Chapter 20 Summary: 'But Still, and Yet'

⚠️ Spoiler Warning: This guide contains detailed spoilers for the entire novel. Proceed only if you've finished reading or are comfortable knowing the plot.

Summary

The chapter opens at dawn as the narrator crosses the Kentucky–West Virginia border on I-64, passing through Huntington with minimal traffic and a few military vehicles. He finds himself thinking about Cammie again, feeling a warm, almost paternal ache toward her that he cannot fully explain. He plays Little Peggy March's song “I Will Follow Him” on repeat, struck by its desperate, uninvited longing.

As he drives, he reflects on his past as a twenty-year-old paid sperm donor. That single act, he realizes, has rippled forward decades: a possible daughter, a long-dead egg donor, a Tibetan surrogate, and a wealthy couple who financed the arrangement. His DNA now sits in multiple databases—what he calls the Genetic Panopticon—and he feels exposed and taken advantage of, though he cannot say precisely by whom.

He stops at Outer Limits, a former American Legion hall turned greasy-spoon tavern, and orders a beer and a Belgian waffle. The bartender tells him alcohol cannot be served until eight a.m., so he settles for coffee.

Without warning, a childhood memory surfaces. He is five or six, sitting alone in a parked car outside a Safeway, watching an orange Popsicle melt on the pavement while ants and a sparrow gather. He waits for his mother to emerge, hoping she might bring him a Popsicle, but he knows better than to ask—complaining about hunger once earned him a forced meal of an entire loaf of white bread and a quart of mint ice cream. When his mother finally appears, she moves quickly, glancing over her shoulder, and they drive off, hitting a shopping cart without stopping.

He reflects that his mother was on the sociopathic spectrum, someone who killed, wounded, robbed, and betrayed countless people. He does not fool himself into believing she loved him, but she kept him around, and he was grateful to be useful.

More memories follow. When he was around nine, she called herself Taffy and seemed to be considering abandoning him. He remembers the particular smile she gave him when she got out of the car—the smile of someone trying to compliment a stranger's homely child. When she was pleased with him, she pretended he was not her son at all, telling him never to call her Mom.

Around age ten, she went by Sessy, drove a hearse with a King Cake Baby dangling from the rearview mirror, and wore heavy mascara. She told people her motto was to forgive quickly and be kind, and she would fix her full attention on someone the way a snake hypnotizes a mouse. He never asked about his father; he knew better.

He recalls visiting Pastor Avery's compound in Montana, a gated militia settlement of about 150 people. Barefoot men on motorcycles escorted them up the driveway, and armed men sat on the porch. His mother made him remove his shoes and socks before entering. Pastor Avery, a tall, balding man in a white linen robe, picked the ten-year-old boy up, pinched his big toe, and joked about him becoming a football player. The boy pretended to be a doll.

Back in the present, the waitress brings his beer and waffle. He presses a hundred-dollar bill into her hand and asks if Friend Esther is around. She says Esther will not be in until five o'clock, and the hundred dollars is not enough to change that.

The memory of Pastor Avery continues: the man held him on his lap, traced his ear, sniffed his hair, and murmured that Billy would not be killed. The boy noticed the man's thumb had the same squat, shovel shape as his own, and he believed Avery might be his father.

He eats his waffle, cutting it into twenty-four pieces. Another memory arrives: he is eleven or twelve, pushing Dallam Hartley in a wheelchair down to a barn full of caged chinchillas and minks. Hartley, a frail old man, tells him plainly that his mother is a compulsive liar and that Billy is not his son. The boy believes him.

He notes that he is now out of the territory of the young men he murdered, and can probably head to Cleveland without repercussions. He thinks again of Cammie, wondering if she ever looked at the grown men in her life the way he did—always asking, Is he? Could he be?

His final memory is of Kenny Panola, one of his mother's oldest friends, who taught him trigonometry and calculus with remarkable clarity. Kenny was a speed freak, trembling and covered in needle marks, and the boy loved him even while suspecting he might kill them. A few days after the math lessons, his mother injected Kenny with a fatal dose of amphetamine while he slept, and they left him spread-eagled on a king-size bed.

The narrator finishes his beer, decides the hundred-dollar tip covers his tab, and slips out the door with his head low.

Key Events

The narrator crosses into West Virginia and stops at the Outer Limits tavern for breakfast.
He reflects on his sperm-donation past and the resulting daughter, egg donor, surrogate, and wealthy parents.
He bribes the bartender with a hundred dollars to ask about Friend Esther, who will not arrive until five.
He recalls waiting alone in a Safeway parking lot as a small child.
He remembers his mother's aliases—Taffy and Sessy—and her sociopathic behavior.
He revisits the memory of Pastor Avery's Montana compound and the possibility that Avery was his father.
He remembers Dallam Hartley telling him his mother was a compulsive liar.
He recalls Kenny Panola's math lessons and his mother's murder of Kenny.
He leaves the tavern, noting he is outside the territory of the young men he killed.

Character Development

Billy (the narrator) emerges here as a man shaped by abandonment anxiety and a lifelong search for paternal identity. His memories are not linear but associative—a waffle triggers a Safeway parking lot, a song triggers Kenny Panola. He is capable of tenderness (his feelings for Cammie) and of brutal pragmatism (the hundred-dollar bribe, the casual mention of murder). His self-awareness is sharp but incomplete; he knows his mother was a sociopath, yet he still feels gratitude for being kept.

The mother is a shadowy, terrifying presence defined by her aliases and her performances. She is never given a single name, only the masks she wears—Taffy, Sessy—and her behavior ranges from neglect to murder. She is the engine of Billy's trauma and the reason he cannot trust anyone fully.

Pastor Avery and Dallam Hartley both function as potential fathers, and both fail him in different ways. Avery is a cult leader who may or may not be his biological father; Hartley is a dying man who tells him the truth about his mother. Neither offers him a stable identity.

Kenny Panola is the chapter's most poignant figure: a violent, drug-addled man who nevertheless gave Billy the gift of mathematical knowledge. His murder by Billy's mother underscores the chapter's central tension—love and danger are inseparable in Billy's world.

Themes, Symbols, or Motifs

Uncertain paternity and identity: Billy's entire sense of self is built on not knowing who his father is. Every man he meets is a potential father, and every possibility is foreclosed.
The Genetic Panopticon: His DNA in databases represents a new form of surveillance—one he cannot escape, even after a lifetime of running.
Performance and masks: His mother's aliases, her motto of kindness, and her hypnotic attention are all performances. Billy learns to perform too, from pretending to be a doll in Avery's arms to his