Atdtda33: Still doing the dirty work, 922-924

[Paul Nightingale]

We are reminded that, since the start of the chapter, Frank has been
drifting in and out of consciousness, waking here to join "some long
dissertation Ewball was handing Stray about Anarcho-syndicalist theory and
practice". There is continuity, then, from the previous section, although we
are denied direct access, either to Ewball's "dissertation" or to Stray's
reception of it. The reappearance of Wren is a distraction of sorts, and
Ewball doesn't speak until, top of 924, Stray is "out of earshot". Most of
the section is taken up with Wren's story and the exchange between her and
Stray on 923, one that Frank appears not to enjoy: at the bottom of the
page, with Stray about to depart, "he figure[s] he better not laugh too much
either, although the way things [are] drifting, this [is] not fixing to be a
problem". Stray has been scoring points off Wren, reducing her to a gullible
tourist, perhaps once removed, so to speak, since she has (apparently--her
'anger' is short-lived) been conned by the "[t]ravelin man" who gifted her
the bracelet, rather than the "Indians at every train depot west of Denver",
any of whom might have sold it. All have paid close attention to Wren's
appearance, Stray's female gaze at odds with the male gaze (one might recall
Wren earlier, in "Jennie Rogers's House of Mirrors" on 276-277).

Wren's appearance, with "Ewball and Frank ... trying not to stare" is
perhaps reminiscent of--as seen by Frank--Stray's transformation on 920,
where we find Frank dwelling on her "interesting legs in britches of
trail-grade ripcord". Stray's appearance sets Frank and Rodrigo against each
other as possible rivals, while Frank and Ewball might be rivals for Wren a
couple of pages later (and then they are tied together by a shared
exclamation as the section ends on 924).

By implication, Wren and Stray might be rivals here. Top of 923, Wren offers
a compromise between conventional femininity and the requirements of the
situation: "trooper's boots, campesino trousers, a man's shirt a few sizes
too large with some buttons missing". Only then, as the description
continues in the second half of the sentence/paragraph, is the reader made
aware of her likely effect on others, male or female, with "nothing in the
way of underwear to veil from the casual onlooker's gaze her flawless little
breasts". Down the page, with Stray "looking [Wren] over with some
interest", the dialogue between the two women is described--again, perhaps
from Frank's pov--as "a swell time".

Frank reminds Wren that her destination had been the South Seas, which takes
us back to the end of Ch22 on 280. Wren is introduced on 275, "a girl
anthropologist ... with whom Frank had become unexpectedly entangled": she
has knocked him off the course described on 273-275, his growing awareness
of Vibe Corp's power (his 'digging' not so different to Wren's). At the end
of that chapter, she has rejected his proposal that she go with him to
Telluride (280): he remains, in Wren's description, a lone "actor", one who
might adopt her anthropological approach. On 922 she is again described as a
"girl anthropologist", the repetition emphasising the comparison between the
two scenes. On 923, she has been "studying the mysterious ruins thought to
have been built by refugees fleeing from their mythical homeland of Aztlan
up north", which recalls her reference, on 278, to "the exodus southward
from Aztlan". That earlier passage is the one in which she echoes Frank's
own frustrated career trajectory, referring to herself as "one of the hired
hands that dug in the dirt" while "[s]omebody else now is writing up the
report, career expectations will be a factor". Perhaps Wren and Frank are
alike here; they each have an obsession they have refused, down the years,
to give up, the little matter of a revolution notwithstanding.