DTM_Summer'26_Flattened - Flipbook - Page 16
Finally published in 1973, it was probably the most
difficult of Elmer’s books to write and to sell. Elmer
reworked it at least three times. It wasn’t strictly a
Western, but the themes it dealt
with—government encroachment, race and class
relations, change and modernization—were issues
that affected ranchers, generally rigid
individualists, in ways that felt particularly
grievous. Still, these are incorporeal forces, much
like the weather which is the nexus of the
tribulations besetting the novel’s characters—and
how do you sell a novel that’s about weather? Well,
Elmer did, primarily because his protagonist,
Charlie Flagg, is a character built from the flesh
and sweat and blood of ranchers like his father that
Elmer had spent his life around, seven of those in a
time of unprecedented, punishing drought.
Charlie Flagg is a reimagined Sisyphus; each day
he must push his burden until day’s end, only to
begin again with each daybreak. For Charlie, the
means by which he might diminish his burdens
means diminishment of himself. Charlie struggles
for some remnant of autonomy in a world where
the individual is increasingly regulated,
documented, curtailed and taxed, while he tries to
protect the land, more fragile than the wholesale
recklessness of corporate management would
credit. For Charlie and men like him, land is the
only thing that lasts, and he meant to leave it better
than he found it. So no, Charlie would not “take
charity and give it a sweeter name;” he would rise
again each morning, stretch his aching back and
he would push. He would push so that his life and
his land remained his own.
Cover Art from The Time It Never Rained.
Source: The Time It Never Rained–Elmer Kelton
Sisyphus, oil on canvas painting by Titian.
Source: Wikimedia Commons
Can we imagine Charlie Flagg happy, as we must
with Sisyphus? Yes, for as his dedication indicates,
Elmer wanted to honor “the old-time Western
ranchman, whose life style gave him an inkling of
Heaven, and more than his proper portion of Hell.”
Men like Charlie found an inkling of heaven in the
glorious sunset, when the workday is done; an
inkling of heaven in the blushing promise of a new
day; in the little pleasures of the day and in the
sweet relief of slumber—these are as much of
happiness as such a man—any man— might
expect. In the last chapter, another ruinous event
befalls the Flaggs, taken from the real-life
experience of a friend. And yet, Elmer leaves
Charlie with that inkling of heaven—a loving,
constant wife and a son finally growing into an
honorable man. One senses Elmer wishes to offer
that same bit of heaven to his readers, if they will
only look and see it.
