Larry hears from the deputy guarding his hospital room that Silas has been hurt and figures out that it has to do with Wallace. He tells the deputy that he has to talk to French about Wallace.
Over the deputy’s radio, he describes to French what he remembers of Wallace and his disturbing ideas, the last time he visited him, and that he recognised Wallace’s eyes behind the mask when he was shot. He describes the mask to French.
Wallace placed a diamondback rattlesnake in Irina’s mailbox
© picture alliance/PIXSELL
French later comes to Larry’s room and has him identify the mask. He asks Larry some questions about Wallace and their relationship, and then informs Larry that Wallace is now dead.
Later, after French has left, Larry is thinking about time passing and loneliness and memories when he gets a new roommate: Silas is brought in.
sixteen
Silas wakes up in the hospital room next to Larry – his brother, both of them the sons of Carl Ott – and remembers what happened and how he got here. The TV is on and they watch a news report about the events at Wallace’s house. Silas learns from the report that after he passed out in Wallace’s house, his colleague Voncille notified the sheriff’s department, and there was a gun battle during which Wallace allegedly shot and killed himself. When the officers searched Wallace’s house they found evidence that implicated him in the murder of Tina Rutherford, including her purse.
Silas tells Larry everything he has learned, including that they are half-brothers. Larry says that he thinks he already knew back when they first met, and after the incident with the coats. When Silas finishes talking, Larry summons the nurse and tells her he wants to be moved to another room.
seventeen
Silas has lots of visitors on the next day, his last day in hospital. Angie, Voncille and the mayor all come to see him. Then French comes to inform them both about the progress with the case against Wallace. They now know that he shot Larry and killed Tina. They also believe that he may have been responsible for the murder of M&M, too. He cautions them both to be careful when facing journalists, because the case has attracted nationwide attention and there are TV crews at the hospital from CNN and Fox News, as well as from local stations.
eighteen
Angie drives Silas home from the hospital. He drops in at City Hall where the mayor tells him he will be getting a new car and some assistance in his work, apparently to be financed by Tina Rutherford’s father. Silas tells the mayor to wait until he sees the story coming out in the local paper before he authorises any of this.
He then goes home to convalesce. He visits Larry, who refuses to talk to him. He also goes to visit Mrs Ott in the nursing home, but she doesn’t know who he is, lost in dementia. He goes to look at the derelict Walker house.
nineteen
Four days later: Silas has visited Larry every day, but while he enjoys the visits, Larry doesn’t know how to react or what to say. Silas has been taking care of things for him, feeding the chickens, bringing him his mail and his cheque book so he can pay his bills.
The doctor tells Larry he can start moving around now, but that he must start eating a healthier diet. Larry takes short walks around the hospital, noticing all the reporters outside waiting for him. Late that night he sneaks out of the hospital. He starts to walk home.
Silas gets a phone call from the hospital telling him that Larry has left, and he immediately gets in his car and heads off to find him. He discovers Larry walking home. Silas drives him home, and Larry offers to fix up Silas’ jeep.
Larry is surprised that Silas and Angie have cleaned up his house while he was in hospital. Larry says Silas should come by the next day so they can work on the Jeep. Their friendship appears to be restored.
| 3.3 | Structure |
SUMMARY
Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter is structured as a crime thriller: a crime occurs early in the narrative and the plot involves solving the crime. The novel is also concerned with events in the past, and so it is structured to include long passages of flashbacks to 25 years ago. Other structural elements which organise the plot and the characters include the use of symmetry to highlight both divisions and similarities. Here we will also look at the evolution of the friendship between Larry and Wallace as an organising structure in the novel.
The title
The concept of place – the idea of where you are, where you belong – and the actual physical location are important in the novel. Alice and Silas’ transition from the northern city of Chicago (the third largest city in the USA) to this tiny hamlet in rural Mississippi is a big deal: For the 13-year old Silas it’s a completely different world. The racial and social tensions and dynamics of rural Mississippi are not the same as in Chicago, a major northern city. And for Larry Ott, his notoriety as “Scary Larry” is greatly exacerbated by his location in a tiny community where everyone knows everyone else – a community he has never really left, with the exception of his short time in the military.
This idea of the central importance of place in the novel begins with the title. Taken from a children’s rhyme used as a mnemonic for the correct spelling of Mississippi (the crooked letter meaning the letter “s”), the title Crooked Letter immediately and firmly anchors the novel and our expectations in a specific place, namely the deep South, and gives it a specific frame of reference: Childhood.
The idea of belonging is a central theme in the novel, and the characters belong to this specific place in varying degrees. We have Larry, who has never left and is tied to a place where he is now a pariah, and Silas, who was conceived here, but who grew up far to the north before being brought back as a teenager, only to leave again, and return yet again as an adult. Alice’s inability to successfully leave this specific place behind her is an important device within the plot of the novel, a device which is used to bring Silas into the story, and to expose the secrets within Carl Ott’s past. The place, Chabot in Mississippi, won’t let people go: Larry can’t escape. Alice can’t escape. And Silas is dragged back twice, also unable to escape.
Chronology
The novel is concerned with the connected events of two different times – the year 1982 and the present day (presumably 2007, 25 years later). The narrative makes strong use of flashbacks, at times with entire chapters being set in the past (Chapters 3, 5 and 7) but also in shorter forms, with the central characters Larry and Silas remembering moments from their past and the events which drove them apart.
The extensive use of flashbacks means that the structure of the novel must be considered in two different ways. Firstly, there is the surface structure, the sequence of chapters and narrative, which moves back and forth in time and follows the demands of the plot and the creation and release of tension and suspense. Then there is the internal chronology, the actual sequence of events within the lives of the characters in the novel, beginning with the first meeting between Larry and Silas in March 1979. (There is of course another, older part of the story – the affair between Alice Jones and Carl Ott – which is only reconstructed after both have died, and which can
