53 pages • 1-hour read
The Life We Bury
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Chapters 11-16Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 11 Summary
Joe takes home the transcripts he’s received from Berthel. They will call him when the remaining material is ready. He stops at Lila’s apartment, and she answers the door wearing an oversized jersey of the Minnesota Twins—Joe’s favorite baseball team. He tells her he has the files, and she suggests they read the opening statement of the trial.
The prosecution’s statement paints the following picture: Crystal was a happy, normal adolescent girl. She was a cheerleader and had a high school boyfriend, Andy Fisher. Days before her murder, she and Andy were “experimenting…sexually” in his car when Carl saw them. Crystal’s stepfather, Douglas, was strict. If he found out about her and Andy, he would ban her from cheerleading and send her to a private, religious school. Shortly after Carl saw Andy and Crystal, Crystal wrote in her diary about a man who was threatening her and forcing her to perform sexual acts against her will. The prosecution suggests this was Carl, using the sighting of Crystal and Andy to blackmail Crystal. On the day of Crystals’ murder, Andy dropped her off at her home. She ended up at Carl’s home; perhaps she went there to confront him and Carl then killed her. On that same day, he had bought an army-surplus handgun. Carl raped her, strangled her, and burned her in his shed to destroy the evidence. The police arrested him the next day, picking him up from his house. They found him passed out, an empty whiskey bottle in one hand, and a .45-caliber pistol in the other. The prosecution’s opening statement concludes with a warning to the jury of the gruesome photos they will see.
After reading the statement, Lila urges Joe to “tell the whole story. Don’t just write about the weak old man dying of cancer. Tell them about the drunken degenerate who burned a fourteen-year-old girl” (80).
Chapter 12 Summary
Joe spends October busy with school and working more than usual at Molly’s Pub to make up for the $3,000 he wasted on Kathy’s bail. Going through Carl’s file, he learns that Carl received two Purple Hearts and a Silver Star thanks to his service in Vietnam. On November 1, Joe returns to Hillview: “As Carl told his stories, I found myself breaking them apart into bits of information, spreading them around like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle on the table. Then I tried to reassemble the pieces in a way that would explain the birth and life of a monster” (82). Joe is determined that a pivotal event in Carl’s life turned him into a murderer and made him “different from the human race, different from me” (82). Joe suspects Vietnam may be the key to the puzzle. He asks if Carl got the scar on his neck from the war. Carl responds that he got it in a prison attack. Afterward, Carl was forced into “segregation” (protective solitary confinement). Joe resolves to contact Virgil to find out more about Carl’s time in Vietnam.
Chapter 13 Summary
Joe and Virgil meet. Virgil reveals that Carl’s lawyers wouldn’t let Virgil testify during the trial. Virgil and Carl met in Vietnam in 1967. Virgil saw Carl kill “plenty of people” in the war, and Joe can see why Carl’s defense attorney wouldn’t have wanted Virgil testifying. Virgil shows Joe his prosthetic leg, a result of Vietnam. On the day Virgil was injured, he should have died, but Carl saved Virgil’s life. He says, “Carl Iverson is a hero—a true god-damned hero. He was willing to lay down his life for me. He’s not a rapist. He didn’t kill that girl” (90). Joe points out that his anecdote alone doesn’t prove Carl’s innocence. Virgil maintains that while Carl was a killer in Vietnam, “that’s different than murdering that girl” (91). Virgil alludes to “another story” from Vietnam, one that he believes will further help clear Carl’s name. He won’t tell Joe the story, however, insisting that it’s Carl’s to tell.
Chapter 14 Summary
Joe picks up the rest of Carl’s file from the public defender’s office. He goes to Lila’s apartment and they start going through the box. Finally, Joe gets to see the grisly crime scene photos. They are just as gruesome as expected: “I had never had such a visceral reaction to a picture. The juxtaposition of the pretty, vibrant cheerleader with the charred corpse made me happy that Carl had rotted for decades in prison, and it made me regret that Minnesota forbids putting criminals to death” (95). Before Joe can continue, he gets a call from Terry Bremer, the owner of the duplex where Kathy and Jeremy live. Jeremy almost burned the building down trying to heat up pizza, and Kathy is nowhere to be found. Enraged at his mother’s lack of responsibility, Joe leaves to drive to Austin.
Chapter 15 Summary
Joe arrives in Austin. He speaks with Terry, who tells him, “Your mother can’t leave a retard home alone like that” (97). Joe snaps back and defends Jeremy. Kathy left for “a meeting” (the usual excuse both Joe and Kathy use for Kathy’s abrupt departures) with Larry. Joe doesn’t know Larry but presumes he’s Kathy's lowlife boyfriend. Joe gets Jeremy ready for bed. As Jeremy changes into his pajamas, Joe sees a bruise on his back. Jeremy reveals that Larry hit him with the television remote. Joe, enraged, resolves to stay there until Kathy and Larry return so that he can have a talk with Larry.
Chapter 16 Summary
The next day, Joe takes Jeremy to get a pay-as-you-go phone. He tells Jeremy to call him if anyone ever tries to hurt him, especially Larry. Kathy and Larry return that afternoon. Joe puts Larry into a chokehold and tells him never to touch Jeremy. He threatens him with more physical violence if he does. Kathy reveals that she and Larry went to a casino, telling Joe “I’m entitled to have some fun too, ain’t I?” (104). When Joe retorts that she’s Jeremy’s mother, she shoots back, “And you're his brother but that doesn’t stop you from running off? Does it? Big college boy” (104). Joe leaves and describes Jeremy watching him drive away: “To the rest of the world he would have appeared expressionless but I knew better. He was my brother and I was his; and only I could see the sadness behind his calm, blue eyes” (104).
Chapters 11-16 Analysis
The diversity of viewpoints presented in this section highlights the thematic argument that the truth is multifaceted. The prosecution and Lila believe that Carl is a “sick bastard.” Virgil defines Carl as a “hero.” Joe is starting to understand the fact that people are neither all good nor all bad:
On the one side, Carl was a man kneeling in the jungle, taking bullets for his friend. On the other side was a sick bastard capable of extinguishing the life of a young girl in order to satiate his deviant sexual desires—two sides, one man. Somewhere in the box on my shoulder, there had to be an explanation of how the first man became the second (93).
The Vietnam anecdotes emphasize the theme of the universal nature of human violence and raise the philosophical question of when, if ever, such violence is permissible. Both Carl and Virgil distinguish between murder and killing. For Virgil, it’s permissible to kill people in a war because it's expected. Joe’s reference to the death penalty also falls under the umbrella of this philosophical debate. After he sees the gruesome crime scene photos, he says, “[I]t made me regret that Minnesota forbids putting criminals to death” (95).
This section includes multiple symbolic references to violence. There is the scar on Carl’s neck, which he got when he was beaten up in prison. There is Virgil’s prosthetic leg, a memory of Vietnam. Then there is the bruise on Jeremy’s back, a result of Kathy’s boyfriend Larry hitting him with the remote control. Human violence is everywhere—in war, in prison, and at home. Physical representations of violence speak to the fact that violence also leaves invisible, emotional marks. Joe is convinced that a single pivotal event made Carl “different from the human race, different from me” (82).
The reference to the jigsaw puzzle introduces the recurring symbol that people are made of many pieces, some good and some bad. Carl, simultaneously a murderer and a war hero (and a killer in both instances), exemplifies this fact. This mirrors the complexity of the concept of “truth” emphasized throughout the narrative. The truth is never as straightforward as the principle of Occam’s Razor would suggest. Joe hasn’t realized this fully yet, however, as is clear by his desire to pinpoint a single incident in Carl’s narrative that will explain “the monster.”
Given the role of the Vietnam War in the narrative, the emphasis on the symbol of the photos gains new significance. Vietnam was well-documented visually, and the graphic depictions of the conflict’s brutality led to a disillusionment with the war effort among the American public. Several photographs showing gruesome moments still serve as symbols of the conflict, such as Ronald Haeberle's images of the My Lai massacre. (Kennedy, Liam. Photojournalism and the Vietnam War. University College Dublin, UCD Clinton Institute for American Studies, 2007-2008, http://www.ucd.ie/photoconflict/histories/vietnamwarphotojournalism/. Accessed 23 December 2019.)
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