Pigs in Heaven Chapters 13–15 Summary & Analysis

Summary

Chapter 13: The Church of Risk and Hope

Taylor and Alice are leaving the Delta Queen Casino Hotel in Las Vegas, where the manager is giving them a hard time for checking out a few too minutes late. Alice plays along with his rules, telling him their room is cleaned out already. While she and Turtle head toward the pancake house across the street, Taylor runs back upstairs to grab their suitcases. Meanwhile Alice tells Turtle about how Las Vegas used to be. Alice thinks that the city used to be a kind of "church of risk and hope" where people came together around a card table, every one with different needs and backgrounds.

Taylor meets them for pancakes, and Alice notices that she is wearing a pink shirt. Before she was a mother, Taylor always despised the color pink. Suddenly, Taylor notices Barbie, the waitress from their dinner the night before, who recognized she and Turtle from Oprah's show. Barbie looks pathetically unkempt, and they discover she has just lost her job. Alice invites her to sit down with them, and only then do Alice, Taylor, and Turtle learn the lengths of her obsession. She knows every Barbie ever sold, and her clothes are all Barbie's wardrobe ensembles. Barbie seems so down and out that Alice suggests they take her on the road with them. Taylor scoffs, but eventually invites Barbie along, and they head toward the highway.

Chapter 14: Fiat

Jax is back in Tucson, where he is sitting in Gundi's Fiat trying to write a song. Jax finds that he is most inspired to write lyrics sitting in a car, and since he does not have his own, he borrows Gundi's. She is a local artist, and has a habit of walking around Rancho Copo naked. Jax misses Taylor, and imagines having a baby with her some day. Gundi comes along eventually, with at least a few articles of clothes on, to tell Jax he has to come sign for a registered letter.

Jax gets the letter from the mailman, and Gundi insists he come into her house to share it with her. The letter is from Annawake. The letter expresses concern for Turtle growing up in a white household without acquiring any sense of Indian identity. Annawake delves into the story of Gabe, explaining that Gabe was sent to a white family in Texas when their mother was hospitalized for alcoholism and the siblings were separated. In Texas, he was grouped with the Mexican kids, where he did not fit in. As a teenager he was involved in an armed robbery, and now he is in and out of prison. Annawake concludes by saying Turtle cannot belong to Taylor and Jax.

Chapter 15: Communion

Gundi sympathizes with Jax's situation. They sit in Gundi's sunny house on turquoise cushions, surrounded by walls displaying her paintings. They discuss the idea of solitary life versus community life. Jax points out that they do live in a culture that rewards individual ambition and achievement, using Gundi's paintings as a case in point. Gundi invites Jax to take a bath, and in the tub, he gives into the temptation to have sex with her.

Analysis

Alice's reference to the "church of risk and hope" again suggests the luck or chance motif that recurs throughout the novel. The Las Vegas setting symbolizes the way in which human life is often dictated by chance occurrences. Alice's memory of people sitting around the card tables, joined together in a moment of "risk and hope" can be connected to the four sitting around the breakfast table—Alice, Taylor, Turtle, and Barbie. Taylor and Turtle are caught in their own moment of risk, as they continue their escape from Annawake Fourkiller. Alice is running away from her old husband, and Barbie is stuck without a job. Like the folks of the old Las Vegas, so too do these women each bring their own story, and own hopes to a common table.

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