James Lannan

Down South of North James Lannan

Discharged from the US Army with a head injury sustained in Vietnam during the war era, Edmond Larson takes to wandering in Mexico. One night at a cantina in Veracruz, a pistolero falls dead at Larson's feet, and he is arrested for murder. After escaping jail, he reluctantly joins up with a local girl who has ties to a madman bent on provoking revolution. Ellie's friend Jerry complains that she thinks she's always right. Ellie admits she has a smart mouth and that even at the age of twenty-nine, she often comes off as a cantankerous old biddy. In Ellie's view, people take advantage at the slightest display of weakness. This is the story of how Ellie loses her virginity. Octavio is a street brawler and a thief, though also capable of painful sacrifice for the benefit of a chance acquaintance. An insurance salesman wakes up on a Saturday morning unable to set work aside. His wife objects to his attitude. His son accuses him of going back on his word. Pancho takes a beating every time he enters the boxing ring, but his sister's husband, a former national champion, won't let him quit the fight game. A man lies on a mountainside in the rain. A woman he can't get enough of has just struck him in the head with a rock. Another man bleeds to death on a bridge, with intestines spilling out his abdomen. His killer admonishes him for seducing their patron's young wife. Down South of North comprises ten stories in all. A suicidal roofer, a painter dedicated to her clients in social services while enduring unrequited love, and a taxidermist who discovers a magic pendant in the belly of a forty-pound catfish round out the collection's central characters.