Night of the Living Rez

Fiction | Short Story Collection | Adult | Published in 2022

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“In a Field of Stray Caterpillars”Chapter Summaries & Analyses

“In a Field of Stray Caterpillars” Summary

While waiting for Fellis to receive treatment at the methadone clinic, Dee struggles to find an unoccupied restroom. While waiting for an attendant to finish cleaning a restroom, Dee reflects on his relationship with Tabitha, a white woman he’s been seeing. He senses that their relationship has been coming to an end, though right now the two are split “[n]ot physically, but mentally” (89).

Dee drives Fellis home and they find that the roads are covered in caterpillars that reek when they are killed. Tabitha calls Dee at Fellis’s house, but Dee refuses to take the call. Dee and Fellis have a list of errands to run, including dropping off a DVD rental and delivering Adderall to Fellis’s aunt. As they drive to complete the errands, the scent of the caterpillars is so overwhelming that Fellis has to get out of the car to vomit and Dee, unable to get out in time, vomits in the vehicle. Fellis buys cigars to cover the stench, and the pair complete their errands in a haze of cigar smoke.

Dee calls Tabitha when they get back to Fellis’s, but he ends the conversation before Tabitha can express what she wants to say. Beth comes home and reveals that Dee and Fellis delivered the wrong medication to Dee’s aunt, and she needs to come over to take an Ativan. After, they all go out to McDonald’s and Dee reflects that he needs to end the relationship with Tabitha but doesn’t know how.

“In a Field of Stray Caterpillars” Analysis

“In a Field of Stray Caterpillars” continues to develop the opening stories’ central theme of Dee’s Entrapment in Cycles of Trauma, as traumatic memories—both his own and those of his loved ones—leave him unable to cope with emotional conflict in his life. This story, though, shifts the site of that conflict from his relationship with other men to his relationship with Tabitha, a woman he’s romantically involved with. Their relationship has stalled, and Dee senses that it should come to an end, but he doesn’t understand why it’s not working or how it should be broken off. Dee’s relationship with Tabitha is also one characterized by silences. Dee notes that when he took Tabitha to a tribal social, she “kept asking me to show her how to dance to this song, to that song. I showed her once. I was never good at dancing” (89). Tabitha’s clumsy attempt to connect with Dee’s cultural heritage illustrates the importance of Personal and Communal History in Dee’s life. Even Dee’s admission that he was “never good at dancing” hints at a long, fraught history with this communal performance of identity—one that connects with a network of memories, both personal and communal, to make up Dee’s sense of who he is. Tabitha has no access to these histories, and the distance this creates between the two of them feels too great for Dee to bridge. The comment from a community member that Dee should be dating “a nice Native girl” (89) only deepens this rift and pushes Dee further from the ability to explain his emotional turmoil to Tabitha.

The conclusion of the story does, eventually, see Dee making the decision to end things with Tabitha. The decision, though, belies Dee’s ambivalence about whether the relationship is worth pursuing. He reflects, “Keep on with her or don’t—neither was right” (106). Just as Dee feels physically trapped by the clinic at the start of the story, he ends the story emotionally ensnared. The eponymous caterpillars provide a fitting symbol for Dee’s state through this story. They are listless, traveling through a landscape that only ever destroys them before they can reach any destination at all.