Summary: a satisfied mind
Keeping track of [the sun] would be a
way of saying, You are here, in this one station, now. It would
be an answer to the question, Where am I?
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Ada is contented with the relatively easy work of harvesting
apples. Ruby leaves to trade cider for beef, leaving her friend
to split logs and make a bonfire with dead brush. Ada tires herself
chopping the logs, and she decides to write to her cousin Lucy.
She explains how much she has changed physically and emotionally—she
can now appreciate nature without one idea passing through her head.
Ada realizes that she has not mentioned Ruby at all in her letter
and puts it aside. She returns to her fire, milks the cow Waldo,
and reads Adam Bede. Ada thinks about clearing
a space in the trees along the ridge to mark the sun’s highest and
lowest setting points during the year.
Stobrod and a young man walk up to Ada. The three sit
around the fire drinking, and Stobrod introduces his friend Pangle,
a fellow outlier. Ruby’s father describes how he stole a banjo,
which he gave to Pangle, during a raid on a man’s house. Since the
young man displayed a natural talent for playing the instrument,
the two became a duo. Ruby returns and puts the beef joint she has
with her into the fire to cook. Stobrod and Pangle play and sing
in unison. Ada is moved by the strange music and by Stobrod’s obvious
pleasure in performing it. Afterward, everyone eats dinner, and
Stobrod asks his daughter to give him provisions and let him hide
out occasionally at the farm. He says he fears that Teague will
hunt down the outliers because of their raiding. Ruby says that
it’s not her place to agree to his request and looks to Ada to answer.
She is dismayed when Ada agrees. Ruby explains how Stobrod abandoned
her for three months when she was a child to start a business distilling liquor
on Cold Mountain. Ruby concedes that he never hurt her but qualifies
this by saying he never touched her in kindness either.
The men leave, and Ada looks up at the night sky. She
retrieves Monroe’s spyglass and observes a lunar eclipse. Ada wishes
she could express what is in her heart honestly and directly. This inspires
her to write Inman a one-line letter, which reads, “Come back to
me is my request.”
Summary: a vow to bear
Inman meets a woman whose daughter has just died. He helps
the lady bury her child and eats a meal she prepares. He looks at
a picture—described as an “artifact”—of the woman’s large family,
of which she is now sole survivor. Inman continues walking and spends
a night in an old chicken house. When he awakes, he reads a passage
from Bartram’s Travels describing the topography
surrounding Cold Mountain. The next day, Inman finds three skeletons hanging
from a tree and listens to the musical “tock and click” of their
bones.
Later, Inman walks along a ridge in the mountains near
home. He sets up camp atop a “rocky scarp” and is awakened in the
night by an angry bear and her cub. Inman is reluctant to shoot
the creature, recalling a vow he had made when he was younger. Inman
puts aside his pistol and tries talking to the bear, but she lunges
nevertheless. Inman deftly steps aside, and the bear plunges down
to the rocks below. Because he feels that there is nothing else
he can do, Inman shoots the bear-cub in the head and eats it. Guilt-stricken
by his act, Inman describes the meat as tasting “like sin.” Since
he cannot decide which of the seven deadly sins he has committed,
he creates an eighth, “Regret,” to describe how he feels about his
act.
analysis: a satisfied mind; a vow to bear
Death features prominently in both of these chapters.
As the seasons turn towards winter and the days are “snuffed out”
earlier, Ada thinks about the changes that have occurred within
herself and in the natural world. She burns dried grasses and acknowledges
that she has changed beyond recognition. As Ada watches the sunset
and the lunar eclipse, the author suggests that even the movements
of celestial bodies seem prophetic of death or change. Ada’s contemplation
of the “looping” of the years, and her decision to clear the trees
along the ridge to mark the sun’s highest and lowest setting points
suggest that Ada is beginning to think about a long-term future
at Black Cove. Her thoughts have turned toward continuation and
repetition, in keeping with the cycles of nature. She finds a peaceful
certainty in the thought of tracking the progress of the years by
these cycles, so that they cease to be an “awful linear progress”
and instead become something whole, complete, and consistent. Indeed,
Ada’s focus on natural cycles will intensify, and it will help her
to deal with her life’s uncertainties. In the novel’s final chapter,
“epilogue. October of 1874,” Ada will hold
on to nature’s habitual and pre-determined variations in consolation
for the changes of a capricious and unpredictable world.
