The Painted Drum

The last chapter returns to Revival Road and the narrative voice of Faye Travers. A year or so has passed since Faye and Elsie took the drum to North Dakota, and now, on an autumn evening, they sit on their porch listening to the coyotes sing. To Faye, it “is the music of all broken and hunted creatures who survive and persist […]” (258).

Both women are startled by Kurt Krahe’s arrival. Unaware of the women sitting in the dark, he enters the porch, but before he goes further, Faye invites him to sit with them. Elsie excuses herself after a few minutes, and Kurt straightforwardly asks Faye why she ended their relationship. It has been more than a year since she changed her locks, during which time they’ve exchanged only polite nods in public. Faye does not have an answer for Kurt. They talk, but their words bring them no closer, and instead, “a gulf filled with words plunges down between” (261) them.

The next morning, Faye confronts her mother about Netta’s death, a subject they’ve never discussed. When Elsie closes her eyes following Faye’s account of what happened in the orchard, Faye understands that her mother “has always pictured and believed another story” (263)—a story that blamed Faye. Elsie confesses she was with her lover when Netta died, and Faye realizes they both have been tormented by unspoken guilt.

Meanwhile, following a series of unrelated incidents, including the loss of his marijuana field and a close shave with a Jeep Cherokee, Kit Tatro decides that he belongs to the Winnebago tribe. A letter from Bernard informs Faye that the drum saved the lives of three children and has brought his community together. Allowing that she is too skeptical “to throw myself into Native traditions as Kit Tatro wishes so sincerely to do” (269), Faye nevertheless plans to attend with Elsie what Bernard calls “feasting the drum” (269).

During a morning walk in the woods, Faye finds the remains of the Eyke’s chained dog. Kurt calls after she returns home to report that his art studio has been vandalized. She goes to him, and surveying the spectacular destruction, “a nameless wildness bubbles up” between them, and they “link arms […] naturally, as if no time had passed” (273). That night, Faye stays at Kurt’s house, and after calling Elsie, she imagines her motherly advice: “You have to love. You have to feel. It is the reason you are here on earth” (274).

Faye visits Netta’s grave, as she does every fall, and sees ravens tumbling playfully in “what must be an air bank rising and falling” (276). Supposing that the ravens eat the insects “that have lived off the dead” (276), Faye thinks, “then aren’t they the spirits of the people […] buried here?” (276). When one raven swoops towards her, Faye calls out Netta’s name. The bird soars upward again, and then “she plummets down […] laughs, and disappears” (276).