Summary
Ree sits on a rock and listens to ambient tropical sounds on tape. She thinks until the rock makes her bottom too cold. At home, Ree boils deer bones for soup. She teaches her brothers how to wash their mother’s hair in the kitchen sink, using vinegar as conditioner.
Ree thinks about how, when her dad was in prison, her mother would get dolled up and have sex with men who often beat her afterward. A “no-strings roll in the hay” with a stranger could lead to chipped teeth and cigarette burns on the wrist. The rule while Ree’s father was in prison was to never see the same man for more than three nights.
The morning is clear but cracking cold as Ree walks her brothers to the bus stop. Coyotes howl. Ree gets a ride on the bus into Hawkfall and knocks on a woman’s door. Ree says she is looking for Little Arthur, a friend of her father’s. The woman, named Megan, recognizes her from a party they both attended. With Megan’s help, they walk to Little Arthur’s. He says he doesn’t know where Jessup is, but speculates that maybe he met a girl and went to Memphis.
The narrator comments that in the spring, Little Arthur had been staying up with Ree’s family. He gave her hallucinogenic mushrooms, then had sex with her while she was full of a feeling of love for the gods and the Earth. After leaving with Megan, Ree guesses that someone killed her father and everyone is keeping the secret. Megan tells her to go talk with Thump Milton, a man who terrifies Ree. She insists he’ll have an answer.
Ree goes up the hill to Milton’s, meeting a woman in the yard. The woman is reluctant to send Thump out, saying he doesn’t talk much to women, but Ree convinces her. While waiting in the yard, Ree thinks about how it is common among her people to only have a few male names in use. She wishes she’d argued more strongly for her brothers to have different names, ones that would give them more choices in life rather than ones that decide a man’s fate.
Ree stays out in the yard a long time, but finally accepts that Thump isn’t coming out. The woman says Thump knows the question Ree wants to ask, and he doesn’t want to answer. Before leaving, Ree shouts at the woman, telling her to give Thump a hard time for not honoring the bond of their blood.
Ree gets ice cold on her way home. She seeks refuge in a hillside cave, one of the caves her people once fled to. There is wood for a fire. She removes her cold wet clothes and sets a match to her panties to get the fire started. She pees at the entrance to let animals know she is visiting. The flames warm the rock wall and she sleeps. In the morning, the sun melts ice and she drinks from a stream of falling water. On her walk home, ice is falling everywhere. She cries when she catches herself looking out for her father’s body.
At home, Ree sleeps until her brothers wake her complaining about being hungry. She heats bacon grease and cuts onions and potatoes. Just then Blond Milton, who has employed Jessup as a crank cook on his team, throws the door open and tells Ree that people have been saying she needs to shut up. He pulls her outside and orders her into his truck, saying he has somewhere to show her.
Eventually they come to a burned-out house. He says it’s the last place anyone saw Jessup. Ree insists that he’s known for never blowing up crank labs or cooking bad batches. She wants to investigate, but he tells her to stay away, warning her of the toxic materials. Ree gets out of the truck and has a look at the burned out building, not getting very close before returning.
Ree says little as Blond Milton drives her home. He says he and Sonya can adopt Sonny, and maybe Harold eventually. Ree holds her tongue until they are back at her house. She tells him off and says he must think she’s an idiot, because “there’s horseweed standin’ chin-high inside that place.”
Analysis
Following her visit to Teardrop’s, Ree deals with the routine demands of being the responsible adult in her household, making deer soup, washing her mother’s hair, and bringing her brothers to the school bus. Ignoring her uncle Teardrop’s warning to stay out of the Hawkfall area, Ree makes use of her familiarity with the school-bus driver to hitch a ride into town.
The theme of drug use arises with Ree’s stop at Little Arthur’s. She recalls how this acquaintance of her father’s once brought hallucinogenic mushrooms up to a party in Rathlin Valley. While high, Ree had sex with Little Arthur. It is unclear to what extent Ree, both high and underaged, could give consent to the sex, and to what extent Arthur took advantage of an inebriated teenager who was filled with a feeling of euphoria. Regardless, Ree chose not to disclose what happened to her protective father, knowing for Arthur it would result in injury or death.
Ree’s inquiry at Little Arthur’s leads her to conclude that she will have to speak with Thump Milton, the local crime boss. By now Ree suspects Jessup is dead and no one is telling her the truth. However, her visit to Thump is met with hostility. Ree displays her capacity for enduring pain by waiting out in the cold until Thump comes out to speak with her, but ultimately her defiant spirit doesn’t influence him, and she leaves in frustration. To Ree, it is insulting that Thump and others are choosing secrecy over the responsibility that comes with being blood relatives, however distantly related.
The theme of survivalism arises as Ree makes her way back to Rathlin Valley wearing inadequate clothing and footwear. The worsening cold drives her to seek shelter in a hillside cave, just as her ancestors once did. Calmly, Ree strips off her wet clothes and lights a fire using the dry cloth of her underpants as starter fuel, knowing the risk of hypothermia. In a rare break in her unwavering composure, Ree cries when she catches herself looking out for her father’s dead body in the snow.
The next day, Blond Milton tells Ree that Jessup died in a meth lab fire. As proof, he brings her to the site of a burned-out building, explaining that it was the last place anyone saw him. But in an instance of situational irony, Ree inspects the burnt building and immediately notices the chin-high weeds that have grown up through the open foundations. Because of this, Ree can be sure the place burned down months before her father disappeared. Blond Milton’s failure only confirms her suspicion that people are covering up the truth about Jessup.
