Betty

In the week following Halloween, Nova falls to the ground while trying to jump on the bed. Flossie assumes that he’s being dramatic when he won’t stop crying, but when Mrs. Silkworm gets there, she picks him up and takes him to the hospital. Flossie takes this opportunity to go to California. Nova’s brain swells, and Mrs. Silkworm takes care of him as he makes slow progress that the doctors said he’d never make, like walking and talking.

Betty works in the fields. On her way home one day, Ruthis shouts insults at her, and she responds to each insult by telling Ruthis that she is beautiful. She tells her that she forgives her. She goes home to her mother, who draws wrinkles on Betty’s face where she thinks they’ll form one day.

Flossie becomes addicted to drugs. She sends letters and sometimes calls but sounds increasingly lost. In the 1980s, she is found dead with a needle in her arm, naked except for the necklace her father gave her.

The Breathanian reports that a group of local men, looking for the mysterious shooter, came upon a girl who identified herself as Betty Carpenter and said that she was looking for rocks for her brother.

Betty leaves with her father to sit on the Rambler in the forest. They listen to the radio and read the news, and she asks him where the burn scar on his right hand came from. He talks about a man who came to town with a burning book from which a beautiful, burning hummingbird escaped. He was afraid that it would set the whole world on fire, so he tried to capture it and got burned in the process. Then, he tells the ugly truth—that a white man driving a fancy Ford held his hand on a burning engine because of his darker skin.

He grips his chest and moans as blood starts dripping from his nose. Betty tries to get Doc Lad, but he asks her to stay. He tells her to leave Breathed and escape just like the bird that flew out of the burning book. He tells her that he loves her and asks whether he has ever said those words before, and she replies that he told her every time he told her a story. She asks the same question of him, and he replies that she told him every time she listened to one of his stories.

Betty tells the real story of her father’s death. He has been saying he’s dying for a week when Alka, Betty, and Lint, sitting on the porch, hear a thud from inside the house. They rush inside to find that he has collapsed and is bleeding from his mouth. He continues to bleed as they call an ambulance. Alka makes dough for a roast and noodles later that night, committed to the idea that he will be back to eat it. Landon asks them to take his boots off.

When they make it to the hospital, the nurse tells them to say their goodbyes. Alka puts her necklace with a pendant of half of an apple up to his.

When they return from the hospital, Alka tells Betty that her father bought her a typewriter. She finds it in the back of the Rambler with a story already begun: BETTY, Chapter One.

Betty wakes up in her mother’s bed to Leland’s hands on her. She walks him outside and tells him to leave, but he won’t, saying that he’s there for his father’s funeral. Betty tells her mother’s story to show Leland that Landon is not his father, and she tells him that she knows he did the same thing to Fraya starting when she was five years old. She shows him what she wrote about what she saw in the barn, and when he tries to destroy it, she tells him that he can’t get rid of Fraya’s story because Betty keeps it within her. He tells Betty that Fraya was pregnant and wanted to keep the baby when she died, admitting that he killed her by forcing her hand into a jar with a bee. Taunting Betty, he also admits that he caged and starved the eagle that Fraya and her sisters believed would carry their prayers to heaven. Betty digs up the shotgun under the stage and points it at Leland. Lint begins using Trustin’s old slingshot to hurl rocks at Leland.

Betty tells Leland that the fire from hell is already burning him. He pretends to feel it, and then his smile fades as he actually feels it and screams for help. Lint and Betty both let him suffer. Eventually, he drives away, and Lint says that he always knew Leland was a demon.

At the funeral that day, they don’t have enough seats for all the attendees. Lint asks people to tell stories about Landon that mean the most to them, many of which have become myths over the years. Betty talks about how she would have lost herself in the swamp of what other people thought of her if not for her father. Then, she puts on a record that Fraya made years ago.

The Breathanian reports that the gunfire has ended.

The winter passes, and the spring makes grief bearable. A black dog comes to their home, and Lint thinks it is Landon. Betty walks into her mother’s room, and she says that everyone will always like Landon best because he could build amazing things. Betty reminds her mother of the time she stepped on a thistle. To soothe her pain, Alka sat with her on a quilt and convinced Betty that they were flying above their home on a magic carpet.

Betty decides to leave Breathed. She invites Lint to come with her, but he decides to stay to look after their mother and continue his father’s business.

Alka tells Betty that she got a job at the Breathed Shoe Company and gives her the Apache tear to take on her journey. She tells her that a girl comes of age against the knife and then decides whether she is torn apart or strong enough to fly—this line, “A girl comes of age against the knife” (461), becomes the first line of Betty’s as-yet-unwritten novel. When Alka notices the shotgun, Betty explains that Fraya was the shooter before her and that Betty began shooting after Fraya died, but she has decided to stop.

Lint asks Betty whether she is scared of the curse, and she responds that there is no curse and that she’s tired of being afraid. She looks in her room before she leaves and sees Flossie, Fraya, and her child self braiding each other’s hair and asking not to be forgotten. She tells them that she will always remember them. She takes a red balloon with a letter to her father. After being picked up from the side of the road, she leans out the window and lets the balloon go, watching her father’s hand grab it from the sky.