The locket

The locket is the decisive material link between Johnny Truant, his absent mother, and the childhood letter that records the son she left behind. More than a keepsake, it is a sealed archive of family abandonment: an object inherited after his mother’s death, opened only after prolonged fear and hesitation, and finally sold when Johnny needs money to leave his apartment and travel toward Virginia. Its history turns an apparently intimate relic into a burden that actively shapes his memory, self-understanding, and movement.

Appearance and Custody

The locket is a cumbersome deer-shaped piece supposedly more than a century old. It is made of polished sterling silver, with platinum-plated antlers, emerald eyes, small diamonds along the edge of its mane, and a silver latch disguised as the tail. A braided gold thread once secured it to the wearer. Johnny does not wear it; he keeps it in the locked lower drawer of his nightstand, close to his bed yet physically restricted from ordinary use.

The object’s elaborate design distinguishes it from the familiar lockets Johnny associates with warmth and intelligibility. Those lockets are small, round, and immediately comprehensible to him, whereas his mother’s is awkward, ornate, and cold. When she cared for it, it caught occasional fragments of light, functioning like a warped mirror that attempted to return a reflection but usually produced only a blur. Its material presence therefore registers not as simple comfort but as an unresolved image of intimacy: visible, reflective, and persistently indistinct.

Inheritance and Hidden Letter

Johnny’s mother wore the locket whenever he saw her between the ages of thirteen and almost eighteen, but he never knew what it contained. He saw it again before leaving for Alaska and later before leaving for Europe, where his restless journey through Czechoslovakia, Poland, Sweden, Denmark, Spain, Italy, France, and Greece intensified his feelings of deprivation and isolation. During that journey, the image of the locket repeatedly returned to him, sometimes causing pain and often provoking anger.

After his mother died, the locket was the only thing she left Johnny. Its back bears an inscription from his biological father, rather than Raymond, his foster father: “My heart for you, my love—March 5, 1966.” Johnny treats the date as practically prophetic, but the inscription does not resolve the family history enclosed by the object. Instead, it establishes the locket as a meeting place for parental promises, absence, and the child’s later discovery of what had been preserved.

For a long time Johnny refused to open the latch. He feared what he might find and expected the interior to be empty. When he finally opened it, he discovered a carefully folded love letter disguised as a thank-you letter, written in the hand of an eleven-year-old boy. The boy was Johnny himself. It was the first letter his mother had received from the son she left when he was seven, and it was also the only letter she saved. The locket thus converts a lost relationship into a physical sequence of concealment and belated recognition: the mother’s absence is followed by the survival of the child’s own words.

Sale and Emotional Reversal

The locket’s meaning changes sharply when Johnny prepares to flee his apartment after failing to pay the rent. His visa has already been canceled, and he gathers enough money to leave by selling his mother’s locket while retaining the gold necklace. The sale is presented as a practical choice made in the company of even more dangerous alternatives, including the possibility of selling his guns, but the object’s emotional charge makes the transaction far more than a financial expedient.

A remembered dream has altered Johnny’s relation to the locket. Merely looking at its dull silver afterward makes him feel as though an enormous weight hangs around his neck, even when he is not wearing it. The desire to dispose of it becomes hatred directed at the object itself. He proceeds carefully: he finds an appraiser, approaches several stores, and refuses to lower his asking price. He learns that the locket was designed by someone well known and receives $4,200 for it.

The exchange does not bring relief. As Johnny hands over the strange shape, with the letter still inside, an extraordinary surge of rage passes through him. He imagines the scars on his arms catching fire and melting down to the bones, then takes the cash and quickly withdraws, hurt, poisoned by his own anger, and afraid he may inflict that hurt on someone else. The locket therefore carries its concealed contents into the marketplace without becoming ordinary property: its price is measurable, but its relinquishment remains bound to inheritance, violence, and fear.

Narrative and Thematic Significance

The locket gives physical form to the book’s recurring concern with interiors that conceal as much as they preserve. Its locked shell contains a letter, while the letter itself disguises its true emotional function as a thank-you note. The object’s meaning is consequently produced through delayed access: Johnny must inherit it, resist opening it, discover that the hidden text is his own, and later surrender the container while the letter remains part of the sale.

Its movement from a mother’s neck to Johnny’s locked nightstand and finally to an appraiser’s hands traces a passage from intimate possession to enforced escape. The locket preserves the only letter his mother kept, but it also repeats the structure of abandonment by making Johnny confront what survives after the relationship itself has failed. In that sense, the object is both evidence and obstruction. It proves that a bond once existed, yet its cold, blurred, and burdensome materiality prevents that proof from becoming reconciliation.

The locket’s final function is to turn memory into action. Johnny’s decision to sell it helps finance his departure toward Virginia, where he hopes to find the source of the place haunting him or at least some fragment of reality capable of addressing the havoc within him. The relic does not heal that wound. It becomes one of the forces that propel him away from his present life, carrying its letter, its inscription, and its accumulated rage into the next stage of his search.