Iceland Spar, Chapter Six: The Inciting Incident!

This is definitely the darkest chapter we've come to yet; it's short, I don't know that I have much to say about it, and yet it's also, possibly, the most important for the narrative as a whole. Or such is my belief.

So first, Webb alienates his entire family, though at this point that only means Lake and his long-suffering wife Mayva. Kit's out east, and it's extremely unclear to me where Frank and Reef are at this point: when we last left this family, it was established that he was in the process of moving apart from his children, but that does not answer the question of what the heck happened to those two.

It must be said: he is an extremely shitty father. It turns out Lake's staying out to all hours, coming home with suspicious amounts of money the provenance of which she's being cagy about. So he does what you do: drives her out, telling her "don't run no shelter for whores here" (190). There is a real problem with communication here, obviously. That's the central Webb problem that his children are going to have to untangle, or try to untangle, in various ways: his politics may be good, but on the personal level, he's a wreck--which is a big problem, given that Pynchon posits the personal as a necessary part of the political. And here, in this chapter, when he tries to form a different, ill-advised sort of family relationship...well, it kills him. The fact that she IS working as a prostitute is neither here nor there.

So Webb takes refuge in the union and mine work, and he meets Deuce Kindred, the most viscerally unpleasant character in the novel: the two-bit thug whom he befriends (considering him a sort of replacement son) and then, at the mine company's behest, kills him. Scarsdale has obviously done more actual damage to the world, but boy, fuckin' Deuce. He also has a partner, Sloat Fresno ("Deuce's sidekick, Sloat Fresno, was about twice his size and thought that Deuce was his sidekick" (195). He helps with the torture and murder, but Deuce feels worse, specializing as he does in inflicting mental pain (another pair of doubles, and a lousy pair for sure). Before the murder happens, Webb remarks to Deuce "too bad my daughter's flown the nest. I could've introduced you two" (196). Hold that thought.

There's no indication that the two of them were supposed to torture as well as murder Webb; that part is apparently just for kicks. They take him to Utah, to a town called Jeshimon, "whose main business was death, and the red adobe towers of Jeshimon were known and feared as the places you ended up on top of when nobody wanted you found" (198). The name "Jeshimon" comes from that for a Biblical wasteland. And Webb "watched the light over the ranges slowly draining away" (198).

There's an odd little coda to this chapter, where passing through the town of Cortez, they're seen by a local gunhand named Jimmy Drop, who sees and recognizes Deuce, only to get a couple of gunshots fired at him for his trouble. He thinks that this is no good, and fumbled around for a gun, which by the time he finds, Webb and his killers are gone. Not sure what to make of this.