struggle to make ends meet to a crime thriller, and a very good one. To say that unexpected wrinkles occur scarcely does justice to the novel’s various folds and creases. This novel has quite a few bad guys, not to mention a few good guys who get in the way. As it has been for most of his life, Beau must ultimately depend upon himself to survive.

 

Crosby deftly juggles a lot of things in Blacktop Wasteland. He gives us a slice of black life set in 2012, but feels like it could have taken place 60 years earlier. It’s also about fatherhood, black support networks (shaky and legit), haunting memories, and self-awareness. Beau may wish to go straight, but deep inside suspects he may be cursed with a “propensity for violent conflict resolution,” just as his counselor in juvenile detention once proclaimed. He has good intentions, but he has killed before and has an “if necessary” view of murder, not guiding moral principles on the subject. Add the question of whether biology is destiny to Crosby’s bag of tricks, not to mention the old philosophical mindbender of whether the end justifies the means.

 

Blacktop Wasteland is a terrific novel, from its multivalent title to a conclusion evocative of I Was a Fugitive from a Chain Gang.” It will leave you shattered.

 

Rob Weir