Chapters 27–32 Summary and Analysis
Chapter 27
Lucy asks to come with Sam on their next adventure. Sam reveals that their next trip is going to be across the ocean, back to China.
At the boarding house, they spot a man in black waiting for them. Lucy mistakes him for one of Anna’s hired men, but Sam promptly corrects her—the man is here for Sam. To avoid trouble, Sam plans to leave immediately. Lucy insists on coming with Sam, regardless of the belongings she has to leave behind.
Chapter 28
After traveling for a day, the siblings cover themselves in mud to hide their scent from dogs. Lucy asks if Sam really intended to miss shooting the banker when they were children. Sam admits that they lied to Lucy, out of fear that she might leave them. Moreover, Sam explains that Ma did not die— she left their family. Lucy recalls the piece of gold Ma always kept close and how she must have hid it in her mouth that day the jackals came. She surmises that it must have been enough for a ticket home.
Lucy asks Sam to cut her hair short, and they then hold a burial for Lucy’s cut hair. The next morning, Lucy asks why Sam conceals their voice. Sam explains that it’s for protection from men and implies by omission that they have been sexually assaulted before. Revealing their wallet to be full of gold, Sam tells Lucy that they are finally ready for a land that is truly their own.
Chapter 29
Sam and Lucy steal two horses and continue traveling westward. Along the way, they encounter and share a meal with a group of American Indian travelers. At campfires, they share stories and their dreams. Sam also teaches Lucy how to gamble. They even encounter a wild buffalo. As Sam grows more suspicious of encroaching danger, they continue to hurry along.
Chapter 30
When they arrive at a city beside the ocean, Lucy, tired, asks Sam for a bit of rest or a hot bath. Sam softens at the mention of the latter and brings Lucy to a brothel where Sam often pays merely to be bathed. Inside, there are girls who remind Lucy of stories. Lucy meets the madam, Elske, who asks her questions.
Chapter 31
Sam and Lucy head to the ship to pay for their tickets, only to find out that prices have risen and they don’t have enough gold. Lucy manages to coax passage from the captain by telling him a story and that she and Sam could “be of service,” insinuating that she could offer the captain sexual favors. Afterward, she tells Sam that Elske offered her a job telling stories to men, and Sam admits that Elske offered them the same job once. As the siblings dream of putting the past behind them, Lucy throws the half-stale bread Elske gave them into the sea.
The next morning, they are awakened by a gunshot: a gold man has come to collect the debt Sam owes him. When Lucy asks Sam how they came to accrue this debt, Sam explains that they and a few other workers stole a huge sum of gold and dumped what they couldn’t carry into the ocean. Lucy wonders why Sam would bother returning to Sweetwater and risk being caught, then realizes that Sam simply missed her. She tells Sam she will talk to the gold man alone.
Chapter 32
Lucy bargains with the gold man, who finally accepts payment in the form of sex with Lucy. When she says goodbye to Sam at the ship, Lucy lies...
(This entire section contains 1011 words.)
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and says she’s going to be the gold man’s secretary. To convince Sam to leave without her, she strikes them as hard as she can.
Back at the brothel, Elske crafts a new persona for Lucy, who begins to service clients as soon as her hair is grown out. She sleeps with an assortment of different men who, she realizes, nevertheless all have the same thirst, and one of whom breaks her nose. Men from China begin to frequent the brothel after they arrive in America to build the railroad, but Lucy observes that when the railroad is finished, they are given no credit.
Elske gives her the key to a library after a year has passed, but Lucy only uses it for a few days; the books have confirmed her suspicion that “there are no new stories.”
After her debt is paid, the gold man asks Lucy what she wants as a gift. Lucy opens her mouth to reply, but the story ends before her answer is revealed.
Analysis
In contrast to their initial split-up, Lucy and Sam’s second and final separation is an act of love. So as to save Sam and give them the life they want, Lucy stays behind to work as a prostitute. Having seen Sam as selfish her whole life, Lucy changes her mind after she realizes that her sibling risked their life to come see her in Sweetwater one last time. When Lucy decides to leave Sweetwater with Sam, she redefines her notion of home as a person rather than a place.
The purposefully abrupt ending of the novel has two possible interpretations. On one hand, it represents the amount of importance society has assigned to Lucy’s interiority. There is something ironic about trying to learn the desires of someone whose people the dominant society would efface from history books. Treated in such a way, how can Lucy offer any real answer, or any answer that wouldn’t be discounted and erased?
On the other hand, the fact that her answer remains unwritten can be interpreted as perfectly expressing Lucy’s desires. Lucy wants to be “rich in choices,” as her Ma would say. She wants an open future, possibility, and indeterminacy—not to be pinned down and have her value appraised or her story told by others. Like Sam, she realizes she wants to be seen. It’s an invisible and buried answer, but an answer all the same.
