Scat

Duane Jr. arrives at Nick’s house with a strange request: he wants to borrow Nick’s biology textbook to study for an exam, even though there is no exam coming up in Mrs. Starch’s class. He tells Nick, cryptically, not to worry about Wendell Waxmo anymore, further implying that there is some sort of network of communication between Duane Jr., Twilly, and Mrs. Starch. Nick lends Duane Jr. the book, and he vanishes without explanation. At the Truman School the next day, Wendell Waxmo calls Dr. Dressler to resign his position as Mrs. Starch’s substitute, claiming he has come down with an improbably rare skin condition. Dr. Dressler is none too sorry to see him go. 

In the meantime, Drake McBride has learned of the arson investigation. Jimmy Lee Bayliss assures him that the situation is under control and Duane Jr. will be successfully framed for the crime. McBride is pleased to hear this and announces his intention to not work in the afternoon and instead spend time with King Thunderbolt, a racehorse he has recently purchased with the intention of learning to ride. With Bayliss’s blessing, McBride gets in his helicopter and leaves. 

On the bus to school, Nick tells Marta about Duane Jr.’s visit to borrow the biology textbook. He’s finished reading The Monkey Wrench Gang by Edward Abbey—the book Twilly Spree recommended—and he excitedly tells Marta about the program of environmentalist sabotage or “monkeywrenching” glorified in the novel. When they get to school, Duane Jr.’s prediction is proven right: Wendell Waxmo is gone, and they have a new substitute with a less ridiculous teaching method. But Duane Jr. himself is not in class. 

Jimmy Lee Bayliss offers to take Torkelsen, the fire department investigator, on a helicopter tour of the arson site—where he has carefully planted Duane Jr.’s backpack for Torkelsen to discover as “evidence”, after being “careful to remove any assignment papers dated after the arson; otherwise Torkelsen would have figured out that the book bag couldn’t have been left at the scene on the day of the crime” (206). Bayliss has even purchased a butane torch and stashed it in Duane Jr.’s bag to make it look even more damning. Twilly Spree is perched in a palm tree above them, but he isn’t watching the investigator discover the planted evidence; he is keeping an eye out for the panther, whose scream he heard on the day of the field trip. He runs into Duane Jr., who is also searching for the panther. Twilly looks at Duane Jr. fondly, wishing he could be the parental figure that Duane Jr. needs. On the way out of the swamp, Twilly finds what he has been searching for: panther droppings or “scat.” 

Detective Marshall arrives at the Truman School to tell Dr. Dressler that they have obtained enough evidence to arrest Duane Jr. for arson. Dr. Dressler calls Duane Jr. out of class to hand him over to the authorities, but Duane Jr. breaks free before being handcuffed and flees across the playing fields, stopping to tell Nick that he is innocent. 

Nick gets home to see his father practicing left-handed pitches in the yard. They play catch for a while, having both improved at using only one arm. Nick tells his parents about the scene with Duane Jr. at school that day, revealing that he believes Duane Jr.’s protestations of innocence, because “what happened in the past shouldn’t matter—if he didn’t start this fire, he shouldn’t be arrested for it” (221). It’s clear that Nick is on Duane Jr.’s side now, and though he has cared about justice since the very beginning, this is the first sign that his personal sense of justice is independent of what the police and the justice system put forward. He calls Libby, Detective Marshall’s daughter, who tells him that the backpack is the key piece of evidence against Duane Jr. Nick realizes that the backpack must have been stolen and planted because Duane Jr. needed to borrow Nick’s textbook only the day before. 

The next day, Nick and Marta pay a visit to Duane Sr. Still trapped with the shrieking parrot in the fortress of his own paranoia, Duane Sr. has no idea of the danger his son is facing. Marta notices his records, piano, and sheet music and mentions a Rachmaninoff piece she is practicing for a recital. Duane Sr. sits down and plays it flawlessly from memory. Warming up to them, Duane Sr. suddenly remembers that his son’s backpack was taken by a “guv’ment” man—but his flustered, unhinged recollections are, unfortunately, not reliable. Frustrated and out of ideas, Nick and Marta leave the house and fight over whether the backpack evidence really exonerates Duane Jr.—or whether he might, after all, be guilty of setting the fire. Adamant that Smoke is innocent, Nick suddenly sees Mrs. Starch’s Prius parked outside a pizza place, and he pulls Marta into the backseat.