House Made of Dawn: 3. The Longhair, July 24 Summary & Analysis

Abel takes the job cutting wood for Angela St. John. When he comes to her house, she is prepared to negotiate his wages, but he shuts her off and states his price without bargaining. Watching Abel work brings Angela pleasure that seems to be erotic. She also recognizes and relates to the “useless agony” that Abel inflicts upon the wood he cuts.

When Angela is alone in the afternoon, she speaks to a child in her womb and searches the wind for bad omens. Abel comes inside to discuss the wood he’s cut, and he is amiable despite his reserved nature. When he tells Angela matter-of-factly that he will take his payment when he finishes cutting the wood over the weekend, she grows offended at his disinterest in money. She challenges him, but he stays silent, which irritates her further. She imagines provoking him into sex with obscene, racist language. She restrains herself, since she knows Abel would have no reaction. She takes some comfort in the power she holds over him as his employer.

Abel leaves, and Angela reflects on her own body. She cannot see it as beautiful, perceiving it only as a disgusting collection of flesh and bones that feeds the “monstrous fetal form” inside her. She sometimes wishes to burn to death, so that her entire body will be destroyed. Angela goes outside and looks at the firewood, thinking of the violence that divided it. One of the nearby plateaus was once decimated by fire, and Angela imagines flames spreading across the “flesh” of the now-dead trees. She sets the firewood in the hearth, but the flames seem only to burn the wood’s outside, leaving the core intact.

Father Olguin visits the Benevides house and invites Angela to the town’s celebration of the feast of Santiago. She accepts, and though Father Olguin wants to linger and look at her, he departs. Angela thinks of a corn dance she saw at Cochiti. She was struck by the seriousness with which the dancers took their duty. She believes the dancers achieved spiritual freedom by seeing beyond the landscape and its colors, seeing instead “nothing in the absolute.” She envies this ability, and she believes Abel shares this perception of nothingness when he chops wood. However, he fails to see all the way to “the last reality,” so Angela is confident she can dominate him.