2.17.2017

FICTION / TEXANA

Heath Dollar

Waylon County: Texas Stories

Sleeping Panther Press

Paperback, 978-0-9980661-4-1 (also available as ebook); $14.99

Waylon County: Texas Stories is a fresh-voiced, well-composed collection of thirty-one vignettes and short stories set in a fictional county in the Texas Hill Country.

Some of its characters include: a woman who fears Texas won’t let her get married a tenth time; a lowly state bureaucrat whose job is to write official letters of congratulation; a man trying to rekindle an old romance while claiming his pet monkey is a “comfort” animal; a linguist who wants to help keep alive the last remnants of the German dialect originally spoken by early Texas settlers; a young man sneaking beers and cigars into his dying father’s hospital room and pushing him outside in a wheelchair so they can share some final time alone; and a ranch hand hired by an aging, wealthy landowner to also serve as his personal philosopher.

Events such as county fairs, bingo games, and visits to beauty shops provide some of the settings. And several Texas cities, including Austin, Dallas, Fort Worth, San Antonio, and Fredericksburg briefly shimmer as backdrops in some of the stories and vignettes. But Waylon County is home for the characters. And their actions and interactions create compelling, often funny, and sometimes darkish portraits of life in contemporary small-town Texas.

Some of the folks have never been far from Waylon County, which is fine with a few. Some, however, still dream of going somewhere or regret they’ve waited too long. And others have seen some of what’s out there and are happy now to hunker down in the county seat, Warnell, or its rural surroundings.

The structure of Waylon County: Texas Stories initially may bring to mind works such as Sherwood Anderson’s Winesburg, Ohio, a dark portrait of small-town life, and William Faulkner’s likewise controversial Go Down, Moses, a novel originally published as a collection of short stories about the white and black descendants of one Southern plantation owner.

Heath Dollar’s nicely edited collection, however, is rich with real-seeming Central Texans who mainly are trying to get along and get by within the borders and limits of their lives. They are the kind of people who will, at first, attempt to discourage a stray dog from hanging around a cemetery. Then they will give up, give the dog a name, and take it home. Many readers will see the concerns and values of Dollar’s characters reflected in their own lives.

In his new book’s introduction, Fort Worth writer Dollar says he did not feel ready to start creating stories about his native Texas until after he had spent years knocking around other parts of the world, including Central Europe, Southeast Asia, and Yellowstone National Park. There, he says, he was able to “reflect on my homeland from a distance” and “view my world through different eyes.”

Dollar concedes he originally “was so steeped in my own culture that I could hardly understand what was fascinating or unique about it. Before I set out, I found it unremarkable that my family had lived in Texas for several generations and that some of my ancestors were even buried at Lonesome Dove, a place that was largely unknown before a certain Texas legend borrowed the name for his magnum opus.”

Waylon County: Texas Stories entertainingly reminds us that the Lone Star State is still a unique place with its own state of mind. Yet, key languages and customs of the past–Spanish, English, German, and Czech — are being altered by progress and expanded by people moving into Central Texas from many other cultures and places. Even in remotest Waylon County, you cannot escape the change.

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