Executive Times
		2007 Book Reviews
		Five Skies by Ron Carlson
Rating:			****
		(Highly Recommended)
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	Grief Ron Carlson’s new novel, Five Skies, brings together three men working together on a project in Idaho as they are working on the impact of major changes in each of their lives. Each man is dealing with grief in one form or another, and thanks to Carlson, readers are able to enjoy the lyrical ways in which the processing of grief plays out. Here’ from the beginning of Chapter 3, pp. 41-45: Five days later, in a scattered cold wind that gusted all day, a dirty yellow road grader cut a first pass through the sage on the gray plateau of the new worksite, the ruined blade just grazing the primordial soil that had pressed there undisturbed since the gorge below was a storm-driven rivulet nosing its way south, hundreds of miles from the sea. The machine was old and used hard, rusted fully at every dent, the pale yellow state-guard paint oxidized everywhere else to a papery white. It too ran in fits, creeping and jerking, as the blade cut and pushed and then found only air for a second before the next bite of hillock or sage or the odd rock. The throaty roar of the vintage diesel was torn into sections like the black knots of exhaust and ripped away in the overcast bellows of the day. Ronnie Panelli drove the grader, sitting in the drafty cab and bouncing as the terrain dictated. He was paying attention. He’d bladed almost to the rocky canyon, inching the big wheels until he was ten feet from the edge and he could see the river glimmering in a string so far below, and then he’d set the blade as he’d been instructed by Arthur Key and powered forward, steering by the stakes they’d set in the dark early day. It was a quarter mile in a straight line to the farm road. The wind was cold, no spring in it at all, no warm strand, and it gusted against the two men watching Panelli’s work. Darwin and Arthur stood by the stacks of lumber, but there was no shelter. They could see Ronnie, chin up, craning to keep each stake in sight as he struggled with the oversize steering wheel. The young man had surprised them both by saying yes when Key asked if he wanted to drive it, blade the runway. The shoulder was sore, but Ronnie could raise his arm and there was color in his cheeks. His bouncing on the cracked leather seat played unevenly on the accelerator and the vehicle jerked and plunged as it shaved the sandy hillocks and tore at the clusters of sage. Key watched, almost smiled, pleased that the kid was okay, and that the road grader, with a fresh oil change and the rusted radiator flushed, now ran without grinding or stalling. The state operator had lined Ronnie up yesterday afternoon: the clutch, the brake, the four gears and the blade angle and elevations. Now Darwin, keeping his hands both in his work jacket pockets, bumped Key with his elbow and nodded toward the tent. “Let’s get a coffee,” he said. “Ronnie will be all right.” The tent was warm, the stove pounding out heat, and Arthur Key threw his jacket on his cot and sat down beside it. The tent was tightly secured, though the sides bellied now, filling and falling with the steady late-winter wind. He pulled his notebook of drawings out of his kit box under the bed frame. Darwin swung the large blue enamel coffeepot over the two tin cups and poured. Arthur could see Darwin’s face closed up; the day for some reason had claimed him. “My wife disliked the wind tremendously.” Darwin, still in his coat, spoke quietly in a voice that Arthur had not heard before. “She grew up in a windy place in Sonora, summer and winter the air moved through their house, even with the doors closed. Her brothers as boys raced little paper boats along the floor. There were few trees in her town and those trees were bent always with the wind.” Darwin put the coffeepot on the edge of the stove and sat on his cot. “At Diff’s ranch in the early spring like this we’d have a full week of wind.” He looked at Arthur and the larger man knew this was Darwin’s news. “She’d get real quiet that week.” Darwin set his cup carefully on the cooling deck of the stove and stepped from the tent. The canvas walls billowed and fell taut and then billowed. It was a comfort to hear the road grader laboring, the work nothing but six levels of engine noise. Arthur Key was not practiced at talking, except for the pragmatic discussions which had always steered and conducted his days. When to meet, what to bring, how to ready and where to start. The inventory and the schedule and the honest appraisal of what had been accomplished. But there was something about him now that needed another talk, needed it, and he knew it was not in his vocabulary. There had been times when he’d exchanged a glance with Darwin that, if it had held, would have led to the first sentence that Arthur Key had ever said. He wanted to tell his story to someone other than himself, and he could not. The tent flap opened again, ripping with the day, and Darwin came back now with a shrug and his changed face, everything brought back to the moment. “This wind,” he said. “Does the weather affect you, Arthur Key?” Arthur Key had been preparing a sentence about Darwin’s wife, a question, and it fled. He drank the milky coffee and said: “I like a good long day. Sometimes in Ohio, certain days in January and February could be short. I didn’t care about the cold, but I was working for the city repairing vehicles, and I didn’t care for it to get dark when I was halfway through something. Most of it was fieldwork, out on the street somewhere. It’d be about noon and we’d see the lights in the houses going on. All that dark.” “Automotive repair,” Darwin said. “These were garbage trucks.” “A garbage truck is a complicated machine.” Key said, “I repaired their hydraulics.” “But now you’ve been in construction.” “That’s right. We build things, structures and mechanical devices.” “The man yesterday said these things were in films.” Outside, the road grader thrummed and sighed, its roar muted in the wind. Arthur felt himself drawn again to the edge of what he wanted to talk about. “Most of the work is for the film companies. Somebody needs part of something in the picture, a fence or a dwelling. We never build a whole house.” “So you build one side.” “One side or a corner. Sometimes just a frame with a tile roof. Even with a barn it was only three sides. Wouldn’t keep a horse in.” “Ohio,” Darwin said. “It’s fine,” Arthur said. “I grew up there. It was green and it was hilly where we lived. Not like this.” “There are hills in Idaho. Mountains, and plenty.” “Oh, I know.” “The main ranch is in a valley south of here. Our house was on a hill there.” Darwin pointed downriver. “How long did you live there?” Now Darwin spoke again with a narrowed voice. “Fifty years.” “Your wife passed away. When was it?” “January,” Darwin said. “And you left that place.” “I did. I have.” “I hope to get down there,” Arthur Key said. “See it, meet your old boss.” In addition to the theme of grief, there’s the development of trust and the impact of loyalty that Carlson explores with great skill. Five Skies is finely written and after finishing it, some readers will want to start again from the beginning to savor every page. Steve Hopkins, September 25, 2007
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	2007 Hopkins and Company, LLC The recommendation rating for this book appeared in the October 2007 issue of Executive Times URL for this review: http://www.hopkinsandcompany.com/Books/Five Skies.htm For Reprint Permission, Contact: Hopkins & Company, LLC • 723 North Kenilworth Avenue • Oak Park, IL 60302 Phone: 708-466-4650 • Fax: 708-386-8687 E-mail: books@hopkinsandcompany.com www.hopkinsandcompany.com