understand who Silas is.
Silas remembers the day he spent at the Ott house when he and Larry were children. He remembers mowing the lawn, and how when Carl Ott came home that evening he had thanked Larry (whom he thought had done the work), and how angry he, Silas, had been about Larry having a father and him not having one.
He now believes that his father had been a white man who had impregnated his mother when she worked as a maid, and that his mother had left Chabot for Chicago to have her illegitimate baby.
On the return trip to the Ott house, Silas pulls over a young white man called Wallace Stringfellow who has been driving suspiciously. But Silas is too preoccupied with thoughts of the cabin where he used to live with his mother to do more than give the man a warning and send him off.
He goes to the cabin where they used to live. He sees through a window what appears to be a fresh grave dug in the dirt floor beneath one of the beds.
nine
Larry recalls having scared away a boy who used to sneak into his barn and steal things and cause disturbances. He was 31 at the time. He put on the zombie mask he got for the Halloween party years before and ambushed the boy in the barn. Years later, aged 41, Larry is visited by a drunk young man in a TV satellite installation van who introduces himself as Wallace Stringfellow – it’s the boy from ten years earlier.
Wallace is a drunk and a liar, but Larry is so crippled by loneliness that he doesn’t object to the visits from Wallace, and the two men become friends, Wallace visiting regularly and getting drunk and stoned on Larry’s porch. One Christmas, he secretly gives Larry an old pistol as a present.
On one visit, Wallace starts to ask about whether Larry had actually raped and killed Cindy Walker, and becomes increasingly excited and sexually aroused by the idea of kidnapping, abusing and raping a girl. He has found the cabin in the woods where Silas and his mother had lived – he fantasises about this cabin having been the site of the rape and murder. He talks about how his mother’s ‘boyfriends’ used to behave with his mother and his obvious arousal makes Larry increasingly uncomfortable. Larry tells Wallace to go home. Wallace becomes angry and smashes up Larry’s car. He doesn’t return to Larry’s after that evening.
Despite the insights he has had into Wallace’s dangerous and deviant character, Larry misses him and hopes he will come back, even to the point of considering employing him at his garage and training him to be a mechanic. His loneliness appears to hold sway over his judgement.
ten
Silas is working traffic duty one week after discovering the grave and Tina Rutherford’s body in the cabin on Larry’s property where he and his mother used to live. He gets a phone call from the nursing home where Larry’s mother lives, informing him, as he had requested, that she is having a “good day”.
Silas has begun working extra shifts – doing guard duty over the comatose Larry in the hospital and also spending time at the Ott farm, feeding the chickens and guarding the property. He is becoming increasingly exhausted by the extra work.
He goes to see Larry’s mother at the nursing home. She vaguely remembers him and seems worried about Larry. A “stringy-looking” young white man (p. 232.30) has been spotted trying to get near Larry’s room in the hospital.
At dinner, Angie forces Silas to finally tell her about his relationship with Cindy Walker back in school. They had been together secretly, but Silas’ mother had found out and begged him to stop seeing her. Cecil Walker had become increasingly suspicious of Cindy and tried to control her completely. Silas had been the secret boyfriend she had wanted to meet on the night she made Larry take her to the drive-in.
Angie understands immediately what this means: Silas has known all these years that Larry was not guilty, but has said nothing and allowed Larry to take the blame and be ostracized under the suspicion of having something to do with the disappearance of Cindy Walker. Silas guesses that it was actually Cecil who killed her.
The next day, while feeding the chickens at Larry’s farm, he gets a phone call from the hospital. Larry has woken from his coma.
eleven
Larry wakes up in the hospital: He has been dreaming about himself and Silas, and then himself and Wallace. French and Sheriff Lolly begin questioning him but he has a seizure when they tell him what happened to Tina Rutherford. They return another time to continue questioning him.
Both French and Lolly are convinced that Larry killed both Cindy Walker and Tina Rutherford and shot himself in a suicide attempt. They try to persuade Larry that this is what happened, disregarding his inability to remember the events or explain why he would have done these things. Larry – due to blood loss and the trauma of the shooting – can’t remember what happened when he was shot or even if he actually did kill Tina Rutherford.
twelve
Silas rushes to the hospital, knowing that French will be trying to force a confession out of Larry. He defends Larry, saying he had nothing to do with the disappearance of Cindy Walker, and finally, 25 years later, confesses to having been the secret boyfriend she had made Larry take her to see. Larry and French and Lolly are shocked by the revelation. French interviews Silas back in his office, and tells him to stay away from Larry from now on.
Later, Silas is getting drunk in a bar when Irina (the woman with the rattlesnake in her mailbox) comes in and starts drinking with him. She tells him about a friend of hers, Evelyn, who had been seeing a weird young white guy who collected guns and snakes. His name was Wallace Stringfellow. Irina thinks he may have been the person who put snakes in her and Evelyn’s mailbox. Silas vaguely remembers the name and the man. He goes home with Irina, but has second thoughts and leaves before anything can happen between them.
thirteen
Larry is in hospital still, watching TV. He is remembering scenes and moments from his childhood, with Silas and with Cindy, in a confused jumble which stirs his emotions.
He also now remembers how, shortly after Tina Rutherford went missing, Wallace came to his place, waking him at 3:15 in the morning. He was drunk, sitting outside on the porch. He half-confessed to having done “something”, and seemed depressed and full of self-hatred. When Larry offered to teach him how to fix cars, Wallace replied that he wasn’t “worth a shit”.
Larry wants to tell French what he has remembered, and that he is sure it was Wallace who killed Tina and shot him.
fourteen
Silas goes to work the next morning with a bad hangover. He later goes back to Larry’s farm to feed the chickens. There he sees fresh tire tracks from the 4-wheel vehicle he had noticed there before and an empty can of Pabst Blue Ribbon beer. He begins to think about Wallace, and decides to go and talk to him about the snakes that had been put in Irina’s mailbox.
He goes to Wallace’s house and interviews him. He sees John Wayne Gacy, Wallace’s vicious and mistreated pitbull-Chow crossbreed dog, he sees the snakes, and then also spots Larry’s old zombie mask, from the Halloween party 25 years ago. When Silas asks him about it, Wallace makes an excuse to go outside and then releases the dog. The dog immediately attacks Silas, biting and wounding him before he can defend himself or get to his radio. While Silas is fighting off the dog, Wallace begins shooting at him. Silas manages to get his own gun and shoots the dog.
Silas then shoots Wallace in the leg, but Wallace escapes into a nearby wood. Silas is badly injured and collapses in Wallace’s house, smashing one of the snake enclosures and releasing a rattlesnake as he falls. The last thing he sees is Larry’s
