53 pages • 1 hour read
Tawni O'DellBack Roads
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1999A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 9-12Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 9 Summary
Harley wakes and reflects on how his father never took the opportunity to speak to Harley’s grandfather as he lay dying. Harley wonders if the abuse his father suffered at the hands of Harley’s grandfather caused Harley’s father to abuse Harley and his sisters. He also wonders if Bonnie’s life would have been different if her parents hadn’t died in a car accident when she was young. Harley imagines that if he had known his father was going to die, he would have told him that he loved him. Harley sleeps again and imagines his sisters 20 years in the future, living in the same house. The house is falling down around them, and Misty is the only one working. Amber still dresses provocatively but doesn’t have any children due to a long string of abortions. Jody is mute and her feet are damaged by the pipe in the yard.
When Harley wakes, he sees Callie washing herself in the creek. The memory of what happened the night before comes back to him. He pretends to be asleep. Callie leaves. Harley dresses and walks back to the house. As he walks, he recalls that this is the last month of school. It makes him remember how hard the first school year after his father’s death had been. Jody was in kindergarten, so she didn’t go a full day. Harley had to work and couldn’t be home with her, and Amber had to go to school. After a time, Amber started skipping school to care for Jody. The school sent a truant officer who told them that if Amber was Jody’s parent, the school would allow her to enroll Jody in the daycare for the children of teen moms, but since Amber wasn’t Jody’s mother, she didn’t qualify. Harley argued with the officer, and eventually the school allowed Jody to enroll in the daycare, but Harley refused to send her. There were other struggles he had to deal with, such as late payments on the mortgage. No one was willing to help Harley with these issues, but he didn’t want the help. He was proud that they survived on their own.
Harley returns home to find Misty shooting at turkeys from the front porch. She explains that she’s trying to help with their grocery bill. He takes the gun and goes to his room in the basement. He thinks about Callie and hopes she enjoyed their time together, but he isn’t sure she did. Harley recalls his cousin Mike Jr. talking about a girl who was a screamer, but Callie didn’t make any noise. He didn’t look at her during the act. Harley is worried Callie left because it wasn’t good.
When Harley wakes, he surveys the outside of the house. He reflects on his parents’ decision to add another room to the house when his mother got pregnant with Misty. Harley’s father and Uncle Mike built it themselves, and it took two years. When it was done, they gave the room to Harley for his ninth birthday. Harley was disappointed to get the room as a gift because he felt it was owed to him and he’d wanted a remote-control car. He announced to his parents that this was the worst gift ever and ran off. His father chased him down and hit him twice before putting him inside the truck. His father drove him to the Carbonville Mine Water Reclamation Plant and walked him to a perimeter fence where a group of small houses were located. His father told him that was where he grew up. After that, he recalls, birthdays were no longer “about cake and presents for me and started being about survival” (153).
Harley speaks to Jody and learns that Callie and her husband, Brad, fight a lot. Harley heads to the shed to begin his yard work when he spots Elvis with something in his mouth. Thinking Elvis has dug the groundhog up, Harley chases him down. However, the item in Elvis’s mouth is a bloody shirt with a sunflower on it. The shirt looks familiar, but Harley isn’t sure who it belongs to.
Chapter 10 Summary
A few days later, Harley asks Amber about the sunflower shirt. Amber says that the shirt belonged to her, but she gave it to Misty. Amber wants to know where the shirt is, but Harley doesn’t tell her what Elvis found. The shirt bothers him, but he convinces himself the blood is from their father hitting Misty and that Misty hid it in the woods herself.
Harley notices that Callie doesn’t try to call him and worries that it might be because she didn’t enjoy their time together. He waits until Friday, then walks up to the Mercer house in the morning. He arrives as Callie puts Esme on the bus. Harley watches until the bus leaves. Harley goes to work at Barclay’s, then picks up a couple of candy bars for dinner on his way to Shop Rite. He steals some caffeine pills from the pharmacy, so when Rick asks to talk to him, Harley is afraid he’s going to get fired. Instead, Rick informs Harley of a customer complaint and asks him to create a display of bananas in the cereal aisle.
As Harley’s stocking the bananas, he overhears Callie talking to her kids. He panics and goes outside to gather the carts in the parking lot. When Callie and her kids come out, he helps her put the groceries in the car. Callie explains that Brad had a meeting, so she had to take the kids to the store with her. As she speaks, he sees her words floating in the air. They discuss art again, then the kids begin to argue. Callie pulls Harley aside and apologizes for leaving him alone that night. She tells him she was worried he would think badly of her for being a married woman with children and taking advantage of a young man. She invites him to visit her that night after the kids are asleep.
Chapter 11 Summary
Harley goes straight to Callie’s after work. She invites him in and offers him a beer, asking him about the night he came to her property. He tells her things have been difficult but doesn’t go into detail. They have sex again. When it’s over, she expresses concern for him. She takes him to the couch and instructs him to get some sleep. The next morning, she wakes him at dawn and sends him away, worried one of the kids will see him. As he drives home, he tries to think of places where they can meet without the danger of the kids seeing. He thinks about inviting her to the abandoned mining office where he and Skip once devised their plans to kill Donny.
Amber confronts Harley, demanding to know where he was all night. She claims there was a crisis while he was gone, growing agitated when he argues with her over the meaning of the word crisis. Amber tells Harley that she was searching for the sunflower shirt when she found an envelope with nearly $1,000 inside. Misty stole it from their mother and was hiding it. When Amber found the money, Misty took it back and refused to hand it over. Harley goes into the house and confronts Misty. She claims she took the money because Bonnie was going to use the money to take the kids away from their dad. Misty says it’s her money now and she’s going to use it to go to college. Harley insists the money isn’t hers and takes it from her, receiving a couple of scratches on his hand in the process. Amber wants to use the money to get her driver’s license, but Harley insists they need to use the money to pay the property taxes on the house. Jody tells Harley that their mother was saving the money because she wanted to take Misty away from their dad. She says she overheard Bonnie talking to Uncle Mike about it, but she doesn’t know why.
Chapter 12 Summary
Harley waits for Callie to call him. When she doesn’t call for four days, he goes to her house. Callie is outside playing with her three-year-old son, Zack. Harley demands to know why Callie hasn’t called him and she explains that he’s never home when her husband isn’t around. Harley demands they go inside, and they have sex on the kitchen table. Afterward, Callie gives Harley a note Jody wrote for Esme that says, “Misty killd a kittin wuns” (198). Callie is concerned, but Harley brushes it off. They agree to meet at the mining company office in a week.
The following week, Harley arrives at the mining company office before Callie. He recalls more ways in which he and Skip tried to kill Donny, including luring him into the mine and planning to set off cherry bombs. However, Harley dropped the matches into a puddle. Harley remembers thinking that Donny went along with their plans because he knew it made Skip happy.
Callie arrives and they immediately begin touching. Callie takes Harley’s dad’s jacket off him. Callie asks if the first night they were together was his first time having sex. He admits it was. She offers him oral sex. Harley falls asleep when it is over. When he wakes, he is alone. Harley takes a sandwich outside to eat. While he’s eating, he hears someone in the woods, but when he calls out, no one answers. He sees an owl take flight from a tree. He knows that whatever made the initial noise wasn’t the owl but chooses not to think about it.
Chapters 9-12 Analysis
Misty wears a cat collar on her wrist that once belonged to a kitten her father gave her. This collar is symbolic of the violence the Altmyer children have experienced in their lives because of its connection to the kitten, who was shot. However, when Harley finds the bloody shirt that once belonged to Misty and Callie gives him the note on which Jody wrote that Misty killed a kitten, the collar takes on a more sinister symbolism. These things, combined with the mention of Misty shooting at turkeys from the front door, underscore Misty’s capability with a gun and foreshadow the revelation that she killed their father.
Harley’s sexual inexperience comes through in the aftermath of his first sexual encounter with Callie. This moment is one Harley has anticipated with excitement and dread. After being with Callie, Harley’s insecurities resurface, revealing the depth of the abuse his father inflicted on him. However, even as Harley struggles with his sexual desires and intimacy, he imagines telling his father he loves him and becomes obsessed with his father’s final moments of life. This again underscores the complicated relationship he has with his abuser, and how it continues to impact his sense of identity.
Harley’s obsession with Callie, and his fear of her rejecting him, reflects the theme of Parental Abandonment. Callie is a sort of substitute mother figure for Harley, and he is afraid she will abandon him just like Bonnie did. While Harley can logically understand Callie’s excuse for not calling him, he still becomes obsessed with the fear that she doesn’t like him or that she doesn’t like the things they do together.
At the same time, Harley reflects on the abandonment he felt from the community in the aftermath of his mother’s arrest. Harley’s inability to get daycare for Jody or an extension on the mortgage payments adds to the sense of isolation Harley feels in his community. While Harley is proud that he was able to provide for his family without help, this lack of support makes it difficult for Harley to seek help. This foreshadows the end of the novel, when Harley accepts responsibility for something he didn’t do, and is angry with the only person who ever offered help to him and his family, Betty.
Harley has begun to see words in the air, revealing another crack in his mental health. These words are often associated with his sense of his own identity or his feelings of abandonment. The first time he saw words was when he was visiting his mother, but they’ve begun to appear more often, coming when he is under stress or nervousness. This, coupled with the hallucinations, lost time, and bad dreams about his sisters continues to reveal his struggling mental health, building tension as the reader worries for Harley’s safety.
Harley’s continued focus on Skip and Donny provides some comic relief. However, Skip’s actions do have a sinister side that throws Harley’s gentle nature into sharp relief, as Harley steps in to save Donny many times. The comparison between Skip and Harley indicates that Harley is not a violent person, despite his fantasies of using violence against his sisters and his actions with Ashlee. The fact that Skip escaped the isolated town where he and Harley grew up while Harley remains illustrates the unfairness of Harley’s situation.
