Tracks: Chapter 2 Summary & Analysis

Pauline, a second narrator, tells of the first time Fleur drowned as a child. She is saved by two men who later disappear. When Fleur is fifteen, she drowns again, but no one will touch her. A man finds her washed up on shore and notices she is still breathing. Much later, the man drowns in his own bathtub. After this, despite Fleur’s beauty, men steer clear of her, certain that Misshepeshu, the lake monster, wants her for himself. Pauline shares the warnings that mothers give to little girls to beware the charms of the lake monster.

Out in the woods alone, Fleur is thought to have gone mad, wearing men’s clothing, studying the ancient traditions of medicine, and turning into a bear, leaving behind tracks that match a bear’s claws. Some members of the tribe believe that Fleur should be forced to leave the reservation, but none are brave enough to tell her so. As they finally get up the nerve, Fleur leaves the reservation herself, heading to the nearby town of Argus.

Fleur walks to the small town of three hundred people, drawn by the thin steeple of the Catholic church. She begins working at the butcher shop owned by Pete Kozka. Her coworkers are three men: Lily Veddar, Tor Grunewald, and Dutch James. Pauline’s Aunt Regina has remarried to Dutch James, though he hasn’t adopted her son Russell.

Pauline reveals that she asked her father to be sent south to live in the town so that she might learn to make lace from the nuns. Instead, she is taken in by her extended family and learns that they are mixed-blood. Her father warns her that living in town will fade her native ways, which she has already begun rejecting, speaking only English and opting out of the traditions he attempts to teach her. In town, Pauline takes a job sweeping the shop and caring for Russell rather than learning to make lace.

Pauline recognizes that Russell is industrious, while she herself falls into daydreams of what her life might be like if she were more like the white girls she sees in town. While she is living with her Aunt Regina, Pauline learns that many of her family members have died on the reservation, and that there is not enough labor to bury the bodies properly, so many are hoisted into trees instead, a thought that haunts Pauline.

Pauline admires Fleur, who refuses to tell Pauline about what happened in the time of the sickness on the reservation, claiming that it’s possible some of Pauline’s family moved north to avoid the sickness. At fifteen, Pauline feels she is invisible to the customers and men in the shop, and uses this fact to spy on everyone. She bears witness to the jokes the men tell, and what they do to Fleur. Fleur works in “a ramshackle board building, part killing shed, part store,” next to the huge refrigerated storage locker. Fleur works alongside another woman named Fritzie, cutting the meat. Fleur is not as invisible to men as Pauline, and she treats Pauline’s little cousin Russell sweetly.

Sometimes the men stay at the locker after closing to make dinner together and play poker or cribbage, but they rarely talk. Fleur’s card-playing catches their attention even more than her looks. The men are surprised when Fleur sits down to play with them, and Lily’s dog snaps at Fleur, but immediately recoils. Pauline and Russell hide to watch what will happen, but Fleur knows the children are there and shines a bright wolf-like grin at them. Fleur asks Pauline to give her the eight cents she earns weekly, and Pauline hands over her coins.

Fleur plays steadily, but the men know she can’t bluff. Pauline goes to sleep on a mound of sawdust, and when she wakes up, the men and Fleur are still playing. Eventually the game ends and Fleur tucks Pauline and Russell into a closet to sleep. The game continues the next night, and Fleur gives Pauline her money back “five times over,” while Fleur keeps the rest of the dollar she has won for her stake in the next games.

Each night for a week, Fleur wins exactly one dollar, and the men bristle at her consistency. They wonder at how she has never won with anything above a straight. They have trouble believing that a woman could be smart enough to play cards, but stupid enough to cheat for only a dollar a night. Each night Fleur retires to bathe in the slaughterhouse tub and sleep in the unused smokehouse, which Fritzie has allowed her secret access to, in addition to the gift of a black umbrella.

Pauline becomes Fleur’s shadow, copying her every move. In August, Pete and Fritzie head north to escape the heat. Fleur has won thirty dollars in thirty days. On a day that’s so hot only Fleur can stand to work, the men wait for her to finish so they might play a game with her. They up the ante to a dollar, and Fleur loses, but they allow her to keep playing until she wins. They continue playing until the pot holds all their money, and then Fleur wins the hand fair and square. Lily slams his dog into the table in fury. Fleur gathers her winnings, and Lily demands another round, but Fleur leaves the table to feed the hog. The men linger around the table, drinking and silently planning their revenge.

When the men leave the table, Pauline drags Russell with her to follow them. Lily follows Fleur into the hog pen, trapping her, and she dumps a bucket of slop on him. He pushes her against the fence and her winnings spill out of her dress. Fleur escapes into the yard, but Lily follows. The sow attacks Lily and they struggle. The other men chase Fleur to the smokehouse. Russell tries to stop Dutch in his pursuit of Fleur, but Dutch throws the boy off. Pauline closes her eyes and puts her hands on her ears to block out Fleur’s voice calling to Pauline and Russell to save her.

The next morning Fleur is gone, and the men are all hungover. Russell is beside himself, blaming himself for what happened to Fleur, and goes outside to brood. Stepping outside to call Russell indoors, Pauline can see that a tornado is gathering. When she steps back inside, the men have all disappeared inside the lockers. The building is trembling. Pauline and Russell, panicked, scream for Fleur, Regina, Dutch—“any of them”—when suddenly everything goes totally still. The door of the locker remains shut, and a dog can be heard barking inside. Pauline and Russell hear “a cry building in the wind,” and a gust of wind slams them into the wall of the shed. Outside, they tumble through the air, witnessing a herd of cattle, a lit candle, and various other objects flying by in the tornado. The town of Argus is “turned upside down, smashed, thoroughly wrecked.”

Days later, people in the town begin to look for the men who worked in the butcher shop. Much of the town is damaged, but a surprising amount remains intact, and seemingly no one has been harmed. Kozka’s Meats has been completely destroyed, though Pete and Fritzie’s living quarters remain undisturbed.

When Pete and Fritzie return from their time away, Fritzie asks after Fleur, whom no one knows the whereabouts of, and the other men, and that is when the town realizes they are missing. A search party hunts through the wreckage, eventually uncovering the meat locker, which was locked from the outside. Pete, Fritzie, Pauline, and Russell enter to find the men, dead, huddled around a card game. When the bodies are pulled out, it’s determined that Dutch James is still alive.

Pauline leaves Argus. Fleur has moved back to Matchimanito. Pauline says she is the only one to visit Fleur at her home. She says she went to help Fleur give birth to a child in the spring, a child who people argue over the parentage of: fathered in the smokehouse, or by the Agent, or by the lake monster Misshepeshu. The child (Lulu) smiles in her sleep, perhaps because she knows people argue over her story—but the story is different every time, and no one knows the true version.