In this four-page chapter, Aggie the Drunk Cokehead gets sad, finds the gun that the sheriff forced on Our Hero Joe, and takes it with her.
It’s a little like the original ending of Fatal Attraction. You just know what’s going to happen next: her suicide will look like a murder. It’s set in the 1930s. Could they detect gunpowder residue in the 30s?
I can look this up.
Aha – I bet that’s why it was suddenly 1930 a chapter ago. Wikipedia says the earliest gunshot residue analysis was “introduced in 1933.”
It ends with a diary entry from a minor character, Moxie, the guy Aggie drank with in the chapter that waxes poetic about drinking.
Four pages, though. Either Jerry was drunk or he just finished reading A Death In the Family, with its one-sentence chapter. That was the book with the one-sentence chapter, right? Or was it As I Lay Dying?
I can look this up.
Why, yes it was As I Lay Dying, because A Death in the Family is the unfinished novel James Agee left behind when he died suddenly and someone else had to edit it into a usable form. They both have death in the title, that’s what confused me. Sure. Why else would my subconscious be tossing unfinished novel A Death in the Family around?