Dotty

Summary

The novel opens by fixing the date and the authorities of the day: Pius XI is Pope in Rome, Roosevelt II is President in Washington, and Murray I is Governor in Oklahoma City, all on October 15, 1933 (the Fourth Sunday of Autumn), which is also the Twenty-Sixth year of the State and the One Hundred and Fifty-Eighth of the Republic. On this day a daughter is born to Sheriff Slywood O’Toole and his wife, Mary Theresa. She will be known as Dotty O’Toole and later as Dotty Peisson.

The chapter then goes back to the circumstances of Dotty’s conception. On a cold January night, Slywood and Mary Theresa went to a dance at the barn of the Bohannons in a neighboring county seat. Mary Theresa, who finds the talk about economic theories depressing, complains about the bleak atmosphere. On the drive home she and Slywood begin a serious argument over their precarious finances and whether to use county money for personal needs. The argument continues at home. Mary Theresa locks herself in another room, and Slywood breaks in and rapes her. Dotty is conceived that night.

Dotty is born on October 15, 1933, joining older siblings Floyd and Catherine. Mrs. Slater comments on Dotty’s fierce expression as a newborn, predicting she will be both pretty and mean. Mary Theresa admits to seeing “hate” in Dotty’s eyes even at three days old.

The family lives in Jack Oak County, a “defective” or “provisional” county without a proper county seat, where official business is done from time to time in private homes. Soon a “Black Blizzard” of dust storms, lasting years, descends on the Great Plains. Slywood, still sheriff, conducts many sheriffs’ sales during the foreclosures but makes very little money from them. Over time he uses up the county funds, the family’s savings, and whatever else they have. When their last cow dies and the windmill collapses for the last time, Slywood packs up his family, takes the thirteen dollars left in the county treasury, and leaves. When he closes the front door, the story of Jack Oak County ends.

Summary

The chapter begins by noting that the large house on Elm Road, now renamed Elm Street, no longer exists, so its precise size cannot be confirmed. It must have been enormous, however, because five O’Tooles moved in without overwhelming the already sizable household. The house belongs either to Grandmother Kearns or possibly to her bachelor son, Uncle George Kearns, who is described as tall, unsmiling, with a white bony face, and known for keeping careful financial accounts.

Uncle Thomas Kearns, his wife Aunt Janet, and their children Andrew, Robert, and Joyce live in the house, as do Uncle William Kearns, Aunt Helen, and their seven children. Uncle Timothy Reilly, who is Grandmother Kearns’s brother, is also there, as is Aunt Martha Kearns, the unmarried sister. Because most of the unpaid grocery bill is in Uncle George’s name, he is the one supporting everyone.

The structure is large, white, and wooden, built the year after “the Run,” with two stories and an attic converted into extra living space. Outside, a garden, orchard, and additional half-block together amount to nearly five and a half acres. Alongside numerous fruit trees, there are vineyards of grapes and extensive vegetables. Chickens, ducks, beehives, rabbits, and a cow and calf occupy pens and lots.

Into this crowded household come Sheriff Slywood O’Toole, Mary Theresa, Floyd, Catherine, and Dotty. When her mother later reminds her that she is the youngest of the thirteen children, Dotty is four months short of six. Dotty scorns the other children, calling them “a bunch of blamed kids.” When Mary Theresa reminds her that she too is still a child, Dotty retorts, “It’s all a damned question of outlook.”

Dotty reads surprisingly well, which puzzles the family. Mary Theresa has forgotten teaching her; Slywood helped with difficult words, and Uncle Tim has continued the lessons at Elm Road. Her closest companions are Clara Anne (described as “an imbecile”), a black dog belonging to the Potters, and a particular duck. Dotty is sent to St. Joseph’s, which she views as a prison. She especially dislikes Sister Mary Catherine but forms a bond with Sister Mary Regina, the eighth-grade teacher. Though they are close, Sister Mary Regina insists that Dotty cannot skip directly to eighth grade.

Summary

At the start of Chapter III, Dotty is aware of both a “Mystery” and an “Adversary,” which she believes dwell within her. She expects a lifelong battle between them and fears that she will lose it. One night Mary Theresa notices Dotty crying, which is unusual, and asks what is wrong. Dotty replies that she has “the damnest nightmares” whenever she sleeps, specifically of being in “Hell.” She describes seeing children her own size or younger there, placed there “for the damnest things.”

Mary Theresa tries to reassure Dotty, but Dotty is still convinced that she is damned. She points out that she cannot go to Confession for four more months, until the day before Holy Thursday, and might die before then. She admits that she says the “Act of Contrition” constantly but does not mean it, and this troubles her.

On the day before Holy Thursday, Dotty is at last able to be “shriven,” or receive the sacrament of Confession. Her inner turmoil continues, and she is still subject to moments of “black revolt.” She plays a dangerous game, enjoying absolution for a time and then falling back into rebellion.

Dotty’s defiance also appears during storms. While her grandmother lights a blessed candle and her mother sprinkles the children with holy water, Dotty dares the thunder to strike her, counting aloud and mocking each thunderclap. She writes irreverent verses mocking angels and Heaven’s cleanliness, declaring, “All but me. I won’t come in.”

Dotty also experiences the “Mystery Itself” as an inner light, which she likens to a lamp shining from a cave inside a mountain. She finds that she can tell whether someone else has the light of grace, even when she lacks it. The gift sometimes horrifies her, as when she realizes that no one in a room, Dotty included, has that light.

Her confidant on spiritual matters is Uncle Tim Reilly, who has long fought his own “battle with Principalities.” He warns Dotty that playing “loose” with salvation becomes riskier with age. Meanwhile, the men in Dotty’s family join the army for the war. Slywood O’Toole becomes a Sergeant in the M.P.s because of his experience as Sheriff of Jack Oak County. He is stationed in a port city in Texas, and Dotty visits him and smells the sea for the first time. She decides that she cannot imagine living where she cannot smell the ocean, “even if she has to go ragged to remain there.”

Summary

Slywood O’Toole is in Texas. Mary Theresa, Floyd, Catherine, and Dotty travel by bus for eighteen hours to reach him, changing buses in Oklahoma City, Dallas, and Waco. Dotty somehow boards the second bus, leaving Mary Theresa frantic. A driver assures her Dotty is safe: “She had to escape from both us drivers. I had her once, but it would have been easier to load a wild cat.”

On the second bus, Dotty encounters unwelcoming passengers. Finding the seated riders unfriendly, she heads to the back with the Black passengers, who converse warmly with her. They reach the Dallas Bus Station at one in the morning, where Dotty drinks coffee for the first time. On the final leg to the island, Dotty senses the nearness of the sea: from about forty miles out, the smell of the ocean permeates everything.

Slywood O’Toole greets them wearing his M.P. gear. Dotty sees that he enjoys berating young soldiers, and this confirms her suspicion that her father can be mean. They find a very dirty room in a run-down house, bathe, and at last reach the shore. Dotty plunges into the breakers and turns out to be a natural swimmer.

Colonel Keen appears, introduces himself to Mary Theresa, and is soon joined by Slywood, who seems eager to please him. After dinner, Dotty sneaks out, climbing through a window and heading to the pavilion on the beach. She tries to enter the Blue Room where soldiers dance and drink, but is repeatedly ejected for being underage. She meets three soldiers, Carson (nicknamed “Kit”), Richard Railley, and “Ninety-Proof” Nolan, along with a girl named Naomi. They move to Naomi’s room to continue drinking. Dotty gets “higher than a balloon.”

Returning quietly, Dotty stumbles upon Colonel Keen kissing Mary Theresa on the front steps. When Mary Theresa cautiously asks whether Dotty would judge an indiscretion, Dotty reveals that she saw the kiss. Her mother then realizes that Dotty has also disobeyed her instructions to stay in.

Summary

Dotty begins Chapter V by waking up with her first hangover. She swims, then writes lengthy observations in her five-year diary, describing the countless “people” of the sand and sea: tiny shell creatures, worms, fish, and crabs. She muses that the ocean is actually “one big animal.”

At one gambling booth, Dotty protests that the payout odds are unfair. The operator, Selma, responds by flipping Dotty upside down and spanking her with a paddle. Dotty vows revenge but still ends up befriending Selma before leaving town.

Dotty has a “cryptic talk” with Colonel Keen, who warns she has been under surveillance for stealing items and befriending “notorious” Naomi. He orders a strict seven o’clock curfew. Dotty pushes back, promising that if they ever “tangle on the road,” the Colonel will get hurt.

Dotty spends much of her last days at the Parisi grocery store, learning Italian foods and games. Late one night she overhears her parents’ argument. Slywood demands that Mary Theresa be “agreeable” to Keen. She claws Slywood, and he beats her badly. On Sunday the family attends Mass at St. Mary’s Cathedral, then leaves by bus.

Summary

Mary Theresa no longer shares Slywood’s letters fully; a “rift had begun.” Dotty uses her skill with locks to read them secretly, learning that Slywood taunts Mary Theresa with infidelities and questions the paternity of their children. Dotty undertakes secret penance with a burlap cilicium and chiggers. After three months of suffering, Slywood’s letters become friendlier.

While feverish, Dotty prays to endure Purgatory’s fire for “the most forgotten soul.” An old Irishwoman appears in her delirium, calls herself a dream, and promises measles as a sign. Dotty wakes with the rash; the narrator calls it a sign that she must never demand a sign. Four years follow with diary entries “T.D.M.T.S.A.A.T.H.G.B.” (“This day much the same as all that have gone before”). She reads St. John of the Cross and makes a one-sided bargain with the Lord for family protection.

In seventh grade, Dotty calls Saint Thérèse of Lisieux, “the Little Flower,” a “lightweight” and is sent to Father Van Heuvel, who transfers her to a special religion class. She asks if one can be a “free-wheeler” and still be decent; Father tells her to keep Christ at the center of her life and her freewheeling pleasures incidental. Dotty, distracted by a horsefly, hears mostly the permission and misses the warning about pleasure losing its savor.

Summary

Mary Theresa works in Tulsa, sixty miles from the family home, and returns on weekends with people who strike Dotty as coarse and troubling. A letter arrives from Colonel Keen expressing concern over Slywood, who is stationed overseas. Soon, word comes that Slywood has deserted his post in Sydney, Australia, suffering from fevers and confusion.

After World War II ends in 1945, Mary Theresa stays at the plant, which now handles the disposal of surplus property. Dotty discovers that Colonel Keen, now in charge of surplus property at Mary Theresa’s workplace, got her a better position and apartment.

Two shocks follow in the summer of 1946. Dotty receives a letter from Slywood in Australia informing her he has remarried. Then Dotty visits her mother and finds Colonel Keen there with a priest from the “Free Catholic Church of America.” She learns Mary Theresa plans to marry Keen through this new “church.” Dotty calls the priest a “Judas Priest” and accuses her mother of hypocrisy. On September 1, 1946, Mary Theresa and Keen wed without family present.

Dotty arrives by bus and is met by Colonel Keen, who offers her thirty dollars. She spends nearly seventeen dollars on a bus ticket and buys a paring knife and friction tape. Late that night, she enters Keen’s room and stabs him repeatedly, then leaves the house. She catches a bus for the seven-hundred-mile trip to the sea island city, one month and one week short of her thirteenth birthday.

Summary

Dotty enters a confessional and says that she has killed a man. Asked whether she is sorry, she replies that she is “desolate” but would do it again. The priest tells her that the man is alive and not badly hurt. He defers absolution and asks her to return the next day, and on succeeding days if necessary. Outside the confessional she refuses to confirm her identity.

Colonel Keen prevents prosecution and pursuit, and sees that no report is filed. Questioned by an investigator, he calls his eight wounds superficial scratches; the investigator says that any of them could have been fatal. Keen believes Dotty did not use her full strength and admits that she has been wronged. He will check on her welfare and send money if it is needed or acceptable.

Dotty enters the parish high school as Dorothy Parisi. During her first week, the priest grants absolution because he judges that she has contrition even though she is unsure of it herself. She becomes popular with Hugh McDonald, Betsy Mish, Felicien Cassell, Miriam LeBlanc, and other students, who gather at the Parisis’ to study, play music, and drink coffee and wine.

She frequents the island’s bars and clubs, sells fish and crab meat for two impoverished crabbers, and learns Galveston-style piano from local musicians. Some call her the “Mayor of Tremont Avenue.” She does well at school, learns languages and the island’s history, and promises God to be as perfect as she can if He protects her and the Parisis. Payments for her upkeep arrive without her knowledge; the narrator suggests that Colonel Keen may be their source.

Summary

Joe Smith orders “a glass of muscatel and a kiss,” and Dotty charges thirty cents for the wine and a dollar for the kiss. Joe paints a card headed “Dotty Specials,” listing nose-rubbing, kisses, embraces, and lap-sitting. Dotty insists that the menu marks a boundary; Karl Zaleski argues that there are no fixed lines, only merging zones. Joe breaks Karl’s nose, then explains that he hit him because he believes Karl is right and wishes he were not. He tells Dotty he wants her and will return in two years.

The beach policemen Tommy Katt and Mossback McCarty arrive. Tommy takes Karl home, while Mossback stays to tell a supposed case from his days as a homicide captain. A woman appears to report her own murder before it happens, but Mossback solves nothing and arrests the police commissioner by mistake. The narrator finally explains that Mossback was never a homicide captain; he invents a different story every night.

On another evening, Karl argues that logic leads inevitably to materialism. Dotty replies that their reasoning starts from different accounts of reality. She compares his inability to perceive the spiritual world to color-blindness. Kitty Kark predicts that Dotty will lose her faith when she loses her virtue. Dotty acknowledges the danger but calls it the prospect of blindness, not enlightenment.

Dotty’s sonnet celebrates being alive in a world she understands as a symbol. Arthur Braden questions an unfinished phrase, Kitty objects to the description of her soul, and Karl criticizes the rhyme scheme. The narrator judges the sonnet good and sets its workmanship beside the grotesque, obscene, and obscure poetry of her critics.

Summary

Mary Parisi asks Dotty the time: four o’clock. She offers to send away the “bunch of nuts,” but Dotty says that she must be able to stand against them. Dotty admits some shame about the Parisis because other parents look down on them and they seldom attend church. Mary offers to return to the sacraments and thinks Nicki would do the same for Dotty.

The island city combines beautiful beaches, fine houses, and oleanders with dilapidated buildings and poverty. Dotty knows many Mexican families and often eats with an elderly Black couple. Their kitchen has a wooden floor buried under mud left by the great storm about fifty years earlier; the husband keeps promising to clean it out.

Dotty spends the summer swimming, eating, and dancing with Betsy, Hugh, Felix, Miriam, Victor, and Catherine. The others have just graduated. Hugh is painfully in love with Dotty, who tries to comfort him without promising marriage. When Betsy fears pregnancy and considers a lifelong religious vow, Dotty warns her against rash vows. Mary Parisi performs an improvised examination, declares Betsy not pregnant, and spanks her. Betsy abandons her proposed vows and later marries.

Karl describes the “gentle exclusion” by which, he claims, unbelievers discourage or obstruct believers in education and public life. Cora English presents a different case: she has rejected God but cannot stop believing in Him. Dotty suggests that she might yet return.

Mary Theresa writes that her new marriage and “mature faith” have brought happiness, yet admits that she feels perpetually dirty. She asks Dotty to return. Dotty refuses. In a conversation with Jeannie, she develops her account of music as carrying both the celestial chorus and Pan’s lustful “Goat Song.” The chapter ends when an inward jolt sends her into the street, frightened and desperate to know who has passed.

Summary

Dotty gradually recognizes Joe Smith as the artist who painted the “Dotty Specials” card and broke Karl Zaleski’s nose. She explains that the Specials lasted about a week: they encouraged rough behavior and were parodied by the women of Post Office Street. Joe has returned after two years and intends to monopolize her time. Mary Parisi distrusts him and reminds Dotty of his earlier prediction.

Joe employs the “Leading Understatement,” the “Insidious Assumption,” and other calculated approaches. He begins three pictures of Dotty: clothed, nude, and anatomically exposed. He says that, after being dismissed from medical school, he dissected a hobo who had died of natural causes. According to Joe, newspapers subsequently described the mutilated body as the victim of a sadistic murder. Dotty also notices a seasonal impossibility in his account of living alone in the mountains.

Dotty says she will be had only through marriage and suggests having the banns read. What begins as a bluff carries them to the rectory, where Joe arranges the first reading for the following day and a wedding three weeks from the next Monday. Dotty protests that she never agreed to marry him. Her anger turns upon herself for feeling what she recognizes as ordinary animal desire.

After drinking in several clubs, Dotty hears the Goat Song in George Dushane’s piano playing at the Little Oyster. Joe joins in on a borrowed trombone. She escapes by taxi, then walks and runs down the beach. Joe follows, tackles her, and sits on her until she is quiet. They discuss Adam and Eve. Dotty insists that an ultimate choice must be made, and the narrator assigns the initiative to her, echoing Eve’s taking and offering of the fruit. The chapter closes, “And for such little things souls are lost.”

Summary

Dotty’s perception changes: the “white sheen” between water and sky has disappeared, and material explanations seem to account for everything. She regards the unbelieving “pig people” as vindicated and says, “I have traded a kingdom for a mudhole.” Early on Sunday she tells the priest not to read the banns. She now sets Augustine against Petronius, Aquinas against Voltaire, and a succession of believers against those she thinks have disproved them.

Dotty discovers that Joe passed more than twenty bad checks totaling over a thousand dollars. She replaces most with notes and I.O.U.s and pays about two hundred and fifty dollars in cash. Joe returns within a week to make restitution; he had expected money and says he fled in confusion. Mary handles the matter; Joe cannot find Dotty. Dotty takes a room near the Parisis and works at the Smelly Goat. Finnegan refuses to finish the anatomical triptych and instead paints the beautiful Dotty he scarcely knew before her fall.

Catherine Collins urges her to go to confession. Dotty replies that she has lost faith through pride and curiosity and can no longer believe in the world to which Catherine would restore her. She works at being cheerful, reads Freud, Marx, Russell, Hegel, and others, and finds their views convincing but dismal. She briefly takes paying lovers, then stops because she finds it disgusting.

With Arthur Braden and Karl Zaleski, Dotty entraps Wesley Fitzcannon in a staged adultery scene. They rob and beat him, but he identifies them to the police. Dotty cannot maintain the lie when confronted. Mary Parisi bails her out, and Mossback warns that he will no longer tolerate her breaking the law.

Hugh McDonald finally finds Dotty. She wounds him by pretending to offer herself for money, then admits that she gave up prostitution. He offers love and urges her to rebuild her life, but she refuses him. He leaves determined to learn to live without her. In this state, the narrator says, a couple of years pass.

Summary

Dotty recognizes a seaman she calls Frenchie, whom she saw two weeks earlier at the Jetsam Room. He explains that his English has returned with practice and gives his name as Charles Peisson. He is poor, Breton, and quite serious about his virtue. Their teasing conversation about their shared Celtic inheritance restores some of Dotty’s delight in herself. As he stands in the doorway, she realizes that she can tell he is in Grace.

Charles disputes the students’ ideas with an ease that draws their interest. He compares their arguments unfavorably with those of formidable French atheists and attacks their claims to intellectual independence. His story of the Devil’s revolt turns upon an inability to sing or keep silent. Karl invokes celebrated authorities; Charles refuses to treat distinction in one field as authority in religion or philosophy. The narrator also observes that Charles is wrong to call the students wholly predictable, since most receive him warmly.

Charles takes Dotty to the Old Wooden Ship, where he enjoys the company of Charles Le Marin. A visiting reporter asks the patrons about racial prejudice and receives a series of extravagant national and regional animosities. Aloysius McGivern, for example, turns out to be railing against Englishmen and Scots while declaring Black people his brothers in Christ. The reporter leaves without the story he expected.

When Charles signs aboard a sulphur ship bound for Rio and São Paulo, Dotty realizes that she loves him and begs him to return. She admits that she hates the spiritual ditch she has claimed to enjoy. Charles will try to find a ship back within eight or ten weeks. Dotty resolves to count the days and finally set the watch she has left wrong for two years.

Summary

Dotty returns to a church and addresses God about the two bargains she believes they have broken between them. She refuses the old priest’s invitation to confession but continues asking for Charles. Unable to profess belief, she nevertheless pledges to remake what she has broken and asks for one year with him. After darkness falls, she acknowledges God’s presence, though she receives no spoken answer.

The narrator calls Charles’s absence Dotty’s “first widowhood.” She writes a long letter warning him of her spiritual injuries and declaring that she means to marry him if she can. Ouida helps with the French portion. Dotty also asks a seaman bound for Rio to find Charles and tell him how much she loves him.

Aided by Soft-Talk Susie Kutz, Dotty becomes the “weaving woman” she has promised to be. She accompanies Susie to early Mass, although she has not yet returned to the sacraments. She works, reads, meditates by the sea, and practices kindness. She buys a house damaged in the old Galveston flood. An elderly neighbor remembers its light gray walls and blue shutters and helps her choose the paint.

Dotty cleans and repairs the house, roofs it, replaces the shutters, and installs a bathroom with friends’ help. She clears the courtyard and palm trees, sets out iron furniture, hangs a ship’s lantern and bell, and renews the crushed-shell walk. A friend gives her a ship’s coffee maker large enough for two hundred cups.

She is reconciled with the Parisis and other friends, while the students cease following her. The Old Wooden Ship shelters card players, storytellers, beautiful women, a formidable dog, and three strange gamblers from another age. Dotty and Susie work its two shifts. The house is finished near the end of Charles’s absence.

Summary

The narrator calls Dotty and Charles’s marriage perfect because of its ease and simplicity. Charles untangles difficulties without making them occasions for conflict. Their marriage rests on trust and freedom from anxiety over possessions and status. The wedding takes place in the summer, probably in 1950 or a nearby year. They accept gifts from the Parisis and Colonel Keen, borrow Little Dutch Eckel’s car, and leave for New Orleans after the wedding Mass.

Ouida has arranged lodgings with a relative at 1224 Epernay, but the address is a vacant lot. Across the street, an elderly landlady says that Amelia Garrard died in a fire four years earlier and that Ouida may inherit a fortune. Dotty and Charles rent an apartment from her. Soon Patricia appears, first pretending to be Charles’s abandoned wife from Rio, then his wife from St. Malo. They recognize the joke and welcome her into their honeymoon.

Patricia takes them swimming, drinking, and dancing. Dotty and Charles dislike much of the fashionable jazz; Dotty takes over a piano and demonstrates her own playing. At the Flannel-Mouthed Irishman’s, Leo Hanrahan turns his wife’s refusal to admit him before daylight into a comic account of how he became a philosopher.

After a night out, the couple find their car missing and a nearly identical landlady denying that they ever rented rooms. They sleep at Patricia’s, try unsuccessfully to identify the borrowed car for the police, and resume their tour. With Patricia’s English seaman, Philip Sherrington, Charles discusses the lost pleasures of Eden. He imagines the Garden as the first amusement park and nightclub district, where pleasure was free of depravity.

Their car and rooms reappear. They gradually discover two Garrard sisters in the house, apparently the relatives whom Ouida had recommended. The supposed death and inheritance were part of the joke. After enjoying the rest of their visit, they return to Texas. Dotty’s recovered address book shows that Patricia is Finnegan’s sister.

Summary

Charles’s habit of turning over in a hammock sends Dotty bouncing out of their old bed. They joke about it and never quarrel. He sails mostly on the Saint Noire, the Spogelset, and Der Rochen, taking short voyages and spending as much time at home as he can. Dotty joins study clubs, the Altar Society, and the Third Order. She learns about taxes, plans to register to vote when she is old enough, and has Charles take out his first citizenship papers.

Dotty delights in pregnancy, even its “glorious nausea.” Charles writes letters to be sent to her if he dies, fearing that she would otherwise come unhinged. Later, Dotty loses her child after stepping in front of a car and spends a week in hospital. Charles stays with her. She grieves without her former revolt, though she questions God and then begs Him not to leave her.

Dotty works at the Old Wooden Ship only on Saturdays and spends her days caring for eight or nine children whose mothers work. She takes them swimming, fishing, boating, and to amusement rides. She jokingly claims that all nine are her own children, all single births, and that doctors are studying her as a medical phenomenon. She spends more on the children than their mothers can pay her. She and Charles plan to explore the coast and retrace the route of Esteban and Cabeza de Vaca.

Only Dotty knows that Charles is aboard the Saint Noire when it leaves Caracas for New Orleans. Hearing that the ship is in trouble during Hurricane Ernestine, she stops reading dispatches and listening to broadcasts. She never opens the cablegram. Believing that God has deliberately drowned Charles, she repudiates her bargains with Him and accuses Him of being “the Old Serpent.”

Summary

At six in the morning, in “the hour of the dog,” Dotty comes into the Wooden Ship in a physically shaken state. Lazarus Reilly holds her hands and helps her drink from a glass. Her face is “a box of bones,” her hair disheveled, but they note she was beautiful only hours before and may be again later.

At about six-thirty, silent patrons, likened to ghosts, take quick shots and leave. A long-running domino game starts. A worried young man arrives asking for “that cute little Dotty” but fails to recognize her current skeletal form. Ouida Garrard brings Dotty her missing shoe, calling her “la pauvre Cendrillon.” Soft-Talk Susie Kutz brushes Dotty’s hair to a golden shine.

Mr. Garnier, often wearing the only necktie in the place, comments on Dotty’s sweet, serene beauty. Lazarus explains she suffers but forgets. When the postman enters, Dotty intercepts a letter for Catherine Cadensus, revealing she has been responding to Catherine’s suitor behind her back.

Dotty’s own letters come from Charles Peisson. He wrote fifty-two of them before his death, and a seaman friend mails one each week for a year. As long as the letters stay unopened, Dotty can avoid fully admitting that Charles has died.

Summary

Sam Engelbach arrives in Galveston to see Catherine at the Old Wooden Ship. The letters he receives alternate between polite dismissal and overwhelming passion, and he has convinced himself that Catherine has a split personality. Catherine, distressed, learns that Dotty fabricated the passionate letters as a prank.

When Sam arrives, he is jovial, greeting the women with kisses and treating the bar to an extravagant party. He hires a band, orders a thousand oysters and shrimp, and ensures drinks flow freely. Despite Catherine’s repeated attempts to explain, Sam stays distracted, sitting on various women’s laps.

When Catherine finally tells him about the letters, Sam already knows Dotty wrote them. He is relieved, because he had been worrying about how to reject Catherine himself.

Meanwhile, Dotty stages a dramatic but non-lethal suicide attempt with superficial cuts. Soft-Talk Susie refuses to indulge her. Mossback McCarty takes Dotty into custody. Susie refuses to pay her fine; Catherine, Lazarus, and Aloysius pay it. Dotty undertakes to stay sober for a week and works for a month at a trucking company. Little Dutch has made employment a condition of lending her the money to save her house from a tax sale. She then works for two weeks at a shipping office, which fires her after discovering that she lied about her qualifications. She and Catherine accept Sam’s invitation to visit his farm.

Summary

Sam Engelbach has a cattle farm of 611 acres, with just under two-thirds in pasture and the rest under plow. His house is large but cluttered. His half-sister Hulda arrives from a neighboring farm and acts as a chaperone. Dotty and Catherine charm her, and she encourages local young men to meet them.

On Tuesday, Catherine rides out with Sam to hunt a coyote or fox bothering the poultry. Dotty goes alone, dismounts, and removes Ned’s bridle. The pony follows her as she walks the hills. At Engelback, or Angel Brook, she feels haunted by the journey she and Charles had planned along the route of Cabeza de Vaca and Esteban. She talks to God again, conceding the excellence of His work in the small details of the landscape.

On the first Sunday, Dotty says she no longer believes but fears Hulda’s opinion if she misses Mass. Catherine exposes the contradiction, and Dotty goes reluctantly. By the second Sunday, Dotty is lecturing Hulda about following the Mass with a missal rather than saying private prayers. When Hulda explains her difficulty reading English, Dotty promises to send her a German-Latin missal. She again suspects God of contriving her return.

While Dotty is away, Ouida reads Charles’s letters with the permission Dotty had previously given. Susie takes charge of them. When Dotty returns, she learns that the year of weekly deliveries has ended. Susie gives her the first letter to read and offers to give her the rest together or one at a time. Its account of the struggle ahead terrifies her. The narrative presents it as a message from the other side, despite Susie’s earlier explanation that Charles wrote before his death. Dotty recognizes that she must reenter the battle, whose outcome is uncertain until the end.

Summary

On a Sunday morning, Dotty goes to Ouida’s place to read the funny papers, taking the Post while Ouida has the Chronicle, but finds Ouida still in bed. Ouida says she feels fine yet plans to skip Mass. Dotty criticizes her, calling her a “shifty-eyed weasel” and accusing the “Old Jew” of trickery, then agrees to go with Ouida but complains that she herself would have used more finesse. Dotty later realizes that these little ploys are more serious than soap opera. They are part of a “live drama” that can split open in a catastrophic way.

The Old Wooden Ship is neither a “lupanar” nor a “cat-house”; it is a barroom bordering on respectability. It houses clubs such as the “Beach Draw-Noon And Domino Fraternal Organization,” “Club Ajedrez,” and the “Elbow Benders Beneficent Society.” Soft-Talk Susie Kutz mysteriously arrived about four years earlier, opening the bar one morning even though Lazarus Reilly was sure he had the only key. Over time, she persuades many women to change their lives, finding them different jobs or encouraging them to return home.

Dotty comes to appreciate order, declaring to Buffalo Chips Dugan that she intends to pick up the pieces of her life. She likens the task to a child gathering scattered toys. The Colonel “put away” Dotty’s mother yet still provides for her, and sometimes writes to Dotty, praising her strength, though she insists she has none.

Dotty has just reached her majority. She works at a respectable job she dislikes and has returned to her faith, though it lacks its former sparkle. She occasionally plays piano at the Little Oyster, where her playing draws a crowd. She goes on benders less often than before, about every two months, and nearly three months have passed since the last. The narrator concludes that Dotty’s soul is not fully secure: One-Chance Hardwick, owner of the Chatterbox Club, would offer only five-to-three odds in her favor and would hardly offer even money on the reader.