Too often, dedicated people come into serious, even deadly, conflicts, despite noble intentions. Not everyone agrees even on the best ways to protect wildlife and the environment, as California-based author T.C. Boyle shows in a coming novel, When the Killing's Done (2011, Viking, 369 pages).
Without an obvious villain, the author tells of stubborn, heroic people opposing each other due to deeply held convictions. Ultimately, they damage precisely what they cherish.
The book does have an important setting. Its action unfolds near Santa Barbara (the author's home turf) and on nearby islands occupied mainly by wild animals.
Sadly, nature lacks its past abundance. No longer are “the lingcod as long as your arm, the abalone… more plentiful than the rocks themselves, the lobsters so accommodating they'd crawl right up the anchor line and dunk themselves in the pot”.
Alma Boyd Takesue, a National Park Service biologist, leads a government effort to eradicate invasive rats and then wild pigs from designated islands to protect the earlier-resident species like endangered birds and foxes. Certain animals “don't belong”, cause damage and must be eradicated.
“For a long moment, she stands there, feeling the sting of it. She is a killer, of pigs, of rats, of fennel and star thistle and of the introduced turkeys that will have to be removed in good time, a killer in the service of something higher, of restoration, redemption, salvation, but a killer all the same.”
Alma's mission brings constant challenges. “Restoring an ecosystem is never easy – maybe it's not even possible.”
“As for the rats, they are capable swimmers with deep reserves of endurance and a fierce will to survive. Experiments have shown that the average rat can tread water for some 48 hours before succumbing, can grip and climb vertical wires, ropes, cables and smooth-boled trees with the facility of a squirrel and is capable of compressing its body to fit through a hole no wider around than the circumference of a quarter.”
Every move Alma makes brings hostility and obstruction from Dave LaJoy, a volatile, semi-retired electronics merchant, and from Anise Reed, his folk-singer girlfriend. They insist not only that “meat is murder”, but that all animal life deserves protection from aggressive humans.
“But LaJoy won't give it up, just as he wouldn't the week before in Ventura when he had to be escorted from the room spewing threats and curses. ‘You're no better than executioners,’ he shouts over whatever the man in plaid is trying to say. ‘Nazis, that's what you are. Kill everything, that's your solution. Kill, kill, kill.’ ”
When environmentalists clash with animal-rights activists, which side can be wrong? Isn't everyone part of the big problem? “Guilt – that's what defines her usage. Guilt over being alive, needing things, consuming things, turning the tap or lighting the flame under the gas burner.”
Oh, there are peaceful moments. “She's left her hair loose and the wind takes hold of it, flinging it across her face, and when she shakes her head to settle it, any thought of Dave LaJoy and the rest of the self-appointed saviors is gone. She shuts her eyes, lifts her face to the sun. This is perfect.” But bliss rarely lasts.
Must confrontation and sabotage end in destructive deadlock? How many rats, pigs or even humans will survive?
As LaJoy declares: “Civil? I'll be civil when the killing's done and not a minute before.” Is the killing ever done?
What happens if Nature battles back? “It was only then that she became aware of the height of the waves coming at them, rearing black volcanoes of water that took everything out from under the boat and put it right back again, all the while blasting the windows as if there were 100 fire trucks out there with their hoses all turned on at once.”
An the author of 12 novels (notably World's End, Drop City and The Women) and nine short-story collections, Boyle teaches English at the University of Southern California. He knows how to tell a good story and does.
As the lively plot winds up, many questions remain. Is killing for science justified? Ultimately, will humans do what's right for the natural world? Do they even know what's right?
Instead of settling such issues, Boyle leaves his readers deep in thought. They're so contemplative and unsure that it's slightly distressing to reach the last page and realize the reading's done.
Approval rating: 71 per cent.
For more information: www.tcboyle.com
(September 17, 2010)
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T.C. Boyle knows how to tell
a good story, and does.
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