Snake Oil

“Snake Oil” frames the novel’s bargains as seductive remedies that may instead conceal deception. Its epigraph pairs a promise of a free tale with the warning that people can lose their way in darkness; that image gains particular force in Danforth Keeton’s story, where a small theft meant to cover gambling losses grows into a financial crisis exposed by an audit.

The Expression and Its Epigraphic Frame

The title appears with an epigraph attributed to Henry David Thoreau’s Walden, describing people going astray even on village streets when darkness is thick enough to cut. The surrounding opening lines promise a tale that costs nothing, then undercut the promise with a parenthetical qualification. Together, these elements establish a wary frame: an apparent offer may carry a hidden price, and familiar surroundings do not guarantee that a person knows where he is going.

Keeton’s Financial Descent

The warning is borne out by Keeton’s progression from gambling to embezzlement. After a winning bet, he celebrates at the track, loses $160, and tells his wife he lost $40. He returns to recover the money, loses another $210, and takes $100 from the town’s petty-cash fund to cover the resulting shortfall in the checking account. The theft begins as a limited attempt to conceal private losses, but repeated betting and the pressure to recoup them make the damage harder to contain.

Keeton is a CPA, and the narrative emphasizes the contrast between professional familiarity with financial records and his effort to hide his own misconduct. By autumn 1990, the arrangement he has been trying to hold together is coming apart. He has found a bookie, enabling larger bets than the track would accept, but this change does not improve his luck. His private gambling problem has become a breach of public trust, with town money and official accounts implicated.

Records, Audit, and the Meaning of the Warning

The state’s demand for an audit turns that concealed financial history into an immediate threat. Keeton sorts Bureau of Taxation correspondence and his own replies, which he has kept locked in a filing-cabinet drawer. Though the letters bear the initials of his secretary, Shirley Laurence, she typed none of his responses. The discrepancy makes the correspondence itself part of the concealment, while the audit’s scope extends across town records, including tax and revenue-sharing accounts, expenses, road maintenance, law-enforcement budgets, Parks Department budgets, and the state-funded tree farm.

When Keeton finds the word “EMBEZZLEMENT” on one of the slips placed around his home, the accusation names the real crime at the center of his fear. The expression’s image of going astray in darkness therefore applies not only to delusion or deception: Keeton’s peril grows from concrete choices and records he has tried to suppress. The apparent escape offered by one more bet, one more concealed loss, or one more false reply only carries him further into the trap.