Medicine Walk: Chapter 23 Summary & Analysis

Eldon never got to say goodbye, he tells the kid, who is slumped on the ground, a deep ache in his guts. He feels a mounting rage at his father’s silence, so he wanders into the woods, kicks at the earth, and finally erupts in tears until he’s spent. He’s about to lose his father, and his mother will always be a mystery to him.

When he finally returns to his father, Eldon asks for a drink but soon starts retching, ruining his blanket. The kid wraps his own coat around his father. He asks Eldon if he ever thought of going to Bunky for help, and Eldon replies that he might as well reveal Bunky’s identity: he took Frank to Bunky when he was a week or two old. He couldn’t look at the baby without seeing Angie. Since he thought his loving Angie had killed her, he was afraid that looking at Frank would make him hate his son, too. Bringing Frank to Bunky was the only thing he was proud of in his life.

Eldon was scared the day he drove to Bunky’s. He left the baby under some trees and walked up to the house. Bunky came out on the porch and told Eldon he had no time for him. When Eldon finally got the words out about what had happened, Bunky staggered as if shot. He collapsed in a rocker and says he could kill Eldon for not being there when Angie needed him. Eldon said he wished he would—it would make things easier. But Bunky said Eldon doesn’t deserve easier.

Eldon finally convinced Bunky to see the baby; he stared at Frank through the truck window for a long time. Then he wiped his eyes and told Eldon to bring him up to the house for fresh cow’s milk. They sat on the porch, and Bunky held and fed Frank, looking happy. Finally, he told Eldon he’d take on the responsibility of Frank. Not for Eldon, but for Angie and her son. He said he owes Angie—she’d brought him to life and made him better. Eldon knew what that meant. He walked away, realizing that the hole left in him by Angie’s death would never be filled up.

Dawn is breaking. The kid can’t think of anything to say, so Eldon picks up the story again. He says Bunky promised he’d do his best to teach Frank “Indian things,” even though he wasn’t one, and he’d show him Angie’s way, too. He even said that Eldon could come whenever he wanted, as long as he wasn’t drinking. He gave the kid the name Franklin after a man who tried to catch lightning with a key and a kite, knowing he’d change the world if he did. He says it takes courage to want something for others.

His father’s whole body is shaking. The kid tries to see something of himself in Eldon, but all he can see is a sad, dying man. He helps his father back to the fireside and builds up the fire again, then makes a shelter out of spruce branches to shade his father from the sun. Thinking about what he’s heard, it feels like somebody else’s story; his father doesn’t seem like the same person. Wondering what effect time might have on himself, the kid feels pity for his father’s sorrowful life and comfortless death. He longs for his mother, who is just a ghost in his life than can never become flesh.

The kid sits by the fire and whittles while his father sleeps. When he wakes up, the kid moves him closer to the fire and tells him he should have revealed all of this a long time ago. Eldon says he couldn’t; Angie was his “breath,” and he hasn’t breathed easily for the rest of his life. He says he’s surprised the kid doesn’t hate him and asks Frank to walk him back to the cliff’s edge. They stand there together, looking down at the valley and the river running through it toward the mountains beyond. At one point, his father raises his hands and softly moans, “I’m sorry.”