REVIEW 'Train' stays on track for each bad stop

The author establishes a painful pattern for his character.
By STEVEN GOODE
HARTFORD COURANT
"Train," by Pete Dexter (Doubleday, $26)
They should have called this book "Train Wreck."
The title of Pete Dexter's latest dark, disturbing novel contains only the first word, but the second is what this story is all about.
"Train" catches up with Lionel 'Train' Walk, a young black man in post-World War II Southern California.
Train is a caddy, hustling for change at the exclusive Brookline Country Club in Los Angeles in the early 1950s. Each day he goes to work for the chance of making a couple of bucks in tips by dragging rich, white club members' clubs up and down the course for 18 holes of golf.
But in his pitiful world, the chances are just as good that he won't. A sadistic mulatto thug named Sweet decides who gets to carry bags for three hours and a $2 tip. And Sweet is just as likely to leave Train sitting in the smelly, bug-infested caddy shack all day, or beat him senseless for a cross-eyed glance.
It's never good
When he gets on the course at all, Train will probably be on the lousy end of insults, racist remarks and bigotry, especially if some fat, half-drunk club member is having trouble keeping his ball out of the rough.
To top it off, even when he gets home with the meager earnings that he stuffs in his socks as savings for a better future, he must endure his mother's boyfriend, who treats her poorly, belittles him and beats his dog.
Train seems to catch a break when a mystery man named Miller Packard takes a liking to him during a money match against one of the porky-and-soused crowd. Packard, who seems to be either a cop or a crook, embarrasses his opponent by having Train, who has a raw, natural talent for golf, take his place in the game.
Gets bad again
Train enjoys the rare victory, but good things turn bad quickly, as Sweet and an accomplice are killed by police after committing a heinous crime involving a member of the country club. Train and the rest of the caddies are fired and brought downtown for questioning. Things turn even worse as a Los Angeles cop, bent on scaring a confession out of Train, accidentally knocks himself out in the process.
Train takes the opportunity to sneak out of the station and walks home, only to find that the cops have already relieved him of his sock-full of dreams, and Mayflower, his mother's boyfriend, offers him a few bucks to get lost.
He does so, but not before taking some revenge.
Eventually he finds work on a broken-down golf course on the poor side of town and rises to greenskeeper. But by now, Dexter has established a painful pattern and Train is about a step-and-a-half away from another banana peel. This time trouble arrives in the form of Packard, who is a cop after all. Instead of busting Train, he decides to teach him how to play golf properly.
Packard is one twisted individual, who reveals himself early and often as someone attracted to danger and the chance of mayhem. Bringing Train to white golf courses for matches against bigots and mobsters feeds that hunger, and Train seems to have no desire or ability to stop the oncoming locomotive.
In the end
In the end, Packard gets more than he bargained for (or does he?) and Train, unwilling or unable to stop the constant bloodshed, just shrugs things off, as if he knows he's destined for one bad ending after another.
Because of Dexter's ability to put the reader inside the darkest recesses of his characters, it doesn't matter that there won't be a happy ending for anyone.
Just like a train wreck, you have to look anyway.