Edward Nappo's Beaded Gloves

Jennie Nappo’s beaded gloves are handmade goods carried on Edward Nappo and his son’s journey, but they mean more than a possible sale. They give the family a modest reserve of money and help Edward retain his composure as they travel. When he offers a pair to Phil Burbank at a gate, the gloves become the focus of a brief encounter between a traveler trying to negotiate and a rancher who refuses the offer.

Making, Pricing, and Purpose

At a late point in the journey, Jennie produces a shoebox containing five pairs of gloves she has made. Edward has only a little cash, kept in a Bull Durham sack, and the family’s canned meat is running low. They have used their rifle to bring down a woodchuck and eaten it in stew flavored with onions; Edward warns that they cannot waste ammunition because their supply is limited. Against this precarious background, the gloves are not decorative extras but goods the family can potentially turn into money.

Jennie sets different prices for the work: three dollars for a pair, and five dollars for pairs with beadwork and gauntlets. Edward has not previously known how much she earns from the gloves. The amounts strike him as substantial, and he wonders whether she is setting money aside for their son. He recognizes her as unusually ambitious, even as his understanding of her plans remains incomplete. The box holds the evidence of work whose value he had not fully appreciated.

The gloves also expose a difference between Edward’s attitude toward selling and Jennie’s practical response to the family’s needs. He doubts that he could bring himself to offer the goods for sale: the thought fills him with embarrassment, and he associates selling for profit with women, whom he imagines have less need for pride. That judgment belongs to Edward’s perspective, not to a neutral account of the work. Jennie has made the gloves and is prepared to name their price. Edward nevertheless credits the box with providing a form of security: knowing it is there allows a man to sit straighter when automobiles pass. The merchandise cannot guarantee a sale, but its potential value matters before money changes hands.

The Offer at the Gate

The gloves acquire a sharper, immediate purpose when Edward faces a man at a gate. He turns toward him with something he has taken from beneath the seat, but it is not the gun: it is the box of gloves. The choice brings the family’s resource into a direct encounter with someone who controls access at the gate. Edward opens the box and holds it out to the poorly dressed man, who has no gloves of his own.

Edward offers the beaded gauntlet pair and names its five-dollar price, suggesting that the purchase might buy them two or three days. The narration also describes his proposal in terms of a possible bribe, making the offer a negotiation as well as an attempted sale. The gloves’ worth is therefore measured in more than their stated price: Edward hopes that their value can help the family continue its journey. Yet the man neither reaches for them nor moves away from the gate.

The man is Phil Burbank. He remarks on the gloves’ appearance, but says he does not take bribes and does not wear gloves. He tells Edward that he has chosen the wrong customer. The refusal ends the encounter without a sale: the gloves cannot secure the passage Edward hopes to obtain. Their practical value remains, but in this moment they also mark the limits of what a small amount of merchandise can accomplish against a person who will not accept the proposed exchange.

Contrast with Ranch Work Gloves

The gloves’ meaning is clarified by the broader working culture of the ranch. Ranch hands and cowboys generally wear horsehide gloves ordered from mail-order catalogues, including those of Sears, Roebuck and Montgomery Ward. They use them for roping, fencing, branding, pitching hay to cattle, riding, running horses, and trailing cattle. The protection is routine: gloves help guard hands against rope burns, splinters, cuts, and blisters. Jennie’s beadwork and gauntlets distinguish her handmade wares from this ordinary equipment, which is bought for repeated work rather than carried as a potential source of income.

Phil stands apart from that convention. He works without gloves, disregards the minor damage to his hands, and scorns those who protect themselves. His refusal at the gate thus has a second context: he rejects not only Edward’s proposed inducement but also the kind of protection the gloves represent. The contrast is pointed without making the objects identical in purpose. The ranch hands’ horsehide gloves are work gear; Jennie’s beaded gloves are crafted for sale. Phil’s rejection places both kinds of glove against his preference for going barehanded, while leaving the economic purpose of Jennie’s box intact.

Value and Narrative Significance

Across these scenes, the gloves move between household labor, hoped-for income, and failed negotiation. Jennie’s making gives the objects a price; Edward’s journey gives that price urgent practical importance; Phil’s refusal shows that their value cannot compel acceptance. The box also revises Edward’s view of his wife’s work. He had not known what she earned, yet he comes to understand that the gloves represent foresight and a measure of financial security for the family.

The contrast with the ranch’s mail-order horsehide gloves keeps the object’s significance grounded in material use. Some gloves protect hands through hazardous work; these beaded pairs are goods whose possible exchange may help a traveling family endure. Their arrival at the gate briefly brings those different economies together. Edward offers what Jennie has made, Phil refuses it, and the gloves remain a compact sign of both the resourcefulness that sustains the journey and the limits imposed by the person standing in its way.