Near the end of "Radium," John Enger's compelling debut novel, narrator Jim Quinn recalls the story of Unlucky Luke, a farm boy who, during a midnight sprint at a barracks stop en route to military Basic Training, gets out front, trips on a tree root and is subsequently trampled by 50-some recruits who can't see him in the darkness.
Never reaching boot camp, Luke is not technically a soldier and so doesn't qualify for disability. He returns to Radium with crippling back pain and a dead-end job.
"Luke made one big mistake," Jim says. "He tried to be out front. People from Radium ... They have to stay in the middle. They have to be mediocre, or the world crushes them."
It's a perfect metaphor for this episodic, shoot-it-up tale of two brothers from western Minnesota who have nothing to lose, traveling the U.S. stealing cars and robbing liquor stores with a U.S. marshal constantly in their rearview mirror.
The journey starts when Billy Quinn impregnates the daughter of the town hothead who — because he thinks Billy and Jim are trailer trash — has his goons rough up Billy. Billy in turn takes a bottle of grain alcohol to the man's grain elevator, starting a fire that not only destroys the structure but consumes the entire town.
Jim and Billy hit the road, outlaws arising from the fire they created.
They steal a car and make a run for it. Along the way they hot-wire old pickups, rob shady businesses, bunk in abandoned barns, use aliases, discuss God with a preacher they encounter more than once, drink whiskey, steal from a mega-church, and work as lumberjacks.
And always they are loyal to each other — Billy protecting his damaged younger brother; Jim doing anything his brother asks him to do.
