Squirm

“He sent her a message thanking me for saving him from the beatdown in D-5. He said nobody’s ever stuck up for him before. See, this is why I’m not on social media. Way too much human contact!”

This quote reinforces the preceding one in establishing Billy’s status as an outsider. He clearly prefers that role over getting involved in the messy lives of other people, even shunning the online chaos of social media. It is for this reason that Chin’s gratitude makes him uncomfortable. Secretly, he also fears the emotional consequences of developing concern for someone else, especially when he knows that his family will most likely be moving on again soon to pursue the next eagle nest.

“‘What—I’m supposed to turn the other way when I see something bad going down?’ ‘No, of course not, no. What you should do is immediately report it to a teacher. Or run to the office and tell somebody. That’s how cases of bullying are supposed to be handled. It says so in the school Code of Conduct.’ I have to chuckle. I’m not trying to disrespect my mother, but seriously—the Code of Conduct? Kyle the lacrosse star was punching that poor kid in the head. Come on.”

Chrissie has just lectured Billy about how he should have handled the Chin situation. While her comment is correct according to all the official rules, it is a naïve assessment of the bullying that actually occurs in middle-school corridors. Chrissie’s same short-sightedness is later demonstrated by the police officers and park rangers who uphold the letter of the law even as endangered wildlife is being slaughtered. In this way, Billy’s early run-in with The Limits of the Law serves to reinforce the larger theme of the novel: standing up for what is right regardless of what the official rules state.

“Mom looks sad. ‘He’s got a whole new life now, honey.’ ‘That’s bull,’ I say. ‘Just because you get a new zip code doesn’t mean you get a new life. Look at us.’”

Billy is trying to convince his mother to let him travel to Montana to find Dennis. While Chrissie’s words indicate that she would prefer to let Dennis move on, Billy’s comment indicates how little she has done so herself. Chrissie moves the family every few years and never settles down. This doesn’t constitute a fresh start or a new life. She is still stuck in past resentments about Dennis’s abandonment of his family. 

“‘Why’d you always cut up the envelopes that Dad’s checks came in?’ ‘Because that’s not how I wanted you to find out where he was. I wanted him to be the one to tell you,’ she says. ‘I wanted him to want you to come see him, but he never asked.’”

This quote makes it clear that Chrissie isn’t really trying to prevent Billy or Belinda from communicating with Dennis. However, she does hold the view that Dennis ought to demonstrate some concern for his children and initiate contact himself. Chrissie believes that if her children have to seek him out, she will never be sure that he actually does care about his original family. Although she may be correct, it is Billy’s gesture of reaching out that actually transforms his father’s behavior into something far more positive and supportive. 

“After my father left, Mom began referring to him as ‘the serial quitter.’ I wasn’t old enough to realize what was going on, but Belinda did. She’s totally on my mother’s side, and who can blame her? She says only a loser walks out on his family.”

As other comments in the book suggest, Dennis is an expert at quitting. He established a track record of quitting multiple jobs and then quits his marriage entirely. However, Chrissie fails to recognize her own quitting behavior. Whenever an eagle nest is abandoned, even briefly, she quits the location and searches for another occupied nest. This pattern proves that she is a serial quitter, too. 

“Lil says, ‘Leave the past upriver. That’s what my great-grandfather used to say. But it’s hard to do.’”

Lil has heard the entire story of Dennis’s past. In this quote, she may also be advising Billy to tell his mother to leave her own past upriver. So far, Chrissie has been unable to do so. Lil’s comment suggests her own awareness of how hard it is to live in the present when the past refuses to stay in the past. 

“When a fishing guide takes out a new sport who turns out to be super-good with a fly rod, the real deal, they call him a Big Stick.”

Summer is explaining the unusual name that she and her mother have chosen for Billy. While Billy isn’t a particularly expert fisherman, he has demonstrated his willingness to step into dangerous situations to help those in need. This quote appears shortly after Billy saves a rude tourist from being trampled by a bison. He helps even those who don’t want to be rescued; the scene also foreshadows the novel’s climax, in which he will act decisively to protect his father from Baxter.

“What I like best about hunting snakes is the peace. All you hear are wild birds and your own footsteps.”

At multiple points in the story, Billy expresses his dislike of noisy human communities. The tourists at Yellowstone irritate him, but so do the snowbirds who descend on Florida each year. Part of his determination to protect nature is because he finds it to be a personal refuge. From this perspective, men like Baxter are a threat to the peace and tranquility that can only be found in the wild. 

“But let’s say the tooth was really mine. Is that supposed to prove Dad cares about me? Just because he saved a dingy little chomper all these years? He’ll have to do better than that.”

At this point in the novel, Dennis is still too frightened to confront his son directly. Instead, he drops Billy’s baby tooth from the drone: a gesture that is at once completely inadequate while also implying that Dennis has never stopped loving or cherishing his children. Thus, although the gesture is meant to reassure Billy of his ongoing commitment to his son, Billy doesn’t perceive the message that way. Instead, he sees Dennis’s move as a way of placating the boy’s anger and isn’t yet willing to forgive his father for remaining at a distance. 

“I should probably be angrier than I feel, but I admit there’s a huge sense of relief to be done with the first face-to-face moment, as crazy as it was. At least no punches were thrown.”

Billy has just tackled Dennis as he tried to flee a face-to-face confrontation with his son. While Dennis was frightened of their first meeting, so was Billy. His quote suggests that his rage at being abandoned might have tempted him to react more violently than he actually did. Ultimately, he is glad that although the first moment of the meeting was intensely gut-wrenching, no bones were broken in the process.

“There’s no excuse […] for how I’ve acted, for not calling you all these years. I just didn’t think I could handle it—the sound of your voice, and your sister’s. I was afraid I’d fall apart on the phone and make things even worse. It was me being a coward, Billy, nothing more complicated than that. As time went by, the fear turned to shame.”

This quote shifts the focus away from Billy’s feelings of abandonment and towards Dennis’s sense of inadequacy over his past failures. A large part of Billy’s anger stems from the belief that he isn’t worthy of his father’s care. However, Dennis’s own statement reveals that he doesn’t feel worthy of being a father, for it is clear that he finds it easier to face a poacher at gunpoint than to face the reproach in his family’s eyes.

“There are now enough bears that they don’t need to be legally protected anymore. Dad says some western states will soon start selling licenses to hunt the grizzlies, like in the old days. In other words, we saved an animal from extinction just so we could start killing it again. How messed up is that?”

Dennis is explaining why he and Billy need to stop Baxter’s activities. In this passage, Billy takes a beat to register the stupidity and inadequacy of current environmental protection rules, which only protect an animal until it has sufficiently recovered its numbers, at which point hunters are once again allowed to kill the species. In this warped system, if a species proves viable, its reward is death for fighting its way back from the brink of extinction. Open season is declared on animal populations that are still fragile and losing more habitat every year. This quote is a prime example to demonstrate The Limits of the Law.

“I can totally picture him and Mom getting together when they were young. Both of them are free spirits—by that, I mean they sail with no anchor—but they care about the same sorts of things. Mom’s got her eagles, Dad’s got his bears and panthers. Their hearts are on the same page.”

At this point in the story, Billy’s attitude toward Dennis is softening. While he doesn’t envision his parents ever reuniting, he can now understand what drew them together in the first place, for Dennis was the first person to show Chrissie an eagle’s nest and inspire her lifelong passion. However, the restlessness that allows both of Billy’s parents to appreciate life in its wild state also makes it hard for each of them to function in a traditional family structure. 

“Sometimes you can be dead wrong about a person. Once the embarrassment of your mistake passes, it’s actually a good feeling—being surprised in a positive way by human behavior.”

Billy has a generally low opinion of his fellow humans, and he has seen enough bullying behavior in his short life to validate that conclusion. However, he has just learned that Burnside refused to help Baxter hunt an endangered panther. The dog trainer clearly needs the money, but his integrity outweighs every other consideration. In this moment, Billy remains open-minded enough to appreciate the goodness in a man he initially saw as his potential foe. 

“In some ways, Dennis is a kick-ass dude, chasin’ these hard-core poachers all by himself. For that he should get mad respect, right? But in other ways, he’s a big dopey chicken, too scared to call you and your sister.”

In this quote, Summer is summing up Dennis’s problem in a nutshell by emphasizing that her stepfather functions like two different people. Out in the natural world, he knows how to survive and how to handle the bullies who terrorize vulnerable species. Within a civilized context, however, he has much more trouble, for balancing interactions with a traditional family throws him off-balance just as holding down a traditional job used to do. Ultimately, Dennis reserves all his courage for nature and all his fear for his family. 

“Chin’s father says, ‘Billy, you did a brave thing.’ Nope. I did the only thing a person like me could possibly do, wired the way I am. No way could I stand there watching a small kid get pounded by a big kid. Not an option. That isn’t bravery, it’s just reflex.”

Billy refuses to take credit for standing up for Chin. He simply hates bullies and thinks they should be stopped. In this regard, he is his father’s son, for both characters are both determined to take decisive action to help the helpless, and they both demonstrate selflessness in doing so. Most people will worry about the consequences to themselves if they stand up for others. Fortunately for the vulnerable, Billy and Dennis don’t. 

“Sometimes it’s hard to feel much hope for the planet. My personal remedy—Belinda calls it my ‘disappearing act’—is to go places where I hear bugs buzzing instead of cars speeding down a highway. Places where birds outnumber tourists.”

As in a previous quote, Billy expresses his bleak view of the limitations of humanity. He dislikes crowds of people and especially dislikes what their increasing numbers are doing to destroy the ecological balance. His solution is to retreat into what remains of nature to recharge his spirit. Perhaps his need for this refuge also explains why he is so willing to put his life on the line to protect it. 

“There’s an important difference between a common raven and a poacher like Lincoln Baxter: one is part of the natural world, and one is a criminal intruder. The bird kills for food, while Baxter kills for entertainment.”

Billy is watching a flock of ravens waiting to attack swallow nests. He isn’t happy about their predatory activities, but he understands the necessity that drives raven behavior. On the other hand, the motivation of someone like Baxter is completely perplexing to him, for Baxter seeks pleasure in killing for no purpose other than sport. This compulsion makes the antagonist no better than a common sociopath, even if his victims aren’t human.

“Nature always gets the last word. That’s not my line. I read it in a magazine article written by a rock climber. His point was that nature is as coldhearted as it is beautiful, and that forces beyond our understanding can deliver a random life-or-death surprise at any moment.”

Billy offers this comment shortly after observing the ravens at work. When he utters these words, he has no idea that they will also apply to Baxter’s fate at the end of the book. Summer will later echo this line once grizzly scat shows evidence that Baxter may have been eaten by bears. While the hunter assumes that it is his right to subdue nature, the wilderness itself has other ideas. In this way, the novel deliberately personifies the natural world and characterizes it as a sentient force with a firm and impartial sense of justice, unlike The Limits of the Law that plague human society.

“As risky as Dad’s drone expeditions might be, she understood that protecting those animals was a passion, something that gave him a sense of duty. There are worse hobbies a man could have, she thought.”

In this passage, Lil has just explained to Billy and Summer that she’s known about Dennis’s secret life for a long time. Like her daughter, she takes a pragmatic view of her husband’s activities, for she understands and appreciates that in his own eccentric way he is trying to make the world a better place. Lil has also seen enough truly evil behavior to be able to tell the difference between someone who is malicious and someone who is merely quirky. 

“I’d never worried about Dad that way, because he was gone from our lives so early. As they say: out of sight, out of mind. If he’d died back then, I’m not sure how sad I would have felt. It’s hard to miss somebody you barely remember. I’d miss him now, though.”

Billy and Summer are now tracking Dennis because they fear that Baxter plans to harm him. This quote indicates how much Billy’s attitude has changed toward his father over the course of the novel. This isn’t simply because Dennis has become a real person to him. Billy also recognizes the similarities that he shares with his father, for they both willingly risk their own safety to help those who are being attacked by bullies. 

“‘Why shoot a grizzly bear?’ I say. ‘What’s the point of killing an animal that’s disappearing from the planet?’ ‘That’s easy. It’s the challenge—they’re humongous and dangerous and, best of all, very rare.’”

In this exchange, Billy is asking Baxter about his motivation for trophy hunting, and the poacher’s reasoning is less than compelling. Baxter’s selfishness is apparent in his reply, for his only justification for such wanton destruction is that he wants to be the sole person who gets to experience the thrill of killing something rare. Such an attitude is strictly a matter of ego and bragging rights. The narrowness of Baxter’s ambition contrasts sharply with Dennis’s quest to defend the country’s wildlife and casts the poacher clearly in the role of villain in the story, even as his activities demonstrate the real-life issues surrounding the highly unethical sport of trophy hunting.

“Songbirds high in the branches remind me where we are, in the midst of a mountain forest after a hard rain. The crisp air smells sweet enough to drink. Golden rays of sunlight slant through gaps in the treetops. A place so peaceful and perfect is totally wasted on a jerk like Baxter.”

Baxter spends a good deal of time outside; he knows how to stalk game in the wilderness. Yet despite frequenting the wildest, most pristine landscapes, he cannot understand humanity’s connection to nature and remains cruelly detached from the world around him. By contrast, even while Billy is facing the poacher at gunpoint, he can still appreciate the beauty that surrounds him and experience a sense of wonder. Baxter’s only reaction to nature is to figure out how to exploit it for his own personal benefit.