Breakfast of Champions: Chapter 12 Summary & Analysis

Meanwhile, Kilgore is still riding with the truck driver just outside Philadelphia. Kilgore has forgotten the trucker’s name, but he asks him about his truck. “The tractor alone cost twenty-eight thousand dollars,” and it has a “three hundred and twenty-four horsepower Cummins Diesel engine.” The truck is owned by the driver’s brother-in-law, and on the side of the trailer is written “PYRAMID” in tall letters. “Why would anybody in the business of highspeed transportation name his business and his trucks after buildings which haven’t moved an eighth of an inch since Christ was born?” Kilgore asks the driver. “He liked the sound of it,” the man answers.

The truck driver asks Kilgore if he is married. “Three times,” Kilgore answers. Kilgore tells the driver about his son who “is a man now.” Kilgore’s son, Leo, left to join the military when he was a teenager, but he wrote Kilgore a letter before he left. “I pity you,” Leo said in the letter. “You’ve crawled up your own asshole and died.” Trout hasn’t heard from Leo in years, but a few years back two F.B.I. agents knocked on his door. “Your boy’s in bad trouble,” they told Kilgore. Leo had committed “high treason” and abandoned the military to join the Viet Cong.