My Pleasure Reading. Summary (pages 300-340)

One night, McEachern watched as Joe went outside his window and was picked up by a car.
McEachern was guided to the schoolhouse, where a dance was being held. He jumped on the scene, calling Bobbie a harlot, and began beating his son, who smashed a chair over his father's head, killing him.

Joe went back to the house, where he took all the money his mother had been saving, hidden in a tin beneath a floor plank.
Joe run to Max and Mame's house, where Bobbie was packed and ready to return to Memphis.
Joe took his mother's money out and gave it to Bobbie as his proposal of marriage.
She thrown the offering back at him .
The group of men, beating him until Mame finally stopped them.


The group pulled off in the car, leaving him behind. Badly beaten, Joe managed to get out onto the street and out of town.

For the next fifteen years, Joe was working in oil towns as a laborer, miner, and prospector. Finally, he enlisted in the army and then deserts. For a short time, he settled down among blacks and lived with a dark-skinned woman for a while.