Summary
Chapter 24
Tom excitedly tells Douglas what he witnessed at the Honeysuckle Ladies Club. Douglas whistles, and murmurs “Witches…” (128) in appreciation.
Chapter 25
There comes a day when the apples begin to drop slowly from the tree, and then finally drop together so they sound like rain. Colonel Freeleigh wakes with a start from this dark dream and looks for his telephone. He can’t remember how long it was since the boys visited, but now his grandson does not want him to have visitors because it excites him and is bad for his health.
Colonel Freeleigh dials a number and greets Jorge. Jorge is surprised but the Colonel presses on, telling him to open the window. Jorge assents and sets the phone down. The colonel then hears all the sounds of Mexico City on a hot day. He listens to the cars and vendors and smells the odors of meat and stone alleys and feels the sun on his cheek. He feels twenty-five and alive again.
Suddenly a nurse enters and he hides the phone. She checks his pulse and frowns that he is too excited. She sees the phone cradle and hears a muted horn from the phone itself, and tells him he was not supposed to do this again. The Colonel protests, and defends the phone and the boys’ visits. He states hotly that the phone is his and the nurse doesn't live here.
The nurse sighs and says she has to go out but she will set his wheelchair aside so he cannot reach the phone again. After she leaves he lays back in bed and rues how greedy he has been with his phone calls. He is frustrated that his body is seeming to fall apart and now “they were tampering with something more intangible - the memory” (132).
Colonel Freeleigh throws himself awkwardly across the room and redials Jorge. Jorge sighs that the nurse said they cannot talk anymore but Colonel Freeleigh begs him, explaining he hasn’t moved anywhere in ten years. He promises this will be the last time. Jorge assents.
The sounds of people and music swirl in the air. The Colonel feels young and heavy and strong. It is hard for him to believe, now that he is away from the city, that he was ever young. The city itself seems a fantasy. He continues to listen to the sounds of the trolley, of tortillas frying, or static quivering along the miles of wires.
Voices are heard downstairs. The three boys wonder if they should go up. One says they can if the nurse is out. Charlie, Tom, and Douglas peer into the room. Douglas leans down and takes the phone gently out of the old man’s now-cold fingers. He lifts the phone to his ear and hears a window close.
Chapter 26
Tom is playing on the Civil War cannon in the town square. Douglas muses to him that he did not know so many people could die so fast. He has no idea what he will do without the Colonel and his memories of the war and bison and Honest Abe. He wanders away to write it down while Tom pretends to shoot playfully at him.
Chapter 27
Grandfather and Douglas work on the second bottling of the summer. Douglas sees the bottles of dandelion wine from the first and remembers that some are from the day he realized he was alive. He wonders why they aren't brighter. He looks at one from the day John Huff left; why isn’t it darker? Can the bottles encapsulate the smell of the Green Machine or trolley? Perhaps if one poured out a drop of the dandelion wine under a microscope “the entire world of July Fourth would firework out in Vesuvius showers” (139).
Douglas sighs that August is coming but there won’t be any friends, dandelion wine, or machines. Grandfather chides him gently for sounding like a funeral bell. He gives him some wine, tells him to drink a bit, and run around and climb trees and do push ups. Douglas cheerfully agrees.
Chapter 28
Bill Forrester and Douglas sit at the soda fountain and order unique ice creams like old-fashioned vanilla-lime ice. An elderly woman, Helen Loomis, invites them over to her table. She says Douglas looks like a Spaulding and she knows Bill writes for the Chronicle. Bill replies that he knows who she is and that he was in love with her once. She invites him to come over tomorrow and she will tell him the story of the town and he can explain why he loved her.
The next day Bill drives his old car over to the beautiful Victorian home where Helen lives. She sits in the garden, “removed across time and distance” (142). They begin to chat and he asks her what she thinks of the world. She replies that old people only pretend to be wise and that it is all a facade.
She wonders how he knew she was pretty. She can’t remember what the younger her looked like but she still feels that girl safe inside. Some mornings she even forgets she is old. She tells a bit about her life, explaining that she did not marry because she waited too long and the only man whom she loved married someone else. She traveled and visited many places.
After a moment she asks Bill why he is not married and he says women like her are rare. She smiles that perhaps young women are but older ones are not. Besides, men tend to run when they find brains in a woman. She asks what he’d like to do and he replies that he’d like to “See Istanbul, Port Said, Nairobi, Budapest. Write a book. Smoke too many cigarettes. Fall off a cliff, but get caught in a tree halfway down. Get shot at a few times in a dark alley on a Moroccan midnight. Love a beautiful woman” (144). Helen laughs and says she can help with a few - she will tell him stories of her travels and fire a Civil War musket at him.
For hours she spins magical tales of her travels. Bill opens his eyes, charmed by their adventure. He looks at her for a moment, squinting. She realizes he is trying to erase time and make her look young. He does not realize he is doing this and when her eyes fill with tears he apologizes profusely.
For days and days they repeat these encounters. The town gossips a bit but neither care. After two and a half weeks Bill tells her how much he has enjoyed seeing her every day; younger girls are not as kind or witty. Helen responds that the young ones aren’t yet but they will be.
Helen then asks about his comment about loving her when she was younger. He explains how he saw her picture from when she was young in the paper next to a recent article about a charity ball. Helen smiles grimly and says she’d told the paper that any time they mention her they have to use an old photo. Bill thinks about how beautiful and fresh and warm her face was and how he’d clipped it out. Helen thanks him for all that. As they walk around the garden she tells him of the young man she loved and how he is similar to him.
At the end of August, Helen shows Bill a letter and tells him it will come in the mail after she has died. He is shocked by these words, even more so when she says she will be dead in a few days. Like a clock, she explains, she can feel her machinery winding down. He cannot wrap his mind around this but she tells him gently that “time is s strange and life is twice as strange” (151) and maybe they will meet again. She makes him promise not to live to too old of an age. That way if they are both sent back they will be closer in age. Maybe one day in 1985 or 1990 a young man will stop into the drugstore for ice cream and see a young girl and they will just know.
The afternoon passes dreamily away. Two days later Douglas brings Bill the letter. He looks at it, then asks Douglas to get ice cream with him. It is a boiling hot summer day. The man and boy sit down. Bill feels like time has stopped. He orders lime-vanilla ice.
Chapter 29
Douglas asks Tom and Charlie seriously what ever happened to happy endings in real life. Tom tells him frankly that he just needs ice cream, a good cry, and a good sleep.
The boys arrive at their destination - Summer’s Ice House, a little bit of winter in the summer. They enter the deep and dark and freezing cavern and chew icicles and marvel at the fog. Charlie whispers that the Lonely One lives here. That is why everyone shivers on such hot nights.
Tom screams. Charlie grins to Doug that he dropped ice down Tom’s back.
Chapter 30
It is seven o’clock and the sidewalks are still hot and the moon is rising and a few people sit on their porches. Lavinia Nebbs walks to her friend Francine’s house so they can go to the Charlie Chaplin film. Francine worries that they shouldn’t go because the Lonely One could be out and Elizabeth Ramsell just disappeared and Hattie McDollis was killed two months ago and Roberta Ferry went missing too.
The two women near the ravine. Lavinia feels its draw, its great “moving hum, a bumbling and murmuring of creature, insect, or plant life” with its “secret vapors” and “great electricity” (159). She chides Francine but Francine worries that Lavinia will have to cross the ravine later that evening. She asks if Lavinia is afraid of living alone and Lavinia laughs that old maids love to live alone.
In the silent, warm ravine they suddenly come across a body. Francine screams. It is Elizabeth Ramsell and she is clearly dead. Not long after the women report their find, the policemen arrive and the women tell them what they saw. They eventually walk away from the “delicate thing upon the ravine grass” (161).
Lavinia is cold and her heart is beating. A policeman calls out, asking if they want an escort. Lavinia says no. They keep going through the ravine and the sounds of the investigation fade. When Lavinia says they will get Helen and go to the show, Francine is shocked and thought they were going home. Lavinia replies that seeing the show will help them forget what they saw.
As they come out of the ravine, they see a small figure silhouetted - Douglas Spaulding. He looks white and shaky. Francine screams at him to get out of the ravine. He turns and runs away. Francine sobs.
At Helen’s house the two women tell her part of the story - that Elizabeth’s body had been found.
The three young women walk out into the night. The news of Elizabeth seems to be spreading from house to house, for they all seem cold and anxious and staring. Helen thinks they’re crazy for being out but Lavinia reassures her friends that the Lonely One won’t kill three women.
A man lunges out of the darkness, pretending to be the Lonely One. The women scream but it’s only their friend Frank Dillon. Lavinia rebukes him sharply and says they found Elizabeth’s body and it’s not funny at all. At the drugstore the women order some candy. The druggist is pale and unnerved, as are all the townspeople. He tells them the women look pretty and that a man had asked after Lavinia and where she lived. Francine’s face drops in horror and she asks if he told the man. The druggist bemoans the fact that he gave the general direction but now after hearing about Elizabeth’s body he wonders if it was bad, but concludes that it is probably nothing.
While Francine is distressed, Lavinia stands there, feeling nothing but the tiniest prickle of excitement. Helen wants to call a taxi to take them all home but Lavinia will not have it. She says if she is the next victim then so be it; she is 33 and a maiden lady and barely has any excitement in her life.
At the theater the proprietor tells them they will close as soon as the show is over so people can get home early and safely. Helen whispers to them that a dark man came into the theater and sat in the row behind them. It turns out to be the theater manager’s brother, but they are still anxious and unnerved.
After the film ends, they get sodas. It is eleven thirty and they laugh over their mistake with the man in the theater and Lavinia chides them for thinking anything bad will happen. She says the Lonely One is miles away now and won’t be back for weeks and the police will get him.
Out in the street it is quiet and dark. Mannequins in the windows stare out at them. They go to Francine’s home first, but she does not want to leave Lavinia. She tells the other two they can stay with her but they both decline and promise to call when they get in. Francine is overwrought but goes inside hurriedly and bolts the door.
Lavinia and Helen head toward Helen’s house. Helen muses that it is odd that everyone else is in bed and locked up safely and they are the only ones out. They get closer to the ravine. At Helen’s house, Helen sighs that she knows Lavinia won’t stay and it seems like some people want to die and Lavinia’s been acting odd all evening. Lavinia replies that she is just enjoying herself precariously and is curious and logical - that’s all.
After leaving Helen, Lavinia strolls down the dark street alone. It is midnight. She starts when she hears a man’s voice but it is only Officer Kennedy. She declines his assistance, but he tells her to give a yell if she needs him.
She is on the edge of the ravine now. It is only three minutes until she is home. Inside the ravine all is dark and black and it seems like only the ravine ever existed or would exist. She tries to tell herself an old ghost story but ends up scaring herself and screaming when she gets to the part where a man was waiting for her.
She begins to count her steps but hears an echo. The crickets are still and the night is listening. Lavinia begins to run and it seems like music swells to dramatize this terror. She hears the wild footsteps behind and rushes up the path to the top of the street and crosses the street and runs up the porch and flashes by a glass of lemonade sitting on the railing and unlocks the door and throws herself inside.
Lavinia breathes deeply. She is safe, she is home. She laughs weakly that no one must have been following her at all because she is not a fast runner. Feeling a little silly, she turns on the light. A man clears his throat.
Chapter 31
Charlie is extremely upset and moans that everything is ruined. Now the Lonely One isn’t scary anymore. Douglas quietly says he was there and saw it all. Tom wonders if the Lonely One is really dead and Charlie says yes he is because Lavinia stabbed him with sewing scissors. He says bitterly he wishes she’d minded her own business - no, not let herself get strangled, but at least run away screaming.
Tom suggests to the boys that the Lonely One isn’t dead because the dead man was just a man. He was plain and boring and wasn’t tall and pale with bulging eyes and long hair so obviously it was not the Lonely One. Charlie smiles in agreement and pats Tom on the back. Charlie runs off.
Tom stands still for a moment wondering what he’s done. Douglas isn’t listening to him. He whispers that he was there last night. He saw Elizabeth Ramsell. He saw the ravine. He saw the lemonade glass. He thought he could drink it.
Chapter 32
Great-grandma is always busy but now “it was as if a huge sum in arithmetic was finally drawing to an end” (180). She’d done everything and she decided it was time to die. Looking around the house and making sure everything is in its place, she lies down on her sheets. Her ailment, if it could be called that, seemed like ever-increasing tiredness.
The family tries to keep her living and tells her she has to give them more notice. Great-grandma tells Tom quietly that she’s seen it all and things happen over and over again and she’s going to leave while she is still entertained. She tells Douglas that only someone who really wants to do the shingles in the spring should do them.
She muses that the important her is not the one in this bed but the one looking back at her in the faces of her family; she isn’t really dying today because she lives in them. She ends by saying she is more curious than afraid and does not want any hullabaloo about her death. She lies back on her bed, alone now, and listens to the sound of the house and the people in it, living. This is fitting, she thinks.
Analysis
The disconcerting loss of the Green Machine and the trolley barely compare, especially in Douglas’s mind, to the losses he suffers now. Colonel Freeleigh, Helen Loomis, and Great-grandma all pass away not long after John Huff informs Douglas he is moving far away. These deaths are startling to a boy who just realized the beauty and richness of life, and he marvels to Tom that “Yesterday a whole lot of dust settled for good. And I didn’t even appreciate it at the time. It’s awful, Tom, it’s awful!... I never dreamed so many people could die so fast, Tom. But they did. They sure did” (136). He tells Grandfather sadly that “But the way things are going, there’ll be no machines, no friends, and darn few dandelions for the last harvest” (139) and asks Tom after Helen Loomis dies, “What ever happened to happy endings?” (155).
Clearly Douglas is struggling with how to deal with these losses, which is understandable. the loss of John was the loss of a true best friend and a truly kind and wonderful person. The loss of Colonel Freeleigh meant the loss of time travel, of connection to the past. The same goes for Helen Loomis, but her death also indicates that not everyone gets their happy ending. And Great-grandma’s death is a tragedy for the family, especially as they felt that she did not give them much notice.
Along with these other deaths is a more disturbing one – the murder of Elizabeth Ramsell and the putative attempted murder of Lavinia Nebbs. As discussed in the first analysis to Dandelion Wine, the ravine is a seductive yet menacing place, an interstice between civilization and nature. It is a place of mystery and beguilement to children and a place of fear and anxiety to adults.
Critic Elizabeth Margaret Marberry notes that adults and children view the Lonely One and the ravine differently: “adults fear their enigmatic, dark aspects, which appear all too real to them. These same characteristics evoke in the children a state of gleeful terror. The Ravine, characterized as an abyss at the edge of civilization, can be seen as marking the boundary of adulthood.” Thus, when Douglas is in the ravine when Elizabeth’s body is discovered, he is initiated into an aspect of adulthood. Unlike his brother and Charlie he cannot mourn the loss of the Lonely One as a generator of “gleeful terror” and has no interest in pretending that he still exists; what he sees shatters some of his innocence and pushes him deeper into his own existential dread.
Along with Douglas, the character who is most worthy of a deeper dive here is Lavinia Nebbs. A beautiful, unmarried woman in her early 30s, Lavinia is clearly enticed by the dark danger of the ravine. She claims to not fear the Lonely One and to revel in what she initially sees as only minor danger because her life is dull as it is. Her friend Helen, however, nervously tells her, “Sometimes I think people want to die. You’ve acted odd all evening” (170). And indeed, Lavinia’s behavior is somewhat odd. She is upset at finding Elizabeth’s body, yes, but not enough to close herself indoors all night like the rest of the town. She rejects her friends’ offers to spend the night even though a strange man had asked where she lives. She even “feels the slightest prickle of excitement in her throat” (165) upon hearing about the man.
So what is going on with Lavinia? Critic John B. Rosenman discusses the ravine in the context of the archetype of Hell, beginning by noting that the ravine is “dark and… mysterious and malignantly alive” and “[exerts] a primal, terrifying force and [exudes] an ominous menace.” Douglas had referred to this danger as a billion years old, and Lavinia thinks of it similarly: “the ravine was a dynamo that never stopped running, night or day; there was a great moving hum, a bumbling and murmuring of creature, insect, or plant life. it smelled like a greenhouse, of secret vapors and ancient, washed shales and quicksand” (159). She is intrigued by the darkness in a way that almost seems sexual. After all, she is thirty-three-year-old virgin and “subconsciously hopes to find the Lonely One, her first and only lover.” Rosenman sees the beautiful Lavinia as an Eve-type figure, beguiled by the darkness and someone forced to traverse that darkness to make it to safety. Even leaving the ravine, however, does not mean that Lavinia is fully safe; after all, the Lonely One leaves the depths of Hell and follows her to her home.
The ravine, then, is described like the “caverns, abysses, pits, and underworlds found in Homer, Virgil, Dante, Milton, and Poe.” Its division of the town “implies a dualistic vision of the universe in which the forces of darkness forever wage war against the forces of good. In Christian terms this view is postlapsarian, but from the broader standpoint reflected in everything from Greek myths to fairy tales, it is archetypal.”
