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Chapter 2
Themes
and Colors
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in How Much of These Hills Is Gold, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Truth, Lies, and History
Civilization vs. Wilderness
Home
Identity and Gender
Family
Grief
Summary
Analysis
One night, Nellie, overcome by some equine terror—not of predators, but of the burden she carries on her back—tries to paw out the stake to which she’s tied and escape. Sam catches her before she flees. Lucy watches in horror as Sam angrily slaps the horse again and again. Sam stops only when Lucy puts herself between Nellie and Sam’s hands, and even then, Sam protests that the animal deserves to be punished for her disloyalty. This sounds like something Ba would have said.
Nellie’s fear echoes Lucy’s worry that Ba’s ghost would chase her and Sam forever. And it does seem like Sam is being haunted, although not by Ba’s ghost. Instead, Sam’s refusal to confront the loss and to look toward the future leaves Sam trapped in a state of anger and fear—a state Lucy is slowly leaving as she buries Ba bit by bit along the trail.
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Sam also sounds like Ba in the ongoing insistence that they might find a better burial site if they just keep looking. Lucy laughs bitterly as she realizes that if Sam really wants to chase Ba’s dreams, they’ll never stop. Sam goes to take another swing at Nellie. Lucy grabs Sam’s small wrist, and slaps back. Her fingernails scrape across Sam’s cheek, and she flees from Sam’s accusatory glare.
Again, the haunting of Sam has less to do with an actual ghost than with Sam’s unwillingness or unreadiness to confront the loss not only of Ba, but even older griefs, like the sense of stability and home the family never had, thanks to Ba’s gold prospecting—and even Ma’s death, which first broke the family apart.
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Lucy runs to the top of a hill and collapses into the scrubby grass. She pushes her hands over her ears and listens for the sound of her own blood, a sound Ma once told her was like the ocean. She misses Ma, and she finds herself apologizing for failing to take care of Sam as Ma would have wanted. Lucy weeps bitter tears, and when they are spent, she gnaws on a blade of grass to chase the salty taste of tears from her mouth. But it’s salty, too. Standing, Lucy realizes that she’s come to rest near a salt flat. And this gives her an idea. She and Sam can buy time to find a place for Ba’s grave if they preserve his body with salt.
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It’s near sunset when Lucy returns to hers and Sam’s camp. Sam is angry, seething with betrayal. Sam isn’t angry, Lucy realizes, about the slap, but about her leaving. Up to now, it’s always been Sam who’s stormed off. She tells Sam her plan. As they tip Ba’s increasingly liquid remains from the trunk, Lucy asks herself again what makes a man. Watching Sam dig up shovels full of salt, Lucy is struck once again by how much Sam’s mannerisms echo Ba’s.
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It takes four days for Ba’s remains to dry out and when he’s fully desiccated, he’s smaller than either of his children. Now, he fits neatly into a rucksack with all his secrets—why he drank, why he sometimes cried, where he buried Ma—still locked away in his remains. Lucy and Sam leave Ma’s trunk behind as they mount Nellie to ride on.
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