Summary
Inman continues his journey. He asks a woman sitting on
a porch in the fork of a road for directions to Salisbury. He steals
lunch from a laundrywoman but leaves some money behind. Inman meets
the preacher, who reveals his name to be Solomon Veasey, striding
along the road. The preacher thanks Inman for saving him from sin,
stating that he was thrown out of the community on account of his crimes.
Veasey tells Inman of his plan to claim land in Texas and start
up a cattle ranch. The two walk on together, although Inman does
not want the preacher to accompany him. Veasey explains that he
stole his revolver from an elderly neighbor.
The two pilgrims find an abandoned house where Inman
forages for honey. They talk about sating their hunger, finding
contentment, and God before they leave and follow the course of
a stream. Veasey spies a catfish and insists on killing it. After
Veasey dams the stream and unsuccessfully wrestles with the catfish,
Inman shoots it in the head. The men camp for the evening and eat
the fish. Veasey tries to draw out Inman's story, so Inman tells
Veasey about a “blowup” at Petersburg. The Federals had successfully
exploded a trench but were so shocked at what they had done that
they found themselves routed by Inman's regiment.
It rains hard the next day. Inman and Veasey go into
a store to buy supplies, but Veasey pulls his gun on the shopkeeper.
Inman hits Veasey over the head and takes his pistol, and the men
leave. A slave woman directs them to an inn where they can lodge
for the night. A big “black whore” appears and identifies herself
as Big Tildy. Veasey begins a quarrel with a customer over the whore.
Inman and Big Tildy intervene to prevent him from getting shot.
Veasey leaves to spend the night with Big Tildy, and Inman pays
for dinner and a bed. He finds he is sharing the loft with a peddler
called Odell. The man shares a flask of liquor with Inman and explains
that he is heir to a plantation in Georgia.
Odell relates the unhappy story of how he fell in love
with a slave, Lucinda, whom he wished to wed even though he was
already married. Odell's father rented Lucinda to a farm when he
confessed that he was in love with her. Nevertheless, Odell and
Lucinda began an affair. When he discovered she was pregnant, Odell
offered to buy the slave from his father, who asks cruelly whether
he is buying her for the “fieldwork or the pussy.” Odell punched
him, and his father sent Lucinda to Mississippi. Odell was devastated
and left home forever to look for the girl. He became a peddler
in order to earn money to continue his search.
Odell and Inman drink more liquor. Odell describes some
of the things he has seen on his travels, including a woman locked
in a cage getting eaten alive by buzzards. After Odell determined
that she wasn't Lucinda, the woman died on the ground in front of
him.
The next morning Inman leaves the inn and meets Veasey.
The preacher has a cut under his eye from Big Tildy but insists
that the night has been worth it. He admits to being “stunned” by
the sight of the naked prostitute.
Analysis
As Inman's journey progresses, numbers and patterns arise
with increasingly frequency within the text, and take on a mysterious
significance. For example, an important pattern becomes evident
as Inman finds himself noting the “pool of shadow” in a woman's
lap above her splayed legs, revealed as she sits in the fork of
a road. The junction of the road is echoed by the woman's posture,
and both underscore the sense of partition and direction that guides
Inman's journey. He knows that he cannot stay where he is, in a
shady no-man's land, but must venture ahead one way or the other.
The crow motif reappears when a bird drops dead out of
the sky in front of Inman, and a second time when three crows wait
for catfish remains. Just as Inman's conscience weighs heavily with
him, images of birds also overshadow the text. The crows echo the
buzzards that feed off the caged and helpless slave girl in Odell's
tale. The presence of the crows helps develop a theme of predation
and threat as Inman becomes increasingly unsure of what to do in
the face of cryptic and foreboding natural signs.
Inman's new insecurity is connected in part with the
reckless preacher, who adds to the burdens Inman seems destined
to bear. Veasey's reintroduction from the chapter “like any other
thing, a gift” bridges Inman's past and present, suggesting that
Inman distances himself from his past. Inman is obliged to intervene
twice—at the store and at the inn—to save the preacher's life. Until
Veasey's death, Frazier develops Veasey as a foil to Inman. For
example, Veasey is someone who professes to have faith but really
lusts after his own ends, while Inman consults his conscience before
committing an immoral act. While the preacher is a self-serving
individualist, Inman's conscience troubles him enough that he leaves
money to pay for the laundry-woman's lunch. Also, Inman's alert
but dispassionate response to violence is contrasted with the preacher's
foolhardy, gun-toting bravado. In every respect, the travelers stand
as a pair of opposites, echoing Ada and Ruby's contrasting relationship.
However, the author shows that Inman and Veasey share
a similar hunger for spiritual salvation and contentment. This chapter strengthens
the link between spiritual succor and physical nourishment. Both
Inman and Veasey seek a more profound sustenance than that which
food can provide. Hunger represents their need for absolution from
past sins, and even the food they eat seems tainted. Their foraged
honey is “toughened up” and black in color, and they find a blackbird
and a hammer in the catfish's belly. Also, both characters desire
to escape the hardship of their lives. While Inman becomes introspective
and internalizes his fears, Veasey talks “on and on” by the river
and sates his sexual desires with Big Tildy.
Frazier begins to explore the motif of narration, or
the telling of tales, which weaves itself throughout this episodic
novel. The author uses Odell's story to reinforce the fact that
tragedies occur and lives go on independently of the Civil War,
even if Inman personally has been shattered by his military experience.
Frazier sets his characters against the backdrop of the Civil War,
but ultimately Cold Mountain is a novel about people
and landscape, rather than war or one historical event.
