Summary
The next morning, Woolly and Duchess set out for the safe in Woolly’s grandfather’s house upstate. When they arrive, however, Duchess receives a nasty surprise: Woolly has no idea what the combination to the lock is. Laughing hysterically at the irony, Duchess goes to look for safe-breaking tools.
Left alone in the house, Emmett offers to paint the unfinished baby’s room. Sarah readily agrees, and welcomes Emmett, Billy, and Sally to stay another night before leaving tomorrow. She confides in Emmett about Woolly, sharing that she feels her brother has too much kindness in his heart for the world. While she is exasperated by the consequences of both his and her husband’s behavior, she does not have it in herself to fully turn either of them away.
Woolly reminisces on his childhood as he tours his grandfather’s lakehouse. It is an impressive house, full of memories of huge family gatherings and pleasant times. He arrives at a bedroom that he used to sleep in with his cousin as a child, and places the few belongings he’s accrued on his journey beside him. Laying down, Woolly consumes the rest of his medicine and the bottle of pills that he found in Sarah’s spice rack. He then lays down and begins to relive the day he had two days ago, starting with Sarah’s errands at the department store and ending with the circus and Professor Abernathe.
Billy begins to transcribe their journey. He decides the perfect place to start would be Emmett driving home from Salina in the warden’s car, as it is in the middle of their story, or in medias res.
Emmett retrieves his car, which has been repainted and refitted. He gives Townhouse a ride back home, and the two boys talk about their respective plans for the future. Townhouse warns Emmett that two detectives are on Duchess’s trail, and advises him to gain some distance from Duchess.
Afterwards, Emmett meets Billy and Sally in Times Square, where they set out on their journey to California. On the way, Emmett asks Sally about a visit from the sheriff in Morgen. Sally dismisses it, but reluctantly tells Emmett that the sheriff was searching for information about the assailant who hit Jake Snyder’s friend in the head after Jake’s confrontation with Emmett. The injury is evidently serious enough to warrant an investigation. Emmett realizes that the culprit must have been Duchess, and that he needs to go after Duchess if he wants any hope of a clean start.
Billy sneaks into the trunk of Emmett’s car, as he does not want to be separated from Emmett and the story he has to transcribe. Emmett, with some local help, arrives at the lakehouse of Woolly’s grandfather. He finds Woolly’s body upstairs, dead by overdose next to a bottle of pills. He is struck by sadness, and moves on to seek Duchess, whom he finds swinging an ax at the locked safe. Emmett is furious at Duchess’s inattention, and tries to call the police, but the phone is dead. The two boys’ argument, rapidly growing physical, is interrupted by Billy, who appears in the doorway to tell Emmett that there is money in the safe after all.
Duchess strikes Emmett and heads for Billy, snatching him inside the house. He tries to explain himself to Billy, who refuses to hear any of it and runs off, hiding beneath the stairs. Emmett recovers enough to break into the house, and Duchess grabs the hunting rifle.
With a gun pointed at him and his brother, Emmett is frozen, but Billy points out that Duchess cannot read, or he would have known that the hunting rifles do not have firing pins. Emmett successfully knocks Duchess out, and the two brothers open the safe, finding 150,000 dollars — just as Woolly said. In addition to the money, Emmett finds the will that Woolly has left behind, bestowing the money in three equal parts amongst Duchess, Emmett, and Billy. After some deliberation, Emmett takes his and Billy’s share, and leaves Duchess stranded with his portion in the middle of the lake.
Duchess awakens to a predicament: he cannot save both himself and the money. When water begins rushing into the boat, he overbalances in an attempt to save the cash and falls into the lake, drowning to death.
Analysis
The conclusion of ten days’ journeying comes to a dramatic end at the lakehouse of Woolly’s great-grandfather. The grand building leaves a different impression on each of the three boys: Woolly, who is struck by his childhood home and its comforting memories, Duchess, who has a single-minded focus on the safe containing a fortune, and Emmett, who admires the grandness and sympathizes with Woolly’s desire to return home.
Upon returning home, Woolly overdoses and dies, and his actions are undeniably deliberate and intentional. He lays down after preparing the room he chooses, and spends his last moments reminiscing on the perfect, extraordinary, “one-of-a-kind kind of day” he had earlier that week.
Billy transcribes the story of his and Emmett’s journey so far, choosing to start with Emmett driving home from Salina in the warden’s car. This plot device brings the reader back to the beginning of the novel, where the story began as Emmett was being driven home from Salina by the warden. Additionally, this move engages another level of narrative awareness, as the framing implies Billy is possibly the author of the story that the reader is currently reading.
Duchess’s motivations, which have been in doubt the entire novel, are made clear by the predicament that Emmett leaves him in, where he is forced to choose between his own survival or his share of the cash. Even knowing that he is unable to swim, Duchess chooses the money, fruitlessly trying to save it even as the boat overflows.
Emmett’s decision to leave Duchess in that situation is a complicated one; he does not report Duchess to the police or drag him to the station. However, he does endanger Duchess's life by stranding him in the middle of a body of water, fully knowing that Duchess cannot swim. Ultimately Emmett leaves the choice up to Duchess, absolving himself of the responsibility. The last image of Emmett that the story depicts is of his car driving away with Billy and their shares of Woolly’s fortune, leaving Duchess behind in the middle of the lake.
