Now Is Not the Time to Panic by Kevin Wilson

Published by Ecco on November 8, 2022

The nature and consequences of art are the focal points of Now Is Not the Time to Panic. An act of artistic creation changes lives, including the life of its creators.

Frances Budge, known to all as Frankie, is a wife and mother when she tells the story of the summer she met Benjamin Ezekiel Brown, known for the summer as Zeke. Frankie was sixteen, living in Coalfield with her mother and hell-raising triplet brothers. Zeke’s mother moved from Memphis to Coalfield to stay with Zeke’s grandmother after his father took up with another woman. Frankie and Zeke bonded over their status as the children of cheaters and their interest in artistic expression. Frankie wanted to be a writer. Zeke liked to draw and planned to go to art school.

Frankie tells the story to the reader because Mazzie Brower, an art critic, has discovered the role that Frankie played in the Coalfield Panic of 1996. Mazzie has only uncovered part of the story but she plans to write what she knows. Frankie will need to decide how much of the full story she is willing to reveal to a national audience.

Frankie and Zeke decided to spend the summer making art. Frankie remembered a copy machine that her brothers stole and stashed in their garage. The two teens decided to make and distribute a letter-size poster. Frankie wrote two sentences: The edge is a shantytown filled with gold seekers. We are fugitives, and the law is skinny with hunger for us. Zeke added drawings of shacks with collapsing roofs and beds occupied by children in twisted sheets. Two giant hands with withered fingers almost grasp the children but the hands are suspended in motion, never quite able to touch them. Frankie and Zeke each contributed drops of blood to the poster, drops that looked like stars when the poster was copied. They made hundreds of copies and surreptitiously hung them on walls, telephone poles, and bulletin boards. They vowed to keep their roles as creators a secret. They wanted to observe the public reaction, if any, to their art without sullying the reaction by revealing themselves.

Frankie had no idea what the sentence meant when she wrote it. Zeke didn’t know what the drawing meant. True art, the novel suggests, comes from the heart or soul, not just from the mind. That’s why it doesn’t always turn out to be what the artist envisioned.

The story also suggests that what art means to the artist may be less significant than what it means to its audience. A local reporter, who happens to be dating Frankie’s mother, believes the posters are nefarious. His reporting is fueled by a preacher who imagines the posters originated with a satanic cult. Within a few weeks, the mysterious posters have gained national attention. Kids in other cities are making and hanging their own versions of the posters. As they do when they recognize something that speaks to them, people arrive at interpretations of the words and art that are relevant to their own lives, interpretations that never consciously occurred to Frankie or Zeke.

Events get out of hand in Coalfield when a couple of kids who were screwing in the woods claim they were kidnapped by the satanic cult to explain why they didn’t come home. Fat old men get beered up and patrol the streets with guns. Tragedies ensue on a couple of fronts, leading to national headlines about the Coalfield Panic. Frankie and Zeke feel vaguely responsible for the unintended consequences of their art, although Zeke is mostly worried about going to jail.

Apart from its commentary on the unexpected forces that art can unleash, Now Is Not the Time to Panic is remarkable for its insightful portrayal of two lost kids, each damaged by a cheating father, who are drawn to each other yet terrified of the prospect of having sex. They can kiss for hours, but they channel their sexual energy into art. “We’d kissed and our prudish brains couldn’t handle it, so we invented some mantra that would unlock the mysteries of the universe.”  Zeke shows signs of a manic-depressive disorder. Frankie has a fear of intimacy, yet her larger fear is that she’ll lose Zeke when the summer ends.

Frankie and Zeke have the kind of relationship that cannot last but is perfect for its moment, a relationship that can never be forgotten, that defines part of the life that follows. As they are making the poster, Frankie has the sense that she “would trace my whole life back to this moment, my finger bleeding, this boy’s beautiful and messed-up mouth on mine, a work of art between us. I knew it would probably fuck me up. And that was fine.” Near the novel’s end, as Frankie thinks about speaking to Mazzie Brower, we learn how the poster has affected the next decades of Frankie’s and Zeke’s lives.

Kevin Wilson tells the story in understated prose that is perfect for a novel that undersells its drama. Wilson proves that prose doesn’t need to be flashy and a story doesn’t need to be histrionic to be spellbinding. In a series of carefully crafted scenes during a single summer and a few additional days in the present, Wilson delivers more intensity and insight than most writers manage with twice as many words.

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