Against the Day, Chapter Sixteen: The Ousts at Home!

So in contrast, here we have a very short chapter. We're back in the US with Stray and Ewball: they're together now, but "by the time they agreed to part, [they] had forgotten why they ran off together in the first place" (977). Hey, it happens. But in the meantime, Ewball has the idea that she should meet his family, which she isn't wildly enthusiastic about. But she does. His mother is named Moline Velma Oust, but the real drama comes with his (unnamed) dad, who is a stamp collector who's pissed off at his son because of the fact that he's been writing home using rare error printings of stamps with upside down images: "inversion symbolized undoing. Here are three machines, false symbols of the capitalist faith, literally overthrown" (979). Oust père fails to appreciate the symbolism and they get into a physical fight which is broken up when the housekeeper fires off a pistol. The housekeeper is Mayva Traverse, who'd run into the Ousts on a train and things went on from there. This is only the second time she's met her grandson's mother, so that's nice. She seems to have a decent set-up. She asks Stray if she thinks Reef is coming back. The last paragraph is rather poignant:

The kitchen was dim and cool. The afternoon was quiet for a minute, no father and son going round and round, midday chores all seen to, Moline taking a nap somewhere. Stray gathered the older woman into her arms, and Mayva with a great dry-eyed sigh rested her forehead on Stray's shoulder. They kept like that, silent, sill somewhere in the house there was a series of thumps and some bellowing and the day started up again. (981)

This chapter doesn't require a great deal of analysis, which, let's be honest, is a bit of a respite.

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