Victor Sims, “Empire”
Victor is a Vietnam war veteran on a passenger train with his wife Marge, who is recovering from cancer surgery. While she sleeps, he has sex with an attractive stranger who is also a soldier. A dream memory flashback to an earlier time when he cheated on hospitalized Marge with girl who also dallied with a Satan-worshipping biker gang recalls a phone message threatening that Satan now had the right to lay claim to his wife since he had given up his right to her by cheating on her. The story ends on an ambiguous note as he and Marge stare a fire raging across the open plains.
Earl Middleton, “Rock Springs”
Earl is a typical Ford character—a middle-age schlub of a loser aimlessly drifting through life—who decided he has to high-tail it out of Montana in order to get as far away from bad checks catching up with him. He and his girlfriend Edna and his daughter Cheryl are headed for Florida when the stolen Mercedes they are riding in breaks down in Rock Springs, Wyoming. Earl sees nothing but “bad signs” everywhere he looks and this foretelling of bad tidings proves to be not all at misplaced superstition.
Aunt Doris, “Jealous”
Of course, it is not just men who populate the stories of Ford. Most of the men are either in bad marriages or divorced. Women usually have to play the role of the adult in the relationships, but Aunt Doris breaks from that mold a little. This is actually the story of the 17-year-old nephew who has been living with his father and is on his way to visit his mother with Aunt Doris—her sister—along for the ride. Doris is a bit more free-spirted and loosened up than the typical main female character in a Ford story and, of course, this aspect of her personality dooms she and the boy to stumbling into trouble.
Glen Baxter, “Communist”
Glen Baxter is the titular character of this story that is more than a little strange in that Glen does not really seem to act much like a communist and the story is not really about communism, but is rather a coming of age story. But then again, it is a story in which that which is not directly addressed carries much weight. There is irony in the fact that the young narrator embodies much of the 1961-era stereotypes conventionally placed upon communists while Glen seems instead to embody the characteristics of the right-wing western man’s man that is the complete opposite. But that may be the point.
