Bluebird Bluebird by Attica Locke

 

Ten of us in person plus two more over Zoom met on Saturday Oct. 30 to discuss Bluebird Bluebird by Attica Locke. Bluebird Bluebird is the initial book in Locke’s Highway 59 Series.

The prologue opens with a woman, Geneva Sweet bringing food and music to the graves of her husband and her son.

Chapter 1 then begins with the main character Darren Mathews a Black Texas Ranger who is giving testimony on behalf of his friend Rutherford McMillan aka Mack.

A white supremacist named Ronnie Salvo constantly harassed and threatened Mack. . One night, when the harassment turned to confrontation on Mack’s property, Mack called Mathews to come out to the property. No violence occurred that night but a few days later, someone found Ronnie Salvo dead and Mathew’s friend Mack is the number one suspect.

Mathews’ superiors suspended him for going out to the property outside of authority. While on suspension, he’s given a suspicious assignment to look into two homicides in a town called Lark. The victims are Michael Wright, who is black and from out of town and Missy Dale, white, local, and married to a man who hangs out at The Icebox Bar. The Icebox Bar is headquarters for the Aryan Brotherhood of Texas (ABT.)

The East Texas setting is a main component of the book as well as the many allusions to The Blues music. In fact, the title Bluebird Bluebird comes from a John Lee Hooker song. Mathews is an alcoholic and he’s separated from his wife.

Almost all of the action in Lark takes place at Geneva Sweet’s café, the Icebox bar and the home of Wally Jefferson, whose home is a copy of Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello and is directly across the road from Geneva’s café.

Wally Jefferson not only lives in a replica of Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello, he also claims family ties to the former president. In this book, Wally’s father and Geneva who was much much younger and had been working as a maid in their house obviously had sex. Whether this was consensual sex (was she even of age?) or whether Wally’s father had taken advantage of his employee (where else would she get a job if she said “no”?) led to a discussion about Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings.

The story begins and ends in Camilla, the county where Mathews lives and involve his friend Mack. The filling of the book involves the two murders that take place in Lark.

Shelara began our discussion noting the story’s framing. In the beginning, Mack had reported  his 38 gun stolen, but at the end of the book, Mathew’s mother actually found the gun on her son’s property. Mack had been working as a caretaker on this property and it’s implied that he hid the gun there.

Mathew’s father’s family always looked down on his mother. She was a damaged person and Shelara said futher, “her mothering was damaged.”

Sunasha added that Mathew’s mother was an alcoholic and he too was an alcoholic.

Shelara added, “Locke has established Mathews as a human being. Even though he’s an alcoholic, he’s not a caricature. I appreciate the author’s willingness to make her protagonist a hot mess.”

Attica Locke Photo Credit NPR

Laura called our attention to page 259, where we get Geneva Sweet’s inner thoughts about one of the murder victims, Michael Wright:

“He reminded her of her son.

Wasn’t nothing you could put a finger on, just the age was right…It was just that a black man of a certain age and carriage…would always pinch at Geneva’s heart, on sight.”

Marsha described the atmosphere of the town further, telling us, “It’s a very complicated shut-in type of community. They don’t trust strangers, that’s why Geneva treats Darren Mathews in an abrupt way.

Sunasha offered us more into Geneva’s feelings about Mathews being there, saying, “Geneva sees a black man who is not from Lark and feels that there could be trouble for him because Missy’s body had just been found. It wasn’t so much unfriendly as it was for his protection”

Shelara said, “Geneva had suffered the violent deaths of her husband, her son, and her grandson’s mother. The book begins with her offerings to her dead husband and son.”

Barbara pointed out that at the very end, Geneva gave Darren Mathews a plate of food. He considered that as an offering and acknowledgement.

I asked the group why they thought the Icehouse Bar, which used to be a general store frequented by blacks and whites turned into an establishment for the ABT to sell meth.

Shelara explained that it was Wally who owned the property and gave the ABT free reign. The motivation could have been money, (a cut of the meth profits) or it could have been hate. Wally always felt that it his father was wrong in choosing Geneva when he knew Wally wanted her for himself and for building Geneva a café.

Marsha asked us if we thought it was realistic that Keith Dale would keep Missy’s baby, knowing that he wasn’t really his son.  Meghan answered that it was to save face. I offered that he actually loved the child because the child’s connection to Missy, and he really did love Missy.

Judy reminded us that the Texas Rangers were involved in catching runaway slaves. Darren Mathews, wanting to uphold the law, kept telling himself that Mack couldn’t kill anyone.

Laura offered that perhaps Mathews wasn’t as zealous in finding out the truth about his friend Mack, but there was a genuine purity in his search for the truth about the murders in Lark.

Once Mathews realized that his mother had found the gun on his property (and now his whole career was in her hands) he ruminated on p. 302

“He’d known Ronnie Malvo was killed with a .38, but he hadn’t asked Mack where his gun was. He’d noticed the new oak on his property, but he hadn’t asked Mack when and why he’d planted it. He’d done nothing because Malvo was a bad guy, a cancer, a lump of hate that would spread untold destruction if left unchecked. He’d done nothing because, if he was telling the truth about it, Darren didn’t care that the man was dead. He’d done nothing because Mack was a good man who’d never had any cross with the county sheriff, had never, in his nearly seventy years, done a thing wrong…He’d asked Mack no questions, behaving like a defense attorney when he’d taken an oath to be a cop. He got it confused sometimes, on which side of the law he belonged, couldn’t always remember when it was safe for a black man to follow the rules.”