Medicine Walk: Chapter 2 Summary & Analysis

The town sits in a river valley. The kid doesn’t like coming here. The local kids make fun of him and sometimes even throw stones at him. People here aren’t used to seeing horses on the roadways and sometimes honk or stare. When the kid reaches the main part of town, he turns the horse down a side street where the houses are slightly dilapidated. He boards the horse at a little five-acre farm. The people there know the old man.

After tending his horse, the kid walks out into the chill purple evening. In the seedier part of town, he passes dank bars and moves toward a row of rooming houses along the riverbank. He crosses paths with a drunk woman on the sidewalk and asks her if she knows Eldon Starlight. She asks for a smoke, and she winks at him as she lights it. Then she laughs and wonders what he wants with the “old lech,” whom she calls “Twinkles.” She tells him where the man can be found, but not without offering him a good time instead. He declines. She says, “Suit yourself […] Indian.”