John witnesses local women whipping Linda and tries to protect her

John witnesses local women whipping Linda and tries to protect her in a childhood memory that binds his anger at injustice to the painful instability of his relationship with his mother. He bites one of the women to stop the blows, is whipped himself, and later seeks to comfort Linda; the attempt ends with her pushing and slapping him.

Background and Conflict

The episode belongs to John's memories of life with Linda in Malpais. Earlier, Linda had been driven away by women after she failed at their weaving, and John could not understand why they were angry. He also hated the men who visited Linda, including Pope, whose mescal Linda drank with him. These circumstances frame the whipping as part of a hostile environment in which John sees Linda exposed to other people’s judgment and violence, though he does not fully understand its causes.

The conflict sharpens one cold afternoon, when John returns home and hears angry voices in the bedroom. He recognizes the women’s words as dreadful without understanding them. A crash, hurried movement, another crash, and the sound of blows precede Linda’s scream. The scene reaches him first as noise and alarm, then resolves into a direct confrontation with violence.

The Whipping and John's Intervention

Three women in dark blankets have Linda pinned on the bed: one holds her wrists, another lies across her legs, and the third strikes her with a whip. John tugs at the fringe of one woman’s blanket and pleads with her. When she holds him away with her free hand, he bites her enormous brown hand with all his strength. She wrenches free and pushes him down; while he is on the ground, she strikes him three times with the whip.

The blows hurt John like fire, but they do not end the attack on Linda: the whip falls again, and Linda screams. His intervention is both a child's attempt to protect someone he loves and an act too small to overcome the force arrayed against her. The scene's blunt sequence of restraint, pleading, biting, and punishment makes the cost of his resistance physical and immediate.

Aftermath Between Mother and Son

That night John asks Linda why the women wanted to hurt her. His back still bears painful red whip marks, and he cries not only from the pain but because he sees the treatment as beastly and unfair and knows he is too little to stop it. He recognizes that Linda, although grown up, was not strong enough to fight all three women either. Their shared vulnerability briefly places mother and son on the same side of the injustice.

Linda says she does not know why they hurt her. She explains that the women say the men are their men, then speaks as if addressing someone within herself and breaks into louder crying. John presses against her and puts an arm around her neck, trying to comfort her. Linda cries out because his touch hurts her shoulder and pushes him hard enough that his head strikes the wall. She calls him a little idiot and suddenly begins slapping him. His appeal, "Linda," becomes "Oh, mother, don't!"; Linda answers, "I'm not your mother. I won't be your mother."

Narrative Significance

The memory turns a rescue attempt into a painful reversal. John acts against the whipping at risk to himself, but he cannot prevent Linda's suffering; later, the bodily contact through which he tries to console her causes pain and provokes another assault. The contrast between his plea for fairness and Linda's refusal of the name of mother gives the scene its emotional force without resolving their bond: affection, injury, dependence, and rejection remain entangled.