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2014
NORTH CAROLINA L I T E R A R Y RE V I E W
Peter Makuck’s third short story collection, Allegiance and Betrayal, includes some of his most impressive writing to date. A poet and a short story writer, Connecticut native Makuck has lived most of his adult life in North Carolina, and his oeuvre bears the imprint of the Eastern North Carolina coast and landscape as well as small-town New England. Like Lee’s Bobcat, Makuck’s collection shows his characters at transitional points in their lives. Allegiance and Betrayal is perfectly titled, as the characters here find themselves in a state of flux. Staying “true” to established or expected behaviors constitutes “real” character; to stray from the comfortable would be a betrayal.
However, many of Makuck’s narrators find themselves in the ironic position of coming to the realization that their allegiance or steadfastness was ill-placed. The growth they experience stems from their acceptance of their own need to change and their dawning acceptance of their own limitations. These might be the men Emerson spoke to in “SelfReliance” whom he chastened for “a foolish consistency.” In particular, some of the conflicts Makuck explores in this collection are the characters’ own images of what masculinity constitutes. Very often, his male characters try to live up to memories of their fathers and uncles who seemed to project a buoyant and even-tempered image, never moody or uncertain as the sons/ nephews very often find themselves feeling. In “A Perfect Time,” one man struggles with his own fear of failing to live up to family expectations. Hank, the story’s protagonist, finds himself in a role he’s not quite comfortable with: the man who fills the part of the capable outdoorsman who takes the family boating and fishing. Looking at an old photograph, he sees the confidence he feels other men in his family wore so easily: “Arms around each other, always a beer bottle in hand, squinting, laughing, they seemed to be having a perfect time” (118). After an embarrassing boat-launching mishap, he is reluctant to take his nephew fishing, but duty gets the best of him, and after a successful day of fishing with the boy, “Hank felt alive all over” (132).
Makuck’s characters are active: they fix cars, tinker with plumbing, dive shipwrecks and deep-sea fish. Wendell in “Diving the Wreck” is like other Makuck characters from Allegiance and Betrayal, photograph by ed dombrofski; courtesy of peter makuck
was regarding Abraham and Issac. But who can bear it? . . . But the Bible is clear; children will have a destiny, and they will have a mountain, and all you can do is accompany them with the terrible knowledge of all the difficulties they will encounter” (153–54). This passage illustrates the strengths of this collection – intellectual and companionable narrators who care deeply about the people in their lives and who draw strength from nature, the Bible, literature, and people to make their way in the world. Readers will care for these characters and will find themselves identifying with their strengths as well as their flaws. Lee’s female characters in particular call to mind original voices such as Jane Austen’s Elizabeth Bennett or Marilynne Robinson’s Ruth Foster.
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dissatisfied with where he is in his life. Defensive about the choices he’s made earlier in life and overqualified for his housecleaning job, Wendell resents a visit from old friends Kevin and Yvonne, whose lives have followed the more usual trajectory of family life and stable employment. Taking his friends on a borrowed boat to dive around a wreck promises a chance to show that his life has substance. But after an unpredictable episode in the water, Wendell begins to rethink whether he’s been too cautious in his recent choices – a defense mechanism, perhaps, to counteract careless behavior when he was younger, which these friends witnessed years ago. In tight prose, Makuck above Peter Makuck reading at Saint
Francis by the Sea, Emerald Isle, NC, 1 Dec. 2012