32 pages • 1 hour read
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In 1862 two orphaned children sit beside the corpse of their father, who died the previous night. The older sibling is 12-year-old Lucy. Her younger brother, Sam, is 11. After their mother died three years earlier, the children’s father Ba turned to drink. A failed gold miner, he dragged his family around looking for silver and eked out a living digging coal.
Lucy has always endured his abuse while he dotes on Sam. Sam was born a girl but dresses as a boy. He shares his father’s delusion that he is the son Ba always wanted and identifies as male. Lucy says, “She figured Ba died angry. Now she knows different: his was the measuring squint of a hunter tracking prey. Already she sees the signs of possession. Ba’s squint in Sam’s eyes. Ba’s anger in Sam’s body” (8).
The two children try to scrape together enough money to bury their father. In desperation, they go to the local bank for a loan. After being rejected, Sam angrily shoots his father’s gun, grazing the banker’s head. The children flee in fear. Later, Lucy is attacked by some bullies. Sam comes to her rescue, and the bullies run away, leaving behind a rucksack containing food and money. The children take the loot and load their father’s corpse into a trunk, which they hitch to their horse Nellie. They go in search of a proper place to bury him.
Lucy recalls when that her mother was still alive, the latter set down the rules of proper burial. The most important rule is to bury a body in its natural home. Lucy remembers her father’s vicious, drunken behavior and wonders where his natural home would be. She thinks, “What’s home mean when Ba made them live a life so restless? He aimed to find his fortune in one fell swoop, and all his life pushed the family like a storm wind at their backs” (20). As the children wander farther west, the corpse begins to decompose, and bits and pieces fall off. Lucy buries these along the way as they go.
Nellie grows increasingly skittish at carrying a rotting corpse on her back and even tries to run away. When the children come across a salt flat, Lucy gets the idea of preserving the body in salt until they can figure out where to bury it. After they abandon the trunk, Nellie seems less disturbed by her burden.
In their travels the children find a bleached animal skull that they conclude belonged to a tiger. They consider this a good omen since their mother used to paint protective images of tigers on all their various homes. They decide to bury their father with the skull to keep watch over his remains.
Sam constructs a little burial house out of dead grass so that the two can dig a hole deep enough to hold their father. Sam recalls many pleasant past memories of his father. Lucy recalls only abuse. After the hole is dug and the body interred, Sam wants some private time with his father. Lucy grants them privacy, not seeing “what passes at last between father and daughter, father and false son” (46).
After a while, the children’s food supply dwindles, and Sam is less insistent on staying where they are. One morning, they awaken to the smell of cooked meat. Following their noses, the children find a mountain man, his horse, and some roasted partridges that he offers to share with them. He tells them tall tales of life in the wilderness, which Sam drinks in. Of more interest to Lucy is his tale of a town called Sweetwater that has a railroad.
As the children reach the edge of the mountains, Lucy turns to contemplate the place where she grew up: “From afar she can’t see how dangerous the West is, how dirty. From afar the wet hills shine smooth and bright as ingots—riches upon riches stacked to the Western horizon” (62).
The rainy season sets in while the siblings continue their trek to find a new home. When they reach a river, they finally get the chance to bathe. As Lucy struggles to scrub Sam clean, some objects fall out of his pocket. When Lucy dives to retrieve them, she finds the two silver coins that were supposed to be buried with her father. Sam selfishly explains that the living need that money more than the dead do.
The following morning Lucy discovers that she is experiencing her first menstrual period. Traditionally, this would be a time of gifts and celebration to commemorate her transition into womanhood. Instead, Lucy washes her stained clothing in the river and announces she is going into town. Sam stays behind. Lucy says, “You’ll be here?,” intending “it as a command. But the distance between them, and the river’s crashing, unmake her meaning. What she says comes out a question” (69-70).
Part 1 introduces Lucy and Sam after Ba has died and focuses heavily on the motif of burial. Their plight as orphans is rendered all the more devastating because no one in their community will help them. Their Asian features identify them as foreigners. Their father’s death makes them outcasts who must make their way in the world as best they can.
This segment is told from Lucy’s point of view, and the reader immediately sympathizes with her as the abused child of a drunken father. However, it is only in retrospect after reading Part 2 that this section can be understood completely. The reader only achieves a partial glimpse into Ba’s character. In this respect, the theme of shifting personas comes into play. Ba has ample reason to descend into anger and inebriation. His harshness toward Lucy has a rationale, too, which isn’t explained until the end of Part 3. Sam is also a character who isn’t all that he seems. Initially, we perceive him as a boy. Later in the segment, we learn he was born a girl but now chooses to dress as a boy. The major characters’ shifting personas are echoed in the bigger slide in Lucy’s own consciousness, as an American whom everybody assumes is a foreigner.
The struggle to pin an identity on any of the characters is amplified by their inability to find a home. Ba’s obsession with gold kept the children moving all their lives. Since the burial ritual requires that the deceased be laid to rest in a place that reminds them of home, Lucy faces a difficult dilemma. No one in her family knows where home is. These questions about personal identity and about home and belonging will continue to haunt Lucy as the narrative progresses.
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