Animal Dreams Chapters 24–26 Summary & Analysis

Summary

Chapter 24: The Luckiest Person Alive

The Minister of Agriculture calls Codi to tell her they have found Hallie's body and some of her personal belongings. Codi is in shock. Loyd drives her to the Mexican consulate in Tucson to pick up a letter describing what was found. When they pass the scene of a deadly car accident, Codi is overcome by despair. She tries to ignore Loyd's attempts to calm her and shifts back and forth between denial and depression.

Chapter 25: Flight

In early June, Codi leaves Grace on a Greyhound, the same way she had come, bound to join Carlo in Telluride. Uda Dell and Mrs. Quintana will take care of Doc Homer. He does not understand when Codi bids him goodbye.

When Codi says goodbye to Loyd, she tells him she is leaving Grace because it make her miss Hallie too much. She is unable to respond to his warning that moving will not change her sense of loss. The day before she leaves, all of the women from the Stitch and Bitch Club come by to try to convince her to stay. In her parting, Viola confirms that Codi's mother was Doña Althea's cousin and also tells Codi that on the day her mother died, Viola had been taking care of Codi and Hallie. Although she was supposed to keep the girls at home, she had brought them up to the field so that they could say goodbye to their mother; Codi's memory of that event was real.

On the bus ride, Codi thinks about the outcome of the Stitch and Bitch Club's efforts. A week after they filed the Historic Places petition, the Black Mountain Mining Company announced that they had decided to shut down the mine and to pay for any cleanup that would be needed. The woman sitting next to Codi on the bus, Alice Kimball, strikes up a conversation with her, and it turns out that the woman had spoken to Hallie years earlier when Hallie worked at a pest control hotline. When Alice Kimball asks where Hallie is now, Codi replies only that she has left the country, and when Alice Kimball relates that to her own sister's death many years before, Codi vehemently denies that Hallie is dead. As their conversation progresses, however, Codi admits to the truth.

The plane Codi takes from Tucson to Denver has engine trouble in the air and has to turn back. Feeling all of her fears about flying about to be confirmed, Codi swears that if they land safely, she will never fly again.

Codi buys an Amtrak ticket going east from Tucson. Even though it's not a passenger stop, she gets off the train when it stops for a crew change in Grace. When the conductor warns her, "this isn't anywhere," Codi responds that it's where she lives. Loyd is on the Amtrak crew getting off at Grace. He and Codi leave the station together.

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