45 pages • 1 hour read
The Water Knife
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Chapters 38-42Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 38 Summary
At the Vet’s compound, everyone watches as smoke rises in the west. The Vet’s men begin scrambling and jumping into trucks. Damien runs past Maria and tells her, “Got to go put some Merry Perrys in their place” (312). Everyone, including the Vet, leaves the compound to go join the fray. Maria can hear the gunfire in the distance. After some time, Toomie comes to free Maria. Before Maria leaves, she releases the hyenas inside the Vet’s compound. She tells Toomie, “If the Vet comes back, maybe he gets a surprise” (314). Maria and Toomie slowly make their way back to Toomie’s house. Maria tells Toomie that she’s going to try to cross the border and get out of Phoenix. When Toomie tells Maria that she’ll die trying to cross, she responds that she’s dead in Phoenix, too. Toomie offers to hide Maria with him but Maria refuses. Maria offers to help Toomie cross with her, but Toomie says he can’t cross the river with his bad leg.
Chapter 39 Summary
Angel hallucinates that he’s a child again, helping his mother make tamales. Angel wakes up to Lucy reviving him with CPR. He goes under again and hallucinates the sicario talking to him. The sicario tells Angel that those who live by the sword die by the sword. The sicario also gives Angel advice about Lucy: “Don’t cheat on northern women. They will fuck you up” (322).
When Angel wakes up from his dreams, Lucy is watching over him. Lucy tries to explain to Angel that she didn’t want to betray Angel, but the Calies put pressure on her family. Angel explains to her that under the right pressure, everyone breaks. Angel tells Lucy that they need to get moving again, despite Lucy’s protests. Angel thinks Case put a hit out on him.
Chapter 40 Summary
Angel gives Lucy directions to a Las Vegas safe house. Along the way, he tells Lucy about his card being declined at the gas station and how it must have been his own people who canceled his account, as if he were already dead. Angel speculates that Braxton has turned Case against him.
Angel pulls away a chunk of carpet that has been glued down, revealing a trap door. Inside the bunker, Angel uses a phone to call for extraction. He makes his voice sound distressed and tells whoever is on the other line to hurry. Angel limps to a house across the street and climbs to a bedroom on the top floor with a window. Lucy and Angel hide in a closet and listen as helicopters approach and missiles fire at Angel’s previous location. Lucy sees Angel smiling, knowing his prediction had been right.
Chapter 41 Summary
Two men come to inspect the rubble from the missile strike to ensure that Angel is dead. Angel has nestled himself in the wreckage, preparing to ambush them. He’s had Lucy burn his hair and has cut his forehead to make it look like he’s been injured in the missile strike. From their conversation, it sounds as though the men are the same ones Angel had seen at the Taiyang. When the men find Angel, he pretends to be seriously hurt. The men ask Angel what he’s done with the water rights; as they begin digging up his body, Angel and Lucy ambush them. Angel begins questioning the Calies who they work for. The men tell Angel that an order had come down to search the place for a dead water knife and search for papers containing the senior water rights. It turns out that Case thinks Angel has the water rights and is trying to make his own score. Angel calls Case and tells her he can get the water rights for her. Case gives Angel a chance to deliver the water rights but tells him “if they end up in someone else’s hands, I’ll know it was you, and I swear I’ll be right there hunting you with California and Arizona for the rest of your life” (339). The realization that the water rights are written on paper has given Angel an idea of where they really are.
Chapter 42 Summary
Maria arrives in Carver City ready to try to cross the river. The National Guard is escorting refugees from Carver City out of the area. Maria sneaks down to the water line and waits for nightfall. Wearing all black, she looks out across the water and imagines the people on the other side whose job it is to try to catch her. She still has Ratan’s book with her. She decides that if she doesn’t see anything move within an hour, she’ll cross the river.
Chapters 38-42 Analysis
Maria’s character has now made its complete arc. By luck, she manages to escape the Vet’s compound when everyone leaves to join the firefight that Angel and Lucy started. Toomie releases her and understands that Maria has made up her mind to cross the Colorado River. He’s done trying to persuade her otherwise or offer more illusions of safety. Maria has had to face two of her greatest fears now: losing Sarah and being tortured at the hands of the Vet. She has emerged from these events less naïve about how her world really works and what she needs to do to survive it. She gives up notions of right and wrong in favor of mere survival.
Lucy’s character has almost completed her journey as well. As she points the gun at the Calies in the rubble of the bolt-hole stash, Angel sees that she’s become completely hardened. Years of surprised anger and rage have finally made it to the surface, and she intends to seek revenge on those who have made her, her family, and Phoenix suffer.
Angel, on the other hand, is now bearing the consequences of all of his past actions: He is dealing not only with proving his loyalty to Case and the physical toll of Lucy’s betrayal, but also the psychological burdens of his past traumas, including the loss of his own family and his encounter with the sicario.
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