Iceland Spar, Chapter Fifteen: Live! Tonight! Gastón Villa and His Bughouse Bandoleros!

So Frank goes down to the mines with Merle, who is positively disposed towards him on accounta him having been a good guy who also saved Dahlia a few times from mistimed explosions. He's very focused on getting Deuce and Sloat, but Merle warns him that people know who he is and that continuing to be in town might be dangerous. Bob is after him, so Merle lets him know of a shortcut through the mine back to town--only there are...people. Or something. Living in there. Tommyknockers, is how they are referred to. Merle gives him "some kind of...meat sandwich" to distract them, and all I can think of is the "grumble grumble" monster in the original Zelda to whom you have to give meat so it'll let you pass.

There's a very evocative description of the chaos in town:

Pandemonium did not begin to amount to a patch on what seemed to be approaching them instead of they it, swelling to surround them, a valley-wide symphony of gunshots, screaming, blaring on musical instruments, freight-wagon traffic, coloratura laughing from the pavement nymphs, glass breaking, Chinese gongs being bashed, horses, horse-hardware jingling, swinging-door hinges creaking as Frank and Dally presently arrived at the Gallows Frame Saloon, about halfway down Colorado Street. (302)

Frank gets a room at a new place, to stay hidden: it's a brothel called the Silver Orchid. Dally is there...observing? I'm going to say observing. Because Merle wants her to learn the facts of life, you see. The idea that she's participating--which, to be fair, the text doesn't hint at, as far as I can tell--is just too disturbing to contemplate.

Anyway, Frank's still around, dodging the authorities. This part seems important: Merle tells him about an alchemist named Dr. Stephen Emmens (a real person), who, allegedly, had hit on a formula for producing gold from silver--or a gold-silver hybrid, called "argentaurum." There's that dang ol' doubling again! Merle has a piece, which he shows it to Frank, along with a bit of Iceland Spar with which to see the bifurcation. Is it possible that "double refraction somehow is the cause of this?" (306). Maybe so! Maybe so.

More on the Tommyknockers: they're there, with a whole society and everything.:

Not only had the tommyknockers found this sector of the Little Hellkite congenial--in the years since its abandonment they had converted it into a regular damn full-scale tommyknockers Social Hall. And abruptly there they all were, sure enough, a regular subterranean tableau. Those duendes were playing poker and pool here, drinking red whiskey and home-brewed beer, eating food stolen out of miners' lunch pails as well as the pantries of the unmarrieds' eating hall, getting into fights, telling tasteless jokes, just as you might find in and recreational club aboveground, any night of the week. (308)

This makes me think of the gnomes that the Chums met in the Hollow World bit. Pynchon likes these Other people. I'm trying to figure out their purpose, if any. Not everything needs a purpose!

Frank meets Dr. Willis Turnstone, an osteopath, who had previously been briefly involved with Lake pre-Deuce. And we learn the classic mouse-and-lion-esque tale of how he came to be here: he was going West when he was stopped by the Jimmy Drop Gang, and might have come to a bad end if not for him fixing Jimmy's bad back. So that made them friendly, and now he wanders and practices medicine, albeit in the exact way that quacks do: he diagnoses patients with this or that, and "since they always died or got better on their own, and nobody kept count, there was no way to know how effective any of this was, and he was too busy himself ever to make a proper study" (311). Convenient indeed!

Frank, who hadn't previously known about his sister and his father's killer, does not take the news well: "when I find her, I will kill the bitch, O.K.? Him, goes without saying, but her--that fucking--I can't even say her name" (312).

ANYWAY, Frank gets out of town as part of the band whose name I mentioned in the title. That makes me laugh. Before he leaves, he has a conversation with his late father, and we get a good summation of the differences between the three brothers: "It's like we specialized, Pa. Reef is runnin on nerve, Kit's gonna figure it all out scientifically, I'm the one who has to keep poundin at it day after day, like that fella back east trying to turn silver to gold."

Frank's leaving, and Dally's leaving, too, going east. Frank recommends she meet Kit if she's in the area. And we get one of those quietly heartbreaking endings Pynchon can do, about Dally and Merle:

Neither of them had ever had much interest in breaking each other's heart. In theory they both knew she had to move on, though all he wanted right now was to wait, even just another day. But he knew the feeling, and he guessed that it would pass. (317)

I sort of wonder about a blog entry like this, which mostly just summarizes the plot: is this useful? Some chapters seem to lend themselves to more interpretation and commentary. I mean, I'm enjoying reading it, but...? Well, no sense in thinking about that. It is what it is! Onward.