Bunions in the Bayous

HACKBERRY CAVALIER--George Sessions Perry--Viking ($2.50).

In Hackberry, Tex., the men run so fast barefoot that when they turn a flinty corner they fill the night with sparks. The old shotgun feuds keep going and the rattle of musketry at dawn is just "my folks and his'n . . . exchangin' good mornin's acrost the river." Oldest Inhabitant Grandpappy Sears dresses comfortably in nothing but cowboy boots and a suit of heavy underwear. He likes to eat in Gus Popupolis' restaurant, whose sign reads: WHERE GREEK FEEDS GREEK. Hackberry has annual huntin', shootin' and bird-dog competitions. When there's a wood-cutting contest the Hackberry Courier likes to announce that "Mr. Polecat Crittenton . . . offers to chop his fiancee against any entrants. . . ." The people of Hackberry are shrewd, but reasonable :

"What had you planned to ask for [the plow], Miss Edna?"

"Oh, I reckon 'bout thirty or forty dollars."

"But you can get a new one out of the catalogue for eight-fifty."

"I'm tired o' this hagglin' over pennies. Gimme a dollar an' take the plow."

Author George Sessions Perry has served a dish of Hackberries before in a moving, serious novel called Hold Autumn in Your Hand. Hackberry Cavalier is more of a side dish--17 rollicking, frivolous stories (mostly reprinted from the Satevepost and other magazines) crammed with action and built around romance as soft as a two-minute egg. Readers who like their romance that way will like Author Perry's staggering galaxy of buxom, cherry-cheeked girls:

With lips as red as a sugar beet With arms as white as a 'Muda onion, I'll follow her until my feet Are naught but corns and flaming bunions.

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