Arvin Russell

Arvin Russell’s adolescence is shaped by bereavement, practical lessons in survival, and a growing willingness to use violence against people he sees as threats. The German Luger passed down from Willard Russell becomes both an instrument of protection and a reminder of his father; at the end, Arvin buries it with Jack’s remains and walks away from the place that formed him.

Identity and Background

After Willard leaves for Ohio, Arvin lives with his great-uncle Earskell. Earskell gives him a 16-gauge Remington and takes him into the woods only a few weeks after the boy arrives. The lesson is practical: in a household where food may depend on hunting, Arvin must know how to handle a gun. Arvin objects that he does not want to shoot animals, a reluctance that distinguishes his early response from the hard necessity Earskell describes.

On Arvin’s fifteenth birthday, Earskell gives him a pistol wrapped in cloth and a box of shells. It is Willard’s German Luger, brought home from the war and hidden under a smokehouse floorboard after Willard left. Earskell has kept it there, cleaning it occasionally, rather than using or selling it. The gift links Arvin’s new capacity for armed self-defense to the father he has lost; his delight contrasts with his earlier resistance to hunting and with the gun’s long, unused concealment.

Protection and Retaliation

Arvin’s violence first appears as retaliation on Lenora’s behalf. More than a week after he beats Gene Dinwoodie, Earskell asks what happened. Arvin explains that Gene and several friends had been teasing and insulting Lenora, and says he dealt with the boys as a group. He does not tell his grandmother the details, because he does not want to upset her, but he knows Earskell expects the facts. The episode establishes a pattern: Arvin responds to harassment through direct physical force, while limiting what he shares with those who might be distressed by it.

That protective role becomes more painful when the sheriff tells him that Lenora was pregnant. Arvin initially rejects the news as a lie. The sheriff relays the coroner’s estimate that she had been about three months along, making the information a further revelation about Lenora’s life and death. Arvin then confronts Preston Teagardin. The preacher says that Lenora came to him to confess her pregnancy and that he promised not to tell anyone. Arvin takes this disclosure as confirmation that Teagardin was responsible for the pregnancy. He fires at the car, disabling it, and advances with the Luger, accusing the preacher of lying. The scene shows grief turning into a demand for accountability, but the supplied account does not establish the encounter’s eventual outcome.

Flight and the Hendersons

After selling his 1954 Chevrolet Bel Air, Arvin travels by hitchhiking. A fertilizer salesman carries him through Charleston and leaves him on Route 35 at Nitro; a Black family in a pickup takes him toward Point Pleasant. From there Arvin walks toward the bridge over the Ohio River before accepting a ride from Carl and Sandy Henderson. When Sandy asks his name, he gives the name Billy Burns, borrowed from the salesman. The false identity is a small but significant measure of caution in a journey where he depends on strangers for transportation.

The ride turns dangerous when Carl reveals that he wants photographs of Arvin. Arvin tries to leave rather than cooperate, but Carl gets out and orders him from the car while pointing a pistol. Arvin draws the Luger. Carl’s demand makes clear that the ride was not simply an act of assistance; Arvin is now trapped in a situation in which his refusal may provoke violence. Sandy’s hands tremble as she tries to light a cigarette, and Arvin senses that something is wrong before Carl orders him out.

Carl dies in the encounter, and Sandy draws a .22 pistol and fires at Arvin. He shoots her before she can fire again. The exchange leaves Arvin sick and shaken rather than triumphant. Searching Carl’s wallet, he finds a photograph of Sandy holding a dead man, an image that reveals the couple’s murder photography and changes how he understands the danger he has escaped. He takes the photograph and two rolls of film from the car, wipes surfaces he may have touched, and leaves through a cornfield. The evidence he carries will matter again when he faces the law.

Return and Confrontation

The following morning, Arvin reads that the sheriff’s sister and her husband have been found murdered after returning from a vacation in Virginia Beach. The newspaper names no suspect, but its photograph of Lee Bodecker reminds Arvin that Bodecker was on duty the night Willard killed himself. Arvin packs quickly, then returns to his room for the framed image of Jesus on the cross, wrapping it in the newspaper and putting it in his bag.

He walks back toward Knockemstiff, traveling by logging truck and on foot. The familiar landscape has changed little, apart from a couple of new houses where a cornfield once stood. Maude’s store remains on its corner, and the camper behind it is still there. Seeing Hank again connects Arvin’s return to the childhood home he left years earlier. But the return is temporary: Lee tracks him to the wooded clearing where Willard once brought him, a place marked by a prayer log, crosses, and bones hanging from wires.

Arvin uses a thrown piece of wood to draw Lee’s gunfire away from his own position, then steps out behind the sheriff and orders him to put down his weapon. Lee refuses. When Lee fires, Arvin shoots him, and the sheriff falls. Arvin takes Lee’s pistol away and shows him the photograph of Sandy with the dead man, explaining that he had begged her to put down her gun. The photograph serves as evidence and as Arvin’s account of why he acted; Lee is too weak to take it before he dies.

Departure and Significance

Arvin stays beside Lee through his final minutes. He recognizes that there is no returning to his former life, but also that he cannot continue as he has. He puts the Luger on the prayer log, kneels beside the hole where Jack’s remains were buried, and lays the gun there. He covers it and disguises the grave. The act closes the chain begun when Earskell gave him Willard’s concealed pistol: the weapon has passed from father to son, accompanied Arvin through successive acts of defense and killing, and is now deliberately left behind.

Before leaving, Arvin takes down the image of Jesus and packs it, thinking that he might someday have a place to hang it and that Willard would have liked that. He puts the photograph and film from Carl and Sandy’s car into Lee’s shirt pocket. Then he leaves the clearing, knowing he will not see it again and probably will not see Emma or Earskell either. He walks north toward Paint Creek and plans to reach Route 50, dependent once more on the chance of a ride. His ending is not a return to safety or a settled homecoming: he abandons the objects tied to his father’s violence, preserves the evidence of what happened, and goes back onto the road.