53 pages • 1 hour read
Allen EskensThe Life We Bury
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2014A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 28-32Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 28 Summary
Joe finds Lila at her apartment. She’s visibly upset. She tells him about a part of her past that the “slob” brought up: “By the time I was a junior, I had lost my virginity to a guy who told me I was beautiful. Then he told everybody that I was easy” (172). In her senior year, they started calling her “Nasty Nash” behind her back. She would go to parties, get drunk, and sleep with people. On the night of her graduation, she was drugged at a party and raped. She woke up with no memory of what had happened. The police found traces of Rohypnol in her system. Nobody who had been at the party would give the police any details; they said they couldn’t remember who she left with. A week later, an email went out from a phony account: “It was a picture of me…and there were two guys…their images scrambled…and they were…they…” (172). Lila breaks down crying and shows Joe the scars of self-inflicted razor cuts. She spent the following year in therapy before going to college. Joe holds her until she falls asleep.
Chapter 29 Summary
When Joe wakes up the next day, Lila gives him a kiss—their first—and thanks him. They prepare breakfast together and discuss Carl’s case. There is a knock at the door and it’s Kathy, dropping off Jeremy. She’s going to Treasure Island Casino with Larry and can’t leave Jeremy home alone. Jeremy is angry at Kathy but happy to have Jeremy there: “I realized that a large part of me was homesick, not for the apartment but for my brother” (178).
Lila is typing on her computer, doing homework, which Jeremy finds amusing. He mentions that he learned typing by repeatedly writing the line “The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog” (179). Lila realizes that this line has every letter of the alphabet in it—that’s why it’s used to teach kids typing. Then she realizes that Crystal had taken a typing class as well and that this sentence might be the key to her coded diary (so T = 1, H = 2, E = 3, and so on). She and Joe check and confirm that the code works. They decipher the diary entry: DJ found my glasses. They assume DJ is Douglas Joseph Lockwood, Crystal’s stepfather, and deduce that Douglas found her glasses, figured out the truth about the hit-and-run, and then used this knowledge to blackmail his own stepdaughter into performing sex acts.
Chapter 30 Summary
Joe and Lila go to the police department and speak with Max. They explain the details of Crystal’s case, the truth about the code, and the fact that Carl is likely going to die soon. They want the detective’s help in getting Carl’s name cleared before he dies. They decode further diary entries such as “I did DJ with my hand. I hate him. I feel sick” (183). Max explains that it will take time to clear Carl’s name. Although reluctant, he agrees to help. He gives Joe the card of a lawyer who works for the Innocence Project, Boady Sanden, and says he will dig Carl’s file out of storage for a start. If Carl is innocent, Boady can take the steps needed to exonerate him.
Chapter 31 Summary
Joe goes to see Carl and shares the news. He asks Carl if he remembers Crystal’s diary, to which he responds, “The diary. I always thought she was such a sweet girl, practicing her little cheerleading routines in the back yard; and all that time she thought I was a pervert” (190). While Carl is relieved that Joe knows the truth about him, he says reversing the conviction doesn’t matter to him. Carl explains that if he hadn’t been arrested on that day, he would be dead. He had been planning to kill himself. That’s why he’d bought a gun. He’d lost the religious faith that had prevented him from committing suicide previously. Carl then reveals to Joe his last great secret: He murdered Sergeant Gibbs in Vietnam, slitting his throat after catching him preparing to rape yet another young Vietnamese girl. Carl tells Joe, “I had no right to take Gibbs’s life […] He had a wife and two kids back in the states, and I murdered him. I killed a great many men in Vietnam…a great many, but they were soldiers. They were the enemy. I was doing my job” (193).
Chapter 32 Summary
Joe goes to see Boady and presents him with the evidence of Carl’s innocence. Boady notes that it would make sense that it was Crystal’s stepfather: “He was close to her—in the same house. They’re not related by blood, so he can justify his impulses toward her” (198). Joe and Boady call Max to see what he’s turned up in the file. Unfortunately, there’s no DNA evidence on her body because of the fire.
Joe mentions the fingernail found on Carl’s porch, likely planted there by the murderer. If Crystal fought her murderer, there might be skin cell DNA on the nail. They can test the DNA and if it doesn’t match Carl’s, that will be a step toward exonerating him. A test takes months, however. Boady mentions the only other way to quickly exonerate Carl would be a confession from the murderer. Joe, determined to get Carl’s name cleared before he dies, looks up Douglas online and discovers that he lives north of Minneapolis. He decides to track him down and try to get him to confess.
Chapters 28-32 Analysis
As the book reveals greater details regarding the central characters’ complex pasts, it brings another central theme into sharper focus—the impossibility of escaping one’s past. This is made explicitly clear in Carl’s case, given that his murder of Gibbs drove him to near-suicide years later. Carl says, “No matter how hard you try, there are some things you just can’t run away from” (193). Joe is also coming to understand this fact for himself. The play reminds him that he is inextricably bound to Jeremy and could never emotionally detach himself from his brother. He can’t outrun his difficult family, and he certainly cannot leave his brother behind. The fact is that “the life we bury” is often significant—a “turning point” experience like Carl’s in Vietnam or Lila’s rape.
Lila’s rape offers another example of how it’s impossible to outrun one's past. The “slob” showing up at the bar unexpectedly and throwing her rape in her face is unexpected and shocking. Lila also still carries the physical marks linked to her rape, the self-inflicted razor cuts she made on her body afterward. Her rape also reiterates the symbolic significance of visual imagery. Although there was photographic evidence of her assault, an entire party full of people chose to ignore the truth and pretend Lila’s rape was consensual. This draws a juxtaposing parallel to the Vietnam War: In the case of Vietnam, photographs made it impossible for the American public to ignore the brutalities the US was committing abroad.
Carl’s revelation that he murdered Gibbs again raises the philosophical question regarding the universal nature of human violence and when, if ever, such violence is warranted. On one hand, Carl killed a man. On the other hand, that man was a brute. However, that man also had a wife and children—and Carl is just another human being. The narrative asks whether Carl, or anyone else, has the right to take another person’s life.
The symbolic weight of puzzles is brought to the fore when Lila and Joe, with Jeremy’s help, crack the code of Crystal’s diary. One puzzle is solved, but now there is a new conundrum—how to get Carl exonerated before he dies. Boady and Max put their faith in the power of DNA evidence. However, there have been real world cases where DNA led to wrongful convictions, such as when a laboratory mixed up files. Given what the book has attempted to convey thus far about the multifaceted and sometimes unreliable nature of the “truth,” it’s questionable that DNA will be a silver-bullet solution.
