Chapter 5 Summary

In addition to running around the park every morning, the narrator eats breakfast at Clary's drugstore. He describes Luther Driggers, another visitor to Clary's regular. Every day, Luther comes into the drugstore and orders breakfast, yet sometimes looks at his plate and walks out without eating or paying. According to the waitress, Luther is divorced, lives in a miserable house, and has a history of marijuana possession. He suffers from insomnia, lack of appetite, and because of his work with insecticides, there is a rumor in town that he possesses a bottle of extremely powerful poison and plans to poison the city's water supply. Luther ties flies to the ends of strings and carries them like balloons. He is known as 'the inventor,' because he has discovered a certain kind of pesticide that passes through plastic, leading to the invention of the...