The Ghost of Bud Parrott: a novel

In the tradition of Southern youth portrayed by Truman Capote, William Faulkner and Harper Lee, Judson Hout gives us the voice of Isaac Wood, whose coming of age in the White River bottoms of northeast Arkansas takes us back to the 1950s, when Elvis was still touring the flats of east Texas and Burma Shave was laying claim to the fence posts along Highway 66. Beginning and ending with a frame story-Isaac Wood as an older adult-the guts of this little Southern novel are laid out like the innards of a White River catfish. Some say 'purdy' and some are aghast. In that frame is the life story of young Isaac Wood's surrogate father. From the wrong side of the tracks comes a quiet man to fill that part, a man who keeps his own council and treats folks right. A man all covered in black skin, Bud Parrott walks out of Jackson County and near-slavery at the age of 16. Hopping a freight, Bud heads to Birmingham, Alabama to seek his fortune. Along the way, Bud is inducted into the rites of the curious fraternity of hobos. Brush-arbor campfires, watering stations for steam locomotives, and haunting interiors of boxcars provide the settings for Bud's induction ceremonies, events for which no crepe paper or soda-pop punch are provided. Traveling with hobos and later courting, working in an industrial mill, playing Negro League baseball on the Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania team with Satchel Page, standing up to a numbers-running boss and inevitably paying the price for his courage, Bud's introduction to humanity away from home is as colorful and episodic as Huck Finn's float on the Mississippi.