The Rig by Ronald Wilcox

The Rig by Ronald Wilcox

Published by Leisure in 1978

Written review below. Video review here:

Ron Wilcox was born in Holladay Utah in 1934. He attended Brigham Young University and has a master’s degree in arts from Baylor University. He was an actor and a playwright. He wrote four plays and appeared in over sixty. He published one novel, this one, The Rig. He has been a consistent contributor to Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought since the 1960s which featured his poetry. Much of it of a religious nature including an epic poem apptly titled Mormon Epic and Mormon Epic II.

A great white Kenworth was gliding through the desert night. Easing the Roadranger transmission into high thirteen, the man inside lit up a cigarillo, settled in for the long haul.

He seemed sane enough, to himself- a good old boy, a trucker. They don’t make ‘em like that anymore. But something was wrong, terribly wrong. His eyes took on a kind of blankness, cold as the white Bonneville salt flats.

Cold as midnight.

The story starts on Interstate 80 just east of West Wendover Utah. An unnamed trucker is hauling is brand new rig, an acquisition courtesy of his deceased wife’s insurance policy. He sees a VW Bus broken down on the side of the road. He slows down. It’s a woman with a flat tire. Inside the van are her three kids.

The women is relieved to finally see some help out here. She asks the man for help but he only stares. She tells him that her husband is also a trucker and could he maybe radio in and tell him the situation. He ignores her again and pulls a shotgun up the edge of the window. She is now terrified and starts praying. The kids want to know what’s going on. She turns to try and change the tire herself.

Our protagonist, her trucker husband Larry Hatcher, CB handle: True Grit and his friend Axel are at a truck stop an hour down the road. Their rig broke down and they are waiting for mobile mechanic Attila the One to fix it.

Here we get set-up and back story through dialogue. It’s incredibly colorful and completely manly trashy trucker conversation which jumps back and forth from wholesome family talk like Larry’s relationship with his Mormon wife Jean and how he is thinking of converting for the kids and banging lot lizards and truck stop hookers like the one who happens to double as their waitress which his horny friend Axel and some other truckers indeed do take to the storage room and hire her services.

Hey Larry, come join in the fun!

No, no, I can’t. Jean will be here any moment. Plus it would be wrong.

Annnnd… gratuitous gangbang scene on a truck stop waitress hooker. It surprisingly has some detail to it. I had heard Ronald Wilcox was a practicing Mormon when he wrote this so I was really amazed at this graphic and very not-marital sex scene. It gets weirder also. Larry mentally justifies it, pros versus cons, and then dives right in. While he’s pounding away a call comes over on the CB, a pregnant roller-skate has been in a bad accident.

A pregnant roller-skate is trucker lingo for VW Bus. So yes, while cheating on his wife with a prostitute Larry gets the bad news. This thing is skanky already!

Thankfully we don’t get to watch our unnamed antagonist take out Larry’s family. What we do get though is a scene post-murder of our psycho killer; miles away he pulls off the side of the road, puts on an all-black cowboy outfit complete with six shooters, walks out to the pasture and shoots every cow in the field. Then he jerks off. Then he pulls out a knife and cuts off one of the udders. He then hangs it on a hook next to a woman’s severed breast in his frozen meat delivery trailer.

This is a nasty little introduction!

So, what IS the plot here?

After the death of his family Larry is stricken with not only sadness but guilt over what he was doing at the time of their death. He quits working, starts drinking heavily and puts his house up for sale. He doesn’t want to be alive anymore. His buddy Axel tries to talk him into doing a run with him by taking Larry out for some pick-me-up pancakes. A stranger comes and sits at Larry’s table while Axel is in the bathroom. The man says he is a trucker also and wants to join Larry and Axel. No thanks, dork. Stranger insults Axel and leaves.

Our protagonist and antagonist have now met but, number one Larry doesn’t know his family was murdered and number two he has no idea that this looney is the one who did it.

Down the line Larry takes on a job where he has to ride along with this guy who has a name now; Langley. He doesn’t remember him from the pancake house, but he can tell right away that he doesn’t like the guy. Larry assesses him as a wannabe. A poser. He is dressed like he thinks truckers should dress. He overuses trucker lingo. He notices that he is trim and fit probably from lifting weights which in Larry’s mind is for soft men who don’t have that natural masculinity. I’m paraphrasing but daaamnn.

Langley wants nothing more than to be Larry’s best friend. Or just be Larry in general. If you’ve seen the movie The Cable Guy it’s like that but with a serial killer and brutal violence.

This book in general is incredibly suspenseful. The writing is fluid and real, it’s working-class prose and dialogue which means, it’s accessible. Though I am generally the target range audience for this book, it is very specific to truckers. Lots of terminology and culture. In fact, the author almost has a Langley type worship about truckers. He talks about them in the same way people talk about war veterans. Like truckers are hardened soldiers out there on the front lines risking their lives for their country.

But at the same time, there is some very interesting psychological study into the serial killer mind here that predates a lot of the concepts that are now widely known in mainstream culture.

Even though he consciously commits these murders he is also detached. At one point he reads a newspaper article about Larry’s family being killed. He's upset that a fellow trucker whom he considers his brother has been so hurt. Even though, he's the one who did it. Not that he acknowledges that. He decides he's going to find him and help him out. In order to get Larry in a position to need his friendship he takes fiendishly prepared steps, and it works. The Langley character is like an actor playing the part of a regular person. His mind is in two places at once, one taking part in what is happening and the other watching from a distance.

I loved this book so much and though I want to talk about the third act I am just going to leave it completely untouched. The Rig is a book that needs to be re-issued. It’s trashy but clever at the same time. It never slows down or lulls in momentum. This is one of those rare moments where the book is rare and sought after AND it delivers. This is Cape Fear on eighteen wheels drenched in the height of the trucker culture exploitation era of the 70s. It’s filled with brutal violence. It’s a working-class psychological thriller that gives it a noir tone. The every-day-Joe takes on Silence of the Lambs.

My only complaint about this entire novel is the two main characters’ names both starting with the letter L; Larry and Langley. It’s a small gripe and one that doesn’t affect the enjoyment but it will make you stumble every once in awhile and have to reset.