Light in August: Chapter 21 Summary & Analysis

There is a furniture dealer in east Mississippi who recently went to Tennessee to pick up some furniture. Arriving back home, he tells his wife about some passengers he picked up on the journey. He found them at a gas station; one was a young, beautiful woman holding a baby, and the other a plain man who explained that they weren’t headed in any specific direction, but were instead just “looking around.” The furniture dealer assumed they were married. He was confused by how a plain man like Byron had managed to marry a woman as beautiful as Lena. At the same time, he got the impression that Byron was “a good fellow,” someone hard-working, honest, and dependable.

Lena kept saying that they came from Alabama, using the pronoun “we,” although the driver soon realized she meant her and her baby. She explained that the baby was only three weeks old and had been born in Jefferson, where a man was recently lynched. On the way, the furniture dealer offered for Byron and Lena to sleep in the truck overnight. He noticed that there was something “funny and kind of strained” about Byron and his relationship to Lena. He then tells his wife that Byron and Lena weren’t married, and that the baby was not Byron’s. He learned that they were searching for the father of Lena’s child, although they never mention his name. He also saw that Byron was desperate to do something that he wouldn’t allow himself to do.

That night, while the furniture dealer pretended to be asleep, he heard Byron try to get into the truck with Lena, and heard Lena gently refuse him. The furniture dealer felt a deep sense of second-hand embarrassment for Byron. He heard Byron walking off into the bushes, and in the morning, Byron was gone. Lena at first didn’t say anything, but when the furniture seller said he had to keep going, she asked if she could keep riding with him, though she said she’d sit in the back of the truck. However, once they set off, it wasn’t long before they found Byron waiting for them. He told Lena that they’d come too far for him to quit now. Lena said she’d never asked him to quit.

The furniture dealer believes that deep down Lena wasn’t really looking for anyone, but was rather just “travelling” with no particular purpose. He thinks she had probably never been as far away from home as she was right then, and that she was putting off settling down because once she did, that would be it for the rest of her life. As they pulled into a town, the furniture seller announced that they had arrived in Salisbury, Tennessee, hoping Lena would be surprised by this news. The book ends with Lena’s remarks in response to this announcement: “My, my. A body does get around.”