Against the Day, Chapter Seventeen: Goodbye Mexico!

So we're back in Mexico with Frank. And on reflection, I really think all this Mexican Revolution stuff is the hardest part of the book to grasp, at least for someone without a detailed understanding of the history. There are just SO many significant names, places, and events; it's not easy to figure out, and you wonder if there's necessarily any point to doing so. What would you get out of it?

Well, suffice it to say, Frank is involved. He finds himself in Jiménez, in the state of Chihuahua. Apparently, this place is famous for meteorites, which makes him think of Iceland spar. He finds "the strangest-looking damn rock he'd seen in a while," and "every time he touched the thing, even lightly, he began to hear a sort of voice. 'What are you doing here?' it seemed it was saying. There's no more about that. It just seemed like something I should mention. We can put it on the pile of sentient inanimate objects.

Fighting against the government, he--as a sort of engineer--is in charge of a train filled with explosives careening down the track towards the enemy train. As I understand it. I'm no scientist. In the midst of this, he starts having a sort of out-of-body experience.

Was this the "path" El Espinero had had in mind, this specific half mile of track, where suddenly the day had become extradimensional, the country shifted, was no longer the desert abstraction of a map but was speed, air rushing, the smell of smoke and steam, time whose substance grew more condensed as each tick came faster and faster, all perfectly inseparable from Frank's certainty that jumping or not jumping was no longer the point, he belong to what was happening... (985)

But then a bug flies up his nose and brings him back to reality, and he jumps, bashing up his leg again. That's pretty fun.

He is feeling at loose ends, not sure what he should be doing or who he should be working for: "what was it worth, then, his life? Who or what could he see himself pledging it to?" (986) Indeed.

In a bar, he runs into Günther von Quassel, Yashmeen's old boyfriend, the scion to a coffee fortune out Mexico-way to run things. He asks Frank to come work for him, which he finally agrees to even though he doesn't really understand so much of this technical coffee-machine malarkey. But he has his ways: "Frank leaned close to the machine and whispered Tu madre chingada puta, looked around once or twice, and gave the 'sucker a theatrically furtive kick" (989-990). That's how ya do it!

He is, I guess, dating a woman named Melpómeene; there's little to say about this except that she introduces him to light-producing bugs called cucuji; it's not quite clear to me exactly what if any real insect this is, but they can light up the whole town, apparently, and can be trained and taught to light up or not on command. Light! "He couldn't say when exactly, but at some point Frank came to understand that this bearer of light was his soul and that all the fireflies in the tree were the souls of everyone who had passed through his life, even at a distance" (991). That sounds like the kind of realization you have when you're hella stoned, to be honest, but it certainly goes with the book's themes.

He has a dream where he's at the same city he was at from El Espinero's cactus vision. "His mission was a matter of life and death, but its details were somehow withheld from him" (993). Boy, I know that feeling. He has to pass under a ceremonial arch which leads to a different city--"two different parts of the city as incommensurate as life and death" (993). But also the same. Like the passenger ship/battleship, and all manner of dualities we have seen. Anyway, there's some kind of battle with gunfire, and that's about it. He decides to beat it back to the States, and finally ends up in Denver. He meets Willis Turnstone, Lake's old beau, but no hard feelings from him; he's engaged to just the best woman, "adorable in every way" (995). And who is that woman? None other than Wren Provenance. He deals with it in a mature way; no jealousy. That may be more stonedness than anything else, though. But! She has news about Stray, who is helping striking miners: "Since last September the mine workers' union had been out on strike against Rockefeller's Colorado Fuel and Iron Company" (996). Yup. The strike that would culminate in April, 1914 with the Ludlow Massacre (seriously, fuck Rockefeller and all his works)--and that General European War is just around the corner too! What fun! But as for Stray: "There's a sort of informal plexus of people working as best they can to help the strikers out. Food, medicine, ammunition, doctoring. Everything's voluntary. Nobody makes a profit or gets paid, not even credit or thank-yous." He wants to go in that direction to help, and turns out ol' Ewball's going that way, too. Frank learns he's broken up with Stray: "But now she's all yours, pardner....She always was" (997). So that, naturally, puts ideas in his head. And here, approximately, the chapter ends. Next one starts on page one thousand in the hardcover printing, which always feels like kind of a milestone.