American Rust: A Novel

Poe is the polar opposite of his friend Isaac. While Isaac’s gifts are intellectual, Poe’s are physical. A former high school football star who could have attended college on an athletic scholarship, Poe also has a dark side—a temper that has gotten him into trouble on more than one occasion. An altercation with another boy—armed with a bayonet—led to Poe’s arrest on assault charges after he beat the other boy with a bat (only to be rescued by a police chief who has the power to alter his fate). Like so many other locals, Poe cannot escape his hometown and all the memories it holds, including his past relationship with Lee. Poe is a big fish in a small pond, and he fears losing his “legend” status if he moves to a bigger arena. Underlying his self-doubts, however, is a strong undercurrent of loyalty and a desire to uphold his own ethical code. He stays in Buell partly out of devotion to his mother, Grace, who he fears will succumb to her arthritis if she continues working. He also worries about her need to be taken care of—a need he’s afraid will be filled by his father, Virgil. A psychoanalytic reading of the text could argue Poe’s experience is consistent with an Oedipal Complex, a deep love for his mother coupled with a jealousy of any other man who gets close to her. He resents his philandering father but also the more honorable Harris for his past relationship with Grace.

Poe demonstrates the full extent of his loyalty when he refuses to name Isaac as the killer, accepting imprisonment and a vicious gang reprisal rather than talking to a lawyer. Prison, he reasons, demands an intimidating physical presence, something to which he is far more suited than Isaac. When he takes down another prisoner for trying to steal his food, the reaction is instinctual, a habit he’s cultivated over the years, showing that he at least stands a chance in prison; Isaac would be crushed, both physically and emotionally. Further, some part of Poe feels he deserves this fate and that his destiny has led him here. A combination of poor life choices and a lack of agency in other areas has resulted in a grim sense that prison has always been in the cards. In the end, Poe pays a steep price for his loyalty, but he survives and is exonerated. Both Isaac and Poe bear the scars of their mistakes, but only by surviving those mistakes, the narrative observes, do we emerge on the other side, beaten but ultimately better people for it.

Poe’s mother, Grace, epitomizes unrealized dreams. With roots in her community too deep to simply pull up stakes, she finds herself trapped in a double-wide trailer on 80 acres of land that, while picturesque, are not where she envisioned for herself. The characters in American Rust are archetypal; they embody a broad cross section of Americans who, through circumstances or a few bad choices, end up trapped. Grace is no exception. She imagined herself living in Pittsburg (or beyond), free of the hard labor and grit of a steel town, but her father’s insistence she embrace the culture of industry and work in the mill led her down a seemingly irreversible path. There, she met Virgil, they married, Poe was born, and suddenly, the mills closed. With a child to support and Virgil largely absent, her choices narrow quickly. Grace, however, works hard and holds her head high, determined to live with the dignity she can. If that means bearing the brunt of a town’s scorn for being a “bad mother,” so be it. She knows the truth—that raising a child in conditions of deprivation severely restricts parenting ability. She has done her best, and that’s all she can do.

Grace’s flaw—if indeed it is a flaw—is her dependency on others. When Virgil comes back into her life, she opens the door despite her misgivings (only to be burned once again). While she knows how much Harris loves her and has done for her, she uses him and returns to Virgil, not considering that Harris can take only so much. Grace sees herself as virtuous and giving, and she does her best with Poe. Children will ultimately follow their own path, but if nothing else, Grace has raised a son with a strong sense of honor and loyalty.

Police chief Harris, at first glance, appears to be a law enforcement officer in the mold of Andy Taylor from The Andy Griffith Show—a cop who relies on his wits and compassion rather than his gun. Harris has been on the job long enough to know when gentle persuasion works better than force. He knows Buell and its residents, knows their plight and their pain, and he forgives when he can. He takes a broader view of crime, a sociological view, seeing behind the thefts and vandalism to the desperation underneath: “Citizens with pensions and health insurance rarely robbed their neighbors” (121).

Harris’s penchant for bending the law, however, sometimes goes too far. His ethical line in the sand creeps back with every favor. His inability to separate his professional and personal lives could be his undoing, but his very human feelings for Grace complicate his choices. By pulling strings to free Poe from an assault charge, he pleased Grace in the short term, but he incurred the town’s wrath in the long run and perhaps allowed Poe to mistakenly feel he is untouchable. While not as sinister or Machiavellian as some in positions of power, Harris nonetheless uses his power for his own ends, including tampering with evidence and eliminating witnesses. He is known in town for his callous attitude toward people without homes, and he is implicated in burning vacant houses to keep squatters out. Harris believes in the law as a force for good, but the road to hell is paved with good intentions, and Harris’s moral ambiguity—even his selective morality—makes that road ethically precarious to say the least.

Lee seems to have it all. She’s the one character to have escaped Buell; she’s earned her degree from a prestigious Ivy League university; she’s married into a wealthy, New England family; and unlike the other characters, she has options, including possibly law school. However, Lee cannot escape her own guilt for leaving her brother alone to care for their father, or her feelings, instilled from growing up with poverty, of not being worthy of her good fortune. Part of that guilt stems from knowing that Isaac is the brighter sibling and, she suspects, more deserving of an education, but she had her chance to leave, and she took it.

While she has acclimated to the upper class, she feels more in her skin in one of Buell’s dive bars dancing with strangers. Mostly, she cannot escape her love of Poe, despite every instinct warning her against it. Lee presents the classic head/heart conflict, and, as is often the case, her heart wins, at least temporarily. She and Poe make love, and they even profess their mutual love despite Lee’s husband waiting patiently back in New Haven—and while Simon has had his own affairs, Lee’s tryst is not a simple case of evening the score. Lee seems to truly love Poe and is honestly torn over what she wants. In the end, Lee’s common sense prevails, and she heads back to New Haven, Isaac presumably in tow. If she is taking the safer, financially secure path over the emotionally rewarding one, it is a willing sacrifice given the enormous sacrifices Isaac and Poe have already made.