Atdtda38: Our own little republic, 1076-1077 #1

[Paul Nightingale]

On 1075 Reef and Jesse have established a 'companionable silence, which both
would come to admit was more than either had hoped for'. In the new section,
progress westwards – 'the last corner of the US map, and after this it would
have to be Alaska or BC' (1076) – perhaps echoes the earlier description of
army movements, 'noplace to go but into the sea' or ‘into the sky’ (1072);
it also confirms the development of the father/son relationship as they
discuss the school essay.

The section splits into two parts, one masculine, the other feminine.
Initially, stasis is indicated by Jesse's attendance at school. Reef invokes
his own father and 'dynamite-related activities'; Jesse’s teacher provides a
link to labour history and 'the olden days' – cf Reef's 'old faith in the
westward vector' on 1075.

Reference to 'the Cour d'Alene back in the olden days' (1076) returns the
narrative to 333, when Scarsdale Vibe speaks of 'no end in sight' to class
war; to 362 and the paragraph on 'Reef's dead'; and then to 463 and Frank in
Fickle Creek, when social/technological change might encourage the view that
'bayonets in the bullpens of the Coeur d'Alène' belong to the distant past.
This school assignment, then, returns the narrative to two moments that
feature class war (the Traverse/Vibe conflict); and then to a moment when
'peach-fuzz desperadoes' (463) are repackaging labour history as
entertainment (and cf scenes at the Chicago World Fair in Ch3). This is not
only class/labour history but a masculine history.


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