A bit late for the 1920s month, Fiswoode Tarleton's only book
BLOODY GROUND was published by Dial Press in 1929. Who the
hell was Fiswoode Tarleton? From the mid-1920s to his death
in 1931, Tarleton published an impressive series of related
short stories in magazines from the immensely popular pulp
Adventure to magazines like The Forum and McClure's. The
stories take place in an Appalachian village named Leeston
that was remote even by Appalachian standards. Continuing
characters are Sheriff Floyd Jett and Leeston's town marshall
Steve Dodie as they deal with murders, moonshiners and
moments of racial tension and violence. Very unusual for
popular fiction of the time the stories are told in the
present tense.
Subtitled "A Cycle of the Southern Mountains," BLOODY GROUND
contains twelve stories. One of the most striking is "Color,"
which tells of a one-ring circus appearing in Leeston which
excites the two very separate populations of blacks and
whites. Into the town walks a huge, powerful man of mixed
race. No one knows him but all eyes are on him. The sideshow
features one of those swing-the-hammer and ring-the-bell
tests of strength. After various white men have failed to
ring the bell, the stranger grabs the maul and rings it with
every swing, eventually shifting to one arm and timing the
bell with the music of the circus band.
The stranger never speaks a word during the course of the
story but he makes both blacks and whites nervous as he
refuses to stay within the boundaries of
"how things in Leeston is run." Tension builds until the
inevitably violent climax.
The publisher called Tarleton a "new young master of American
fiction." Based on the number of times Tarleton stories are
listed on the honor rolls of both the two big short story
annuals O'Henry and Best American Short Stories many others
of the time agreed. More importantly, the evidence is in this
book and in the uncollected short stories.
Tarleton is seldom mentioned except in connection to his
death in 1931. He died in an automobile accident with Horace
Kephardt, who helped create the Great Smokie Mountain
National Park and whose book OUR SOUTHERN HIGHLANDERS is
still in print. Tarelton was visiting Kephardt and they hired
a driver to take them to a bootlegger. Unfortunately, the
taxi driver sampled the moonshine himself and failed to
negotiate the very well-named "dead man's curve" near Bryson
City, North Carolina. Only the driver survived the
crash.
Richard Moore
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