Chapter 9 Summary

Winter in Thalia is always dull, and now that Dwayne has quit basketball, even that feels like a tiring chore to Sonny. Frank Fartley also has Sonny out making butane deliveries late into the night, and Sonny has started drinking coffee to stay awake. Everyone has the winter blues, even Sam the Lion, who must take daily naps for his heart condition. Jacy feels uncertain after her strange conversation with her mother, and she decides her mother's license to sleep with Dwayne must have been a trick. Jacy decides to allow Dwayne even less access to her body, in order to protect him from her mother's "subtle treacheries." A week before Christmas, there is an annual square dance that everyone in town attends.

Lester Marlow, proud of the record $280 he lost to Abilene the night before, shows up early with a plan involving...