Summary
Chapter 7 begins with Frank back in his father’s room at the boarding house. Eldon sits at the edge of the bed, half-dressed and smoking. The prostitute Deirdre sits beside Eldon. Frank asks Eldon how he knows he is dying, and Eldon responds that his liver is failing from all the drinking. Eldon reaches for the bottle once more, and Deirdre inspects Frank through her drunken gaze, licking her lips. Frank asks Deirdre if she knows what his father’s asking for—to be buried in the bush—and if she’s okay with it. Deirdre responds “He’s an Indian.” Deirdre explains that everyone has a right to die the way they want to, and takes another sip from the bottle. Frank storms out of the room, overwhelmed by the desire for escape, then curses, and heads back to the room. By way of agreeing to make the journey, Frank tells Eldon that he’ll need supplies for the trip. Eldon gives him money for supplies and more bottles of alcohol, and Frank goes to retrieve his horse.
As the two journey out of town, the townspeople openly stare at them. The attention makes Frank uncomfortable and ashamed, as though everyone in town knows the nature of their journey. Eldon rides the mare sloppily, and Frank tells him “to sit the damn horse.” The two travel down the dim trail out of town. Overlooking the mountains and town, Eldon comments that he’s lived in the town for a long time, and that when you get to know a place, it hangs on to you. Frank struggles to understand how such a dilapidated town could mean anything to a person. Eldon takes a sip from the bottle, and Frank tells him to go easy on the booze. They continue on without speaking, and by late afternoon they make camp. As Frank makes a fire, sets up two fishing lines for dinner, and prepares the fish he catches, Eldon asks Frank where he learned all his skills. Frank replies “what the old man didn’t teach I taught myself.”
Eldon replies that he’s never learned about the land the way Frank has. Eldon tells Frank that he lived in a tent for most of the time he was a child, and that everyone worked as soon as they were able. Eldon scavenged for firewood, busted it up by hand, and sold it to the “Indians” and “half-breeds” in the Peace Country. Eldon tells Frank that Frank’s grandparents, Eldon’s parents, were of mixed descent: Ojibway and Scottish. Neither the Indigenous people nor white people wanted them around, and so Frank’s grandparents survived through following what work they could find. Eldon says that “Indian stuff just kinda got left behind on accounta we were busy gettin’ by in that world,” meaning the white world. Eldon tells Frank he owes him, and Frank replies “I heard that before.” As Eldon falls asleep, Frank looks at his father and thinks of what histories are etched in his father, of the stories Eldon holds within him. Frank scavenges for wood, and making his way back to camp he realizes that he bears more than wood in his arms.
Chapter 8 takes place in the past, and is largely a description of Frank’s memories of Eldon as he grew up. The first time Frank sees Eldon is when he is 5 or 6 years old. Eldon and the old man are in the barn. Something has been eating the chickens, and Eldon asks the old man if it’s varmints. The two venture into the house, and Frank finds Eldon sitting in the kitchen, pouring whiskey into mugs. The old man asks Eldon about a job, telling Eldon that if he gets four seasonal jobs he’ll be employed the whole year. The old man and Eldon argue about Eldon’s ability to get a job, his drinking habits, and his cussing.
The old man begins dinner and Eldon secretively pours himself more whiskey. Frank catches Eldon looking at him now and again. After Eldon leaves, Frank asks the old man who Eldon is. The old man replies “someone I known years ago.” When Frank remarks that Eldon smelt funny, the old man replies that Eldon’s been “rinsed through” with whiskey to keep “varmints” away. The old man says “whiskey keeps things away that some people don’t want around neither. Like dreams, recollections, wishes, other people sometimes.” Frank remarks that Eldon seems sad. By the time Frank and the old man finish the chores, all that remains of Eldon is the smell of old booze, stale tobacco, and bills of money in a glass jar.
The next time Frank sees his father is almost a year later. Frank approaches the barn and hears shouting, and when Frank arrives at the barn he can see that both Eldon and the old man are out of breath. It seems to Frank that the two have been in a physical altercation, and Eldon says to the old man “tell him.” The old man replies “not my place to tell him. It’s yours.” Eldon appears broken; he is unshaven, and takes a long drink from the flask in his pocket. The old man puts an arm around Frank, and Frank becomes wary at the sudden weight of the moment. Eldon says to Frank “I’m your pap.” Frank doesn’t understand at first. Frank asks the old man if it’s true, then asks Eldon if he’s telling the truth. Eldon replies “truest thing I ever said.” Frank looks to the old man and says “I thought you were my dad.” The old man replies “I’m raisin’ you. Teachin’ you. There’s a diff’rence.” The old man goes on to say “But I love you. That’s a straight fact.”
Frank asks Eldon why he decided to tell Frank, saying to Eldon “I don’t even know you.” Eldon says that’s why he told Frank, because the two don’t know each other. Eldon admits that he doesn’t know why he came, nor why he felt the need to tell Frank, but that something inside of him compelled him to. Eldon looks to the ground, appearing trapped by his words, and traces his boot back and forth on the floor of the barn. Eldon finally says “I gotta think on this,” and that he needs to go. The old man tells Eldon that he can’t go anywhere now without the truth following him, and that now Eldon owes Frank seven years of lost time. The old man says that while Eldon can’t change the past, Eldon can make up for it in the coming years by getting clean and being present in Frank’s life. Eldon fidgets, takes his flask out once more, and apologizes to both of them, saying “I shoulda thought this through.” Eldon leaves, and Frank asks the old man about his mother. The old man replies that it’s Eldon that owes that truth to Frank, not the old man.
Chapter 9 returns to the present day, where Eldon is feverish because of his liver failure. It is morning, and Frank cooks three trout that he caught overnight. Frank disassembles the camp and leaves the boughs in the woods, out of respect and the importance of returning things to the way they were found. Eldon struggles to sit the horse, informing Frank that “Ojibways weren’t horse Injuns.” Frank notices over the course of the day that his father is weaker, and that there is a different smell about him, and Frank wonders if the time of his death is approaching. As they settle into camp that night, Frank finds mushrooms, greens, and berries in the woods and feeds the mixture to his father. Eldon asks how Frank knows so much about the land, and Frank tells him it was the old man, who called gathering what you need from the forest a medicine walk.
Frank tells his father that there’s a place nearby worth seeing, with symbols painted directly into the rock face. The old man brought Frank there in the past, and told Frank it was a sacred place because the paintings never faded. Despite the difficulty of the climb, Eldon agrees to go see the paintings on horseback. When the trail becomes too difficult even for the horse, Frank partially carries Eldon. Eldon’s mouth drapes open at the sight of the rock face, covered with dull red, black, and white depictions of different beings. Eldon asks Frank what they signify, and Frank says that he doesn’t know, although he figures they’re stories. Frank says you got to let a mystery be a mystery for it to give you anything. Frank says that it seemed to him that no one came to see the markings, but he kept coming to see them so at least there was someone there. Frank then says that thinking of someone dying scares him, and that he is unsure what to do when it happens.
Analysis
Chapter 7 demonstrates the racial othering that both Frank and Eldon experience in Parson’s Gap, and is an extension and paralleling of the racial othering Frank experienced in Chapter 2. When Frank asks Deirdre if she believes what his father is doing is right, she shrugs and says “He’s an Indian.” It is after this assertion of Eldon’s race, his being made other, that Deirdre gives a more meaningful, emotional response: that she believes everyone deserves to die in the way that they want to.
When Frank and Eldon ride out of town, the townspeople openly stare at both Eldon and Frank, just as they openly stared at Frank on horseback when he first rode into town to visit Eldon. Frank feels “ashamed” because he feels like the townspeople know the nature of their journey, but unspoken in that passage is how the townspeople's staring connotes difference. Frank and Eldon are not like them—Frank and his father are Indigenous—and the townspeople do not afford Frank and Eldon the same decorum they would otherwise; the townspeople stare, and in turn Frank and Eldon are made a spectacle.
Chapter 7 also begins the characters' opening up about the past, something that Eldon has been hesitant to do. Eldon tells Frank the first story of many: how Eldon and his parents had to scavenge for firewood, break it by hand, and attempt to sell it to make a living. Eldon’s description of their shared background—that they are Ojibway and Scottish, and that “no one wanted them around”—connects back to the feeling of being an outsider. Eldon grew up with that feeling of being unwanted by the people around him, and so his living in Parson’s Gap isn’t much different.
What is more, Eldon says that “Indian stuff just kinda got left behind on accounta we were busy gettin’ by in that world,” meaning getting by in the white world. Eldon’s family gave up their heritage, their ways of being and knowing, in order to survive. When Frank realizes he is “carrying more than wood,” his literal carrying of wood is made figurative. Frank realizes there exists a historical weight and meaning to the stories his father is telling, and will continue to tell, Frank during his final days. For Frank, this realization of “carrying more than wood” is also the first instance in which Frank has an empathic response towards Eldon: Frank places himself in Eldon’s shoes by feeling the weightiness of Eldon’s story.
Chapter 8 documents Eldon’s alcoholism during Frank’s childhood. While Frank remembers Eldon coming to visit him and the old man, Eldon’s visits are devoid of interaction with Frank save Eldon telling Frank he is his father. The “varmints” that are killing the chickens during Eldon’s first visit also come to symbolize the figurative “varmints,” or inner demons, that Eldon is battling in alcoholism. The recurrence of the word varmints creates a literal-figurative blending once more; there are varmints on the farm getting at the chickens, but there are also figurative varmints getting at Eldon’s psyche. Eldon drinks to keep them at bay.
When Eldon returns to tell Frank that he is his father, the moment is also shrouded in literal-figurative blending. Frank becomes “aware of the sudden weight of the moment” when the old man puts his arm around him, and the weight of the old man’s arm on Frank’s shoulders comes to symbolize the weight of the truth. Eldon feels a sort of duty to tell the truth to Frank, that he is Frank’s father. The emotional weightiness of the moment solidifies when the old man places his arm around Frank; the old man tells Frank he loves him during this scene, and the old man’s love exists in stark contrast with Eldon’s drunkenness.
Chapter 9 is important to the larger theme of storytelling. The rock paintings that Frank brings Eldon to see cites a moment where father and son bear witness to the stories of the past, much like Frank bears witness to Eldon’s story on their walk to the burial site. Frank keeps coming back to the markings, even if everyone seems to have forgotten about them, because he figures it’s important for someone to bear witness. It’s important for someone to listen to the stories. This concept of being present for storytelling, of receiving the stories as they are told, is an important theme throughout the novel.
