Eli Cranor, “Don’t Know Tough”

Powerful. Heavy. Dry.

Don’t Know Tough sets a cool tone. That cool vibe never wavers. When the drama builds—and there’s plenty of it—the prose keeps a steady beat. That’s a style thing to notice and not a comment on the story itself, but Eli Cranor’s calm execution pulled me along in that matter-of-fact mode that generated veracity like a brick layer building an impenetrable wall one slap of mortar at a time.

Cranor alternates third-person point of view with first. The first-person chapters are told from the perspective of Billy Lowe. Billy is a high school kid in Denton, Arkansas. A senior. He’s not a happy kid. He’s got issues. For good reason. Cranor gives Billy a voice that’s clipped, rough, and blunt. It’s missing prepositions and conjunctions.

“Still feel the burn on my neck. Told coach it was ringworm this morning when he picked me up, but it ain’t. It a cigarette, or at least what a lit cigarette do when it’s stuck in your neck. Just stared at Him when He did it. No way I’m gonna let Him see me hurt. No way. Bit a hole through the side of my cheek, swallowed blood and just stared at him. Tasted blood all day.”

The voice takes some getting used to. Soon, the rhythms kick in. Rhythms and character. You get to a point where you feel like you want to climb into the story and do what you can to relieve all the pressure and pain coming down on Billy Lowe. The capital H “He” and “Him” in that section above is Travis Rodney, who lives in the same trailer as Billy and “Momma.” He’s not Billy’s daddy. “He got a bottle of NyQuil in His hand. Drink NyQuil most of the time, save His whiskey up. He pull from the bottle and wipe His mouth with the back of His sleeve.”

To make it worse, Billy lives in the shadow of his older brother. Ricky holds most of the high school records for touchdowns. And tackles.

Billy takes out his anger about cigarette burns and abuse on a sophomore linebacker during practice. The boy is from a prominent family, but Billy doesn’t care. “The boy a poser. He don’t know tough. Don’t know nothing.”

The vicious hit puts Billy’s playing time in jeopardy. He might miss Senior Night and he might miss hearing his name being called and the whole town cheering for him at high school, “the only good looking building in the whole damn town.” The Denton Pirates have dreams of going deep in the playoffs. They need Billy. But the hit was so hard the principal is half-tempted to call the cops.

The third-person sections mostly feature Trent Powers, the fresh new coach from California. He considers Billy Lowe “a sawed-off white boy with tree trunk thighs … a pit bull.” Trent thinks: “Arkansas hills produces crazy like the Earth’s mantle produces diamonds: enough heat and pressure to make all things hard.”

Billy’s predicament over the appropriate punishment for the on-field roughness prompts one cascading series of action. Trent’s arrival triggers another raft of conflicts and the novel’s stewing brew of disruption and danger.

Trent comes with plans. He thinks football is a tool to teach boys “how to be better husbands and fathers—better men.” And Trent believes this is “all part of God’s plan.” Gulp. The coach wants to save Billy Lowe just as a coach once saved him. And Trent doesn’t believe in a passive approach when it comes to praying or religion. A cross on an office wall isn’t enough. Trent prays with his eyes open.

Readers are well advised to pay attention to every single character Cranor puts in this well-populated story. Cranor plays fair. Close reading will be rewarded but you might find yourself scrambling back at the end and say to yourself, “I should have seen it.” Sure, Don’t Know Tough is crime fiction but fiction first, crime and mystery second.

All the effort to help Billy Lowe succeed feels legit. Trent Powers isn’t the only one with a plan for Billy, but the stakes are higher because Trent can’t afford to lose—again. He needs Billy on the field. (Despite all the football context, by the way, there’s very little football in Don’t Know Tough; the sport is Denton’s water and blood. And, smartly, when the “dismal tide” rises, the climactic scene takes place in a dark cave, not on the gridiron.)

Don’t Know Tough is a novel about expectations, legacies, reputations, rituals, religion, and culture and their impact on community, team, tribe, and family. 

Winning is the thing—and that applies both to football teams and all the ways in which families find to keep score.

Read Don’t Know Tough. It’s quite a ride.