Montana 1948

“Why did my grandfather first run for sheriff? ... He wanted, he needed power. He was a dominating man who drew sustenance and strength from controlling others. To him being the law’s agent probably seemed a natural progression—first you master the land and its beasts, then you regulate the behavior of men and women.”

This is a summary of Julian Hayden’s character and foreshadows the family conflict in the novel. When David’s father goes against his own father’s wishes, the elder Hayden reacts. He will even resort to violence against his family when challenged.

“The problem was that I wanted to grow up wild. . . . Wildness meant, to me, getting out of town and into the country. Even our small town—really, in 1948, still a frontier town in many respects—tasted to me like pabulum. It stood for social order, good manners, the chimed schedules of school and church. It was a world meant for storekeepers, teachers, ministers, for the rule-makers, the order-givers, the law-enforcers. And in my case, my parents were not only figurative agents of the law, my father was the law.”

This is the not surprising point of view of a twelve-year-old boy on the verge of adolescence and increasingly aware of how his parents controlled his childhood. David wants to be independent, free, and able to make his own choices. He is able to do that when he is outside the town fishing or shooting or horseback riding.  

“(I realize now how much I was a part of that era’s thinking: I never wondered then, as I do now, why a college didn’t snap up an athlete like Ronnie. Then, I knew without being told, as if it were knowledge that I drank in with the water, that college was not for Indians).”

This is the first introduction of the theme of racism as it applies to all Native Americans in the West. White people assume that Native Americans are second-class citizens who do not deserve a college education or a professional career.

“My father did not like Indians. . . . He believed Indians, with only a few exceptions, were ignorant, lazy, superstitious, and irresponsible. I first learned of his racism when I was seven or eight. An aunt gave me a pair of moccasins for my birthday, and my father forbade me to wear them. . . . ‘He wears those and soon he’ll be as flat-footed and lazy as an Indian.’”

David says his father would not have recognized his own prejudices. Sheriff Hayden might well have said that he was just describing reality as he observed it around town and on the reservation. This turns out to be a major area of character development over the course of the book. By the end of the novel, David’s father is convinced that the effects of racism, including his brother’s murder of a Native American woman, are not to be condoned.

“Your brother makes his patients—some of his patients—undress completely and get into indecent positions. . . . He fondles their breasts. He—no you don’t turn away. Don’t! You asked, and I am going to tell you. All of it. He puts things into these girls. Inside them, there. His instruments. His fingers. He has … your brother I believe has inserted his, his penis into some of these girls. Wesley, your brother is raping these women. These girls. These Indian girls.”

This is the climactic speech of Chapter One. David’s mother obviously believes Marie’s accusations against Dr. Hayden. David’s father remains to be convinced, but the sheriff does move quickly to question Marie himself and start an investigation. The rest of the plot follows inevitably from this moment. 

“Daisy’s usually loud, brassy voice was lowered, but I heard her say, ‘The word is he doesn’t do everything on the up-and-up.’ Then she noticed me. She straightened up and smiled at me but stopped talking. That meant I was supposed to leave the room, and I did. But slowly. As I crossed into the living room, Daisy whispered, ‘Just the squaws though.’”

David overhears the wife of Len, the deputy sheriff, confirming Marie’s accusations against Dr. Hayden. David is also aware that as a “child” he is not supposed to hear this adult conversation.

“I wanted to be included, to know more than my eavesdropping brought me. I suppose I wanted adult status, to have my parents discuss the case in front of me, not to . . . have them speak in code as if I were a baby who could be kept in ignorance by grown-ups spelling words in his presence.”

David is very much aware throughout the novel that his parents are still trying to protect their child from the knowledge of evil and crime in their family. David is at an age where he chafes at being treated as a child or a baby. He wants to be a full-fledged grown-up himself.

“Had I any sensitivity at all I might have recognized that all this talk about wind and dirt and mountains and childhood was my mother’s way of saying she wanted a few moments of purity, a temporary escape from the sordid drama that was playing itself out in her own house. But I was on the trail of something that would lead me out of childhood.”

This quotation suggests David’s mother’s inner feelings about the investigation into Uncle Frank’s crimes. It foreshadows the scene later when David’s mother insists that her husband just let Frank go and end the tension and danger.

“This city fellow thinks he’s heard enough. . . . He starts for our table. By the time he gets there Pop has pulled out the little .32 revolver of his. . . . ‘Out in Montana you wouldn’t be worth dirtying a man’s hands on. Or his boots. So we’d handle him this way. Nice and clean.’ And he keeps holding the gun on him. . . . Meanwhile Frank’s laughing so hard he gets me going and then neither one of us can stop.”

This passage helps to define the character of David’s grandfather. He uses threats of violence when provoked. He carries a gun and will use it. The fact that his sons think threatening someone with a gun is funny also says a great deal about their attitudes toward violence.  

“You know Frank’s always been partial to red meat. He couldn’t have been any older than Davy when Bud caught him down in the stable with that little Indian girl. Bud said to me, ‘Mr. Hayden, you better have a talk with the boy.’. . . I wouldn’t be surprised if there wasn’t some young ones out on the reservation who look a lot like your brother.”

Here, David’s grandfather confirms that Uncle Frank has been sexually involved with Native American girls all his life. Julian Hayden also makes a directly racist statement by referring to Native women as “red meat.”

“I needed that, I thought; I hadn’t even known it but I had to kill something. The events, the discoveries, the secrets of the past few days—Marie’s illness, Uncle Frank’s sins, the tension between my father and mother—had excited something in me that wasn’t released until I shot a magpie out of a pinon tree.”

This reveals how intense the situation is for David. He wants to be an adult and participate in real life. Yet he is still emerging from childhood and the stress of the circumstances in his family trouble him greatly. His need to commit a violent act suggests that he shares the violent inclinations of his father, uncle and grandfather. The dead magpie also foreshadows the death of Marie.

“’You know what your granddad said it means to be a peace officer in Montana? He said it means knowing when to look and when to look away. Took me a while to learn that.’ Len leaned forward and pointed a long, gnarled finger at me. ‘Your dad hasn’t quite got the hang of it. Not just yet.’”

Len, the deputy sheriff, is suggesting that David’s father would be better off ignoring his brother’s crimes. Some people, like the powerful Haydens, are truly considered above the law.

“As I had so often been advised by my parents, I never believed any of my grandmother’s supernatural stories. Until the day Marie died. That night I lay in bed and couldn’t breathe. The room felt close, full, as though someone else was getting the oxygen I needed.”

This passage uses the symbolism of breathing that begins with Marie’s coughing at the very beginning of the book. It also suggests that Uncle Frank may well have killed Marie by suffocating her with a pillow. Thus, Marie’s ghost may be trying to tell David something.  

“’If I had my way, I’d let every house in town go. Let the sun bake ‘em and the north wind freeze ‘em until there isn’t a house in town with a spot of paint on it. You’d see this town from a distance and it would look like nothing but firewood and gray stone. And maybe you’d keep right on moving because it looked like nothing was living here. Paint. Fresh paint. That’s how you find life and civilization. Women come and they want fresh paint.’”

David’s father has just locked his brother Frank in his basement. He is exhausted by the tension and conflict he feels between loyalty to his family and faithfulness to the law. He imagines escaping his troubled reality by having the whole town disappear. 

“It is commonplace to refer to the narrowness and intolerance of small town life, but it seems to me just the opposite was true, at least of Bentrock, Montana, in 1948. The citizens of that community tolerated all kinds of behavior, from the eccentric to the unusual to the aberrant.”

David wonders how it is that people know about his Uncle Frank’s molesting his patients and yet keep it secret. The small-town people he knows make a point of avoiding scandal and making trouble. Perhaps they expect the same leeway for themselves and their families.

“I began to feel dizzy and ashamed and sick because this time, with Loretta, the thought of how Uncle Frank may have abused her did not disgust me as it had with Miss Schott, but stirred me sexually.”

Twelve-year-old David is entering adolescence and experiencing changing hormones, thoughts, and bodily responses. It is another aspect of his coming-of-age story. His sexual response to the thought of his Uncle abusing a young woman suggests that he shares some of Frank’s desires but his shame at his arousal distinguishes him from his Uncle.

“I was running back across the street when the shotgun boomed, and its blast was so loud, so wrongly out of place along that quiet, tree-lined, middle-class American street that the air seemed instantly altered, turned foul, the stuff of rank, black chemical smoke and not he sweet, clean oxygen we daily breathed.”

David’s mother’s firing the shotgun is shocking. It is something David could never have imagined happening. The imagery of the air suddenly turning foul instead of clean is an apt metaphor for the whole story of Uncle Frank and the affect his crimes have on David’s family and the community more generally.

“As my father spoke . . . what struck me was that he seemed to be apologizing. For what? I wondered. For not being there when those men came? How could he have known? He was at work, where he was supposed to be. For being Frank Hayden’s brother? Julian Hayden’s son? Even then I knew that we were not responsible for the circumstances of our birth or the sins of our fathers.”

By this time David is acutely aware of the “sins of our fathers” as it applies to his grandfather, who raised his sons to be racists and to consider themselves above the law. However, he still considers his own father to be a good and law-abiding man.

“So, yes I mean it. Let him go. Let him do whatever he wants to whomever he wants. I don’t care anymore. I just want my house back. I want my family safe.”

David’s mother is exhausted and traumatized by the discovery of frank’s crimes and the threat from Julian Hayden and his men. She is ready to sacrifice justice for safety. This puts the responsibility on her husband to make a decision. Sheriff Hayden then decides not to release his brother. It is a major turning point in the novel.   

“I was still child enough to believe, as children do, that when adults are engaged in adult business children become invisible. That was why it was so unsettling to have my father staring at me. What did he want from me? Was he waiting for me to express an opinion—I was the only one in the room who hadn’t. Didn’t he know—I was a child and ineligible to vote? How dare he bring me in on this now—I wasn’t even supposed to know the facts in the case!”

This passage sums up the tension David has felt throughout the events of the story. He is both a child who is supposed to be protected from evil and an important part of his family who shares his parents’ experiences and emotions. It is an uncomfortable position to be in, and it disturbs David greatly.  

“’I don’t care. I tell you, if you could hear him talk. As if he had no more concern for what he did than if . . . if he had kicked a dog. No. He’d show more remorse over a dog. . . . Do you see?’ asked my father. ‘I can’t let him loose. Not and live with myself.’”

This is the critical moment of moral decision for David’s father who chooses justice over loyalty to his family. This decision ultimately leads to Frank’s suicide.

“’David, I believe that in this world people must pay for their crimes. It doesn’t matter who you are or who your relations are; if you do wrong, you pay. I believe that. I have to.’”

David’s father is teaching his son a lesson that he never learned from his own father. In many ways, David’s father’s growth during this time of crisis has finally made Wesley a responsible adult, one who makes his own decisions based on what he thinks is right.  David’s father is no longer a slave to Julian Hayden’s wishes.

“I find history endlessly amusing, knowing, as I do, that the record of any human community might omit stories of sexual abuse, murder, suicide . . . Who knows—perhaps any region’s most dramatic, most sensational stories were not played out in public view but were confined to small, private places. A doctor’s office say. A white frame house on a quiet street.”

This is the grown-up David talking with forty years of perspective on the events that changed his life. It is also, clearly, the author’s point of view about life and reality and how appearances are very often deceiving.