Chapter 14 - 16
Chapter 14 (Present)
- Silas wakes up hungover but still goes to work and to the hospital
- feeds Larry‘s chickens, finds out Stringfellow‘s address from Ms. Voncille and tells her he‘s going out to interview him
- sees Stringfellow‘s dog in the yard and finds Stringfellow on the porch
- manages to get into the house, finds aquariums full of snakes and a zombie mask that Stringfellow says he can‘t recall getting
- when Stringfellow goes outside to calm the dog, Silas feels that he needs to call for back-up but is unable to grab his phone or radio
- Stringfellow lets the dog off his chain and the dog attacks Silas, who kills it but carries serious wounds from that
- Stringfellow gets a gun and aims at Silas but Silas is faster and shoots him in his thigh
- Stringfellow escapes in the woods and Silas tries to call for help, clumsily breaking one of the aquariums, coming face to face with first the zombie mask and then a rattlesnake
- Larry learns about the attack on Silas and who was responsible for that
- tells French everything he knows about Wallace being the man who shot him and the one who raped and killed Tina Rutherford
- French brings the zombie mask, Larry identifies it as his
- Larry is being told about Wallace‘s death and that he should watch the news in order to find out how that happened
- French asks Larry why he and Wallace became friends, Larry claims that he didn‘t have many options to choose from
- Larry explains that he had suspected what Wallace had done for a while and wanted to tell Silas but he never returned any calls
- French just says that it is time for Larry and Silas to finally talk and be honest with each other
- being alone again, Larry reflects on the relationship between past and present, and wonders what would have been different in the present if things had happened differently in the past
- Silas is brought to Larry‘s room after surgery
- narration tells reader that Silas‘ arm will heal eventually, that Silas had asked to be put in the same room as Larry, and that on the news, the story of Silas’ confrontation with Stringfellow is a headline, the report revealing that Stringfellow killed himself, and that evidence had been found that linked Stringfellow with the death of Tina Rutherford
- after the news report, Silas tells Larry that Carl was being his (Silas‘) father
- Larry in turn admits that he suspected that (given the comment with the coats)
- afterwards comparison on how it was to grow up with Carl (Larry) and how it was to grow up without him (Silas)
- Larry asks to be put in another room
- tension in the relationship between past and present resolves itself
- simultaneously, the events of those chapters pull away layer after layer of truth to reveal the core truths of the novel’s mystery plot
- climax of that plot in Silas’ confrontation with Stringfellow
- sense of suspense
Wallace is given a statement (that he doesn‘t know where he got the mask) that the reader knows is a lie and the reader gets an idea of what the truth really is
- reference to Stringfellow‘s dog: reader knows that the dog is vicious and has the name of a serial killer
- other elements: next-to-last appearance of zombie mask; one of the final, symbolic appearances of snakes; and finally, the groundwork being laid for the climax / resolution of the novel’s second main plot: the friendship plot, resolved in the following section