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Chapter 20
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Medicine Walk, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Fathers and Sons
Nature and the Land
Identity and Heritage
Memory and Story
Love, Loss, and Grief
Summary
Analysis
Eldon, Angie, and Bunky sat silently in the kitchen. Bunky kept thumping his fist on the table and finally stood up and moved toward Eldon. Eldon waited for Bunky’s fist to meet his head, but Bunky just swore and stepped away. His face was filled with despair as he asked if this is how the two of them repay him. Eldon quietly apologizes, and Angie said it wasn’t Eldon’s fault. Bunky told Angie he loved her and gave her everything he could. If she knew that, then how could she have done this?
Normally reserved, Bunky’s anger is all the more striking in the aftermath of Angie and Eldon’s meeting in the loft. At the same time, his restraint from attacking Eldon shows just how heartbroken he is at their betrayal. Opening up to both of them leads to grief, as love always makes people vulnerable to loss in the novel.
Themes
Eldon said that he didn’t have any plan, but he hadn’t wanted to get in the way of Bunky and Angie’s love. Bunky laughed bitterly and asked if Eldon loved Angie; Eldon looked at her and said yes. When Bunky asked if she loved Eldon, she said yes. Then Bunky sat down at the table and weep. Afterward, he said Angie had come into his life like a sudden hope, and he’d believed in it—believed they could turn his place into a home. Angie said that sometimes things just happen, and there’s nothing you can do to prepare.
Because Bunky is normally unemotional, the simple clarity of his emotion is especially striking compared to characters like Eldon who typically hide their feelings. Throughout the book, he’s an example of someone who copes with grief in a healthy, outward way as opposed to an inward way that risks consuming a person and hurting those around them.
Themes
Bunky asked Eldon what he planned to do, and while Eldon didn’t have things figured out, he knew he wanted Angie. Sadly, Bunky said that Eldon can’t be a booze-hound, and that if he hurt Angie while drinking, Bunky would come and find him. Angie said they’d take care of each other, looking stubborn and sure. She feels that she recognizes and knows Eldon, she said, and that’s enough for her. Bunky said it had better be.
Bunky had looked forward to building a stable home with Angie, and he doubts that Eldon can provide the same. The suddenness and shock of their betrayal feels like a mockery of the care he’s invested in both of them over the past few weeks.
Themes
Bunky thought Eldon was a good man, but now, he said, he’d need to be convinced. Nonetheless, he gave them his stake truck so that, wherever they ended up, Angie wouldn’t have to take the bus. Then Bunky asked them to leave before he had to face them again. As Angie hugged him goodbye, Bunky wept again. Before he strode out the door, he pointed at Eldon and warned him to take care of her. He could live with a broken heart, but Eldon must “be a man about this. Or else.”
Earlier that same day, Bunky had said that he judges a man by his actions and not by his past. He realizes now that he didn’t have the full picture of Eldon’s actions, and Eldon isn’t the man he’d believed at first. Despite his pain, Bunky puts Angie’s wellbeing above his own heartbreak, another example of his generosity even in the midst of sincere grief.
Themes
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After they gathered their belongings, they went out to the truck and Angie found a roll of bills Bunky had left for them. It’s a lot of money to get them started. Eldon didn’t want to accept it, but Angie said it’s Bunky’s way of taking care of her. She told Eldon that she wanted to explain this to Bunky someday, but right now she couldn’t even explain it to herself. He wiped her tears away, and they got into the truck and drove off into the night.
Eldon concludes the story of his relationship with Frank’s mother. Once again, Bunky put love before bitterness by helping the two of them get established.
Themes
