Summary
Woolly has purchased days-old newspapers while waiting for Duchess, and he reads them on the car ride to find Duchess’s father. Reading one of the articles for defense testing, Woolly is struck by the sight of Manhattan, silent and motionless.
Duchess confronts Fitzy in a bar that he and Duchess’s father frequently habited. At first, Fitzy claims not to know where Mr. Hewett was headed, but then begins apologizing to Duchess for signing the police statement that put him in Salina.
Sally confronts her father about the Watsons’ ranch, which he has bought. She accuses him of purposefully refusing to help Charles Watson with the farm when he was alive, and of encouraging Emmett to leave town for his own selfish ends. When Sally threatens to leave Morgen as well, her father grows angry, lecturing her about the proper place of a young woman. Sally drives off angrily back home, where she notices that the sheriff is waiting.
In New York, Ulysses confirms with Stew that he and the two boys will stay at the camp the following night. Stew is surprised, as Ulysses once swore never to spend two consecutive nights in the same place, but readily agrees.
Duchess and Woolly arrive at Woolly’s sister’s house, which is empty. They are unable to get in, and Duchess drives off with a few duffel bags, promising to return. In his absence, Woolly remembers the key underneath the flower pot, and enters the house, giving himself a tour.
Woolly finds that his room has been cleaned out and prepared for his sister’s unborn baby. He finds his old dictionary in some storage boxes, and is reminded of how he once set the accompanying thesaurus on fire and accidentally triggered an explosion on the football field.
Sarah, Woolly’s sister, comes home and finds him in the house. She apologizes for the empty room, then asks Woolly about his departure from Salina. Woolly accusingly asks after their mother, who is in Italy with her new husband, four years after Woolly’s father died. Duchess mulls over the debt he owes Townhouse, who previously took a beating because of him. The debt is complicated by the fact that Duchess has formerly helped Townhouse out when he was falsely accused of stealing. Duchess arrives at Townhouse’s address in Harlem, where Townhouse is lounging with his group of friends. Referencing the incident that caused Townhouse to get a beating in Salina, Duchess prompts Townhouse to pay him back with three punches. Though initially hesitant, Townhouse is goaded into hitting Duchess, who takes the blows. Afterwards, they shake hands, the debt settled, and Duchess walks off to find his father. He tosses Emmett’s car keys to one of Townhouse’s friends.
After a false start, Emmett manages to find his way to the Statler building, where Duchess's father Mr. Hewett’s agency operates. He is advised by a man with a parrot to present himself as a client looking to hire a performer. The ruse works, and Emmett makes his way to the Sunshine Hotel, where Duchess has checked out earlier that day.
Emmett traces Duchess’s steps to the bar that Fitzy inhabits. He learns that Duchess has gone to Harlem, and is about to leave when Fitzy begins to talk about Duchess’s past. His deceased mother doted on him until she passed away, and his name ‘Duchess’ originated from the names that his father would jokingly call him when drunk, as no one remembered his given name after his mother’s death.
At the camp, Ulysses and Billy are rereading the story of Odysseus from Billy’s book of stories. When pressed for a story of his own, Ulysses tells Billy about a time when he was stranded outside during a tornado in the countryside. Refused shelter by a farmer, Ulysses managed to run for a church, but could run no further than the graveyard. Faced with imminent death, he found a newly dug grave and emptied the coffin of its owner to shelter inside it.
Ulysses’s story is abruptly interrupted by a blow to the head from Pastor John, who has somehow managed to find his way to the camp despite having been thrown off the train. Billy flees, and Pastor John searches for the tin of silver dollars instead, but he is abruptly knocked out by Ulysses, who has regained consciousness. After confirming that Billy is safe, Ulysses leaves to take care of Pastor John and drop him off at the police station.
Duchess comes across Woolly’s sister in the kitchen at night, holding a bottle of pills in her hand. She asks him how he ended up in Salina. Duchess explains that two years ago, when he and his father were living at the Sunshine Hotel together, Duchess discovered the suicide of another tenant that he was close to. Upon reporting the body to his father, Duchess was ordered to go to the lobby. When the police arrived, a neighbor noticed the body was missing a gold watch, which turned up in Duchess’s pocket. Duchess realized his father must have stolen the watch and then planted it on him. Sarah expresses her shock and consternation, and Duchess, in return, stops her from taking her bottle of pills.
Analysis
Duchess’s thorny past unfolds as he tracks down Fitzy FitzWilliams, an old contact of his father’s. While Duchess readily shares glamorous and enthralling stories from his past, he is more tight-lipped about the circumstances that landed him in Salina. It is through Fitzy’s confession that the novel first hints at Duchess’s innocence. In a subverting twist, it turns out to be Duchess who is the lone falsely accused inmate of the boys from Salina. Emmett is brought to the same realization by Sarah, and is forced to reconsider his growing conception of Duchess as a violent, dangerous individual.
Back in Morgen, Sally provides a glimpse of the atmosphere in small-town Nebraska. She strains against the boundaries of acceptable social behavior that her father and the town have drawn for her, and the tense argument she has with her father clinches her decision to leave Morgen. While there is a dearth of female characters in the book, Sally’s short but piercing first-person narration and striking insights make her a strong presence nonetheless.
Woolly arrives at his sister’s place, but is faced by the sight of his unmade room—which is being turned into a room for the new baby. While he is agreeable to the changes and assures Sarah that the new arrangement is fine, he cannot help but fixate on the storage boxes filled with his things. Woolly, who has spent so long feeling out of place amongst his family’s expectations and demands, must reckon with the fact that his favorite sister is also growing distant from him.
Billy and Ulysses face their own danger while Emmett is tracking Duchess’s footsteps. Pastor John, who has managed to follow them all the way to their hidden camp in New York, interrupts a fraught story that Ulysses is telling Billy. Ulysses cements his status as a hero by saving Billy once more and dropping off the false pastor at a police station.
Several key plot points are also foreshadowed in these chapters. Duchess discovers that Sarah, like her brother, also takes “medicine” to help herself, but he confiscates it as a gesture of gratitude, trying to lead her down a better path than Woolly, whose addiction is debilitating at times. While Duchess’s intentions are good—he hopes to stop Sarah from becoming addicted to drugs, as he believes she will be a good mother—he inadvertently gives Woolly the tools to overdose later.
