Chapters 2 and 3 Summary and Analysis

Chapter two begins with the author's vivid recollections of waiting to be picked up and driven away from his last day at Freemont School. He describes how he, his sister Alison, his mother, and his mother's boyfriend/husband Jean drive to Florida to make a new life, and offers a glimpse into the history of Jean's family that made him so independent. He also narrates in first person present tense a frightening encounter with Jean's alcoholic brother Victor that, the author asserts, changed his view of the world.

The author also narrates his summer-long friendship with Tobey, a boy from the neighborhood with whom he explores the wilderness, describing the sense of both silent solitude and joy at the core of their experiences. He focuses particularly on their discovery of the carcass of a dead mule, and the simultaneously...