He no longer thought of that world as
heaven, nor did he still think that we get to go there when we die.
Those teachings had been burned away.
(See Important Quotations Explained)
Summary
Inman wakes up in a hospital ward before dawn because
his neck wound has attracted flies. The morning is too gray for
him to see out of a window that usually provides him with a view
of an oak tree, a road, and a brick wall. Inman gets up and sits
in a chair. There he awaits sunrise. He imagines walking out of
the window as he did when he first arrived at the hospital. Inman
recalls a moment when he was bored with a history class at school.
He threw his hat out the window. The hat was caught by the wind
and landed at the edge of a hayfield, where it looked like a crow’s
shadow. The teacher threatened Inman with whipping, but Inman walked
out of the classroom, retrieved his hat, and never returned.
Balis, the man in the bed next to Inman, wakes and begins
working on translating ancient Greek texts. His right foot was blown
off in battle, and his leg has rotted increasingly along its length.
More people in the room begin to stir as the room lightens. Inman
counts flies on the ceiling and waits for the blind man he has been
watching for some weeks to arrive. He remembers the wound he received
in battle near Petersburg. No one thought he would survive that wound.
Before healing, the wound “spit out” small fragments of clothing
along with something resembling a peach pit that caused Inman to
have troubling dreams. Inman also recalls how he played a game while
convalescing that involved counting time until a change occurred
in the scene outside, framed by the open window.
The blind man arrives, and Inman goes to speak to him.
Inman learns that the man has never had eyes and would regret gaining
his sight for a brief time if it meant suffering its loss in the
future. Inman replies that he wishes he himself had been blind at
Fredericksburg when his regiment shot down thousands of Federal
troops from behind a wall on a hill. He remembers “heaps” of corpses
littering the battlefield as he went scavenging for boots; he also
recalls a woman turned crazy by what she had seen and a soldier
who killed a line of fallen Federals by smashing their heads in
with a hammer.
Inman returns to the ward and opens his copy of Bartram’s Travels at
random. He loses himself in descriptions that remind him of his
home’s mountainous topography. A few days later, Inman goes into
town to buy supplies, such as clothes and writing paper, with money
sent from home and his back pay. He drinks bad coffee at an inn
and reads in his newspaper about army deserters and Cherokee troops
scalping Federals (Federal troops). Inman then remembers a Cherokee
boy, Swimmer, whom he met when they were both sixteen and grazing
heifers on the slope of Balsam Mountain. While they fished by a
creek, Swimmer told Inman folktales and spoke of the nature of the
soul. Next, Inman’s coffee grounds and a flight of vultures make
him think about divination. He remembers Swimmer saying that the
mountains are gateways to a world above heaven where a “celestial
race” lives. Responding to this comment, Inman pointed out to Swimmer
that there was nothing at the top of Cold Mountain and other mountains
he had climbed, although he could not discount the idea of a spiritual
world invisible to the human eye.
Fiddle music draws Inman out of his reverie. He begins
and then abandons a draft before mailing a letter that informs the
recipient of his imminent return home. Inman returns to the hospital,
finds that Balis has died, and reads Balis’s translations. The day’s
sunset evokes in him a sense of grief. He adds his new supplies
to his already-packed haversack and leaves that night through the
open window.
Analysis
Frazier opens the novel by introducing his brave yet haunted
protagonist, a wounded Confederate soldier. He includes details
of famous Confederate generals such as Lee and Longstreet to flesh
out the historical framework of his narrative. However, the chapter focuses
only indirectly on the Civil War and instead traces Inman’s personal
experience of it. Inman is clearly engaged with the world and seeks
out other people in it. He is aware of Balis in the hospital bed
beside him, just as he notes the changing view from his window and
the movements of the blind man. Yet Inman is as troubled by the world
as he is fascinated by it. His nightmares and lonely visions of the
future suggest that he suffers from a psychological injury that will
not easily heal.
