Part X - The Gospel According to Joe: Meditations on Joe Pug's Sketch of a Promised Departure

9. No Place a Good Man Can Hide

This penultimate track, with the last lyrics on the album, is the quintessence of a Joe Pug song: it’s concise, beguiling, capable of bearing close attention, and it makes masterful use of the lyrical refrain. Musically and tonally, it represents a slight development for Pug and makes me think he’s been listening to Warren Zevon–the instrumental chorus (featuring what I’ve heard Gospel musicians call “hits”) sounds like it was written on a piano. The lyrical punchlines are almost cynical, and while they are funny, they remain profound. As the narrative climax of the album, it concludes the adventures of the Christ figure. Possibly. Here, however, none of Jesus’ virtues appear: the scapegoat comes off as a feckless victim caught in a rum game.

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The first verse is perhaps the most enigmatic on the album. Without context, it would be impossible to discern any connected meaning. Resuming the second person perspective, Pug sings:

It’s five after midnight and the sun is still setting

On girls in white dresses not meant for weddings

And there stands your daughter with both eyes upon you

You stand up and walk to her side

There’s no place a good man can hide.

The riddling mode is present from the first line–a description of setting and circumstance that makes no obvious sense. At that time of day, I suppose there’s a time of year in Alaska when the sun’s literally still out–though there’s no reason to suppose we’re that far north. But the sun is setting on girls whose attire is characterized as white and only further modified by negation. In case you’re thinking they’re a collective of brides (I’m pretty sure bridesmaids never wear white), they’re not. Old school nurses wore white I suppose, but other than that I can’t think of any female assemblies with uniforms of that color. The character sees his daughter among them; she’s watching him–as if to see what he’ll do. Because he stands up, we can guess he’d been sitting. He joins her in a gesture of…?–solidarity is the only supposable significance for me. The refrain comments on this event, “There’s no place a good man can hide,” and if music can indeed comment, the rueful, poignant, possibly mocking arrangement of harmonica, keys, organ, electric guitar, climbing bass, and cathartic drums chime the terrible pity of this circumstance. 

If you’ve read this far, you can guess I catch a whiff of symbolism here and that I’m going to root around. Nothing works perfectly and I wouldn’t be surprised if Pug would demur and say something like it’s just rhythm, meter, imagery, tone. 

Well, whatever. That's how he should answer. But even if it's just reverse psychology or something, I'll take the suggestion.

I'm going for it. But before I do–as an example of the kind of unmoored reader-response interpretation I reject, consider the following. A stoned highschooler says to his friend, “The girls in white dresses are Klu Klux Klanswomen. The sun has not set on their nocturnal assembly because the light of burning crosses lights up the surround like a vernal Alaska midnight. The man who joins his daughter in their ranks gets prosecuted and pursued because he’s a white supremacist and eventually commits some crime in the name of racism. The lieutenant torturing him is actually a good guy, a Yankee law enforcer reinforcing the fact that the North gets to write history. Or, the lieutenant is a bad guy” (remember, I’m speaking foolishly) “because the speaker’s a white supremacist who doesn’t like the destruction of Robert E. Lee statues, and the protagonist in the story is a tragic hero, a lost cause Rebel, one of the last to wage the hopeless war.” Hits joint.

There may be little reason to favor my actual reading over that parodic one–other than context. And the context is an album structured on the Passion Week with explicit references to Scripture and the life of Christ written and recorded by Joe Pug.

But we have to wonder if this “good man” is really all that good. To me, he also resembles figures less noble than Jesus. So back to genuine exegesis.

Even the syntax in the phrase “girls in white dresses not meant for weddings” resembles the language of riddle. I am not proud to admit I’ve been stumped by a riddle or two in my life. In fact, I was stumped by this one, and I did not come up with the interpretation I propose. My friend Ryan Reese did. However, I will try to justify his hypothesis with a train of logic. Here’s what we’ve got. It’s twelve after midnight and the sun is still setting, which means this is a highly unusual night. The ordinary course of things has been interrupted. The dresses are white, which would ordinarily make you think of wedding dresses–a fact betrayed by the narrator’s care to tell you they’re not for weddings. And since they’re not meant for weddings, these girls aren’t brides. That suggests that these girls won’t be involved in the sorts of activities that brides are involved in shortly after weddings. Thus, a group of girls is up late on a highly unusual occasion, there’s light out, and they’re wearing white, although they’re not getting married and aren’t about to consummate any marriages. 

I haven’t heard a better hypothesis than Ryan’s, which is that these girls in white dresses are meant to evoke Christ’s parable of the ten virgins waiting for the bridegroom (Matthew 25). Pug’s girls are wearing white because they are virgins (cf. Roman Vestal virgins), and while they are sort of waiting for someone involved in a wedding, they are not brides. The sun is still setting after midnight because the ordinary course of things has been suspended. The implications are apocalyptic: Christ’s parable is about his eventual return and hence about the end of the world. There are actually two sets of virgins in the parable: one set brings extra oil for their lamps, and when the bridegroom delays, they don’t have to go buy more oil with the foolish virgins whose lamps burn out. The wise virgins are believers who keep the faith, who stay awake and wait for the second coming. The foolish virgins are ones who think they want to wait for Christ, but don’t truly have faith–they run out of oil and their trip to Walmart makes them miss the bridegroom’s arrival. They’re like seed scattered on rocky soil, who have no root in themselves (Mark 4:17). In short, these girls in white dresses are Christians waiting for the Bridegroom.

I know. It doesn’t work perfectly. It’s a stretch to say these dresses not meant for weddings are meant for a wedding. But it actually works with the riddling construction as a bit of a paradox. And in the end, the verse isn’t about the girls in white dresses. It’s about the man whose daughter stands down there among them. He “stand[s] up and walk[s] to her side.” To my mind, this indicates that his daughter is a believer who regards her dad intently and wants him to take his place as one waiting for the Bridegroom. The refrain’s rum remark on this decision is that “there’s no place a good man can hide.” I read this as an ironic commentary on the convert’s ultimate inability to resist God’s call–the inability to fly the hound of heaven. The “good man,” somewhat reluctantly, stands up and joins the flock.

Even if these are a series of original images, they are archetypal and bound to suggest– along with other meanings–what they suggest to a denizen of western civilization such as myself.

No strict connection between the first verse and the second verse presents itself. All we have is sequence and juxtaposition. But the second verse presents a “good man” who is subjected to torture by the police. The narrative flows chronologically backwards, which makes for a trio of punchlines. On the first listen, the opening line sounds like it’s coming from the narrator’s mouth: “History is perfect and written by the winners.” This comes off a bit droll, and however cynical it is, the second half of the predicate has the ring of truth. But then the second line reveals that this is said by “the lieutenant…as he breaks all your fingers.” If this isn’t gallows humor, I don’t know what is. It’s dark, but taken with the tone of the music and the periodic syntax, it’s also funny. A wry, downhearted blues riff replies to this sad news, and then we learn that the good man had “fled prosecution but they found [him] in Houston” and told him “to reach for the sky.” The commentary, “There’s no place a good man can hide,” is now the bitter reflection that a decent guy can’t escape the law and its enforcers. Anyone can be forgiven for wondering if this “good man” is, after all, really all that good. Granted the less than legal treatment of this arrested fugitive, though, we need not side with the lieutenant.

Pug’s delivery of the line about history and the accompanying torture is brilliant. If history were perfect, it couldn't very well be written by the winners, particularly if the winners are men like the lieutenant who torture weaker men or drag them through the street. If history were perfect, it would be an accurate representation of historical reality. The idea about winners writing it is that the winners flatter themselves, whitewash their own behavior, and malign their defeated enemies. History in this sense is a lie. 

In light of this, why wouldn’t it be possible to write truthful history? Incidentally, the canonical Gospels’ apparent status as truthful history is one of the reasons thinkers like Rene Girard and C.S. Lewis converted. Look into the historicity of the New Testament from the perspective of believing scholars. You might be surprised. Even skeptics admit that the number and quality of ancient documents we have for the Gospels are better than what we have for Homer or even Shakespeare. People contest the dates–and you can of course find whatever account of the matter you want (someone’s lying about history, after all)–but we have to confront the facts.

The deftly painted scene with the lieutenant reminds me of one in All the Pretty Horses. John Grady Cole finds himself in an office with a Mexican police captain who has been about as faithful to any transcendent conception of justice as Lord Byron was to his wife. The captain has arrested John Grady and his friends on scant evidence. He eventually goes so far as to shoot a boy on suspicion of stealing a horse and for trying to get it back. The captain wants John Grady to go along with his version of recent events: “We can make truth here. Or we can lose it. But when you leave here it will be too late. Too late for truth. Then you will be in the hands of other parties. Who can say what truth will be then?” (168). Needless to say, neither McCarthy’s captain nor Pug’s lieutenant are men who believe what is good will never change. John Grady’s response is, to me, spine-shiveringly heroic: “There ain’t but one truth, said John Grady. The truth is what happened. It ain’t what come out of somebody’s mouth.” I’m not too sure about historians these days, but I’m pretty sure most philosophers don’t see things this way. I’m not even sure Cormac McCarthy saw it this way. Philosophers are more likely to agree with another authority figure who once questioned an innocent prisoner. When Pilate asked Jesus if he was a king, he replied that indeed he was and that he came into the world to testify to the truth. He added, “Everyone who is of the truth hears My voice” (John 18:37-38). The lieutenant, the captain, and “the powers that be” have the epistemology implied by Pilate’s cynical response–“What is truth?” They’re all apparatchiks of the cold machine.

The parallels between verse two and the Gospel emerge fairly clearly, but there’s an evident discrepancy in the third line. Though Jesus did avoid forcing the moment to its crisis for a time, he did not “flee prosecution”–much less did he get caught in Houston. When the time came, He said, “Not my will but Thine be done” and sang the song he didn’t want to sing. Pug’s version of the arrest evokes modern and western American tropes. The fugitive gets caught in Houston like any hero in a newspaper article beginning with the words “Florida man.”  The phrase “fled prosecution” calls forth similar characters, and “reach for the sky,” a western film cliche, further cements the song’s sardonic tone. By the end of the verse, the refrain has a darker ironic tinge: “There’s no place a good man can hide.”

In the tag before the final chorus, we hear our last about the good man. He’s subjected to public mockery, perhaps national in scale: “They printed your name as a joke on the paper’s front pages this Fourth of July.” This joke echoes the Roman soldier’s mockery of Christ’s claims to be king. The torturers give him a purple robe, a reed for a scepter, a crown of thorns; and of course, above him on the cross, Pilate posts “King of the Jews.” Pug’s reference to Independence Day connotes American politics and, since the scope of the publicity is so broad (“the papers’ front pages”), American politicians. Again, I can’t help thinking of headlines regarding certain widely mocked politicians who are undergoing prosecution (though they haven’t fled, they are resisting). Come to think of it, one of the politicians I’m thinking of has a well known beef with mainstream news media. But the hero of this album is also an artist, a folksinger, and maybe an everyman. And the second person pronoun makes every listener in the audience the subject of the song. The message then, to Donald Trump, to Pug himself, his artistic peers, and to the average American on the streets, is–there’s no place a good man can hide.

For me, the title is a reversal of the Flannery O’Connor story, “A Good Man Is Hard to Find.” Granted the story’s contents, “A Good Man Is Hard to Find” is an ironic understatement equivalent to “There Are No Good Men.” There's the doctrine of Original Sin again. We’re all sons of Adam and daughters of Eve. I’m not saying Pug’s message is the same as O’Connor’s–in fact, Pug’s song could be renamed, “A Good Man Is Not Hard to Find.” But I do think we’re meant to question the moral status of this song’s hero. Christ was the only perfectly good man. We could find plenty of people who wouldn’t say D.T. is a good man. And nothing in Pug’s oeuvre–not even on this album–suggests to me he thinks of himself as a straightforwardly good man. Timely and tactful, this song demonstrates that Joe Pug doesn't have a messiah-complex–he doens't literally think of himself as Jesus. The proverbial judgment, “There’s no place a good man can hide,” then, lands as a reminder: if you think you’re good, deserving of roses at your feet, undeserving of the fate you’ll someday meet–better think again. There was maybe only one guy ever who was good. And look what happened to Him.

McCarthy, Cormac. All the Pretty Horses. Vintage, p. 169. 1993.

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