Boy Swallows Universe: Boy Digs Deep Summary & Analysis

While Eli is waiting for a train, a hulking man with dark hair and a moustache seems to watch him from a yellow Ford Mustang. Fortunately, Eli’s train arrives just as the man gets out of his car. Eli gets off near The Courier-Mail offices and walks to the door. It’s taken him three months to get up the courage to come here. Caitlyn Spies works here now; she must be their star crime writer. Eli asks the woman at the front desk to see Brian Robertson and fiddles with the tie Dad got him at a thrift shop. It reads, “WORDS.” When Eli says he doesn’t have an appointment but he’s special, the secretary snaps that cadetship positions won’t open again until November. She says she won’t let him in, but he can sit by the hedge outside and try to catch Brian when he goes home.

Brian Robertson finally exits the building more than an hour after the secretary said he would. Eli leaps up, introduces himself, and says he’s been sitting for six hours. Brian continues walking and describes a horrifying massacre he saw firsthand in 1957—but he says the massacre wasn’t as disturbing as Eli’s tie is. Eli says he hoped it’d appeal to his “love of words,” but Brian says he despises words. Eli asks for a cadetship and says he can offer a page-one story. When he says it’s a complicated story, Brian says that’s too bad—complex stories can always become three-word headlines, so Eli should give him the headline. Eli can’t, so Brian walks away.

Eli feels like a failure as he studies the graffiti in the train station. But then, Caitlyn Spies walks onto the platform and says Eli’s name. She remembers him. Eli follows her onto the train and asks to sit with her. He tells her about meeting Brian outside, and she laughs; Brian is as rude and callous as he seems. They discuss Eli’s desire to be a crime reporter, and Caitlyn says she looked up Tytus Broz. He is, apparently, a “pillar of the community.” Eli says it’s not true, and he hasn’t told anyone his story yet. He was going to tell Brian but got tripped up on the three-word headline.

Caitlyn says Brian asks everyone for three-word headlines. In her interview, she was asked to create a headline for her life, and she came up with “Spies Digs Deep.” Caitlyn explains how she was born premature and her mother died in childbirth, so she’s spent her life trying to make her mother’s sacrifice worth it by “digging deep.” Eli insists he can’t come up with a headline for himself. As Caitlyn’s stop approaches, Eli confesses he just got on this train to speak with her. This makes Caitlyn laugh, and she agrees to look into Tytus Broz again. Then, she tells Eli to just start writing for the paper. Eli says he knows his three words: “Caitlyn and Eli.”