Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter

“The man against the wall had sunk to his haunches, watching from behind the mask, eyes shimmering in the eye holes, and Larry felt a strange forgiveness for him because all monsters were misunderstood.”

Though Larry faces an intruder in his home who wears a monster mask and clearly means him ill intent, Larry shows sympathy for him in this moment. This reaction gives insight into Larry’s character and also illustrates what Larry must have gone through. Perhaps more than anyone, Larry can understand how someone might be driven to desperate acts by being misunderstood, as he has been his entire life. 

“He hoped not to have to shoot any as he mushed along fanning the air with his hand. Here he was two years as Chabot’s law and he’d never fired his pistol except at targets. Practice. Never for real. Not even a turtle on a log.”

In Silas’s first point-of-view chapter, he establishes his lack of experience as a lawman. Unlike crime and mystery novels that center around a seasoned cop or detective who’s become jaded and cynical by all he’s seen, Silas reveals that he is still inexperienced in many ways. Silas’s lack of experience with shooting, in particular, also foreshadows that by the end of the novel, this will change, and he will be forced to fire at someone in the line of duty.

“Silas could testify: in all the times he’d driven past on his way to Fulsom, he was yet to see anyone get their car fixed. Nobody but Larry there, that red Ford. Still, he showed up to work every day, waiting for somebody on his way to someplace else, somebody who didn’t know Larry’s reputation, to stop in for a tune-up or a brake job, the bay door always raised and waiting, like something with its mouth open.”

Because of Cindy Walker’s disappearance, Larry has become the town pariah. Here Silas details what Larry’s day-to-day experience of dealing with this ostracism must be like, with Larry waiting for customers who will likely never arrive, and paints Larry as a sympathetic figure. However, Silas then compares Larry’s garage to a sort of monstrous creature, waiting to lure in its prey, reflecting Silas’s avoidance of Larry, as well as the uncertainty the reader still has about whether Larry is guilty or not.

“‘You’ve never minded,’ Larry’s mother said to Alice, looking hard at her, ‘using other people’s things.’”

After Ina learns that Alice and Silas have been getting rides to school from Larry’s father, Ina insists on taking Larry and has an awkward encounter with Alice and Silas. Ina gives Alice and Silas old coats, reminding Alice about taking what doesn’t belong to her; afterward, Alice and Silas never get rides to school again. Though filtered through Larry’s childhood perspective, this incident clues in the reader that some transgression has occurred between Alice, Ina, and Carl and foreshadows the revelation that Silas and Larry are half-brothers.

“Having a black friend was an interesting idea, something he’d never considered. Since the redistricting he was around them constantly. The churches were still segregated if the schools weren’t, and sometimes Larry wondered why grown-ups made the kids mingle when they themselves didn’t.” 

As a white boy growing up in a small town in Mississippi in the late 1970s, a youthful Larry notices a discrepancy between what adults say and how they behave. Though laws have banned segregation within schools, laws cannot force people to socialize with one another against their will. Racism runs deep, and Larry has internalized some of these ideas, even if he doesn’t fully understand them.

“Call back, even if it’s late.

Well, it was late, wasn’t it, Larry. Too late.”

After returning from the crime scene where Larry has been shot, a startled Silas realizes he has received a message on his answering machine from Larry saying he has something urgent to tell Silas. Silas reflects that he received the message too late, since Larry is now in a coma and unable to tell Silas whatever he had to say. This moment also has another, deeper meaning, pointing to the severed friendship between the two men. Larry has reached out to Silas a handful of times since returning to town, but Silas has not been open to mending their friendship, and now, with Larry at death’s door, Silas realizes that he may have lost his chance.   

“As he pushed the mower, he thought how Alice’s car must have come from Carl, but Larry knew not to say more about it. He’d failed Carl before by not understanding that the black woman and her son had been their secret. He should have known that men do not discuss with their wives (or mothers) the business that is their own.”

Larry reflects on the complicated dynamics between Carl, Alice, and Ina that he has observed but that he does not fully understand as a child. However, although Larry remains partially in the dark, his observances show that he is a thoughtful, intelligent boy who notices more than grownups give him credit for. Even though he cannot understand why Carl would give Alice a car (though the readers may be able to read between the lines and make their own assumptions), Larry reads people well enough to know that this is something Carl will want him to keep a secret.

“It had to be his color. What else could it be? He’d known his own father would disapprove. He would never tell Carl about the friendship, but wouldn’t it be different for Silas? Wouldn’t a black woman be happy her son had a white friend? They’d given them coats, a car. He’d assumed the anger that black folks felt was a reaction to white people’s attitude toward them. Y’all started it. But if somebody white was willing to befriend somebody black, offer them gifts, even a place to live, shouldn’t the blacks be grateful?”

Larry’s inner thoughts demonstrate the complexity of his friendship with Silas. Larry has grown up in a time and place where white people hold the power, and racism continues to shape interactions between white and black people in rural Mississippi. Larry cannot understand why Silas’s mother would object to them being friends, since Larry has grown up in a culture where black people are expected to be grateful for whatever white people choose to give them. Larry anticipates that his parents might object to him being friends with Silas, since white people are considered above black people, but cannot understand why there would be any objection on the side of the black family. This moment shows that though Larry considers Silas to be a friend, he does not really understand the other boy or what his life might be like.

“On the way to Fulsom, he’d gone right past here and from the car window seen Larry standing where Silas stood now, in this spot. Silas had kept his eyes forward, as if Larry could’ve seen him, as if he’d been standing there all those years, watching for Silas to come back.”

This quote illustrates the theme of the link between past and the present, and how the two are irrevocably intertwined. Standing in Larry’s auto shop in the present day, Silas reflects on a time when he drove past this same spot and saw Larry, and how it gave him the unnerving feeling that Larry was reaching out to him from the past, waiting for him to return. Though Larry is still alive, Silas has in a way become haunted by memories of their friendship, how things went wrong, and how he has neglected to make things right after all this time. This scene foreshadows the idea that only way for Silas to make things right in the present is to acknowledge the mistakes of the past, so that both he and Larry can finally move on.

“He leaned up and looked at his mother’s profile as she smiled, listening to the bus driver who had one hand on the steering wheel and the other flapping, some story his mother was supposed to laugh at. And Silas knew without looking at her that she would, because it was polite and she lived in a world where she had to be polite all the time.”

Silas reflects on a childhood memory of his mother, Alice, and how she accepted a ride from a stranger. Silas sensed that this stranger, like many men before, was attracted to Alice and had nefarious intentions in showing her kindness. Here, Silas resents his mother for being polite to people like this and playing along with their games. However, even as a young boy, Silas intuitively understands that Alice behaves this way to survive. As an attractive black woman, Alice must smile and play nice with white men who pay her attention, or her life will be all the more difficult in a white man’s world.

“His father still drove him to school, long talkless rides they both endured. Neither had ever mentioned what happened at the cabin, Larry’s fight with Silas. Carl had returned home later that evening, no apology, no mention of the rifle, come in the house as if he’d been working. Gone to the refrigerator, gotten a beer, and sat in front of the television watching baseball. They’d had supper that night, no one speaking beyond Carl saying the blessing his mother insisted on, ‘Bless this food, amen,’ but gradually, the next day, the one after, their life together had resumed, Carl working, his mother cooking and cleaning, out volunteering for the church, Larry going to school.”

After a drunk Carl forces Silas and Larry to fight each other, Larry expects there to be some kind of shift in their dynamic but instead is surprised by how quickly things go back to normal. Larry’s family has many secrets and often sweeps uncomfortable things under the rug instead of confronting them openly. In particular, Larry and Carl do not see eye to eye and have great difficulty communicating with each other because of their differences. Returning to their mundane, day-to-day routine allows them to continue as if nothing has changed, a temporary bandage on a wound that keeps growing bigger without being treated. 

“Their lives had stopped, frozen, as if in a picture, and the days were nothing more than empty squares on a calendar. In the evening the three of them would find themselves at the table over a quiet meal no one tasted, or before the television as if painted there, the baseball game the only light in the room, its commentators’ voices and the cracks of bats and cheers the only sound, that and the clink of Carl’s ice.”

After Cindy’s disappearance, the Otts’ lives are upended. As the previous quote illustrates, the family has always buried issues instead of confronting them openly, and they attempt to do the same now that Larry is suspected of kidnapping and murdering Cindy. However, this event proves to be so catastrophic that even returning to their day-to-day routines cannot help them return to their lives as they were. 

“Good work, boy.

Silas remembered it. He had felt, at that moment, most acutely in his life, the absence of a father. He’d walked home that night, through the darkening woods, aware that all this land—over five hundred acres, Larry had said—was theirs, which meant that it was Larry’s, or would be. And Silas, who had nothing, looked up to where the sky had been, now he couldn’t even see the tops of trees as night peeled down along the vines. He started to run, afraid, not of the darkness coming, but of the anger scratching in his ribs.” 

As a boy, Silas visits Larry’s house to find him mowing the lawn, a chore that Larry hates but Silas finds novel since he’s never had a chance to do it before. Larry shows Silas how to mow the lawn, and Silas excels at it but must jump over the fence and hide when Carl returns home. Carl praises Larry, giving him credit for Silas’s work. This moment points to the divide between the two boys: One loves to mow the grass and is good at it but can’t take credit for his work, and the other would prefer to read but is expected to take on the task. Silas’s resentment foreshadows the upcoming rift in their friendship, as well as the knowledge he will soon gain that Carl is his father. Larry and Silas instinctively fight for Carl’s approval and attention, even without knowing the truth that they are inextricably bound together because they are brothers.

“He knew now she’d loved him despite his never writing her back, despite the trouble and fear he caused her, despite the thing missing out of him. He’d returned her love by rarely coming home, and when he did she’d doted over him, as if every meal was his last, or hers, straightened his paper napkin and laid another chicken leg on his plate and filled his milk glass or iced tea so much he could barely stand it. He’d refused to see the truth, that she was starving from loneliness. In fact, he could barely look at her.”

Silas recalls his strained relationship with his mother, Alice, and realizes how much he misunderstood as a young man. Because of not understanding who he was or where he came from, Silas felt as though something was missing in him, and this caused him resentment toward his mother. Silas realizes now that, like many children, he took for granted the unconditional love of a person he assumed would always be in his life. Now that Alice has died, Silas understands her more than he ever did, but he will never get a chance to have that adult relationship where he can see her eye to eye.

“Sometimes he thought of Alice Jones, of Silas, how Larry’s mother had given them coats but not a ride in her car. How what seemed like kindness could be the opposite.”

Larry recalls a vivid moment as a child when his mother finds out that Carl has been giving Alice and Silas a ride to school along with Larry. Ina insists on taking Larry one morning, and though she gives Alice and Silas old coats, she does not give them a ride but leaves them out in the cold. With some time and perspective, Larry can understand how racially charged this moment was. Ina offers Alice and Silas old hand-me-downs from her closet instead of what they really need, which is a way for Silas to get to school and get out of the cold.

“He found the first skipped meal the hardest, the hunger a hollow ache. The longer he went without eating, though, the second day, the third, the pain would subside from an ache to a memory of an ache and finally to only the memory of a memory. Until you ate you didn’t know how hungry you were, how empty you’d become. Wallace’s visits had shown him that being lonesome was its own fast, that after going unnourished for so long, even the foulest bite could remind your body how much it needed to eat. That you could be starving and not even know it.”

Larry’s friendship with Wallace is complicated and strange, revolving around Wallace’s fascination with Larry killing Cindy Walker. Most people might find Wallace off-putting, but Larry is a profoundly lonely man, and Wallace reaches out to him in a way that nobody else has for a very long time. Larry realizes that, before Wallace, he didn’t understand quite how lonely he was, and now that he’s had a taste of friendship again, Larry doesn’t know how he can go back to being alone. 

“‘Such and suching like you doing would be dangerous enough in Chicago, but you in Mississippi now. Emmet Till,’ she said, ‘was from Chicago.”

Alice warns Silas away from pursuing an interracial relationship with Cindy Walker, comparing his situation to Emmet Till’s. In 1955, 14-year-old Till was visiting relatives in Mississippi when he allegedly flirted with a white woman in a store. Till was brutally beaten and lynched, and his murder created a national sensation when Till’s mother requested an open-casket funeral so people could witness how badly her son had been mutilated. The two white men who killed Till were acquitted by an all-white jury and later confessed to the murder but never served time. By referencing Till’s name, Alice reminds Silas of the realities faced by black men in the South.

“Things ain’t so clear when they’re happening, Angie. You’re eighteen and playing ball and everything’s going your way. Then all of a sudden twenty-five years’ve passed and the person you look back and see’s a whole nother person. You don’t even recognize who you used to be. Wasn’t till I come back down here that I saw the mess I’d made.”

After telling Angie the truth about his involvement with Cindy Walker, Silas pleads his case about why he never told the truth, which would have spared Larry from years of suspicion and ostracization. By distancing himself from Chabot, Silas could convince himself that things weren’t as bad as they were. For a time in his life away from Chabot, Silas’s life flourished, but he realizes now that it was all at the expense of Larry’s suffering.

“Larry’s grass had grown high and weedy and Silas remembered how his fists had vibrated on the lawn mower’s handle, the shower of green grass out the side, Larry watching from his porch. He longed to cut it now, mow his way back to the boy he’d been and do it differently with Larry, go to the police and say, ‘She was with me.’”

Silas recalls the day when Larry let him mow the grass, a chore that Larry hated but that Silas enjoyed and at which he excelled. Silas wishes he could just as easily cut through time and make amends with Larry, owning up to his part in Cindy’s disappearance and sparing Larry from a lifetime of pain. Here the novel shows the overlapping of past and present—how the present cannot escape from the past, but how it is also impossible to return to that past. Silas cannot go back in time; he must find a way to make things right in present day.

“And you can bury the past but it always seems to come back, one way or another.”

After Larry wakes from his coma, Sheriff Lolly puts on a buddy-buddy act to try to persuade Larry to confess to Tina Rutherford’s murder. Though he is incorrect in his assessment of Larry’s character, Sheriff Lolly addresses one of the main themes of the novel: that the past informs the present. Everyone in town assumes that Larry has secrets he’s been hiding over the years, but Silas is the one who truly needs to confront his past and unbury the truths he’s been hiding for so many years. Rather than convicting Larry, as Lolly intends, this truth will prove his innocence.

“‘Wait,’ Larry said as French began to fasten his restraints. ‘We were friends. Weren’t we, Silas?’

Tell the fucking truth, 32. Silas.

‘You were, Larry,’ he said. ‘I don’t know what I was.’”

After many long years of silence, Silas finally confesses his role in the disappearance of Cindy Walker, clearing Larry of murdering her. Over the years, Larry has hung on to his memories of his friendship with Silas, and he has long assumed that it was his use of a racial slur that ended their friendship. On various occasions, Larry has tried to make amends, only for Silas to reject or ignore him. Now that the truth has come out, Larry learns Silas was the one who truly betrayed their friendship and that he allowed Larry to carry the guilt for all these years—not only for Cindy’s disappearance, but for driving Silas away. Silas now must own up to the fact that while Larry was truly his friend, Silas was no friend to Larry. 

“‘And now,’ French went on, ‘here you been carrying this information around with you for a quarter-century. I understand your reasons. But considering they never found the Walker girl’s body, and Ott never did no time—’

‘Shit,’ Silas said. ‘Larry’s done time his whole life.’”

Technically, Larry never served any prison time for Cindy’s disappearance and suspected murder. However, Silas points out that there can be more than one type of prison. Though never found guilty, Larry has been treated as a guilty man for all of his adult life. Larry’s seclusion and the cloud of suspicion surrounding him have been a metaphorical prison that have interrupted his life and made him miss opportunities he might have otherwise had.  

“When French got to the hospital, Larry decided, he would talk. Tell what he’d remembered. Tell how, at first, he’d felt a kind of protection for the man who’d shot him. Who’d been his friend. But he’d thought Silas had been his friend, too, hadn’t he? Maybe Larry was wrong about the word friend, maybe he’d been shoved away from everybody for so long all he was a sponge for the wrongs other people did.”

Larry has spent most of his life taking the blame for a crime that he did not commit. Further, Larry also thought himself to be a bad friend because he believes he drove Silas away when they were children. Larry’s sense of loyalty is so strong that even though he knows Wallace was the one who shot him, he initially withholds this information. However, when Larry learns that his life was ruined by Silas’s silence, Larry questions the nature of friendship, realizing that thus far in his life it has only caused him pain and suffering.